The Antisocial Socialist

Ugh, just had an unpleasant mental image about sexual technique.

ANYWAYS, has anyone ever explained to these dudes that Occam's razor suggests that if "women" are indeed choosing "assholes" over them, the simplest conclusion is that they are less attractive than "assholes"? That "women are psycho ho-bitches" is perhaps a sweeping conclusion requiring substantial evidence?

That heartless-bitches.com link really gets at the problem, which is that "niceness" is too often a cover for insecurity and martyred submissiveness. Someone who defers to you is someone you have to take care of, and someone who always defers to you is someone you always have to take care of. In a mature relationship, there's a give and take of care, and for that to happen, you have be willing and able to assert your needs and desires without being a jerk, and without being passive-aggressive. You have to be able to manage that conflict.

So now I'm wondering to what extent these so-called nice guys are overinterpreting the healthy conflict they see as assholery. Sometimes relationships have conflict; you vent to your friends and then get on with living. That's not to say assholes don't exist, but I can easily imagine someone insecure and avoidant seeing any conflict at all as an intolerable failure state. (This could also explain the fierce rejection of any criticism from certain quarters of fandom, gamers, etc.)

But conflict is part of life, because we're not all identical automatons, and working through conflict is a major part of building connection, cooperation, and intimacy. A majorly sucky part of being a bullied adolescent nerd is being deprived of opportunities to learn how to do that, since 19 times out of 20, if someone's engaging you with anything less than total warm fuzziness, it's because they're looking to humiliate you in some way. That's not fair, and it's wrong, but once you've healed from the damage, you still have to create opportunities to learn how to handle conflict.