« White Stripes + Lego! | Main | Basic Problems »
June 10, 2006
What it means to be a “nice guy”
There is this pervasive social idea that “nice” people don’t get laid. Or much of anything else. Amanda steps up to debate the idea that nice guys ought to expect tail just for being nice. The post she is responding to involves a guy who claims to want to be feminist whining about how this won’t get him into bed with the sort of buxom young thang he is used to. There were so many bad premises and false starts that it’s a miracle Amanda arrived at a valid conclusion...
Let me just start off by laying out my own beliefs. I’d love to call myself a feminist. Insofar "feminism is the radical notion that women are human", I’ll roll with it. Since I tend to feel that way about every-damned-one is human (replace the relevant bits of that statement with the “race” or creed of your choice and you’ll see what I mean), I tend to call myself a “humanist”. This means that in my view, men are from... Earth. Women are from... Earth. Some of us want to visit the Delta, some the Obelisk, but everyone wants to travel...
So what does it mean to be “nice”? Well, in my experience, “nice” means “spineless” and “socially awkward”. When a “nice” guy meets a girl he likes he does everything he can for her. He treats her as either a child or a goddess—but never a co-equal human being. If he treats her like a child, he’s showing that he doesn’t respect her enough for her to return that respect. If he treats her like a goddess, he’s showing that he doesn’t respect himself enough for her to respect him. Either way: this guy may have made a friend. But never a lover....
Non-nice people come in as many varieties as a pack of flavored condoms. I won’t defend each and every choice—some are indefensible. I will say that non-nice people are capable of communicating desire. Effectively communicating this desire is a pretty universal key to most people’s private chastity belts. In fact, nearly every other lock is extremely personalized. No wonder” nice” guys can’t get to first base; they can’t communicate their desire. Nor are they able to pick up on the subtle cues that a woman would really quite badly like to be nailed to the nearest sturdy object. This is the “social awkward” part...
When looked at as a whole, it becomes quite clear: feminist men aren’t “nice”. Indeed, it is quite clear to me that spineless and awkward men aren’t going to get laid no matter how egalitarian the world becomes. It isn’t that women like men to be assholes, merely that men and women both like their partners to have gonads. Our species’ survival kind of depends on it...
Posted by Andrew at June 10, 2006 07:42 PM