This is a comment by Jay on the post “Can A ‘Nice Guy’ Ever Beat the ‘Bad Boy’?“
“This is really awful advice by both the man and the woman. Want to know the most important difference between a bad boy and a nice guy? A nice guy asks what can I do to win this girl. A bad boy either sees himself as the prize or doesn’t believe women are a prize.
“Why are you fighting for a woman’s affection? They aren’t magical angelic creatures made from God’s tears. They are human beings, just like men are. She is no more worthwhile than you. The problem nice guys have is they put women on pedestals and themselves in a pit.”
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Well that’s a gross oversimplification of things. There are plenty of nice guys out there who don’t, actually, put women on pedestals. They just treat them like fellow human beings.
Yes, there are lots of nice guys. Many do treat women better than themselves and like human beings too.
The ultimate issue is how the nice men are treated by the women. Right? They (nice guys) are not treated in a reciprocal fashion.
JMO.
Cite, please. I am married to a nice man and treat him well. I know numerous women married to wonderful men who treat them well. Just because you’ve had a negative experience doesn’t mean it’s true for all
But Terence raises a good point.
Just like a man that will walk all over a woman once he realizes he can get away with it, women have the capacity to do the exact same. One weird difference is, depending on who you talk to, one is a jerk for doing or the one is a doormat for letting it happen to them. I’ve had people, in the same conversation, switch from saying that a guy that walked all over a woman was a jerk to saying that a woman that walked all over a guy was justified in doing because the guy was “stupid enough to let her do it”. (And I bet money that you could hear the reverse.)
I let a woman do just that to me when I was in college. And now, almost 10 years later, am just really coming to terms with it to at least try to move on (yeah one of my biggest flaws is that I hold grudges).
Married women have argued that men do not treat them the same as during courtship. They (married women) say we tend to treat them better during the courting phase. Right?
OK. So, why is it so difficult for you to believe the counter perspective is not also true? Seems pretty reasonable to me. Is it only we men who become slackers?
I will refer to my ex wife. Now, this is NOT to assume it goes for all married women. My ex wife had propsed we go on a cruise with friends (another married couple). My ex wife and the other wife are high school friends….I have never been on a cruise. She had been on numerous cruises, primarily with ex boyfriends.
What I resented was she (ex wife) never proposed that the two of us go on a cruise. She had done so with her past lovers. Why I wondered? Because, she had “been there done that” I concluded. She only valued that experience with her ex boyfriends. So, I was treated in an inferior manner.
The same things goes on with many women after marriage. Old boyfriends and ex lovers are treated better, especially when it comes to sex. It is as if most married women have given their best to past lovers. You (the new husband) are left with cold leftovers and scraps.
Now I am single. This is best for me. I have no problem getting women. I have a terrific sex life. While I am not a bad boy, I am certainly not as nice to women as previous. Nor do I desire a committed relationship of any shape, fashion or form. FWB only.
JMO.
I’m very sorry that you’ve had such painful experiences. I hope that the path you are on is what you want and gives you more peace than your marriage did.
Not all marriages are like yours, is all I can offer.
Also, “She had done so with her past lovers. Why I wondered? Because, she had “been there done that” I concluded.”
Did you ask her? Did you tell her of your feelings of resentment?
I get what you mean, but I think you’re referring to actual nice guys and the other person to “nice guysTM” (the kind of passive aggressive vending machine guys ozy was talking about when she deconstructed the codemonkey song)
I find “Nice Guys TM” to be used primarily as a means of shutting down discussion, and has little use in any other capacity..
Check out the comments section on blogs like Jezebel, Feministe, or Hugo Schwyzer’s blog and you’ll see the exact same drama portrayed again and again:
A poster identifies as a woman and shares a personal, painful, experience. She is thanked, praised for the “courage to share,” and her anecdote is used to draw generalizations about men.
A poster identifies as a man and shares an equally personal, painful experience and is immediately called a “Nice Guy TM” in order to justify a litany of victim-blaming that no doubt follows. This is then used to draw a generalization about men.
Are there guys who claim to be “nice” and hold misogynist impulses? Sure. But the phrase “Nice Guys TM” adds nothing to discussion beyond a tool that can be used for convenient shut downs.
I agree with you, Heather, on the gross oversimplification. The thing about it is, what’s *wrong* with holding someone you love high on a pedastal. The trick is not to get walked over, but there’s nothing wrong with holding someone you love on a pedestal. None of us are divine, but some of us like to make those we love feel that way–it’s called love.
I don’t think it’s so much the affection as the attention of a woman that many (nice) men are seeking in the first place.
The nice men want to be treated the same as any other man. Why do the women have to discriminate in favor of the “bad” boy?
Answer: women are attracted to men whom they find attractive and likable, in general. For whatever reason(s), and women do know the reason(s), too many women prefer a man other than a genuinely nice guy. When I hear a woman utter the word “nice guy”, I know it is code for no sex and friend zone. I cringe and seethe.
I would tend to disagree. I would propose that Nice Guys™ – and I would also suggest this is probably how one might differentiate that group from guys that are nice – put themselves on a pedestal and can’t understand why Women™ don’t see how much better they are than the Bad Boys™ they end up preferring. It is an act of self-delusion, a way for the ego to protect itself by casting the rejection as one class of people (women) preferring another class of people (bad boys) instead of it being a personal rejection.
Okey pokey dokey, here’s my question….are Nice Guys™, Women™, and Bad Boys™ actual types of people, or just broad stereotypes?
Stereotypes, of course. People behave as individuals, not based on their class memberships. And yet the discussion needs a way of describing a set of behaviors that people hold in common, hence the labels.
Some men who have been unsuccessful in dating don’t see it as a particular woman, or series of women, having simply not been interested in them. Instead they have generalized their lack of success to be because of Women™ preferring Bad Boys™ to them. That’s the only explanation that makes sense to them.
Some women who have encountered the aforementioned men, see those men as “entitled” and have labeled them as Nice Guys™ to differentiate them from the general group of men who happen to behave nicely. The common traits among these so-called Nice Guys™ is the way they externalize their lack of success (blaming it on women as a class preferring bad boys as a class), which I propose comes from their self-pedestalization that women may mistakenly characterize as a sense of entitlement.
Well I’m going to get wicked feminist (and abstract) here for a moment in my reading of this phenomenon:
It’s interesting that Women are all lumped together as one single entity, yet men are divided into Nice Guys and Bad Boys. I’m not quite sure what conclusions you can draw from that, but it’s definitely interesting.
The beauty of declaring all women as stuck up princesses that won’t give them the time of day instead of compatible/imcompatible. Saves the trouble of actually sorting women out. At the same time there must be some division of men simply because some men have no trouble with dating while some men have nothing but trouble with dating.
I’d wager the same thing happens with women (declaring that “there are no good men left” or “all the good ones are gay” and/or sorting other women as the woman equavilent of Nice Guy/Jerk).
Actually let me add something.
To these guys there is some sorting to women. They are classified as either stuck up princesses that only like jerks or good women (where good woman means “she is a woman that I have a chance with”). Well since they aren’t getting with any women that must mean there are no good women and they are all stuck up princesses that only like jerks right?
The female version of Nice Guy/Bad Boy could possibly be something like Beautiful/Not Beautiful. Conventionally physically attractive women are viewed as having a leg-up, certainly. Anyway, here’s the thing, saying that “all the good ones are gay” is still dividing men into groups. (There certainly isn’t a sentiment that all the good women are lesbians…if anything it’s more often said that all the lesbians are worse, because they wouldn’t even try to date the Nice Guys). And saying “there are no good ones left” is also dividing men into groups, albeit the “good ones” are seen as no longer existing.
But still, it’s a different sentiment. The Nice Guy thing suggests Women are all a certain way because they are Women, and whenever I’ve seen it discussed it’s also often included in discussions of alpha men and beta men and all that nonsense. The “where are the good guys left,” sentiment generally seems to be more about perceived problems with current men…it’s a nostalgia thing.
Mind, I think it’s all stereotyping and horrible.
The female version of Nice Guy/Bad Boy could possibly be something like Beautiful/Not Beautiful. Conventionally physically attractive women are viewed as having a leg-up, certainly.
Maybe. With the Nice Guy thing there is a matter of the guy going on about how nice he is and people question just how nice he is. On the other hand I don’t think there is much question about how beautiful said woman would be (or at least in my experience). What I’m trying to say is that someone can actually say “yes she is beautiful” (by at least some standard) but I’m not sure you can say “yes he is nice” (at least when it comes the examination of Nice Guys the final conclusion is usually “they weren’t that nice in the first place”, I don’t see a lot of “she wasn’t that beautiful in the first place”, unless its coming from a Nice Guy).
But still, it’s a different sentiment. The Nice Guy thing suggests Women are all a certain way because they are Women, and whenever I’ve seen it discussed it’s also often included in discussions of alpha men and beta men and all that nonsense. The “where are the good guys left,” sentiment generally seems to be more about perceived problems with current men…it’s a nostalgia thing.
I guess its matter of varying mileage because I’ve seen it dicussed, men talking about women or women talking about men, as “all _____ all want the same thing”.
Mind, I think it’s all stereotyping and horrible.
Yes. And it can get real hard to nail it down because even between the two of use we have different experiences.
Perhaps that’s because Nice is something a person does and Beautiful is something a person is…so I guess that’d go back to the old idea about how women often aren’t viewed as full actors, as active participants.
“And it can get real hard to nail it down because even between the two of use we have different experiences.”
Yeah, which is why I find most of these tropes really ridiculous. Everyone has really different experiences, particularly with anything romantic or sexual. Often the larger social narratives (and the pressure placed on people because of those narratives) actually don’t reflect the reality of most people’s individual experiences in romantic relationships.
Well of course. As men we are supposed to be the ones that act and “earn” women (yes that’s full of heteronormativity).
Yeah, which is why I find most of these tropes really ridiculous. Everyone has really different experiences, particularly with anything romantic or sexual. Often the larger social narratives (and the pressure placed on people because of those narratives) actually don’t reflect the reality of most people’s individual experiences in romantic relationships.
I think that happens because people find some bit of comfort and support in being able to point to a specific trope, see that other people have similar experiences and say, “So it’s not just me.”
Yes, and I wanted to highlight it as a point of reference.
For someone to be a Nice Guy™ there must be the not-Nice Guy who is known alternately as a Bad Boy™ or Jerk™. This is a way of differentiating yourself from the people who are obviously inferior to you, and yet somehow are more successful at dating. There must therefore, by necessity, be at least two classes of men.
There is no need to differentiate between women since your experience is that of universal rejection, therefore it’s fitting to lump them into a single category of Women™ that just happen like Bad Boys™ instead of you (because it couldn’t possibly be anything about you, personally, so it must be that all of the women say they like nice guys but really are into jerks).
As for beauty, I would suggest unattractive women are invisible for the purposes of the stereotype. But that’s a different problem for a different discussion.
Amen to all this.
“It’s interesting that Women are all lumped together as one single entity, yet men are divided into Nice Guys and Bad Boys. I’m not quite sure what conclusions you can draw from that, but it’s definitely interesting.”
I’m no one to usually blame feminism for the world’s problems, but I’m like 99% certain that this can be blamed on feminism.
Older feminist thought (and I’m thinking specifically of 2nd wave here) is dedicated to the idea that men and women can be generalized as entire groups.
Women, as a whole, are assigned characteristics like “victim” and “underprivileged” and “objectified.”
Men, by contrast, are generalized to be “victimizers” and “privileged” and “objectifiers.”
When individual men point out that they don’t hold a lot of privilege, or don’t objectify women, or have never attacked anyone, they are told that they are “wrong” in their understanding of the groupings. They are told that words like “privilege” refer to men, in general, rather than specific men. So men a privileged, while a man can be unprivileged.
This leaves men trying to talk with feminists in a difficult spot. The overwhelming majority of them are always going to come from sub-1% households, have never actually attacked anyone, and do not objectify (they are, after all, trying to speak with feminists, something that objectifiers probably don’t do).
So, what can you do if you’re not allowed to argue that men aren’t privileged, but you can look around and see that you and all your friends are decidedly without privilege?
You invent a group that must have all the privilege and then recast yourself as not a member of that group.
So we have “bad boys” who do an awful lot of objectifying and victimizing (and thus exhibit and benefit from male privilege). And then we have “nice guys” who don’t actually do any of that, and are usually upset because they continue to be lumped into the victimizers/privileged/objectifiers when it comes to discussions with feminists.
Now, if feminism had not begun by insisting that designations such as “privilege” or “victim” existed in the first place, we might be somewhere different today. However, history played out how it did, and we are left to pick up the pieces.
Right I’m short for time, but no it’s not something you can blame on feminism. Feminism originally fell into the trap of not going beyond this, yes, but they didn’t create this idea of monolithic groups (and actually feminists are the ones who came up with the idea of intersectionality).
That feminists determined, after the fact, that they had made a mistake does not change the fact that the mistake was made in the first place.
Heather, respectfully, I’ve seen you arguments on this point before and it will look something like this:
“Yes, 2nd wave feminism made mistakes X, but we’re at 3rd wave feminism, and that doesn’t think X at all!”
This is definitely true, but you cannot just wave your hand and make pretend that 2nd wave feminism never happened (as much as you might want to). 2nd wave feminism has been preaching the privileged/unprivileged duality on college campuses for the past 4 decades. Whether or not this is currently the case is immaterial: the damage is done.
Like I said above, I don’t normally blame feminism for anything, check out my comments on Justin Cascio’s piece on the five good things feminism has done for men. I really believe that feminism has, on balance, been a force for good.
But you cannot make pretend that 40 of the disaster that is/was 2nd wave feminism has not had a lasting impact on how men and women view each other.
Yeah but feminists didn’t create that idea. You can blame 2nd wavers for not seeing it, but they didn’t create it.
I wonder if he’s talking about the naming and shaping of the Nice Guy/Bad Boy narrative. Sure you can say that feminists didn’t create this out of thin air but at the same time this specific naming and discourse largely came from feminists.
I think they have more to do with it than just not going beyond it. It seems in some way they helped create this beast.
I wouldn’t say you could blame it on feminism to be sure though.
Well first, I’m pretty sure Mike was talking about the treating groups as monolithic, thing. Secondly, feminists didn’t create the Nice Guy/Bad Boy narrative…that is full on created by men.
If you look at my comment above, I specifically stated that it was created by men.
Men created it in response to the monolithic groups created by second wave feminism.
Heather, you cannot look at prominent second wave feminists like Steinem or MacKinnon and argue that they did not trade in monolithic generalizations.
Look at the language used by Steinem:
“The real reasons for genital mutilation can only be understood in the context of the patriarchy: men must control women’s bodies as the means of production, and thus repress the independent power of women’s sexuality.” (first quote that came up under a Google search for Gloria Steinem Quote)
There’s no nuance here: men are monolithic and MUST control women. This is an extraordinarily powerful duality (men victimizers, women victims) that has dominated Gender Studies discourse for four decades.
You cannot pretend this is not monolithic: men are generalized into one massive negative morass. Men responded to this by declaring that *some* men (e.g. the bad boys) are members of the negative group, but others (e.g. the nice guys) are not.
This wouldn’t have been necessary if there wasn’t an effort by writers like Steinem to label men, writ large, with generalizations.
“Heather, you cannot look at prominent second wave feminists like Steinem or MacKinnon and argue that they did not trade in monolithic generalizations.”
Did I say that? Nope, pretty sure what I said was that they didn’t create them. One of the valid criticisms of second wave feminism and especially first wave feminism is that they failed to recognize intersectionality and the ways in which multiple social identities all interact with each other. However…they still didn’t create that problem; they just failed to address it.
So…to be clear, 2nd wave feminists “failed to see” the problem of dealing in monolithic groups like “women are victims and men are victimizers,” but you are claiming that they didn’t actually create those groups.
I’m sorry, I just don’t buy it. There is no source for ideas like “men are victimizers” outside of feminism: that is literally the only place it comes from.
If you can show me where academics, who were not feminists, independently created the idea “men are victimizers” then I would be happy to believe you. I simply don’t think there’s another source for that sort of belief.
Secondly, feminists didn’t create the Nice Guy/Bad Boy narrative…that is full on created by men.
But they have influenced it (and besides I agreed that they didn’t create it). If anything else they have contributed the “he probably wasn’t as nice as he thought he was in the first place” conclusion of it.
In my experience, self-pedestalization often (but not always) tied up with an attitude that certainly comes across as entitlement, along the lines of “I drove her to the vet when her dog was sick and I gave her my spare ticket to this concert and now she tells me she just wants to be friends? What a bitch!” Or, as a tweet I read at some point put it along: “some guys seem to think girls are machines that you put kindness coins into until sex falls out.”
Granted, I’ve met very few guys who actually think like that. Most guys are actually just generally nice people who do nice things for girls they like because they like them, not because they are expecting some kind of romantic pay-off further down the line. Full-blown Nice Guy™ does exist, but he’s a fairly rare specimen in my experience.
Our of curiosity…
I’ve had female friends that had no issue calling up men that they new to be interested in dating in order to use them for services (for lack of a better word).
How do we know what a comment like:
““I drove her to the vet when her dog was sick and I gave her my spare ticket to this concert and now she tells me she just wants to be friends? What a bitch!” Is the product of a “nice guy” or a “using girl”?
It seems like an awful lot of guys get accused of being “nice guys” but the reverse, the girl who uses male affection for the her ends, is rarely discussed.
Well sometimes it does come up in the whole passive aggressive bit.
Can you expand on that Danny?
I’m not familiar with that.
Sure. You know how that “using girl” will take advantage of a guy that likes her. I’m thinking that is a bit of learned helplessness. Getting that guy to do stuff for her because “he’s such a good friend” or “she could really use the help”.
Again its not an exact fit but I think it may be related.
I’m not sure it quite happens that way sometimes (as in I think what you say happens as well, because there’s obviously more than one way that this all goes down). I think that in at least some cases those guys (before they became Nice Guys, because they don’t always just spring from the ground as fully formed Nice Guys) really do put women on a pedestal. They do whatever it is they think they are supposed to do in order to earn women as if they are a reward to be earned rather than a person to try to connect with.
What you say happens (putting themselves on a pesdestal above women, aka the fable about the sour grapes) may come after reality sets in. They get frustrated with trying and constantly failing to earn the reward that they convince themselves that the reward really wasn’t worth it in the first place (Nice Guys do this) rather than seeing that women aren’t that special (nice guys do this and try to work out what it is they can change about themselves).
Nice Guys keep women on a pedestal or puts themselves on a pedestal over women and never consider them to be just people to try to connect with nor will they try to work on changing themselves.
nice guys will eventually see that women aren’t all that (or they may not put women on a pedestal in the first place) and work on changing themselves or being comfortable with themselves, etc…
It is an act of self-delusion, a way for the ego to protect itself by casting the rejection as one class of people (women) preferring another class of people (bad boys) instead of it being a personal rejection.
Self delusion that could be born out of taking personal experience(s) to the wrong conclusion. Take a guy that has tried dating and getting in relationships with women but they never work out while they see other guys that could be classified as certifiable jerks have no problems with dating/relationships/sex. Now he could conclude that he is just one unfortunate bastard. Or he could conclude that “women like jerks” (because even if his experience is reltively limited, its still real and its what he knows). Or he could go through the steps to try to figure out what’s wrong with him (which could still end in misfortune). Or who knows what.
So what…basically the idea is that Nice Guys used to put Women on pedestals and bent over backwards to ‘catch’ one. Then one rejects him, and they think Women are actually kind of horrible and only go for Bad Boys?
So basically it’s just a very common problem of placing limited, individual experiences as proof of a general problem…
So what…basically the idea is that Nice Guys used to put Women on pedestals and bent over backwards to ‘catch’ one. Then one rejects him, and they think Women are actually kind of horrible and only go for Bad Boys?
Well, that is going to vary from guy to guy. For some it only takes one. For others it takes a long line of them. Also time is a factor (a few that are stretched over a long period of time or a lot of them in a short time). For some others still there is those points plus seeing other, more successful guys. Some have low tipping points and will turn Nice Guy quickly. Some turn over the course of a long time. Some never turn that way. Hell I tettered on the edge of it for a while.
So basically it’s just a very common problem of placing limited, individual experiences as proof of a general problem…
Possibly. It’s a matter of living the experiences, even if the exeperiences may be limited in a global sense, and seeing them happening to a whole lot of other guys. So much that people start getting ideas.
(For example. A lot of male against female rapes happen right? But, despite that we know that only a small portion of the male population are actual rapists. But, despite that there is still an existing thought that males are rapists be default or that it’s okay to assume that all males are rapists. And no the factor of “but we don’t know which men are rapists” doesn’t justify assuming that all males are rapists.)
Alright I follow…but I’d argue that rape and sexual assault is a far more traumatic experience than being rejected (having been rejected myself) and that the more traumatic an experience is, the more likely that something can become triggering and less logical an association with that experience.
But generally I get what you’re saying.
Well I was kinda hoping that was a given and need not be said. I’m not denying the trauma, but that don’t justify blank presumptions.
Can we all agree that rape and assault is a far more traumatic experience than being rejected? Yes, but… no, not exactly.
I heard a radio interview the other day with author Rob Nixon about his book, “Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor.” He talks about the “attritional lethality” of many environmental crises that threaten us, and especially the poor, but don’t get much notice because they’re slow, incremental, long-term.
It’s the perfect analogy for my thoughts on this topic: Rape is an oil tanker spill on the Great Barrier Reef. It’s the Fukushima Daiichi reactor meltdown, or the Great Smog of London. It’s intense, spectacular and demands notice. “Slow violence” is much harder to notice because the causes are diffuse through time and space, it’s hard to apportion blame because individually each cause has little effect, and the cumulative effect is seen only over the course of years. Chronic rejection is slow violence. It’s the acidification of the oceans, the Gulf of Mexico dead zone, or an increase in cancer rates.
Yeah, rejection hurts, but it’s really not that bad. You feel the sting for a few seconds to a few weeks, but then you move on. Everybody’s been rejected at some time or another, so they think they know how it feels. But chronic, pervasive rejection is something of a different order. As a guy (and in my experience it’s virtually exclusively men), when the only message you get is rejection from women, it gets harder and harder to shake it off as time goes on. When every woman says no, when many women not only say no but act as if you’re some sort of pervert for even being interested, when sometimes women go out of their way to reject you even if you haven’t asked, or pointedly act to deny you the opportunity to even interact with them, if this goes on for years without even a single ‘yes’… Well, it adds up.
Rape and chronic rejection both attack the same fundamental issues, a violation of one’s sense of agency and ability to control one’s world. One is intensive, the other is extensive. One is violence, the other is slow violence. But both can cause deep, lasting damage to one’s psyche and have a profound impact on one’s quality of life.
So, yeah, no. The question of whether rape is a more traumatic experience than rejection is not simply an open-and-shut case.
Not one… more like 100 in my case. Unfortunately, I have no one who can A) act as my wingperson B) tell me what I’m doing wrong C) give me an idea of what to do to give myself a chance at success D) not make me want to kill myself because of the perpetual failure.
Okay, this pushed one of my buttons in a way that took me by surprise, so I had to respond: “They do whatever it is they think they are supposed to do in order to earn women as if they are a reward to be earned rather than a person to try to connect with.”
I was a “nice guy” for too many years. I did what I thought I was supposed to do in order to earn a woman’s affections. As a good little son of the feminist era, I took the message to heart that what I was “supposed to do” was to show interest in a girl as a whole person and try to connect with her. Gee whiz, this should be easy, because that’s the kind of guy I am, anyway. And if I do that, then they should reciprocate, which is perfect because that’s what I want for myself.
It’s a perfect plan, aside from the minor detail that it utterly fails! To oversimplify, the result is that she thinks you’re either not interested in her, or not confident enough to make a move, both mortal sins of dating. It doesn’t get you a meaningful relationship, or just get you laid.
That’s not to say that a guy should skip the part about connecting with a woman as a person, but that comes (minutes, weeks, years?) later. The meat-market-customer approach definitely comes first. Otherwise, there exists the danger that a woman that you met with a deep-connection-as-a-person approach will want to spend more time with you, but on the grounds that deep-connection-as-a-person is what you want, and if you try to push for sex later she’ll be shocked and feel betrayed, saying, “But I think of you as a friend!” Indeed, because that’s how you presented yourself at first.
So, as a former “nice guy,” I haven’t become a jerk, but instead decided to be honest and go for what I want up-front, be it sexual or intellectual relations. Again to oversimplify, my advice for other “nice guys” is to lead with your true intentions, that’s what works.
Yeah its a difficult thing to navigate.
Its a matter (at least) 2 things.
1. Guys realizing that simply put, women aren’t all that. They are not some great and grand display of perfection.
2. With some guys its a matter of misfortune of not finding a woman they are not compatible with. Sometimes its because the women are straight up terrible. Sometimes they are a terrible match for you.
3. With some guys its a matter of actually having something wrong with them that prevents them from meeting women. Working on those things should be priority.
As someone said above there are an awfully lot of ways this can go so its a bit hard to nail down one thing and try to hold it up as “the way it goes”. Hell I’d wager that even a good portion of the guys that get written off as Nice Guys were guys that had the misfortune I mention. Problem is they got bitter which while is mean and counterproductive people are still quick to declare that “maybe they weren’t really that nice at all”. I think thy probably were. They just have to refind (heavy emphasis on the re) that niceness.
I suppose my hook in all this is the word “earn” as if there is a price high enough in either good or behaviors to get a woman to become sexual with you.
A big problem indeed.
This implies that she doesn’t really have any decision making power or desire anyway.
And it implies that he must be the one to do all the acting and deciding.
Now, brass tacks is that people that actually display a liking of me for real, are actually interested in me and find me attractive…
I would call that an attempt at connection, not earning.
I guess that’s “earning” but I don’t think I’d appreciate learning that there was a prescribed set of actions or behaviors someone felt would earn them my body.
To clarify “earning” in the way I’m using it is the way people are socialized into thinking that relationships are created by men finding out what it is that will get a woman to like them (often for the sake of getting women to like them and no more). Of course it would make sense that some women wouldn’t want to be treated in such a way.
HeatherN:
Well first, I’m pretty sure Mike was talking about the treating groups as monolithic, thing. Secondly, feminists didn’t create the Nice Guy/Bad Boy narrative…that is full on created by men.
And feminists had no problem running with that narrative to the conclusion of “he probably wasn’t that nice at all to start with”.
That’s two separate narratives. If you’re talking about the Nice Guys/Bad Boys narrative that Nick, mostly discussed…well then that’s an MRA/PUA type narrative that feminists outright reject. Dating is not viewed as a competition like that; it is far too animalistic and frankly ignores human agency and intellect too much. Also the concept of dating as a transaction (nice guy gives money/time/energy; woman gives sex) is totally not kosher with feminism.
Now, if you’re talking about the few people who fit into the stereotype itself…well a feminist would look at a guy who pays for something and is nice to a woman with the expectation of getting something in return and say that’s not very nice, yeah. Mind, most people would say that…because being nice for the express purpose of profiting isn’t nice.
Looking at this logically, I think that feminists would also argue that that perception (that dating is a transaction; that men must compete for women) is totally a patriarchal idea. It assumes women are to be acted upon, and men are the actors. It also makes a woman’s body an asset…all part of patriarchy (or traditional gender norms if you prefer that term).
I think you are overaggravating the “competition” thing.
The way I see it, a vast majority of people are monogamous, it’s mostly just the timespan that varies. I.e. if you want to be with someone, whether it be for life or just for the next couple of hours, you have to make yourself be “chosen” or “selected”, then and there, over any other person that that person might be interested in.
And, BTW, this goes for both women, men, and all combinations thereof.
Now, if you’re talking about the few people who fit into the stereotype itself…well a feminist would look at a guy who pays for something and is nice to a woman with the expectation of getting something in return and say that’s not very nice, yeah. Mind, most people would say that…because being nice for the express purpose of profiting isn’t nice.
Bingo. But two separate narratives or not there is still the matter of this conclusion is often brought up as a part of the Nice Guy/Bad Boy discourse.
Looking at this logically, I think that feminists would also argue that that perception (that dating is a transaction; that men must compete for women) is totally a patriarchal idea. It assumes women are to be acted upon, and men are the actors. It also makes a woman’s body an asset…all part of patriarchy (or traditional gender norms if you prefer that term).
I can agree with that.
If you’re talking about the Nice Guys/Bad Boys narrative that Nick, mostly discussed…well then that’s an MRA/PUA type narrative that feminists outright reject. Dating is not viewed as a competition like that; it is far too animalistic and frankly ignores human agency and intellect too much. Also the concept of dating as a transaction (nice guy gives money/time/energy; woman gives sex) is totally not kosher with feminism.
MRAs/PUAs didn’t create the narrative either. Sure some of them try to capitalize on it (either for their own gain or as a scapegoat) but it predates them as well. And its not like I said feminists agree with it.
Some people, men and women alike, allow complacency to erode their marriages and relationships. Imagine you have a job that you know you can never get fired from, with a boss who never holds you accountable for screwing up or failing to achieve your goals. You get no real incentive and the job basically stays the same. How hard are you going to work at that job? Not very.
If you have a marriage like this, with a partner who never expresses their discontent OR their satisfaction with what you bring, the motivation to keep working on it will fade. It requires both partners to understand that they are equal. When 1 person fears losing the other too greatly, they will bite their tongue at times of discord, failing to point out the ways their partner has hurt them for fear that they will spurn them evermore and leave them alone, throwing away years of love and affection. If that person knows their partner harbors this great fear, it gives them a sense of power, that they can use that threat of abandoment, of leaving or of simply being angry, to their advantage. People who identify that power and seize it, ruthlessly elevating themselves above the other, are often those who lie, cheat, abuse and control partners. The ultimate defect of being “too nice” is that it can convey to a toxic person that they posess this power over you, and this is what leads to nice guys feeling like they finish last. They simply wind up with people sometimes who exploit their niceness to further feed their own selfishness.
Joanathan G – Great posts! Especially about the very dynamic and pervasive effects of repeated,
repeated and repeated rejections ( since the guy “manned up?” and kept on trying). The numbers seem to say that fewer and fewer men are approaching women and not even playing this game and the Pick-up Artist schools are getting concerned. Maybe this evolution will help the “average guy” who does not do very well with the current rules.