Against Nice Guys

[sabotabby]

So there have been not one, but two Nice Guy posts on The Face. This is rare for me, because my Face list is pretty small. I don't have a lot of relatives and old friends from high school—you know, the people who normally post right-wing shit and racist forwards—so I get in comparatively few flamewars. Generally speaking, my feed is 40% far-left politics, 20% nerd shit, 10% cute animal pictures, 10% reposts from George Takei (I guess that's nerd shit, but it requires a whole other category owing to its frequency), and 20% pictures of people's kids. (I'm at that age where friends are sprogging, so right now it's like a nursery on there. Don't worry, I'm still not going to reproduce.)

Accordingly, it's surprising to see something irritating enough that I need to say something that I know is going to offend the person who said it, but I'm compelled to do so anyway because they were being Wrong on the Internet. And should know better. Lately, that something has been the revival of Nice Guy Talk.



There's a strong overlap between the people posting nerd shit and Nice Guys. You can draw your own conclusions. I got in a small dust-up a few days ago because someone used the term "friendzone" and I pointed out that if a woman "friendzones" you, it doesn't mean that you're too nice; it means that she doesn't find you attractive but can't find a polite way to tell you that. I mean, I'm sure there are exceptions, and there have been certainly times where I haven't slept with someone because it would ruin a good friendship*, but generally speaking, women who have been conditioned for years to be docile people-pleasers are not going to up and tell a dude that they just don't find him hot. I also mentioned that the guys I've known who refer to themselves as "nice guys" or "good dudes" and complain that women only see them as friends are typically going for conventionally attractive women, and don't see the nice lady who weighs 200 pounds as a potential love interest, regardless of how great a personality she has.

(Weirdly enough, the person who took greatest offense to my comments was a very conventionally attractive woman. At least if her profile picture is to be believed.)

The flipside of Nice Guy whining, of course, is misogyny. Those damn crazy bitches, always falling for assholes and not me. She's just too stupid or evil to know what's good for her. I know what's good for her, and eventually she'll get beat down enough to understand that. In the meantime, I'll be lurking in the background all passive-aggressive like.

Today, though, there was a Nice Guy whine that took the cake:



Dudes. Resentful, sexually frustrated, emotionally stunted dudes and their misguided notions about chivalry. Do they think that women really care about flowers and door-holding if it means that we're going to be treated like second-class citizens? My ideas on historical chivalry and white knights approximate those of Sandor Clegane's on Game of Thrones, and I have even less respect for doughy douchebags in the 21st century who profess those sorts of notions.

The last Cracked.com article on the subject was disappointing, but I did like this line:

They mix up a batch of Ideal Mate and pour it into a you-shaped pitcher. It's usually an updated version of the Victorian elegant creature -- noble, graceful and more boring than a box of rocks, which are at least capable of hurting people.

My response (after railing for a bit about Nice Guys) was that well-adjusted women find it creepy to be put on a pedestal and prefer partners who treated them to human beings.

And also that some little girls grow up wanting to be dragons.

P.S. Sorry for the heteronormativity of this post. Though I think it really is mostly straight dudes getting on my nerves with this shit.

* But I don't think, in those cases, it could be mistaken for, "I won't sleep with you because you're too nice." It was more, "I won't sleep with you because one or both of us is too immature and it will get weird later."

Comments

[sabotabby]

I had to share. Not on FB, because too many people would agree, apparently. But it made me vomit and other people should know so they can sympathize.

[sabotabby]

I seriously did want to be a dragon. And still kind of do.

[culpster.livejournal.com]

Oh so this is a thing. I have a FB friend who does this sometimes and I'm like, grow up. But not to his face/wall. Maybe I should start.

I used to have a unique (?) variation on this complex which ran something like, 'I am a great guy and have been roundly rejected, therefore rejection is a badge of superiority, therefore I want nothing to do with any club who would have me for a member.' It sounds nuts but I'm probably still living down the ramifications of this bent pretzel of a coping strategy. It's dark with your head up that ass. Can't count the opportunities I missed from it. Score one for being old.

[sabotabby]

Also, flying. And breathing fire. And breathing fire while flying.

[sabotabby]

Oh so this is a thing. I have a FB friend who does this sometimes and I'm like, grow up. But not to his face/wall. Maybe I should start.

My social circle is just incestuous enough that I wonder if it's the same friend. Probably not, though. I think all of our mutual friends are too cool for that.

I used to have a unique (?) variation on this complex which ran something like, 'I am a great guy and have been roundly rejected, therefore rejection is a badge of superiority, therefore I want nothing to do with any club who would have me for a member.'

I fall victim to this too, which is maybe why I bristle so much at the Nice Guy shit. I mean, I have been rejected a lot, and at the formative age where this shit matters. Lots of early resentment that I had to work out and sometimes realize is not entirely worked out. Blah blah, nerd pride.

[culpster.livejournal.com]

And the crowd cheers back: NERD PRIDE!

[monster-grrrl.livejournal.com]

I AM a dragon.

[sabotabby]

Yes.

[sabotabby]

Hahahaha. I do prefer LeGuin to Tolkien, though I really suspect that I am whatever the opposite of a luckdragon is.

[sabotabby]

Awesome. And by "awesome," I mean, "what the everlovin' fuck?"

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

My business partner posted a similar thing on the Dybbuk Press page and besides the facepalm reaction, I decided to let it stay and then just got philosophical about the whole "dating jerks" concept in a non-heternormative non-gender way in that to a certain extent we ALL hate ourselves and date assholes who support us in our terrible self-images.

I'm kind of torn about the things he posts there. On one hand, they DO get people paying attention to the page. On the other hand, they don't exactly push the books which is kind of the point of making a fan group.

With knights, I tend to point out the rapey aspects of those medieval narratives. Also the fact that the knight is IN WUV with the fair maiden and that's pretty much the only reason why she's supposed to be with him (and the fact that he's the guy with the horse and the money).

Of course, the quintessential "nice guy" is the troubadour in Chaucer's Miller's Tale who pours out his heart and soul to the woman and gets farted on for his troubles. To prove his love he comes back with the hot poker.

[curgoth]

Princesses don't need you to rescue them, man. Go save yourself. You can't save anyone with your penis. It's not a sword and it's not a lance, and swooping in to save someone from depression or a bad day because you want to shag them doesn't make you a noble knight, it makes you Just Another Predator. So go jerk off to a renn fest magazine or a D&D book, then come back when you can do something useful, like offer your support without strings attached.

[frilled-shark.livejournal.com]

I mean, I have been rejected a lot, and at the formative age where this shit matters.

I notice that men who identify as Nice Guys think that women never lack for sexual offers (that aren't creepy strangers telling you to smile), that they're bombarded with them every time they step out of the house and just swat them away like so many gnats. Hello, women get ignored or rejected too; we don't just sail through life with everything being handed to us!

I think it ties into their view of women as creatures that aren't real people with real feelings, but forbidding ice queens that have to be appeased before they grant The Almighty Sex.

[sabotabby]

I had a friend flat-out refuse to believe that I was fat as a kid. Like, he just didn't believe me.

The thing is, the dudes who go on about this stuff just don't consider non-conventionally attractive women to be women. Women are the hot, thin chicks in beer commercials.

[sabotabby]

Hahahaha. True, and with some great mental images to boot.

[sabotabby]

I for one encourage peasant uprisings against these knights and princesses.

[xturtle.livejournal.com]

Holy crap, if a dude thinks I need rescuing - unless I am literally tied to railroad tracks with no means of freeing myself and a train approaching - then he is a complete douchecanoe. I do not date douchecanoes. They creep me out.

[ironed_orchid]

Wow, that knight in shining armor thing is repugnant and straight from the school of "girls are bitches because they won't fuck me".

I never wanted to be a princess (well, not until I had a book about princess who ran away to become a kitchen maid because she was no good at princessy things). I mostly wanted to be a sailor or an explorer.

[ironed_orchid]

it makes you Just Another Predator.

Ha! Yes.

[sabotabby]

I was never into the princess thing either (I'm not kidding about the dragon thing). I wanted to be an astronaut or marine biologist or something.

[sabotabby]

Douchecanoe. I like that. It leaks too much to paddle very far.

[akisawana.livejournal.com]

Nice Guys suck. They remind me of those video games where you do enough quests to earn enough Relationship Points for sex. Every time I see stuff about them on the internet, I'm glad I hooked up with my nice guy (who is not a Nice Guy, but rather what Nice Guys think they are) because otherwise I would have totally fallen into their traps.

Which is probably why the meme persists; when a girl enters the dating scene with her only model of healthy relationships being TV, their superficial niceness and undercurrent of expectations seems normal. And since a lack of decent male role models frequently leads to low self-esteem enough of those girls assume the problem is with them rather than the Nice Guy.

Not that I have any evidence for the above, but it at least makes sense. To me. At one in the morning.

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

I was on a panel about Renaissance Festivals and I went off about how I would love to see some Italian Renaissance tropes like assassinations in churches and the king pretty much sent begging to the popes and the banking families.

Didn't go over so well.

[misslynx.livejournal.com]

When I was a little girl, I would totally have preferred being a dragon to being either a princess or a knight. Although mainly I wanted to be Catwoman.

[misslynx.livejournal.com]

Sabs just said exactly what I was going to: the kind of women who do get ignored or rejected don't register on these guys' sexual radar. They are firmly convinced that society owes them a hot girl - that no matter how socially awkward, maladjusted, or not-conventionally-attractive they themselves might be, they are entitled to date a supermodel, or someone who could pass for one, because that's how it always goes in the movies. So that's who they mean when the generalize about "women" (or, more frequently, "girls"). Other women don't count.