Moderation note: this article is about feminists and Nice Guys ™. Please note that I will be actively deleting stupid comments.
Clarisse Thorn, Danny, and I were having a conversation on Tumblr during which I was cruelly forced to discover the existence of a feminist who, although she no doubt has many other sterling qualities that I happen to be unaware of, kind of makes me want to bang my head into the keyboard.
Let me just genderswap a few quotes from three of her essays, and then I hope that’ll show you the problem.
[She] played the victim, changed the rules, and refused to give the thing [she] had the power to give. In this case, sex.
She told me some version of: “I’m happy to have you back in my life. I don’t want to move too prematurely because we are rebuilding our relationship.” Riiiiight. What I wanted to know is what our “relationship” had to do with the sex that I needed to have right then and there.
Consent was never an issue in this interaction. It became a straw man in this blog conversation, used in a reactionary way by women who didn’t want to acknowledge another manifestation of female privilege, namely the fact that women do play power games with sex.
So she befriends you. For you, it’s the start of a beautiful friendship with tantalizing possibilities. For her, it is and will only ever be friendship, because she perceives that you are nice and non-threatening.** And that makes you friendable, but not datable, and certainly not f*ckable. Why the two are mutually exclusive is absolutely beyond me.
Don’t like ads? Become a supporter and enjoy The Good Men Project ad free[These friendships] are predicated on me doing boyfriend duties without getting boyfriend benefits.
Ladies, gentlemen, and miscellaneous, I would like to present to you the legendary Female Nice Guy. I fucking told you they existed. And sexual entitlement isn’t a nicer look on feminists than it is on MRAs. Crunk Feminist Collective, it seems like we need to review some basic feminist and sex-positive talking points!
1) Sometimes people, including men, do not want to have sex with anyone.
2) Sometimes people, including men, do not want to have sex with you.
3) Sometimes people, including men, do not feel ready to have sex until the relationship is deeper and more intimate.
4) It sucks when people you want to have sex with don’t want to have sex with you. However, it does not say anything about their quality as people or about their overall gender or anything except that sometimes people aren’t attracted to you.
5) For the vast majority of people, not wanting sex with you is not some kind of complicated power game, it’s just that they don’t want to have sex with you.
6) If they are part of the tiny minority of people who refuse to have sex with you as some kind of power play, then you should count your blessings that you are not sleeping with that person, as they will probably make your life miserable.
7) Sometimes people want to be friends with you and don’t want to have sex with you.
8) You are not doing “girlfriend duties” when you talk to your friends about their feelings and secrets and have intellectual conversations with them. You are being their friend.
9) If you feel like your friend is taking advantage of you and you’re putting in more emotional energy than they are, you can talk about the imbalance in your relationship with them. If nothing changes or they don’t see the problem, you can stop being friends with them.
10) If your explanation for people not wanting to date you is “I am just TOO FUCKING AWESOME,” it is probably wrong.
Seriously, guys, men turn down sex. That shouldn’t be news to a feminist, especially not a feminist who identifies as pro-sex and an anti-sexual-violence advocate. Men are not ravening sex beasts (and even if you just perpetrated that stereotype for humor, you should really reconsider why, as a feminist, you are making jokes that perpetrate a sexist stereotype that has been used to justify the victim-blaming of rape survivors).
Also, I’m only a white person, I don’t exactly have the lived experience of racism, but “black men only like stupid women” strikes me as incredibly fucking racist.
*Also raceswap; original author is black.
**Gender-stereotype-swap; original author was complaining about being too smart.
So she uses patriarchy as an excuse for her dating failures AND generalizes men too! What a great feminist she must be, isn’t this a huge no no? I wonder if she get’s annoyed when people generalize about her, or black women?
I know I’m late to the party, but Dude, I think you completely missed the point of her essays here. Not to mention she has written a whole bunch of essays (outside of the three you discuss which can only make a reader think there’s some selection bias here) concerning her dating journeys as a feminist that would help to elucidate why she expressed herself the way she did in the three essays to which you linked here. Generally, she is discussing what seems, in her experience (she repeatedly speaks from the ‘I’ perspective) to be two incompatible goals: a… Read more »
Regularly it is said that the most common person to have a lower libido is the woman, and that men on average want it more. The lack of sex for those men gives those women power as their needs can be fully met but his aren’t, it gives room for a lot of coersion n power towards him should she choose it as generally he will be wanting something more than she does with mismatched libidos like that. Does she take this into account? Or is it just the typical blame the patriarchy because you can’t get laid speech?
Hey now, that conversation was TOTALLY on Twitter.
Wait – Ozy, where did you come actross this post? At r/MensRights?
This is realy about what Typhonblue calls the power of the limp dick.
Casting the right to decide whehhter or not ou are going to have sex as “privielge” shows exactly how completely the concept of privilege can be turned inside out and negated. That doesn’t negate it, but it is a caution.
I read the articles, and she sounds like a woman who is frustrated that her feminism and her academic success are getting in the way of her ability to have some hot sex with guys she’s attracted to. It sounds like she’s saying, “here I am, a feminist who is trying to be sexually empowered blah blah blah and isn’t it ironic, I can’t get laid even when I come right out and ask!” The similarity with NiceGuysTM is that she seems to blame the guys for not wanting to give her what she needs. I do feel sympathy for… Read more »
Sort of how you shouldn’t ever mention the word engineer when a woman ask what you do for a living. Stereotypes work both ways, I can personally tell tales about women who lamented their being single yet somehow when the topic of single engineer man came up the women said that they would like a boyfriend, but not a nerd.
I don’t have your experience so I can’t comment on the intelligence part, but the sexyness part is not something unique to women. If someone likes you for non-sexual qualities they’ll most probably like you in a non-sexual way. Men discovering this is what leads to talk of “the friend zone” (what “the friend zone” is like is also colored by the common belief among men that women don’t respect men they’re not sexually attracted to). In both cases you have people who have positive, likable traits but are dissappointed that it doesn’t result in sexual attraction.
I can relate. For a long time I beat myself up over why I had such a hard time in the world of dating/relationships/sex. I too am tempted to think, “If I could go back to my teenage self and tell him what the score really is…” but as you say that calls for pretending to be someone I’m not (but if I go back and tell my teen self that I suppose I could become that someone different). But oh well at this point in the hand I’ve been dealt and have been playing I’m not in my early… Read more »
Intelligence can be sexy, but there have been quite a few women and men who’ve used intelligence in an arrogant manner which would be a turn off. Imagine being someone who isn’t as intelligent as yourself, if you hear too much talk of “intelligent” things there is a possibility that it may sound condescending n arrogant leaving you feel even more stupid. I try to dumb things down to the person’s level when talking to people who may not have as much knowledge in a certain area (I dislike saying they aren’t intelligent as I have no idea of their… Read more »
Yep, I’ve seen female sexual entitlement before and it’s (surprise!) exactly the same as male sexual entitlement. Basicly I watched a girl rant on and on about how a guy had backed out of a threesome at the last minute and how he had no right to deprive her of something she was looking forward to etc. About the “nice guy” thing though. “Nice-guy” and “friend-zone” are good example of terms which used to mean something useful and highlighted problematic behaviour but have become so stretched beyond the original meaning (with the ample help of both sides) that they no… Read more »
Good news ladies, men are becoming the “Masters of their Domain”… Hurray!
Bad news ladies, men are becoming the “Masters of their Domain”… Nuts!
I can assure y’all that there are men out there who’ve been blackmailed into sex by a female friend before. I’m one of them. And it doesn’t feel like something that’s mutually empowering, let me tell you. I am still friends with the woman who I feel manipulated me into having sex with her. It’s something I moved past and chocked up to experience, and she’s been kind enough to not *regularly* bring it up now (5 years in the future). She made sure every one of our mutual friends knew about it at the time though, and I didn’t… Read more »
wait are you two people?
No. I’m one especially sleep deprived person with two related experiences.
This literally makes me sick to my stomach.
This woman sounds like a rapist in training. The justifications for demanding sex, the egomania, the attitude that sexual desires are needs that have to be fulfilled immediately by someone else (and it doesn’t really matter who or if they desire it themselves), the demand of sexual favors for “intellectual and emotional investment…” God. I could go on and on.
This is probably the creepiest thing I’ve ever read on this site. Jeez.
I thought so too:
http://www.genderratic.com/p/1790/rape-culture-%e2%80%93-rape-culture-on-steroids-and-sociopathic-self-excusals/
“But frankly, strictly speaking from my own experience, I think that men say no as a way to regain power.”
This is out of one of the essay’s.
So what she is saying is the ability to say ‘no’ is power over the relationship, but back in the day when she was the one to say ‘no’ she believes she didn’t have power because it was the men that had the right to approach.
Play self pity much?
I’m not sure it’s self pity. I’d like to believe if it were self pity one would be able to find some actual source for the initial pity. No this is pretty much hypocrisy. “When I say no it it’s what I really want. When he says he’s just trying to take control over the relationship, and me. Why? Because…..male privilege.”
In the comments on one of the articles, she goes on to say that black women have a right to sex and intimacy. Sorta dances around the whole “how can you have a positive right without the corresponding right to demand it from somebody, and isn’t that wrong?” issue. How can a black woman have a right to sex because blah blah patriarchy while a whiny white dude doesn’t? Does she live in such a walled-off, safe-spaced academic world that her oppressions are so useful as a cudgel that they’re actually advantages resulting in special benefits, like sex on demand?… Read more »
No need to hate on all intellectuals because of this crazy lady. It’s far from the first time I’ve heard this sort of thing before, but it’s not socially acceptable in any sense. The craziness this lady is espousing is pretty common among the more radical feminists, but those folks are ostracized by every other social science as a general rule. I’d be kind of hesitant to say she just needs to blow off some steam about this. She’s got a seriously twisted ego and she’s likely to hurt a lot of people over the course of her life and… Read more »
I don’t mean to knock intellectuals… some of my best friends are intellectuals! It’s the intellectuals who think that regurgitating a bunch of five dollar words makes “I have the right to sex on demand because I’m a black woman and life sucks for us in a lot of ways” mean anything other than “I have the right to sex on demand because I’m a black woman and life sucks for us in a lot of ways.” Her post was loathsome and her attacks on any commenter who had the temerity to believe that one guy’s “no” wasn’t some patriarchal… Read more »
I meant “what about the menz” alleged derail, not the blog.
She’ll try marry a plumber in a few years when she realises her numbers up.
I gotta call you out on that one, Natty. I suspect you know why.
Actually I read the “we” in her “we have a right to sex, love etc” as being all human beings, not just women or black women.
Doesn’t matter. No one can have a right to anything someone else would have to provide.
“How can a black woman have a right to sex because blah blah patriarchy while a whiny white dude doesn’t? Does she live in such a walled-off, safe-spaced academic world that her oppressions are so useful as a cudgel that they’re actually advantages resulting in special benefits, like sex on demand? ”
That or maybe it goes deeper. That whole pile of cant about oppression and historical victimhood had a very churchy feel to it.
Churchy… interesting.
Maybe we can lay our sexytimes at the foot of this martyr in the hopes that she will miraculously cure us of our privilege.
Oh I am sure somewhere at the bottom of this whole pile she thinks she has the power to absolve us, to grant us a “good” label. she is the arbiter of real justice and injustice after all. Being oppressed with do that to you.
Please, lets cut it wiht the ‘sex on demand’ stuff. Women have the power to get… insanely unattractive guys on demand. It’s not the way you think it is.
Would people knock it off with the “sex on demand” thing? Yeah, we can get sex whenever we want with somewhat-to-quite unfuckable (going all the way up to the omg ‘God no, just, no.’) guys on demand. Yeah, go women privilege…and stuff. The hot guy we, you know, actually *want* to have sex with (because, ya know, mutual desire is such a new concept -no,seriously; it IS) is SUCH a common occurrence…
Additionally I don’t know if you can call it a conversation.
Thorn: Mother of god what the hell are these feminists on?
Danny: (There is no way she is talking about THAT post….)
Ozy: What the hell are what feminists on?
Danny: (I have to know.) You aren’t talking about his are you?
Ozy: (Puts on Captain Picard costume and extends hand with an angry face). The Fuck is this shit?!?
I don’t think Thorn ever actually acknowledged that that was the post did she?
From the author in comments:
“I believe in “reverse sexism” about as much as I believe in “reverse racism,” which is to say not much.”
Telling, no? Calling it reverse sexism, is already something (a notch worse than Finally Feminism 101)…but then saying it can’t even exist, it’s like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy…well.
Actually, there’s nothing reverse about it, it’s straight up sexism.
On the money. The idea of reverse sexism gives nod to the idea that the very default definition of sexism is that it is male against female, therefore when its female against male it becomes a reverse of that default. Fuck that noise yo. But that’s what happens when you build your foundation for equality for all gender with language that active tries to limit the scope of the things that harm certain men (and then Flip The Fuck Out when questioned on it). Start off with stacked language so that from get go women have it worse in all… Read more »
10) If your explanation for people not wanting to date you is “I am just TOO FUCKING AWESOME,” it is probably wrong. And since she wishes to plaster her feminism all over the situation I dare say that this would make her a Nice Feminist (unlike actual nice feminists). What really hit home for me was the “revisited” follow up post where she basically ignored how she wrote off men turning down sex as power playing and black male privilege and choose to act like the only criticisms that came at that first article was the straw man of accusing… Read more »
“And since she wishes to plaster her feminism all over the situation I dare say that this would make her a Nice Feminist (unlike actual nice feminists).” This isi the shit that makes decent feminists grind their teeth. It isn’t feminism, it’s hijacking and deforming feminist concepts to cover her own creepy, dehumanizing cravings. “What really hit home for me was the “revisited” follow up post where she basically ignored how she wrote off men turning down sex as power playing and black male privilege and choose to act like the only criticisms that came at that first article was… Read more »
Someone should tell Crunk to ‘woman up’ and get over her sense of entitlement.
Why didn’t she just go ask someone else to f*ck her. I am sure she could of found someone. Surely she should realise that having sex with this guy whose got an ’emotional bond’ with her wouldn’t be the best of ideas? Lets hope she marries a bus driver. Also, I’ve read countless times that SINGLE men always fancy their SINGLE female friends and see them as potential partners or sex partners. Its something I’ve had issues in the past with, but now I agree. Thats not to say that they are not friends, it just means that they will… Read more »
“Why didn’t she just go ask someone else to f*ck her.”
Serioulsy. All she has to do is stand in a bar for a while.
She could even just pay for a prostitute. Or would that be too mannish for Missy’s taste?
Haha, YES!
Thanks for covering this … thing (I don’t mean the author, I mean her thought-thing). That quote about “men refusing to give women what women want, i.e. sex” is really something to behold: It’s a complaint that those men have, in her eyes, become an obstacle between the woman and sex, when they should be the ones removing the obstacles between the woman and sex. This is far more blatant (and entitled) than anything I’ve ever seen a *sigh* Nice Guy(TM) who isn’t into nutjob-MRA theory write on the internet. Also annoying: Her comment in the first comment thread that… Read more »
I… I am not even sure where to start with these. There are so many telling quotes. From her first essay suggesting that men should have sex with women whenever women demand it since such a thing is empowering for women: “… But what I can tell you is this: Getting my courage up to ask a partner that I trust for the sex that I wanted only to be turned down left me feeling hella disempowered. As feminists one of the major tenets of hetero-sex positivity discourse is making women feel empowered to ask for what we want, to… Read more »
Thank you so much for covering this! I was linked to her posts earlier today, and I honestly thought at first that she wrote them as satire, to help illustrate something via gender role reversal. I seriously was expecting a follow-up saying “See what it’s like on the other side?” or something like that. It’s that perfect, as you have so aptly demonstrated with your gender-flip editing. I mean, I have my criticisms of feminism, but this was totally out of left field. Completely incongruent with the feminism I know. What’s also concerning to me is that if you look… Read more »
So, to reign myself in a little here, I actually do have to say that she has some valid points and valid complaints. If you read the third linked article (which is actually the oldest, having been written 2 years ago) the heart of her frustration seems to be with her academic standing combined with her blackness making her less attractive or date-able in our culture. And these are both fairly well accepted complaints within feminism, the last time I checked, and are in fact complaints that I agree with. And I sympathize with her frustration in that respect and… Read more »
Hmm, actually, it appears that the third linked article is written by a different author than the first and second. The first and second linked were written by Crunkashell, whereas the third was by Crunktastic.
You think it’s her academic standing and blackness that makes her less date-ablee? Yeah, that’s gonna be the top two answers on the board. 🙂
“If you read the third linked article (which is actually the oldest, having been written 2 years ago) the heart of her frustration seems to be with her academic standing combined with her blackness making her less attractive or date-able in our culture.” is that oldest article the one i linked to? Because if it is, then no. Her valid concerns about her academic standing and the contepmt for black femininity in the culture in no way mitigate the radically objectifying sense of entitlement she displayed in that article I linked to. That article had a truly creepy sociopathic feel… Read more »
No. The one you linked to was recent (within the last month). The third one Ozy linked to is from 2010, and was written by a different author. Go read it.
Read it. It just confirms my assessment of her approach. She feels entitled to sex from men and that they are misusing her as intellectual masturbation aids when they just want to have intellectual relationships rather than sexual.
She feels entitled to sex with them and finds hiogh-sounding ways to insult and even coerce them when they don’t comply. The term for that is rape culture.
Two authors, same rape culture sense of entitlement to men’s bodies.
Stupid woman, men are for gays! We are entitled to them! /s