“Nice Guys” on parade
So, “Nice Guys” are causing a stir on the Internet again, thanks largely to a new(ish) Tumblr blog called “Nice Guys” of Ok Cupid, which posts selected highlights from the OKCupid profiles of self-proclaimed “nice guys” who make it very clear, in their profiles and in their answers to OKCupid’s “match” questions, that they are in fact anything but nice.
Some of them are actual or potential date rapists, convinced that women that they’re “nice” to owe them sex. Others are bitter from too many rejections, and launch long tirades in their profiles about how women are bitches and whores. Still others are clueless on a more fundamental level, declaring that women have “an obligation to shave their legs” and otherwise prettify themselves for men while noting that they themselves only shower or brush their teeth occasionally.
It’s not clear how any of this is supposed to convince the women of OKCupid that these angry, ranting, hapless-yet-entitled “nice guys” are indeed as “nice” as advertised, much less convince any rational human being to have sex with them.
The site is a goldmine of unintentional self-revelation — as is a similar site with the name of, er, OKCupid Goldmine — and I’ve spent hours looking through the pictures on both sites and discussing them with friends. The only reason I haven’t linked to it in the past is that neither of them blur out the faces of the people they feature, which seems to me a pretty major invasion of privacy. (As you no doubt have noticed, I’ve taken the liberty of somewhat creeepily disguising the faces of the guys in the pics I’m posting here.) But “Nice Guys of OKCupid has been pretty widely discussed, linked to by Jezebel (1, 2) and The Guardian and even the Men’s Rights subreddit, to mention merely a few examples; Ok Cupid Goldmine is also provoking discussions. Posts on both sites regularly get dozens if not hundreds of comments and reblogs on Tumblr. The cat’s already out of the bag.
Here are a couple more of these “Nice Guys” with their faces all spiral-ized:
Posted on January 4, 2013, in creep-shaming, creepy, douchebaggery, entitled babies, hypocrisy, incoherent rage, irony alert, men who should not ever be with women ever, misogyny, nice guys, rape, rapey and tagged misogyny, nice guys, okcupid, rape, rape apology. Bookmark the permalink. 1,346 Comments.
It’s going for that here today, too. Upsy-downsy is about the only good part of this heatwave! Did you see Hobart – HOBART – got to 42 on Friday? We got to 41 and it was like being in a feckin’ oven on the trams.
I shave my legs and I don’t like the thought that somebody thinks I’m obligated. I couldn’t date that person. My body is mine.
………………
I feel that it is weird that a lot of guys expect ladies to be shaved bare down there………
I’m sorry, but I’ve tried it. 1) it look wrong on me in my opinion 2) it is a hassle 3) If you don’t stay on top of it and get prickles it is SUPER uncomfortable.
IDK no guy has ever complained to me about it, but people on the internet can be complete jacka$$es in regards to shave/not shaven.
I keep it trimmed and nice, but I’m not shaving or waxing.
I don’t care if someone else wants to shave her legs. It can be more practical if you wear stocking/pantihose, simply for comfort. I do side-eye the whole cultural “women don’t have body hair” crap that it’s based on, but that’s another matter. Me, I don’t wear clothes that are going to show my legs like that anyway, and I cannot be stuffed going through the hassle of it. I have Clydesdale ankles, moreso with menopause, and when I look at my toes I think I’ve got Hobbit ancestry. :P Mr K likes me as I am and it’s no other man’s fucking business what I do with my body. (Don’t read that as Mr K’s opinion being the decider, he likes me as I am regardless of what I choose to do with my body.)
Pubic hair … the idea of removing it is a personal side-eye squick for me. I always see it as “it’s like this in porn and that’s how you’re supposed to be” with a side order of potential pre-pubescent fantasies thrown in. Yeah, I know that’s not necessarily the case at all, and it’s up to the body’s owner, none of my business, but it’s how I react to any man expecting a woman to denude herself there for him.
@Argenti
I haven’t read the Odyssey yet, but I imagine I’d enjoy it more than the Iliad, I’ve always been more interested in brilliant displays of intellect and wit over brutal violence; as for the Aeneid I had trouble actually reading it as it’s the one book I didn’t manage to acquire for class. Speaking of University, if anyone’s curious, I REALLY need to get my ass in gear this semester, switching meds did a real number on my sleeping habits and general ability to focus on work, fortunately I should be able to get everything sorted out now.
You know, all this talk of assholes on OKCupid was kind of what spurred me into creating a profile, cuz I’m never mean in real life and I wanted to be mean to some trolls asking for sex. I mean, the other half of the reason was because I have a real adult job and an apartment now and my friends from college are mostly gone so why not.
Turns out that 30% of the messages were innocuous “Hey, what’s up?” that I would never answer, 1 or 2 messages that were amusing because one was “hey u dtf” and the other asked me if garlic makes you fart. I have fun with both of those. The rest? The rest seemed like decent people attempting to start relevant conversations taken from the info on my profile.
WHY DID PEOPLE NOT TELL ME ABOUT THIS? Here I am, expecting to have fun with trolls and now I hate myself because I have to ignore otherwise lovely people because I’m a pretty extreme introvert and I can only handle a few social interactions at a time. Maybe I just don’t attract assholes? I don’t know. The two sort-of dates I’ve gone on have been just fine. The guys were really nice.
I don’t have a lot of experience with jerk-off people, so maybe they’re all secretly jerks and I’m not seeing it but . . . ugh. No man ever talks to me in real life like this. What the hell, men.
Also, I kind of love the Nice Guys of OKCupid’s author’s reply to anonymous insults. Simple yet satisfying.
@Argenti – from last night, I love the Odyssey mostly because I wrote a paper on how the Wizard of Oz is the same story. :)
(Dorothy/Odysseus go into a dream state, encounter strange creatures, a powerful sorceress, monsters, wise elders who help them get home, etc.)
@hellkell – Excellent. We can get our diabetes medicines from that place Wilford Brimley shills for!
I can’t keep up with the topic switches! Hats and shaving and cartoons, oh my.
One random note on pubic hair – shaving and waxing can be deeply uncomfortable and risk health complications, but trimming may be necessary for hygiene/comfort reasons (Google “Bartholin cyst” if you want to know. I’m not linking, because it’s rather gross and deeply unpleasant. Also highly painful.) But individuals should do what they want to do with their bodies and not have to conform to someone else’s expectations, and definitely not to their demands.
@Wandarox – put the word “feminist” in your profile, you’ll get plenty of assholes.I had a guy message me demanding that I prove feminism wasn’t a CIA plot.
I shave lots of places often, but more often I can’t be bothered. It is so much work and not a lot of payoff (like a half a day for legs, a couple of days for pubic areas, so not enough). I wouldn’t be with someone who wasn’t attracted to me regardless of what state I’m in. I like things shaved occasionally and that’s got to be okay too.
I hate when people talk about it looking prepubescent because I never look that way no matter what I do. I am an adult and look it with or without hair, thank you very much. My pubic hair does not add years the way some men’s beards are said to. However, no-hair as a requirement does indicate discomfort with women’s bodies that I find squicky.
Nice guys has been shut down. I has a sad.
Wonder if legal action was threatened, just a lot of online harassment, or…?
Give it a rest, kittehserf, you’ve got **nothing** to complain about. It was 45 in Adelaide that day.
Yeah, I know. It was only for one day so it doesn’t really ‘count’ for the record books. But it’ll be 36 today, then …. nothing under 37 until Friday.
As for Hobart. We had a holiday in Tas a couple of years ago. I’ve always envied them for good gardening weather – I was wrong. It turns out that Hobart, of all places, had the lowest rainfall of any capital city in 2009. The only thing that saved them from total desiccation was their low evaporation rate – not enough heat and sun. Don’t know about the annual rainfall, but they’ve certainly got enough heat for the time being.
@lowquacks, she did mention she was getting legal threats.
At Aussie manboobzers, that’s why I love where we are, sure it’s humid but most of the year it’s not and temperatures hover in the mid to high 20s for most of the year. No crazy spikes in temperature.
An oppressor’s view of my partner? What, should I date people I have no wish to date lest I suffer your moral censure?
It’s like if I’m sharing a pizza with someone. If you wanna get some shit like pineapple, I’m getting my own fucking pizza. I know that’s a flawed analogy, because we could always go half-and-half, but let’s say for the sake of argument that this particular establishment won’t do that.
45! Yikes! We haven’t had it that bad since the Black Saturday week in ’09, at least not in Melbourne. I think the north of Victoria, Mildura and so on, are going to be around there for a while yet.
::goes to the Not That Hot corner of shame::
Some Gal – yeah, I know it’s not really right about the prepubescent stuff, it’s my gut reaction/suspicion about blokes who insist on it, more than anything else. Not exactly rational.
drst – “I had a guy message me demanding that I prove feminism wasn’t a CIA plot.”
OMG you had a message from NWOslave? :O
And I just know some people are going to somehow misconstrue my analogy as comparing women to pizza.
Agreed. Sometimes my leg get prickly after 2 days and I don’t bother fixing it immediately. Just wear tights/leggings/jeans. Problem solved.
I shave my legs twice a week. Any more than that and it gets annoying.
Sgt Grumbles, the analogy is flawed because bodies aren’t pizza, or any other food or object a person buys. It’s not something two people have joint ownership of. If the analogy could be used at all, it would be you walking up to someone and saying “I’m want to have some of your pizza but you’ll have to get rid of the pineapple first!”
Grumbles, it’s fine to prefer smooth-shaven legs, but not fine to expect women to have them.
* I want, not I’m want
Nope, Grumbles, we get what you’re saying. You’re saying that you could never date a woman who didn’t shave her legs, no matter how awesome she is. If she doesn’t bow to your demands for shaven legs, you won’t consider her.
Hair phobia? Shallowness? Or just the first testing of her boundaries? IDK, I don’t care to know.
Raise your hand if you don’t give a rip what Sgt. Grumbles or asses like him like.
*raises both hands in the air, like I just don’t care*
Grumbles is an odd one. He’s consistently been largely friendly and engaging as if he’s one of us, but always slightly off. Like another Ruby, almost.
“I had a guy message me demanding that I prove feminism wasn’t a CIA plot.”
Why I don’t have an okc profile:
“You’re right. Feminism is a secret CIA plot. We’ve also got the FBI, BJS, the NSA, the CIS, the CSI, the SVU, and the ASA wrapped around our fingers. You cannot escape the scope and span of our control. We own everything.
Good luck proving it.”
The pizza isn’t anyone’s body in the analogy. The pizza is the sex taking place between two people.
Yeah, that’s how it comes across to me, too.
Raise your hand if you don’t give a rip what Sgt. Grumbles or asses like him like.
Wrong, Grumbles. It wasn’t even talking about sex: it was saying a woman’s obliged to change her body in a way the man wants before he’ll consider sex. A woman’s legs do not equal sex, they’re part of HER BODY.
Evem if the pizza were sex, it would be about one person wanting to do a particular thing and the other not. That would still not give the person wanting it the right to impose it on the other.
I really don’t do either terribly often at all, so I could be missing something, but perhaps we could just collectively decide that having sex and ordering pizza are very different and it was a silly idea to compare the two, and leave it at that?
Great, now I’m craving pineapple pizza. And me with GERD.
@Grumbles
How often does a woman have to shave to get her to date you? Would I have to shave twice daily or is stubble okay? What about waxing? How often would that need to be done?
Most guys who feel strongly about shaved legs haven’t actually considered how much legs are not like faces and what exactly it is they feel strongly about. Women’s bodies are mysterious things with on/off switches: makeup/looking “natural,” shaved/lots of hair, etc. It’s like how they misunderstand bra sizes. They want something specific for their fantasy that is essentially meaningless in the real world.
Hey, someone order a pizza! (Holding up the box) Oh, don’t worry, it’s not pizza pizza — it’s sex.
There have definitely been actual studies on men’s general cluelessness about makeup.
While we’re on it, why do womens’ shaved legs (or non-womens’ shaved legs, but I see those far less often) never display the blue-grey tinge with very slight stubble that pale white men with darkish beards tend to? There must be pale people with darkish leg hair out there.
Grumbles: An oppressor’s view of my partner? What, should I date people I have no wish to date lest I suffer your moral censure?
No, you should be honest about your expectations, so as to avoid dating people who don’t share your views.
As it is, you are setting women up to have you tell them they are failing to meet your expectations. That you think this the best course, lest other people think you to be the obnoxious, presuming, asshole you appear to be is why you have an oppressor’s view of other people.
You this it’s reasonable to not share your expectations, but you have them.
Your analogy is flawed because relationships aren’t pizza. You can’t “go halfsies” on what someone does with their body. You certainly can’t expect them to not order pineapple if they don’t know you don’t like it.
Re weather: I’ve probably lived in most of the, not to horrid, extremes.
I’ve wintered in Ottawa, and summered in both Missouri and the Mojave, as well as Iraq (NW of Tikrit, SE of Mosul) until July.
I was lucky enough to not be in Bagdad in the summer; the temps are around 48C/120F, and humidity in at about 70 percent relative.
The Mojave gets to about the same, but is drier, which means the nighttime temps drop a lot more. That means people who don’t know what’s going on often die of exposure, because they get hypothermic at night.
All in all, the Central Coast of Calif. (say San Luis Obispo to San Francisco) is what I’d call the ideal climate.
I guess I don’t see where Sgt. Grumbles is getting hate from. He doesn’t want to date a woman who doesn’t shave, which is stupid but his preference, but won’t insist that all women must shave. I mean, he specifically said he wouldn’t answer that question on OKC because he’s not going to impose his ideas on every woman.
Shaved pubes… varies in cultural expectations. The Romans thought a refined woman was shaved, and a refined man trimmed (they would also critique the physical appearance of naked men… those being crucified were considered especially fun to mock for being too large, or poorly groomed or, gods forfend, “mutilated” [e.g. circumcision]).
The greeks seemed to be more for trimming than shaving; though at least one school of thought on classical greek women thought them to be most attractive if they had a unibrow above the eyes.
My preference… I am not so fond of bald. It can look a bit off to me. But it’s not my body, and I can’t say that the lovers I’ve had who shaved were off-putting because of it. They liked it, it make them happier, this made the sex better, ergo I was all for it.
Re “blueface”. It’s a function of density. Leg Hair is a lot less dense, and a lot smaller diameter (no matter how coarse it is).
The face also has a slightly thinner layer of skin, so the hair below the surface is a litte easier to see, if it’s really dark.
lumi: He said he didn’t see what the point of the question was, that the way it was phrased made it a universal obligation; which he wouldn’t impose.
But… If a woman wants to date him she has to shave her legs.
That’s a denial of her right to autonomy.
But he won’t cop to it, because he’s a coward, who doesn’t want to be called on his asshole beliefs.
Raise your hand if you don’t give a rip what Sgt. Grumbles or asses like him like.
Raises hand
He’s a convenient prop to explain why fools like him ought to be ruled out as partners.
I’m pale with dark hair. It isn’t a problem for me. I have fairly fine leg hair though……It isn’t coarse the way my dads beard is.
Were both of those supposed to link to the same .gif?
Me me me, that’s me!
I can only guess that it’s because facial hair might be stronger and denser than leg hair? Though I’m comparing my own leg hair to a man’s, so it probably isn’t helpful.
Thinks: where’s the king of five o’clock shadows when you need him? :P
Okay, ninja’d twice … :(
And if a man wants to date me (in theory, I’m happily married now), he can’t have a Gandalf beard, and I’m gonna side-eye anything that’s not short and trimmed if not bare. But I don’t yell at the guy in the psych lab who has a forest growing on his face, because that’s not my biz . Preferences are not bad.
The whole problem with the OKC guys is that they’re saying that all women everywhere should conform to their desires, whether they’re trying to get the specific guy or not.
Were both of those supposed to link to the same .gif?
No, it was a badly closed tag. Only the middle sentence was supposed to a link.
Addendum; if you know your partner has certain preferences, then you should try to conform to them. If you don’t want to, you can always leave. This does not apply to natural aging processes (including weight gain) or unexpected health problems.
Never mind, Marilyn waving twice is no bad thing.
Grumbles…dude, seriously, I know you’re not this dim. That question is designed to do exactly what you almost figured out for yourself – make it clear which guys believe that women are obligated to meet their personal preferences. It’s a test for unthinking, reflexive sexism, basically. If people choose to add a personal comment like “It’s just courtesy” then it becomes a very revealing question indeed.
I shave my legs, but I wouldn’t date a man who thought that I was obligated or required to.
Cassandra: He did figure it out, and then he decided to lie about his actual position.
Entitled scumbag.
:cat:
(Just testing to see if the cat smiley from the forums works here.)
No! That’s MISFELINEDRY!
Should? There is no “should” in the case. You may choose to discuss them with your partner. You may choose to conform to them. It’s all about choice.
Yeah, it’s about choice. And everyone has the choice to not stay with someone who has stupid expectations.
I’m seeing more heat than light from lumi.
It’s also weird when people say it’s wrong to have physical expectations for your partner but it’s ok to not accept personality defects.
And stupid expectations should be mocked.
pecunium, I have lurked here a long time and have grown to respect the regulars, including you . I just see someone (Grumbles) being attacked for what seems to me a reasonable opinion. Perhaps there is history I missed.
My leg hair is not a personality defect. Nor is it a physical one.
It is a little like when people claim they are not racist, but they prefer white girls. Or Asian. They are racist. Guys who prefer certain things can have RACIST preferences. Here, we are mocking a misogynistic one.
The guy who brought up leg shaving in the OK Cupid post above…he’s freaking hilarious:
“I’ve been on this site on found that for some reason it’s a joke. This entire online shit is stupid. It’s the first and last time I’ll ever have profile on some site.”
Jesus, do you promise?
“Then why I’m I taking the time to even write this you ask?”
No one did. No one will. I thought you said this “online shit” was stupid. Why bother clarifying your, um, position? Oh wait, here it comes…
“For the sole purpose of telling all you stuck up bitches FUCK YOU! You know who you are…”
Well, you showed us, sparky. But you’re not bitter, are you? Pssst, come closer, I have to tell you something: You don’t seem to like women very much, so it makes oodles of sense that you’re not chin deep in ass. But hey, you got your revenge, Dr. Evil, by calling us all bitches — and no, that won’t get you laid either. Thanks for driving it home, to all the bitches who dared ignore you, that they were absolutely justfied in not getting involved with you. You just highlighted your own problem, then underlined it…then put shiny star stickers next to it.
Or one partner could decide that they used to be OK with those expectations and now no longer are, and just wait to see how their partner reacts. I see no particular reason to put the onus on the person who doesn’t have the rigid expectations.
I think the real reason that Grumbles is mad is that he knows that it’s a test for sexism and doesn’t like the fact that OKC built some of those into their system. Even though it really does help with the matching process.
If.
I want you to want to shave your legs. I don’t want someone who grudgingly does it for my sake; I want someone who enjoys the feeling of having smooth legs. I want someone who legitimately enjoys a lot of the same things I do, not someone who feigns interest to keep me happy.
Would you shave you balls for her?
…your balls
Well, if a person decides to change their expectations while in a relationship, then they’re probably an asshole. Unless it’s the “expanding the definition of attractive” that tends to happen in long-term relationships.
Lumi, the difference between physical and character expectations is that the personality ones are going to affect how that person treats you. I’m fine with someone saying they don’t want to be with controlling types, or misogynists, or people whose religious/political views are totally at odds with theirs. I’m not fine with the “women are obliged to shave their legs/be a certain shape/appeal to my boner at all times” types (see: misogynists).
The problem with Grumbles’s action is that he didn’t say straight out what he meant. He could have answered “No” to the obligation question and made a comment along the lines of “I prefer shaved legs but wtf is this “obligation” crap?” to make it clear. And then he started on the women/sex/food analogy, which is soooo much like the sort of shite we’ve seen from trolls here.
@Grumbles
I enjoy the feeling of smooth legs. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, we both love the same movie. It is our absolute favorite movie. We enjoy it. Does that mean that it is the inky movie we watch? Can we watch other movies we enjoy? Why isn’t leg shaving the same?
Only movie not inky movie. I swear this autocorrect barely speaks English.
Also! Let’s say that there are some men out there who can’t figure out what that question is designed to do, which is to get at the issue of whether or not they think that all women are required to conform to the physical preferences of some men. Guess what? Any man who can’t figure that out fails my “is this person worth dating” test on the grounds of sorry but anyone who can’t figure that out is not smart enough or aware enough about gender issues to be a good match for me. And I think that may be the case for most of the women who are paying attention to how men answer that question.