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Kathryn Joyce sent me this article from Alternet as an exercise in laughing at the Internet Tough Guys who tend to go apeshit whenever anyone questions the toxic masculinity that holds their allegiance, and believe me, the comments on it went from hilarious to just sickening. Because we’re talking about the myth of “man as caveman” (which tends to pair of neatly with the illogical myth that women are somehow more civilized, as if one half of the species could evolve without the other half)---which is used to defend everything from rape to male cheating (as if female cheating doesn’t exist) to, and I suspect this is most important to myth proponents, making your wife feel bad for daring to be older than 16---the internet hooligans went bananas. I think this Nice Guy® whining is my favorite:
I’d just like to remind the devotees of The Lady of Eternal Victimhood, that despite all the hate and condemnation thrown at modern-man for the resemblances he may hold to proto-man, Woman created Man through sexual selection to fill a set of survival needs.
In case that was unclear, he’s arguing that men are born as rapist cheating machines, and women have ourselves to blame.
Anyway, for all that this article caused a delicious uproar from guys with massive masculinity issues,* I found it really disappointing. The author Martha McCaughey approaches the problem of the armchair evo psych masculinity myth by attacking the authority of science. I doubt she intended it squarely as an attack, but more of an “asking questions” thing, but these exercises in treating science like it’s another cultural construct without any qualitative difference from cultural constructs like, say, reality TV shows tend to backfire.
Learning evolution’s significance for male sexuality can enable men to rationalize sexist double standards and wallow in their loutishness, as they do in guyland. Alternatively, it can serve to encourage men to control their caveman natures by becoming self-conscious, enlightened cavemen. But either way, the popular versions of man-as-caveman never question men’s putatively natural shortcomings or innate aggressive heterosexuality. The caveman is certainly not the only form of masculine identity in our times. But the emergence of a caveman masculinity tells us much about the authority of science, the flow of scientific ideas in our culture, and the embodiment of those ideas. We live in a culture attached to scientific authority and explication. The popularity of the scientific story of men’s evolved desires—however distorted the science becomes as enthusiasts popularize it—can tell us something about the appeal and influence of that story.
It’s not that it’s untrue, it’s just that by critiquing the justification by looking askance at science is the sort of thing that causes otherwise reasonable science backers to go crazy on the whole concept of post-modernism, and that’s about the least productive warfare imaginable. Really, I was listening to an episode of “The Skeptic’s Guide To The Universe” the other day, and some people on the show are so angry with post-modernists who they see as refuting the entire possibility of making real world claims that can be tested that they drifted into making fun of the study of literature, as if it was impossible to read poetry symbolically. I shit you not---you can listen to it here. (And Rebecca Watson realizing how offensive they were getting and trying to be a peace-maker.) And I like this podcast 99% of the time.
It’s absolutely true that chauvinist pigs like to argue that certain male behaviors are innate and that women should simply accept them and our second class status, presumably, as long-suffering wives or sexual harassment/assault victims, and that said pigs wrap themselves in the mantle of science to give themselves authority. And failing that, they’ll use religion. In fact, I’d say you still have more religious misogynists than evo psych ones (though a lot of misogynists double dip), not because our culture values religion more, but because religion doesn’t have a self-correcting mechanism or a habit of valuing evidence over what you wish were true. McCaughey seems to accept the claims of evo psych sexists to scientific accuracy at face value, and argues instead that we can draw on science’s role as just another part of our culture to push back. I disagree. I think the best way to tackle these claims is to point out how many pop science claims about innate male behaviors are made up, evidence-free bullshit that ignores that much more pressing scientific reality that our very flexibility and civilization is our evolutionary survival strategy. The evidence suggests not that men are “programmmed” to rape and cheat, but that human beings are equipped with large brains and an ability to weigh a series of options, and that the choice to rape or cheat is made by a creature that evolved precisely to be reactive to its environment in complex ways.
Fight pseudo-science with science, in other words, instead of taking pseudo-science claims to be science at face value. I can’t blame scientists and science supporters when they get frustrated with this sort of discourse that treats scientific authority as if it’s exactly the same as religious authority or sentimental forms of discourse. When you’re dealing with creationists or anti-vaccination nuts who weigh what they want to believe with more authority than what science and evidence tells us, you get a tad defensive is all I’m saying. The problem with evo pysch claims---and I do think that McCaughey hints strongly at this---is that, at best, they miss the forest for the trees. Fans of armchair evo psych are so busy trying to justify men’s most boorish behavior that they fail to consider the mountains of evidence that suggest it’s a direct reaction to social pressures and that is evidence for a genuine, evidence-based, scientific claim, that we are social animals who, like other primates, survive in a group with changeable, complex political hierarchies.
*Always funny, because they never seem to clue into the cure for their massive problems, which is to give up worshiping masculinity and instead become full human beings.
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Posted by
Amanda Marcotte on 04:53 PM •
Permalink
This is the guy that got me…
“interesting that these guyland people are the ones getting laid.
I would like to see a survey of how much sex frat boy jocks receive versus schmucks such as myself that wasted our time going to feminist philosophy classes and trying to be respectful and understanding while constantly being talk down to in class for even trying. While Quarterback Jack spent his evenings piling driving 6 chics back in his cock-cave.
Riddle me that batwomen.
PS Why were you on a date with that guy in the first place? Yes...there it is...quick, cover it up with fancy talk about double standards...”
Geez, dude. We all go through “dry spells”. No need to be so bitter about it.
Seriously, I know tons of guys like this. “Why do girls only go out with guys who act like assholes?” I just tell them, “Well, then start acting like an asshole and see if that works for you.”
Of course, to act like assholes, they’d have to change nothing. Sitting in a women’s studies class and staring at the girls like they’re pieces of meat while ignoring the instructor because she’s yapping about some stupid woman bullshit might seem “sensitive” the Nice Guy® in question, but comes across for what it is to everyone else.
Quarterback Jack and the Cock Caves = band name.
I wonder how much sex the assholes really get. Maybe they have more sex partners, but they probably find it harder to find a long-term partner, or they’re not interested in a long-term relationship. Then consider a guy who’s a serial monogamist. Even if he’s only having sex with his partner an average of once a week, he’s probably still getting more sex than the guy who tries to get laid on the weekends and risks going home alone.
I loved the fantasy of the “cock cave”. That was just wonderful.
You know I’d also like to stand up for football players, I was never known one myself but in high school I honestly knew a few who were alright. Not all of them, although the ones who conformed most to the moronic bully stereotype were the onese least likely to get attention from girls.
What I find somewhat amazing is how many men prefer misogyny over the possibility of a dating/sexual relationship. This may be counter-intuitive, but consider.
If you are man interested in meeting women, you would think that going to where the women in fact are would be smart. Even under brute force math, you are more likely to meet women who might be interested in you where women - are. Yet these men who complain about their hardupitude leave alone the social activities that are gendered “female” in this society. The yoga classes, the cooking classes, most community volunteer non-profit work and, yes, the houses of worship remain overwhelmingly female in participation. (I am assuming that in this society a majority of straight men don’t conscientiously object to religious institutions for the last example.)
Now if most single men were gay or working 110 hours a week, maybe this would make more sense. Yet men with free time but dissatisfying social lives with women will complain that women don’t miraculously appear at their poker table with the fellas or next to their barcalounger during Monday Night Football. These are fine activities, but a yoga class or cooking class is usually a better place to meet female friends and possible women to date (either there or the friends of new acquaintances, etc.) But looking down on these social activities as “women’s stuff” out of misogyny is more satisfying than the possible prospect of a dating and sexual intimacy for these fellows. Go figure.
Gee, I didn’t know I was a rapist cheating machine. Learn something new every day, I guess.
Maybe they have more sex partners [...].
Since when did blow-up dolls count as sexual partners?! 
Purely anecdotal but I’ve seen many an Asshole stomp out of a bar (and keggers) in such a huff, because his assholish “charms” failed to seduce anyone with two X-chromosomes. But then again it’s just an anecdote. And yet...there are quite a few EvoPsych- and ”Nice Guy”-theories on heterosexual interactions based on *anecdotes (*”this bitch wouldn’t fuck me because I’m not a rich jock and not because I’m a whimpering assclown, wah!”) and watching the latest relationship-based “reality” show, and *those* are taken as “truths”.
You’re not, Nathan, unless you choose to be. If you think that I was saying that you are, however, then you are either lazy or illiterate, because I was precisely saying the opposite---that evo psych theories excusing men who cheat (but not so much women) and men who rape are full of shit.
Seriously, I know tons of guys like this. “Why do girls only go out with guys who act like assholes?” I just tell them, “Well, then start acting like an asshole and see if that works for you.”
I have a friend who brings that shit from time to time. Next time he does, I plan to borrow your rejoinder.
The sad thing is, he’s actually not an asshole. He has other issues that scare women off pretty quickly, but he’s not an asshole. Just really really frustrated, I think.
Dear Man:
See that woman over there. You’re lucky if she’ll give you the time of day, let alone kiss you, date you, boinka-boinka-boink you, or marry you.
Signed,
Damn lucky she married me.
Here’s what I like about the evo-psych bullshit. The same assholes tend to simultaneously claim that all the achievements of women are irrelevant, because men created civilization. So not only are men unthinking cavemen, but they simultaneously created Western Civilization.
Women, in this point of view, evidently spent the first 1960 years of the common era cooking and the past 48 whining.
I always find it telling that I have heard 100,000 variations on the “Nice Guy” rant on the internet, yet no man has ever dared utter such a narrative around me. Or any of my best girlfriends (I’ve polled them.) So the picture that forms is one of the ultimate entitlement- not only should we have understood and appreciated these Nice Guys from day one, we also should have read their minds and realized how they felt about male/female friendships: that they are thirty-day waiting periods after which they get the key to our vaginas.
You know, being handsome, outgoing, athletic, or an “alpha male” (whatever the hell that means) doesn’t automatically make a guy an asshole. In fact, a lot of those guys are great to women because they got over their dating/sexual anxieties in high school. Meanwhile, much as I find nerds sexy, there are tons of introverted, nerdy types who are bitterly misogynistic and treat whatever girlfriends they can get like crap. This “why won’t you dumb bitches sleep with a Nice Guy like me?” whining is a huge turn-off for any intelligent woman.
And, yes, I was permanently embittered by personal experience with a particular nerdy guy in college who constantly whined about what a “nice guy” he was while cheating on his girlfriends, lying, and generally sleazing around at every opportunity. No matter how much he got laid, it never dented his ironclad perception of himself as a put-upon beta male who never got his due from women.
Shaenon, I sympathize. I had a crappy Nice Guy ex who behaved in much the same way- with the added benefit that he never cheated on me because, as he later told his friends, I was “the kind of girl you marry” and the other girls weren’t. BLECH. I kicked his madonna-whore complex to the curb as fast as possible.
It seems like a lot of the behavior Nice Guys hate in other guys (and call “asshole” behavior) is stuff like honesty and self-confidence. The Nice Guy ex thought my new boyfriend (now my husband) was an asshole, but the truth of it was that he was confident, happy with himself, willing to share what was going on with him, and unwilling to put up with other people’s crap. It’s appealing to have a partner that you’re not validating and ego-pampering 24/7.
I’ve noticed in life that a lot of people seem to subscribe to various delusions as a kind of revenge against the world for life being tough. They make something up, or follow a facile trend, and cant’ be talked out of it. However, what they don’t see, in their hot pursuit of this strategy to get more power is that by making something up and believing it, they are also deluding themselves, not just the others whom they want to get some power over. And—it is always a handicap not to have a clear-eyed view of reality.
I can’t blame scientists and science supporters when they get frustrated with this sort of discourse that treats scientific authority as if it’s exactly the same as religious authority or sentimental forms of discourse.
THANK YOU. It’s true - the idea that scientific thinking is qualitatively equivalent to religious or sentimental/symbolic discourse (as you call it, and that makes sense to me) is maddening, and is encountered with aggravating frequency among academic thinkers on the political left. I mention that because hearing science dismissed as just another cultural artifact or one equally valid epistemology among many by my putative political allies both really turns me off and shuts the door on what valid and accurate scientific discourse can contribute to the movement, which is a LOT (it’s been said before that reality has a well-known liberal bias).
We could all do a lot better by acknowledging what we owe, as thinkers in both the sciences and the liberal arts, to each other and by celebrating a shared intellectual history. The scientific approach to knowledge and information is an enormous buttress to causes we all consider near and dear, including Feminism, the study of race, social theories, and etc.
It’s definitely worthwhile to acknowledge that the scientific method has a human origin, and it’s extremely important for scientists to realize that, since we are human and since we are performing our own experiments, that we cannot eliminate subjectivity from the work we do. That, I think, is a really important philosophical component that we can drawn from postmodernist thinking. On the other hand, there is something qualitatively different about science as an epistemology that distinguishes it from, say, religious authority, and makes it more valuable: it is the ONLY tool we have that allows us to reliably learn facts about the natural world. Sometimes I don’t think we appreciate just how special that is. There is literally nothing else available that gives us good answers about how the universe works. I mean, that’s pretty school. And it should be pretty inspiring that silly, puny subjective little apes like us have been able to figure that out.
Great post Amanda, thanks.
“pretty school”? Gyah. “Pretty cool,” is what I meant, of course.
Yet men with free time but dissatisfying social lives with women will complain that women don’t miraculously appear at their poker table with the fellas or next to their barcalounger during Monday Night Football.
Dang, so that’s what I need to do to land a man.
Yet, if those guys did start taking yoga and cooking classes to meet women, they’d have to avoid the trap of acting skeezy when interacting with their female classmates. I’ve heard many a tale (although luckily haven’t experienced it myself) of men who attend such classes and are clearly desperate to land a woman, any woman.
Purely anecdotal but I’ve seen many an Asshole stomp out of a bar (and keggers) in such a huff, because his assholish “charms” failed to seduce anyone with two X-chromosomes.
Yeah, I would imagine so. But still, if there’s any truth to the Nice Guy anecdote that assholes get all the babes, the real story is probably that those assholes get laid less often in the long run.
All this evo-psych stuff is stupid, but beyond that, the (mostly men) who espouse it are hypocritical about it.
They say it’s only natural for them to want the girl with the “appropriate” waist-hip ratio and think it’s okay to “go with nature” in that instance. But tell them they’re not big and strong enough, or they don’t make enough money, or have enough status, or aren’t aggressive enough, and they’ll claim that’s not fair because they can’t help it.
I wonder if they’d really like the full evo-psych model.
There’s the fact that the penis is shaped so that it is able to scoop out sperm from earlier ejaculations—that would make no sense if women weren’t “designed” to have multiple sexual partners in the same day. Multiple orgasms support that idea.
There’s the g-spot, which is accessible to most penises, but then there’s supposedly the “a-spot” which is further back, indicating that if you don’t have a big penis, you’re not going to be the one who ultimately satisfies the woman, so your sperm will be squeegee’d out.
So, nature tells us women should have multiple sexual partners and that guys with big dicks really are superior. All this time we’ve said that a guy who has three inches is as good as any other guy, that was just lies.
Try explaining that to the Nice Guys (tm) when they complain they can’t get any sex—it’s just natural! They should just accept it!
You know, being handsome, outgoing, athletic, or an “alpha male” (whatever the hell that means) doesn’t automatically make a guy an asshole. In fact, a lot of those guys are great to women because they got over their dating/sexual anxieties in high school.
Not so handsome, “alpha male”, or especially athletic men are seen as “assholes” by many “nerdy” or otherwise dudes without those attributes not only due to an element of jealousy.....but if my classmates’/co-workers’ experiences at mainstream US high schools are true, also are traits common among most stereotypical high school bullies from popular social cliques like athletes. Considering most were subjected to some pretty serious physical abuse along with the everyday verbal tauntings from those types of dudes, there are understandably serious anger issues. Worse, their misdirected anger may have warped their way of thinking in ways which causes them to view women who date such types as “accessories/collaborators” to/in their continuing bullying by them. From studying how collaborators of occupational authorities’ were viewed in WWII, they tended to be viciously reviled by the subjugated populace. Wouldn’t surprise me if the “Nice Guys” mentioned here automatically saw women who dated those handsome “alpha types” in the same light.
Hearing such accounts of mainstream US high school experiences along with the volumes of complaints from TAs/Profs who had too many encounters with overentitled athletes and other “alpha male” types who felt they merited an A for their mere existence when their actual demonstrated academic performance merited far lower W-level grades....if now outright flunking has caused me to look upon such types with deep suspicion and concern about how US popular culture seems to love elevating athletes and celebrities far above what their accomplishments would warrant.
I was fortunate to have only had a taste of this in junior high. A taste not only because my friends and I manage to triumph in the last fight in our junior high careers, but also due to the fact I ended up attending an urban public magnet high school where being interested and engaged in academics was lionized, not something to be scorned, ridiculed, and too often a justification for harassment and beatings from stereotypical US high school bullies. Though bullying did happen at my high school, it was of a far more genteel kind than ones most of my college classmates and co-workers experienced at their local US high schools. Compared to serious physical beatings and verbal tauntings most classmates and co-workers experienced, getting ribbed for having below -A level grades and pre-1995 SATs below 1350 just cannot compare.
It’s not the a-spot but the “afe-spot”. I don’t think a man has to particularly large to produce the sfe-spot effect. He just has to give a shit and try stuff. I would have never believed this afe-spot stuff if I hadn’t experienced it myself with a couple of partners, though with the first one neither of us had a clue what was happening.
Some guys wouldn’t know asshole behavior if somebody showed them the video.
My first boyfriend was such a Nice Guy (T) he would remind me on a daily basis that no other guy in the school would date my skanky ass, so I’d better be grateful that he’d even talk to me. But of course it was the jocks that were assholes.
Wow. A lot of hostility to guys who got seriously socially excluded in hs here, and mocking them for being physically abused too. Nice. Very ‘progressive.’ Well done.
Looks like ‘Nice Guy’ is rapidly become code for ‘All men I don’t like who aren’t obvious alpha jerks.’
That’s just . . . touching.
“I think the best way to tackle these claims is to point out how many pop science claims about innate male behaviors are made up, evidence-free bullshit...”
Okay, you are 10 times smarter and more diligent about your research than I, but that statement reminded me of a study that was touted by an idiotic and lazy so-called “science writer” hack a while back who purported to show that the famous male inability to listen was “proven” to be “evolutionary” (while women evolved, with a strangely convenient and concomitant keen ability to be attuned to our male partners). It was based upon - get this - research on male and female schizophrenic patients’ reports of the voices they hear in their heads. The journalist extrapolated this to the population at large and voila, yet another justification of sexism and male privilege was introduced into the popular discourse.
“Wow. A lot of hostility to guys who got seriously socially excluded in hs here, and mocking them for being physically abused too. Nice. Very ‘progressive.’ Well done.
Looks like ‘Nice Guy’ is rapidly become code for ‘All men I don’t like who aren’t obvious alpha jerks.’
That’s just . . . touching. “
Exhibit A.
Of course, Max, there are always epsilon jerks…
Oh, that’s rich, Donna, a rich chocolate slice of hypocrisy. How is my comment ‘Exhibit A,’ pray tell? Do you deny the existence of males who are socially isolated and physically abused in high school? Are they all doomed to be ‘Nice Guys’ who are secret misogynists? What’s your point?
From personal experience, being horribly beaten by jocks is not a joke. Nor is it a myth. Now, this is the part where you tell me that it has nothing to do with you or your conception of ‘Nice Guys,’ so we who were so excluded and abused should ‘just snap out of it.’ Where would you like me to send your 5 cents?
And of course, ‘male privilege’ means that anything bad that happens to a man is perfectly justified, right?
As to BBBB, yes, I’m sure there are epsilon and omega jerks as well. Ted Hughes has to fit in there somewhere. No doubt there are ‘pi’ or ‘root minus one’ jerks as well.
Max, stop blaming women for what men have done to you.
Donna, stop blaming me for your issues with men.
Ah, Max, see that’s where you’re wrong. I don’t blame men. I blame the Patriarchy.
You should, too.
Oh Donna, how is it blaming the patriarchy to argue on this thread that ‘Nice Guys’ are whining crypto-misogynists who blame jocks for their woes without a lot more context? Seems to me that a number of commentors here want to slam a ‘Nice Guy’ straw man and in at least two cases have sought for ‘alpha’ style jocks a level of rehabilitation (essentially, ‘at least they weren’t ‘nice guys!’’).
It seems to me from reading these comments that there is a strong element of not wanting to discuss the reality that many men face in social situations that are be situated in the context of patriarchal culture but that perhaps at the time no one (including most US women) wanted to face up to or were equipped to deal with. I notice your comment on Drudge on your site, on how much of his social isolation stemmed from his homosexuality. Did you reach out to him? Did any anti-patriarchal men or women? And why did you feel the need to qualify your comment with ‘not that there’s anything wrong with that?’
Short version: I blame the patriarchy too, but I don’t think it does anyone any good when men who are vicitimized by jock culture are ridiculed and turned into a straw category of ‘Nice Guy’ so that commentors can rank on all the images in their heads who fit this stereotype. It’s ugly and destructive.
And PS, I’m not ‘blaming women,’ I’m calling out the tone of commentary in this thread. Exholt’s comment was excellent. Other orange’s were pretty offensive and defensive.
Max, I still don’t get what your point is. Unless you can persuade the readers of Pandagon that you have a legitimate case to plead, beyond being bitter over not having nailed the females whom you believe you were ultimately entitled to, I really don’t think you have a case.
Because you reallly sound like every bitter Nice Guy I khave ever known.
No, Max, it’s like this:
“If it isn’t about you, then it isn’t about you.” One of the mantras on this site to remind people not to take things personally if the shoe doesn’t fit.
Most of the people here were bullying victims themselves. The threads on bullying habitually reach 400 or more comments. We are not prejudiced against the victims.
HOWEVER, the people who react to being victims (or to having under-affectionate fathers, or childhood arthritis, or wearing hand-me-downs, etc) by becoming hostile to everyone, especially every female, do not deserve the label “Nice” that they claim for themselves.
Truly nice guys like to have women as friends; being more than friends is an added benefit, not the only point to ever talking to a girl in the first place.
Decent guys learn that social skills, hygiene, and expressing what they actually want go a long way. Even if a woman doesn’t feel “that way” about him, both of them will respect him if he can both be honest about his and also respect her wants. Even men who have been bullied can probably figure this sort of thing out if he tries, and if he can’t do it on his own, there’s therapy to help him deal with his self-image and resentment issues instead of him going online to blog about his best friend being such a whore because she’s dating a pre-med who just came back from a stint with the Peace Corps. Even someone who has Aspberger’s or something and will never have great social skills is capable of realizing there is a flaw in their makeup that makes relationships difficult, instead of casting all the blame on the other party.
Likewise, female who have been sexually abused are generally expected to not hate men as a class, or “man-hating feminist”, straw-woman though she is, would be a term of pity, not of scorn.
So, if you are a misogynist victim of abuse by your male peers, 1. why do you blame women who have their own issues, if you don’t want to be blamed for yours? Double standard much. 2. Why do you choose bitterness over self-knowledge, healing, and improvement? 3. why don’t you hate on the men, instead of the women?
If you are NOT a misogynist, it isn’t about you. You are one of us (people who hate bullying and the system that rewards it) not one of them (guys who hate women for not being fuck-toys).
Forgive me, Pandagon readers, for I’m tired. But you get the point.
If you are NOT a misogynist, it isn’t about you. You are one of us (people who hate bullying and the system that rewards it) not one of them (guys who hate women for not being fuck-toys).
Samantha Vimes on 10/28 at 05:01 AM
How kind of you. I’ll be sure to tell my wife. And given the myriad straw-beings known as nice guys being bashed in these comments, forgive me for not getting the gist in time to spare your delicate sensibilities. I sense from both ‘Other Orange’ and ‘Shaenon’ that there is a fair amount of Schadenfreude going on in seeing men get bullied by the existing structures of society if said men resemble guys they don’t like. Further, Samantha, patriarchal context or no, do you really believe that men do all the bullying and social excluding in the US? It seems as though your argument is that the existence of the patriarchal context excuses women who support the structure, but not men who are excluded by it.
And Donna, I didn’t say anything about ‘nailing women’ or being ‘bitter’ about it. See, you’ve just turned me into a straw-man ‘nice guy’ in your head. Oh, and good job side-stepping my question about Drudge, too. I’m sorry my comments made you stay up past bed-time. Finally, I don’t have to ‘prove’ a ‘case’ about anything. I expressed disapprobation for the tone in these comments, and you decided that I was some skeeze in a Mac hating on women in general. Projection?
My objection here is identical to Korr’s objections in the LDR thread: isn’t the point supposed to be to avoid gross generalizations and straw categories? I’ve read Pandagon since its inception, but this is ugly.
HOWEVER, the people who react to being victims (or to having under-affectionate fathers, or childhood arthritis, or wearing hand-me-downs, etc) by becoming hostile to everyone, especially every female, do not deserve the label “Nice” that they claim for themselves.
THIS.
Max, get over yourself. This comment thread was never about condoning bullying, or saying that GENUINELY nice guys could go suck a bag of cocks, and if the jocks got a piece of them, all the better.
What we’re talking about are a certain category of men who whine about how being nice doesn’t result in instant pussy, guys who decide any other man who gets near a woman whom they find attractive is a jerk (and I really do believe that’s the root of the “women like jerks thing”, jerks being any guy who isn’t them. It’s jealousy and envy). The guys who complain that women don’t go for “Nice Guys” like themselves while either a) actually being such asshats that they in fact aren’t “nice” or b) waiting for us to magically realise that they’d like to pursue a relationship without actually saying or doing anything to suggest that they’d like to pursue a relationship. Maybe the latter is due to low self-confidence/self-esteem which I KNOW (as a bullied teenager myself) can be a hard thing to break free of, but we’re not mocking guys how don’t have enough confidence to ask women out. We’re mocking guys who don’t ask women out and then flail and whine because doing nothing didn’t get them a hot babe.
If that shoe fits, wear it, and then kick yourself up the ass hard enough to knock some sense into yourself. If it doesn’t, stop clogging up the coment read by arguing angainst something that no-one is actually saying.
Excuse the typos, guys, I’m only on my second cup of coffee.
Max, I think you should re-read other orange’s and Shaenon’s posts again, because I don’t see anything about schadenfreude about bullying in them. In fact, I don’t see much about bullying in those posts at all.
Not that they need me to say what they meant, but it looks a lot more like they’re saying that self-described nice guys who are actually jerks aren’t worth the time of day. Shaenon even writes that so-called “alpha males” aren’t “automatically” assholes, which would suggest that there is a perception that they are seen that way usually.
I sense from both ‘Other Orange’ and ‘Shaenon’ that there is a fair amount of Schadenfreude going on in seeing men get bullied by the existing structures of society if said men resemble guys they don’t like.
Why is my name in quotes? It’s my real name. And rather than “sensing” my intentions, maybe you could actually read what I wrote.
From the snide, condescending way you’ve addressed me and others on this thread, I can only conclude that the “social excluding” you keep moaning about is richly deserved. Why would anyone want to spend time with a person who talks to them the way you’re talking to us? Would you want to?
I don’t feel like a rapist-cheating machine proto-man.
But I look like one. I guess I should look into getting a wax.
If the A spot is best stimulated by large cocks, I have been doing sex wrong all these years. So I don’t think that’s how it works.
Max, if you are under the impression that men are the victims of all or even most bullying in middle school and high school, I should like to know what magical female-nerd-friendly fairyland you’re from.
*sigh*
I’ll be the first to admit. I’m a new reader. I happened to spot the blog from a link from a friend (dealing with politics, not misogyny) and really liked the viewpoint.
When I read the article, I was really pleased. Finally, some honest truth about why we act the way we do. Social pressures and mores are what define our boundaries, and unfortunately, all too often those boundaries and limitations are either incorrectly defined or so skewed as to be wholly wrong.
And that’s when I got to the comments…
Shaenon, good on you for recognizing that the stereotype isn’t always the reality, and keeping a cool head. The reality is most frequently halfway between each of the extremes, and good on you for saying it. I wish I knew more people who thought like you do.
Max, I feel your pain, and I agree with you that some of the characterizations thus far skirt dangerously close to the stereotype, but that’s all they are - close. You can be a nerd and be a chauvinist at the same time. I’ve had friends who can, and do act that way. Not all nerds are Nice Guys (tm) and not all Nice Guys (tm) are nerds. While there is definitely some truth to your argument, distilling it down to an either-or argument defeats the purpose of having the argument in the first place and ultimately gives some people (on both sides of the coin) the short shrift.
I’m sure there are “jocks” out there who are just as socially inept as the “nerds,” just as I’m sure there are some “nerds” out there who are gregarious and silver-tongued as the “jocks” can be. I’m one of those people who falls in the typical “nerd” category—poor with public speaking, poor with social behaviors, and altogether “broken” when it comes to many basic interactions in a social sense. I’m certain that many of these behavior patterns came about as a result of bad parenting, along with the way I was treated in grade school and high school. Are other people to blame for my problem? Absolutely! Can they do anything now to fix it? Not a chance in hell. The onus is on me to address the problem, because the problem is now mine and mine alone—it’s internalized.
Samantha—I only wish you had spoken sooner. The “If it isn’t about you, then it isn’t about you” part is what clears away any confusion, because, until the clarification, I could have read some of the earlier comments in the exact way Max has. I think it is important to say things like this, because it makes it crystal clear who we are talking about.
Anyhow. I thought I’d throw some words out there, and such. Back to reading again.
I get the impression the all encompassing intuition some of the participants here presume to have is not so.
Other orange’s were pretty offensive and defensive.
I’m tempted to yell PICS OR GTFO, but I’ll bite.
So my personal history with a man who treated women with open contempt “offends” you ? I think I explained pretty clearly that my story was about rejecting one man with screwed-up ideas about women, and finding a life partner in a man who is respectful and honest. Many of the men that women end up with, the “assholes” in the eyes of the Nice Guys are- let’s not miss this important point- not assholes.
(Again, I’m using Nice Guys to mean “Nice Guys, the ones who are passive-aggressive and entitled, not very nice at all.” As Samantha wisely said, if you’re a nice guy and not a Nice Guy, why take it so personally ?)
Maybe it’s bullying that causes Nice Guys to view other men as “assholes,” but unless the guy they’re talking about is actually the guy that beat them up in high school, they’re projecting. Counseling and talking about these issues might help- I don’t mean that in a derogatory way, as I found counseling to be very helpful personally while I was in college.
I sense from both ‘Other Orange’ and ‘Shaenon’ that there is a fair amount of Schadenfreude going on in seeing men get bullied by the existing structures of society if said men resemble guys they don’t like.
This isn’t the topic of my narrative, or Shaenon’s. We talked about men who openly disrespect women while still claiming that women are the sources of their problems. When did we talk about bullying ? I think that’s your topic, so please take it off of me. Unless you believe that by dating me, my husband was “bullying” my ex, in which case there are much bigger reality-based problems to deal with here.
Also, Max, I’d like to point out that the Nice Guy in my story was an athletic jock. A weightlifter, in fact. My husband is a skinny, nerdy musician; he actually was bullied in middle school and early high school, a lot, and yet does not need to blame women and strangers for it. A lesson some (yeah, not all, let’s not generalize) of the Nice Guys could learn.
So please, when you say “...if said men resemble guys they don’t like,” please don’t presume to know my taste in men.
Phew, when I saw this thread blow up I was afraid it was going to be an academic pissing match. But no, there’s always a Nice guy® who wants to demand the feminists give over the key to the pussy we’re keeping from him.
Okay, you are 10 times smarter and more diligent about your research than I, but that statement reminded me of a study that was touted by an idiotic and lazy so-called “science writer” hack a while back who purported to show that the famous male inability to listen was “proven” to be “evolutionary” (while women evolved, with a strangely convenient and concomitant keen ability to be attuned to our male partners). It was based upon - get this - research on male and female schizophrenic patients’ reports of the voices they hear in their heads. The journalist extrapolated this to the population at large and voila, yet another justification of sexism and male privilege was introduced into the popular discourse.
I saw that, and I saw it debunked. (I forget where.) The debunkers actually went back to the researchers, who were pissed that the MSM was taking the study that way. What they actually showed was that male and female voices lit up different parts of the brain, and men listening to women were closer to men listening to music than women listening to men were. They didn’t say that one sex heard the other better, but pointed out that if anything, that meant men should retain what women say to them better. Because, you know, people have good recall for music.
The justification for the “men can’t hear women” bullshit was thin indeed. The idea is that people tune out music. Which is actually the opposite of how the brain works.
Max, if you were beat up in high school, but somehow didn’t conclude that you are owed easy access to sex because of it, this isn’t about you.
OMG Martha McCaughey! I went through my late adolescence in the department next to hers! She used to visit my queer studies seminar and talk about cavemen! And yes, that whole department has drunk heavily of the aggressively po-mo kool-aid, which I bought for a while. (Luckily I was always friends with a lot of physics majors, who to a one turned purple and started to splutter when I insisted that a “fact” was just a myth that our culture happened to believe in.) At the same time, I’m not convinced that’s where McCaughey’s going. I think she might be guilty of clumsy phrasing - what I’ve gotten from her previous work, and from this article, is that what we study, and how we interpret what we find, is one hundred percent dependent on who we are as people. Would it occur to a culture that does not hold that men are inherently promiscuous to study why men are “inherently promiscuous”? (Or, more likely, to construct scientific “proof” out of an unrelated study?) In fact, she concludes that men who embrace “cavemen science” need to get over themselves and, not dismiss science, but approach it with fewer prejudices stemming from their own contemporary cultural background. I think trained scientists already know how to do that (or are supposed to), but as she points out, once science filters out into the popular culture we’re back at square one.
Also, she sometimes dresses like a pirate, which I always find charming in an academic.
Ah, the Nice Guy debate. A Pandagon classic.
I’ve gone from Nice Guy skeptic to… buying it, sort of. What seems wrong about it is certainly not that it corrects some frustrated young mens’ mistaken impression that the universe (or for the jerker variety, womankind) owes them sex, but that it seems to absolve young women of all responsibility for their sexual choices. Some commentors also seem entirely too ready to dismiss mens’ actual experience as a basis for the Nice Guy complaint.
“he actually was bullied in middle school and early high school, a lot, and yet does not need to blame women and strangers for it”
Well, *someone* did the bullying, yes? And others—girls and boys—stood by, yes? Are you saying it was HIS FAULT that he was bullied? That at age 12, he should have been a paragon of self-confidence and social adjustment already? If so, I had no idea juvenile social darwinism had become so acceptable to liberals and feminists, and we’re in much worse moral shape than I thought.
Also, she sometimes dresses like a pirate, which I always find charming in an academic.
WIN.
...what I’ve gotten from her previous work, and from this article, is that what we study, and how we interpret what we find, is one hundred percent dependent on who we are as people. Would it occur to a culture that does not hold that men are inherently promiscuous to study why men are “inherently promiscuous”?
That’s a really great point. Those kinds of studies seem to me to be going towards some kind of moralistic point with an end-goal clearly in mind; our cultural background makes us want to justify ourselves, but really you can prove any point if you fudge the facts enough. I’m going to have to look up more of her work.
...but that it seems to absolve young women of all responsibility for their sexual choices.
Women don’t owe men anything. This is a Nice Guy tactic of trying to make women feel bad that they didn’t pick the “right” kind of guy- namely, them.
Well, *someone* did the bullying, yes? And others—girls and boys—stood by, yes? Are you saying it was HIS FAULT that he was bullied? That at age 12, he should have been a paragon of self-confidence and social adjustment already? If so, I had no idea juvenile social darwinism had become so acceptable to liberals and feminists, and we’re in much worse moral shape than I thought.
Point the first: read for comprehension, please.
Point the second: yes, his bullying was caused by other people. He is now a grown up. He does not take out his past on the people he meets now, namely women and strangers. What I was trying to point out is that if he were a steretypical Nice Guy of the type Max and others have suggested, he’d feel free to blame the women in his life for not “fixing” his social traumas, and he’d say that the men he encounters are “bullies” and “alpha males.” He’d act like the things he went through in high school (a time that leaves a lot of us with stuff to get over) entitled him to ask for free pussy for life, to make it up to him. He doesn’t. That’s because he’s not a Nice Guy- he’s an adult.
Time to show my fandom cred… reading this thread made me think of a filk song by Leslie Fish…
“Jack the Slob”
Jack the slob to Venus prayed / Grant this night I shall get laid
Venus said “That shall I do” / But first three things I’d ask of you
Go clean your teeth and bod and hair / and change your week old underwear
Pray put on clothes that flatter you / a clean t-shirt and jeans will do
Next if a maid you would impress / pray do not drool down her chest
Jack replied “No thank you, ma’am / Send one who’ll take me as I am”
The Goddess said “I’ll tell you what / Though I should kick your lazy butt”
“Perhaps t’would be more fitting, far / to send one who’ll take you as you are”
“Go at once to the city zoo / and there you’ll find the mate for you”
Thense he went with hopes held high / until the ape house he came nigh
There a maiden him did view / and she was struck with passion true
Her hair was long, her looks were free / indeed she was a lovely chimpanzee
She lept the fense e’re he could run / and seised him boldly by the bun
She dragged him swiftly to her lair / for all that I know he may still be there
So lazy swaines, you’d best believe / you should not get the Goddess peeved.
A fun song, if you can find a copy of it. The song is much funnier than the lyrics suggest.
other orange, now that I think about it, some other points I remember hearing from her were “There is no evidence that prehistoric man dragged prehistoric woman around by her hair, and even if there were, it’s as much of a non sequitur to say “prehistoric man was a rapey promiscuous fiend and thus I don’t have to do any housework” as it is to say “the best-adapted species of finch on Galapagos gains dominance and therefore my country gets to invade yours”. Those are finches, we are people, that was then and we are living now.”
I am paraphrasing from a long-remembered lecture, but I liked what she said when she said it.
I find it interesting that, when a girl can’t get a date, she describes the problem being with her. “Am I fat? Is my voice whiny? Are my ears too big? Are my boobs too small? What can I fix about myself to make me more attractive to men?” She typically does not get into “Men are pigs” until she has *dated* several who have mistreated her. Or, her “men are pigs” is more like a shrug. “What can you do? Men are pigs. Guess I gotta wear a bikini or they won’t notice me.”
However, NiceGuys(tm) don’t *ever* appear to locate the problem as within themselves or something they can change. “I am a Nice Guy, and girls only like assholes! Maybe I should *be* an asshole, and then you’ll all be sorry!” Of course it doesn’t work, because girls don’t like assholes, girls like self-confident guys (easily confused with being an asshole, when you’re young), and NiceGuys don’t truly believe there’s anything they can do to make women like them, therefore they are desperate and have no confidence.
If just *once* I heard a man bemoaning “Should I lose weight? Pump iron? Wash my hair more often? Maybe stop wearing Axe, the commercials said it would get me girls but it totally hasn’t worked? Girls like rock stars, maybe I should join a band? What if my clothes were more sexy?”, I would have a lot more sympathy. Women have just as many struggles as men do to attract the opposite sex, but women identify the problem as within themselves, and then work their asses off to correct whatever problems they see (which are often imaginary, sadly.) Men who have a hard time finding a girlfriend don’t seem to want to *do* anything about it except whine about how bitches are shallow. (Or they try to slavishly follow romantic scripts that are presented in the media—“if I give her roses she’ll love me!” “if I rescue her, she’ll love me!” Changing something about yourself is much, much harder than performing a single discrete act; men who try to win women by performing grand romantic gestures are *still* not trying as hard as women who wear makeup, obsess over the perfect clothes, and modulate their behavior in the presence of a man.)
Don’t get me wrong. I have a lot of respect for the philosophy of “Take me as I am.” It was *my* philosophy, and I didn’t have a real boyfriend until after graduating college, and then spent two years in a dry spell after he dumped me—“take me as I am” doesn’t magically get you laid for women any more than it does men. But if you want a partner badly enough that you are suffering for the lack of one, you may *have* to change yourself to get one. If you’re absolutely adamant against changing yourself, you have to accept that the self you are may not get past most people’s gatekeeping.
I always like to point to this as a rejoinder. It hypothesizes that grandmothers are responsible for civilization and starts with:
“The Hadza people of northern Tanzania are a small group of hunter-gatherers who share a language, a culture and a distaste for gardening. Time and again, government and church agencies have sought to transmute them into full-time farmers, but the Hazda have always returned to the bush, where they subsist on wild goods like fruits, honey, tubers and game. The terrain is hard and hilly, and so is the life, but on one incomparable resource the foragers can always rely: a pack of old ladies with hearts like young horses.
As Dr. Kristen Hawkes of the University of Utah and her colleagues have found in their extensive studies of the Hadza, women in their 50’s, 60’s, 70’s and beyond are among the most industrious members of the group. They are out in the woods for seven or eight hours a day, gathering more food than virtually any of their comrades.”
I’m really more of an Omega Male myself, and…
Hey, where did everybody go?
I’m about halfway through Robert Wright’s The Moral Animal at this point; it’s a popularization of basic evolutionary psychology. I picked it up on a recommendation from Eliezer Yudkowsky. (I was engaged in a form of extended footnote-chasing after having enjoyed GEB and True Names.) ‘Course, now I notice that Yudkowsky himself interprets the book as saying that human males have an undiluted desire for infinite sex, which Wright himself doesn’t even say. (Because males in the ancestral environment could and did help raise their children, they then do possess a limited resource--that investment of time and effort--and it matters where they spend it.) And what he does say is sometimes sketchy; he describes social traits as being innate because they’re near-universal among cultures, without considering that they might be derived from other near-universal traits, such as the subjugation of women.
It’s funny; Wright handwaves away the possibility that bad ideas in the social sciences have consequences which might not affect bad ideas about, say, the formation of stars or the nondenumerability of the real numbers would, saying that wrong ideas can come from anywhere, and there’s nothing that makes evolutionary psychology especially dangerous. He has been shown to be, of course, utterly wrong. As McCaughey says in the linked article, “Ideas that count as scientific, regardless of their truth value, become lived ideologies.” It might well be that any investigation of the field would lead to an industry of self-serving cartoon bullshit, but I don’t think much real thought was given to it.
And on top of all this, there are plenty of things we humans are heirs to from our hunter-gatherer days which don’t involve gender at all. For some reason, a cottage industry hasn’t sprung up around the is-ought fallacy applied to tribalism, claiming that, well, we’re genetically programmed to consider people who don’t look like us as subhuman, so it’s only right that we bring back the plantations. Funny, that.
Max, if you’re still out there, I don’t know why you’re talking about strawmen. Why can’t you believe that these Nice Guys (little TM thingy) exist?
I spend a little time hearing women’s woes with men, but not much, so when I read something like the Nice Guy (little TM thingy) debate here, I assume it’s true. Why can’t you? (Conversely, when some conservative starts gum-knocking about libruls being socialists and America-haters, well, I’m a liberal and I talk to lots of liberals and I know we’re not socialists or America-haters, or I ask for actual examples and I don’t get any, so I know they’re creating strawmen.)
Yet, if those guys did start taking yoga and cooking classes to meet women, they’d have to avoid the trap of acting skeezy when interacting with their female classmates.
The easiest way to avoid that trap, of course, would be start an activity because it’s something you actually want to do, not to meet women.
It’s sort of funny how the stereotypical Nice Guy (tm) does not understand how dishonest he is being.
E.g., hanging around Women’s Studies territory just so you can try to get more sexual partners? See women as mere objects/receptacles for your pleasure, much? How dare they consider themselves human beings who do not exist merely to serve your sexual pleasure and to respond as automatons to your “nice"ness by offering up their bodies. When your outward display is purported sensitivity to the problems women face, but your only goal is service of your own sexual needs, you are dishonest and dehumanizing others. Then, if pretend meekness does not get the other to serve as the object you desire, you threaten to go all caveman.
And maybe you should hold your breath until you turn blue, too.
Or try learning the higher arts of manipulation, rather than dishonesty, threats, and appeals to pity.
Thanks Amanda that was excellent reading.
Two minor issues though.
1. I think evo-psych has been ridiculed at so much there’s a danger of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. You quite rightly point out that negative behaviours are all the results of very complex organisms making decisions, not mindless drones. But its equally true that organisms must have inherent _predispositions_. So even if rape, for instance, isn’t caused by a biological imperative, its clear that the physiology of humans predisposes us to urges to have sex and urges to commit violence. The tendency in evo-psych to come up with “just so” explanations for complex traits invites ridicule and ultimately obscures the fact that understanding our physiology does help us better understand ourselves. Its when people start drawing ridiculously simplistic conclusions and claiming that they have no control over themselves that things start getting ridiculous.
2. There’s an unresolved subtext in a lot of Pandagon posts that I was wondering if someone could clear up for me. Perhaps this isn’t the right thread to raise it in but in another thread “Pick your own damn washing up of the bathroom floor” or something similar jumped out at me. Here again, the issue of male loutishness is raised and I was wondering if Pandagon’s writers include in that category non-coercive behaviour that some partners might consider offensive but, by virtue of being non-coercive, aren’t inherently sexist? I ask the question because I’m a complete slob who lived quite happily with a complete slob lover for a while. She didn’t have to pick up my shit, and I didn’t pick up hers and the house was a mess most of the time. I’ve also been in and out of relationships with more orderly people where invariably I left because, hey, I appreciate you need more effort on my part and baby, I’m to lazy and I hope you find someone more suitable. No snark at all, just honesty. So is that “loutish”? Specifically “loutish in a sexist manner”?
“to lazy” = “too lazy” above
What seems wrong about it is certainly not that it corrects some frustrated young mens’ mistaken impression that the universe (or for the jerker variety, womankind) owes them sex, but that it seems to absolve young women of all responsibility for their sexual choices.
That’s the most disgusting of the Nice Guy arguments, this idea that women are “responsible” to anyone for their sexual choices other than themselves and their partners. No one assigns men similar “responsibility” for their sexual choices for good reason. The worst and most miserable cases are the Nice Guys who refuse to sympathize with abused women because those women should have dated said Nice Guys instead of the men they chose. I can’t even imagine how stifling it must be to have your head shoved that far up your ass.
The easiest way to avoid that trap, of course, would be start an activity because it’s something you actually want to do, not to meet women.
The trouble with this is that men have it hammered into their heads that anything that women do, they must avoid, or they will be contaminated with girl cooties and their balls will fall off. it’s hard for men to get past the bullshit of social programming and genuinely *want* to do yoga.
That being said, I highly recommend that any geeky man who wants to meet a geeky woman who shares his interests should take up reading fanfiction and giving positive feedback to authors he likes, 90% of whom will be women. The act of reading is not specifically gendered, and while fan fiction is unedited and full of dreck, by following recommendation lists made by people who can spell you can usually find good stuff. If you fear the girl cooties, stick to stories labeled “gen”, which usually do *not* feature romantic relationships of any kind and most especially don’t contain homosexual relationships. But check your homophobia at the door if you choose to read fanfic; even those who don’t write slash will flame your ass if you write some sort of screed about why does everyone have to make Kirk and Spock gay. If said man would like to try out *writing* some fanfiction, the community is usually very, very welcoming to men who are actively participating, as pretty much all of us wish our boyfriends or husbands would actually read and care about what *we* write, so we do try to be welcoming to the rare men among us.
The great advantage to this is that if you read fanfiction about a TV show or comic book or video game you really like, you know that the woman who wrote it enjoys and shares at least one of your hobbies. Geeky men often lament being unable to find geeky women; well, that’s because we’re all busy writing fanfic. It’s not hard to find us, guys, we’re all over Livejournal for instance. And geekery in general has a huge overlap in what the genders like (though not so much overlap in what we like to do *with* what we like; women don’t have internet arguments over whether Superman could defeat the Borg, generally speaking, and men don’t usually write fanfic or make songvids. But exceptions *do* exist.)
but that it seems to absolve young women of all responsibility for their sexual choices.
So if I choose not to sleep with a Nice Guy (or even worse, if I choose to sleep with someone else), my responsibility toward that Nice Guy is...what? What responsibility am I evading, exactly, by refusing to give it up to some dude just because he feels he’s owed it?
Max, you didn’t read my blog post. I didn’t say Matt Drudge was shunned because he was gay. It was because of his smug and unlikable personality. He was Matt Drudge ferchristssake!
I should add to my last post: every person I have ever slept with (all three of them… ok, I am a wallflower 
) started out by reading my fanfic and commenting positively on it, asking my advice for writing about my favorite character, or reading my fanfic and writing response fic.
But the positive feedback thing is important. If you’re in it to read enjoyable fiction *or* to meet women, either way, you are not responsible for correcting other people’s mistakes; leave that to the hardcore members of the community who write a lot, and spend your time praising those who deserve praise, not knocking down those you think should be taken down a peg or two.
“2. There’s an unresolved subtext in a lot of Pandagon posts that I was wondering if someone could clear up for me. Perhaps this isn’t the right thread to raise it in but in another thread “Pick your own damn washing up of the bathroom floor” or something similar jumped out at me. Here again, the issue of male loutishness is raised and I was wondering if Pandagon’s writers include in that category non-coercive behaviour that some partners might consider offensive but, by virtue of being non-coercive, aren’t inherently sexist? I ask the question because I’m a complete slob who lived quite happily with a complete slob lover for a while. She didn’t have to pick up my shit, and I didn’t pick up hers and the house was a mess most of the time. I’ve also been in and out of relationships with more orderly people where invariably I left because, hey, I appreciate you need more effort on my part and baby, I’m to lazy and I hope you find someone more suitable. No snark at all, just honesty. So is that “loutish”? Specifically “loutish in a sexist manner”? “
Being untidy doesn’t automatically make a man a sexist lout. But if he’s a slob because he considers cleaning to be cunt work and expects his female partner to pick up for him because that’s what his mom did and “women just notice dirt better” then he definitely belongs in the ‘sexist lout’ category. There is also societal pressure on women to be domestically competent that is not placed on men.
Amanda did an excellent post a while back on why some women just go ahead and do all the cleaning because it’s easier than fighting. She also pointed out how when a couple’s house is messy, everyone blames the woman for it.
but that it seems to absolve young women of all responsibility for their sexual choices.
Ok, serious post time. The issue of “Beta men feel they cannot get a date” is NOT THE SAME as “Women date men who treat them badly.” I *do* think one could make an argument that women have some responsibility for our collective tendency to date men who treat us badly, and part of the point of feminism is to teach young women that they are worthwhile beings in and of themselves, they don’t deserve abuse, they don’t need a man so badly that it’s worth sacrificing their self-esteem, and that we live in a system that helps to break women down to make them more vulnerable to those who would hurt them. But *none* of this is related to the issue NiceGuys(tm) face, which is that they can’t get a date.
It seems superficially like there might be a connection. Women date assholes, the NiceGuy(tm) is not an asshole, therefore if women just stopped dating assholes, women would have better love lives and the NiceGuy(tm) could get laid! Win-win! But it doesn’t work for the following reasons:
1. You (the NiceGuy(tm), not a specific poster) actually are an asshole, you’re just passive-aggressive about it. The fact that you look at the *entire universe* of women and declare that they all want assholes and that’s why none of them want you means that you generalize outrageously about women. You don’t see women as individual people. Therefore from a female perspective, you’re *just* as much of an asshole as the macho dude who thinks women are interchangeable pussy.
2. You are not locating *any* of the blame within yourself, and therefore not looking at anything you’re capable of changing. As I mentioned in a post above, when women feel like they can’t get a man, they blame themselves and change themselves. They try to make themselves prettier. I do not recommend that *any* human go to the effort that the majority of women go to, but for any given man, a *little* bit of trying to make yourself prettier would go a long way. You know the ZZ Top song “Women go crazy ‘bout a sharp-dressed man?” It’s true. Not 100% true, not true for every woman, and not the *only* thing that’s going to help you, but dressing nicer will make you more attractive. Wash and style your hair. If you are overweight or underweight, dress in a way that makes the body you have look more attractive, not in a way that accentuates things a woman might see as a flaw. And do what women do with your personality—don’t change yourself, but downplay the parts of you that could scare people off or turn them off, and accentuate the parts of you that people will warm up to.
3. The women you are looking at who don’t want to date you because you are not alpha enough for them? Are they the only women in the world? Seriously? Did you try looking at any of the beta women? Or do your eyes just slide over them because if they’re not hot, they’re not women?
4. If you didn’t look at the beta women because you just don’t find them attractive, you have just lost the right to complain about alpha women just not finding you attractive, ever. Women are shallow and attracted to superficial characteristics, and so are men, and that’s just fine either way. You’re lucky as a man, actually, because women value the traits of sense of humor, wealth, a good personality, power, intelligence, and demonstrated passion about a shared belief system about as much as they value looks, whereas with men… it’s pretty much about the looks. You actually *have* a chance of having a trait that a woman you find attractive will find attractive in you, because women have a wide spectrum of reasons to find men attractive, and you just have to have *one* of them, whereas women who are not hot are frequently shit out of luck.
It is not the responsibility of women to be your pussy vending machines. It is not the responsibility of women to spread around our affections like some sort of redistributive progressive tax of love. If you are not going out of your way to date women you feel no chemistry with, you cannot complain that women want to feel some chemistry with you before they date you. Therefore women have *no* responsibility to correct the situation that you cannot get laid. That is your problem. Women *do* have some responsibility to correct the situation that we date assholes, and most of us do… it’s calling “growing up and growing some eggs.” Well, okay, only I call it growing some eggs, but the point is, women usually mature out of dating assholes because they get some self-esteem, and also learn to recognize the bad guys. (Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.) But we need to correct it for *ourselves*, so *we* can be happy, not to improve your happiness. What you need to do for your own happiness is STOP BLAMING WOMEN for the fact that you are not attractive to them, figure out what’s wrong with *you*, and fix it.
When your outward display is purported sensitivity to the problems women face, but your only goal is service of your own sexual needs, you are dishonest and dehumanizing others.
Yet the “needs” are there, and very real. And I wonder how many times the sensitivity is assumed to be “purported” when in fact it is also real. That’s the problem I have with the “Pandagon consensus” about Nice Guys. There’s no doubt such men exist; but it often appears that men can’t win for losing. If we make an effort to be sensitive, it’s assumed to be a put-on. If we don’t, we’re insensitive clods.
My mom has often counseled me that what I really need to do to find someone is to be in a “target-rich environment.” This tracks with the advice earlier to go to yoga classes, cooking classes, etc. But isn’t that just as much of an insincere put-on? I don’t like yoga, I don’t like cooking, and the only reason I’d be going is to find someone. I don’t think that’s particularly great advice.
I’m amazed that people get together at all.
What you need to do for your own happiness is STOP BLAMING WOMEN for the fact that you are not attractive to them, figure out what’s wrong with *you*, and fix it.
Excellent comment, Alara. (The whole thing, not just my quote of it, which BTW is in my opinion the best-worded response to Nice Guy-ism I’ve seen on this blog in years.)
My mom has often counseled me that what I really need to do to find someone is to be in a “target-rich environment.” This tracks with the advice earlier to go to yoga classes, cooking classes, etc. But isn’t that just as much of an insincere put-on? I don’t like yoga, I don’t like cooking, and the only reason I’d be going is to find someone. I don’t think that’s particularly great advice.
I see your point, liberalrob, but it’s not an either-or-proposition. I think looking for environments in which you’re more likely to meet people is a perfectly acceptable motivation for doing something (good social relations are valuable in of themsevles), but it need not be the only reason you do something.
I’ll use myself as an example. I took a ballroom dance class (which was so long ago that I need to retake it), and yes, meeting women was one reason I did it. But I also genuinely wanted to learn to dance because I don’t do it well and would like to because it looks like a lot of fun. Because I already had that motivation, the class itself was reason enough for me to go and the social aspect was another benefit.
I didn’t get a single date out of it, but I met some nice people, learned some nice moves, and it helped me develop (in a small way) as a person such that I felt better about myself and had a good time.
Now, if someone can’t think of anything they’d like to do that is somewhat social (assuming there are opportunities) and would like to, then the issue is much deeper: namely, that person has some “personal growth” to do and no one can do that for you.
What you need to do for your own happiness is STOP BLAMING WOMEN for the fact that you are not attractive to them, figure out what’s wrong with *you*, and fix it.
I agree, Alara, and I felt a lot better about myself when I figured this out some years back.
I would also add that sometimes the issue isn’t what’s “wrong” with you, but that maybe you need to rethink your choices and reconsider who is suitable for you. If someone is so unable to see what’s good about you, maybe you don’t really want to be with that person.
It is not the responsibility of women to be your pussy vending machines. It is not the responsibility of women to spread around our affections like some sort of redistributive progressive tax of love.
Alara, well-said. No woman should feel “responsible” to date or sleep with anyone. It’s just one more way to make women feel like they are responsible for the lives and problems and happiness of grown-up men !
My mom has often counseled me that what I really need to do to find someone is to be in a “target-rich environment.” This tracks with the advice earlier to go to yoga classes, cooking classes, etc. But isn’t that just as much of an insincere put-on? I don’t like yoga, I don’t like cooking, and the only reason I’d be going is to find someone. I don’t think that’s particularly great advice.
All respect to your mom, but that’s awful advice. I mean, maybe it’s great advice if you want to “find someone,” marry them and have kids with them, all for its own sake, and 20 years later you spend the rest of your life watching sports while she reads books and talks on the phone to her friends and the two of you never really talk to each other again because deep down you realize that if you met all over again you wouldn’t even be close friends. But as far as finding someone you really want to have a life with, it’s awful advice.
You’re already in a target-rich environment: the world. There’s like 60 trillion people in it, and at least half of them are women.
Live your life. Do what you want to do. Yeah, sometimes you have to drag yourself off the couch, but you’ll be the better for it. Sooner or later, someone comes along. In the meantime, you’re having a full life that you enjoy. (Psst: chicks dig that. But that’s secondary.)
And hell, if you want to be an insensitive clod (that’s the impersonal “you”; I’m not saying you do), go ahead and be an insensitive clod. Just don’t be real surprised or hurt when no one of either gender wants to hang out with you.
farren, I’ve “broken up” with roommates for the exact same reason. Yes, I could wash all my dishes the second I’m done cooking, but I really feel more like piling them in the sink until I’m good and ready and vacuuming five times a year and calling it quits. But then, I feel no pride in my house’s cleanliness and don’t care if other people judge me. I think for a lot of women it’s difficult to feel that detached - and I don’t think men have that pressure.
Alara, I think your suggestion that men come over to our side of nerddom is adorable (in a good way!). That said, I spent the weekend trying to get my significant other into fanvids… he does not get it. At all. This from the guy who introduced me to Warhammer. (And then was really freaked out when I spent the next four hours hunched over his keyboard yelling KILL THE ORCS).
Excellent comment, Alara. (The whole thing, not just my quote of it, which BTW is in my opinion the best-worded response to Nice Guy-ism I’ve seen on this blog in years.)
Thanks. I think I have more sympathy than many here for the NiceGuy(tm), as most of my close friends were NiceGuys(tm) when I was younger, and I have one for a housemate. (It saddens me, looking back, to wonder how many of my friends were my friends because they were secretly hoping I would dump my asshole boyfriend—who, BTW, genuinely was an asshole, but also had many positive qualities that I have gone out of my way not to remember since he attacked my new boyfriend two years after dumping me)—and go out with them instead. You know, I kind of feel bad for anyone who had a crush on me, because it just wasn’t gonna happen—I’m sexually attracted to maybe 1 in 200 men, so their odds were just not good—but at the same time, if you’re my friend I would kind of like it if you were my *friend* and not badmouthing me behind my back because I don’t wanna sex you up, kthxbye?
But I do understand some of what it’s like from their perspective because they spent years telling me. And I also have the experience of chasing a smart, funny, geeky, fat boy with acne who didn’t want me, he wanted a cheerleader. What was wrong with me? I was scary thin at the time, I had boobs, my mom made me wear makeup before I left the house… physically I met the world’s beauty standards well enough. But I was the class weirdo. And hey, maybe I just wasn’t his type. I didn’t do it for him, he just wanted to be friends, ok. You think I didn’t feel kind of rejected that his crush was a cheerleader? It seems so logical when you’re in it. “Why does he want that shallow jerk who would never be interested in him? He should date *me*! I like him for himself!” But of course he had every right to like the cheerleader. And I had every right to like my asshole boyfriend and not the guys I was friends with. It’s the exact same thing, only because I’m a woman I didn’t have an entire cottage industry of fellow NiceGirls(tm) telling me that I was justified in my feelings of entitlement. Rather, I had an entire cottage industry telling me that if I really *wanted* the boy I should make myself over to be more like the cheerleader… and since I was already feminist enough to know I never ever ever wanted to do that, I had to accept it. The world told me there was a strategy for winning my crush, and I decided the cost was too high. NiceGuys(tm) usually don’t end up in that position (or if they do the cultural messages of entitlement make them feel sour about having chosen not to pay the cost.)
(I would also like to point out, from my story, that my crush probably *was* a NiceGuy(tm) from the perspective of the cheerleader who didn’t want him. He might well have bemoaned to his male friends that girls don’t like smart shy guys, totally ignoring the fact that the class weirdo, who was in fact female, had been throwing herself at him for two years. Do NiceGuys(tm) see the women who might actually want them, or are they too busy dreaming of the girls who don’t want them? I’m not saying that NiceGuys(tm) have any more obligation to date the class weirdo than I had to date my NiceGuy(tm) friends, but you can’t actually *say* “women aren’t interested in me” if women are, in fact, interested in you but you are not interested in them. You can do what women do and say “there aren’t any good women interested in me”, where “good” is commonly understood to mean “that I would want to date”, but that would ruin generalizations about All Women.)
I have my parentheses in totally the wrong places…
*facepalm* *smack*
Alara,
It’s okay, it (happens to the) best of us.
Alara, I think you’ve really pinned down part of the problem women have with Nice Guys- that yes, liking someone who doesn’t like you back is pretty much a universal experience ! But women get told “well, you should have been hotter” instead of what the Nice Guys get- “it’s not you, it’s her daddy issues, guess she just wants a jerk, she totally should have had sex with you instead of the guy she was attracted to.” So in either case, we get blamed. Not fun.
I agree with everyone so far who has said “go live your life and be happy, and if love comes along, great.” That’s the only way to be- going for your own goals, taking care of yourself and your loved ones, becoming the kind of person you want to be around.
Just a thought or two for Max:
I am, by many definitions, a Nice Guy (tm). I am manifestly unwanted by women, and my friendships and social relationships are so stilted that while it seems like I whine about dating more than anything else, it’s hardly my only issue. Women do not want me; I’m somewhat creepy, a bit obsessive, and boderline paranoid. Yes, I was bullied. I do try to be sensitive. I do get pissed off when it doesn’t work. But you know what?
It’s not them, it’s me.
Get over yourself, Max. If I have enough self-awareness to realize what a useless fuckup I am and not blame it on the women I’m interested in, than you and every other Nice Guy (tm) should too. Otherwise you’re a tard who not only doesn’t deserve to get laid, but should be castrated on general principle. (A sentiment I’m sure your wife has had on occasion.)
Apropos of absolutely nothing, Internet Tuff Guys™ are pathetically awesome.
It’s like that joke where you add “in bed” to the end of all fortune cookies.
“You will soon travel to another country - in bed.”
“Someone is speaking well of you - in bed.”
“A freind asks only for your time, not your money - in bed.”
In this case it’s
“You better watch out for me - on the internet.”
“I swear I’m gonna kill the next traitor liberal I see - on the internet.”
“Man… guys like me are babe magnets - on the internet.”
“That chick knows she wants it - on the internet.”
I would also like to point out, from my story, that my crush probably *was* a NiceGuy(tm) from the perspective of the cheerleader who didn’t want him. He might well have bemoaned to his male friends that girls don’t like smart shy guys, totally ignoring the fact that the class weirdo, who was in fact female, had been throwing herself at him for two years.
Alara R:
What’s sad is that I could have been that guy. I spent my high school career ignoring interesting girls who were actually into me and chasing girls who wheren’t. I actually feel sad & guilty about it, but what can you do? It really is true that a lot of boys & men act that way. In a wierd sense we are almost taught to.
Anyway, keep the great comments coming.
But women get told “well, you should have been hotter” instead of what the Nice Guys get- “it’s not you, it’s her daddy issues, guess she just wants a jerk, she totally should have had sex with you instead of the guy she was attracted to.” So in either case, we get blamed. Not fun.
This is the only time you’ll ever hear me say this, ever. And pretend I’m whispering (on the internet!)
But I hold out hope that the phrase and concept “He’s just not that into you” maintains traction. It’s our strongest weapon (both genders) against self or other blame in the world of romantic rejection.
It acknowledges your personal lack of control, but offers no space (at least the book doesn’t) to actually *blame* the other person/gender for it. It recognizes their right not to be into you, and your right to be *hurt*, but to get the hell over it.
I *heart* atheist so much right now.
kyso
People love me - on the internet
But thanks
Atheist --
No kidding. It’s kind of sad to think that because I was so oblivious to social cues (and I am), I missed out on a girl who would’ve been right for me.
There was a girl I liked when I was in college. Sweet, funny, -very- smart and cute as a button. I -desperately- wanted to ask her out, but the problem was...I was too scared to even bother. I’ve lived in fear of rejection my whole life, and it’s so pervasive that it actually causes some pretty severe problems with my regular daily life.
I agree that we are in many ways, “taught” to act a specific way by our culture. I learned very early on that “you aren’t attractive, you aren’t athletic, you aren’t going to succeed in life, so why bother trying” from my peers—and I think this is the reason why “nice guys” sometimes act the way they do. It doesn’t make it right, it just explains the behavior. Sadly, the result of social conditioning like this results in a personality that is introverted, shy, perpetually afraid, and worst—prone to overcompensation—which is basically what you have in the “stereotype” above.
Dear Nice fags: pick up a guitar u skinny twats! It makes ‘ em tender in the middle.
Nice Guy is a true phenomenon. Basically its an in-authentic person. Not good for anyone.
Reformed NGs have to take some responsibility for what they let the environment turn them into but the environment does have a role. ( Elementary teachers who dont like the rambunctiousness of little boys and try and fit them into tight girl size behavior boxes. )
In regards to this thread, in my opinion, what NG are complaining about is women saying one thing and doing another. Again from the posts above we can pull two extremes:
a. Women who collaborate with the males who make up the patriarchy are guilty by association.
( doesnt matter what excuse they give for liking the confident alpha males, the were young, they can like who they want)
BTW - females who collaborate with the patriarchy have been labelled collaborators on this site.
b. Women’s duty in love is to themselves and their partner only, not the larger society
I guess it depends if you want to take a narrow (personal) or a wide ( society level). Both can be argued , eg. the personal is political etc…
However, when women opportunistically use one lens for some behaviors ( I owe nothing to anyone but me) and then pick up another when it suits them ( equal pay, etc...) this is hypocritical and invites attacks by NGs who dont have a solid foundation in themselves.
No double standards no reason for passive-aggressive on both sides. Of course, there are tons of such binds for women too. A comment Amanda made at the beginning of her post is that we evolved together over 1000s of years and are really basically equal and that includes deceiving ourselves about our perceived honesty as well.
“However, when women opportunistically use one lens for some behaviors ( I owe nothing to anyone but me) and then pick up another when it suits them ( equal pay, etc...) this is hypocritical and invites attacks by NGs who dont have a solid foundation in themselves.”
I don’t think that’s the best comparison - a lot of people hold the view that in things like employer-employee relationships you owe it to them to be fair, but that dating someone is more personal (and not something that’s basic to survival) and should be totally open to free choice. An example of hypocrisy would be a woman complaining about guys only going for hot cheerleader types while reserving the right to only go for hot jock types.
Though in practice I don’t think rejection tends to be exactly the same for the sexes. Women will certainly express preferences for certain types of men, but most women who aren’t alpha-jerk types won’t insult other women for dating guys she isn’t personally interested in, whereas in my experience that is more common among men.
Alara Rogers: “However, NiceGuys(tm) don’t *ever* appear to locate the problem as within themselves or something they can change.”
Absolutely. I think a lot of guys fail to realize how far a little positive change can go. It seems like a guy who works on his looks at a fraction of the level most women do will likely be considered much more attractive. I think part of it is that a lot of guys buy into the idea that women don’t care about looks (or only care about things like having lots of muscle) - it does seem like women in general are less picky about looks, but that doesn’t mean going above and beyond a woman’s minimum looks standard won’t do a lot of good for a man’s social life.
Also slightly paradoxical in that a subset of men who acknowledge female desire find it, in toto, directed at other men and never at them. You would think that recognition of female agency might leave one open to the possibility of individual variations and preferences--instead women are a mass of individuals who invariably arrive at the same preferences despite diverse formative experiences.
Eurosabra,
You lump a group of together men into a “subset”, the Nice Guy category I guess, and that’s OK by you but when it comes to women you say they should accorded the honor of being regarded as individuals.
Its great when you can get away with having it both ways isnt it?
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This is the guy that got me…
“interesting that these guyland people are the ones getting laid.
I would like to see a survey of how much sex frat boy jocks receive versus schmucks such as myself that wasted our time going to feminist philosophy classes and trying to be respectful and understanding while constantly being talk down to in class for even trying. While Quarterback Jack spent his evenings piling driving 6 chics back in his cock-cave.
Riddle me that batwomen.
PS Why were you on a date with that guy in the first place? Yes...there it is...quick, cover it up with fancy talk about double standards...”
Geez, dude. We all go through “dry spells”. No need to be so bitter about it.
Seriously, I know tons of guys like this. “Why do girls only go out with guys who act like assholes?” I just tell them, “Well, then start acting like an asshole and see if that works for you.”