The contest for the Most Ironic Use of the Term “Nice Guy,” When Applied to Yourself –otherwise known as the MIUTNGWAY Award – is heating up. The previous front runner – the Tumblr guy who compared his inability to get laid to the Holocaust – now faces a serious challenge from a Redditor calling himself DogmaDog.
The other day Mr. Dog wandered into a discussion of the SlutWalks in the Feminisms and offered his two cents: he declared them “stupid,” and suggested that they won’t really help victims.
And then he started in on his own tale of woe.
I know I’m going to be shit on for saying what I’m about to say, but please hear me out.
Not a promising start, Dog.
I’ve never raped a woman, and I’m the ‘nice guy’ who never took advantage of a woman.
Do you want an award for this?
But a girl I was infatuated with in high school blew me off and treated me disrespectfully. She ended up being raped one night, while intoxicated. I do not know how I am supposed to feel about it.
As Don Draper would say, “what?”
How do you think you’re “supposed” to feel? Did you accidentally dislodge the part of your brain responsible for basic human empathy?
Apparently, the answer to that is “yes.”
[H]ow do you suppose I am supposed to feel about this woman I knew who got raped? I mean, I’ve never taken advantage of a woman, but I don’t understand how my ‘friend’, this girl I went to high school with, could go out and party all the time, and in turn treat me, her classmate, as though I were an inferior person for not enjoying the atmosphere of drunkenness at high school parties.
As it turns out, you’re an inferior person for an entirely different reason.
That girl was a mean girl, no? And by being disrespectful toward men, and prejudiced toward men, wasn’t she asking men to behave badly toward her? The only men she gave attention and physical affection to were the ones who hurt her back.
So let me see if I get this: she didn’t go out with you, a “nice guy,” so she was therefore “asking” to be raped?
Naturally, this being the Feminisms subreddit, and not The Spearhead, some of the regular commenters took exception to Mr. Dog’s victim-blaming and his complete lack of empathy for the victim – especially strange, since Dog, who says he is suffering from an (unspecified) mental illness, considers himself “a victim, in my own way,” of prejudice towards those with mental health issues. This experience, alas, has not given him any sympathy towards other vicitms.
Indeed, it seems that DogmaDog didn’t misplace his sense of empathy after all; rather, he threw it out of the house and got a restraining order against it. Responding to someone who suggested he show a little empathy, Dog lashed out:
Your empathy can go suck a dick. Empathy does nothing to help my situation. I suppose that is just the excuse people give themselves so that they can feel like they are actually doing something.
You basically called me an inferior human being because I can’t or won’t empathize for my friend who was raped. Well, ask yourself this, smart-ass, have you ever really wondered what good your empathy does? It does nothing. …
In reality, you are doing nothing but attacking me, and I may or may not have a ‘complex’, even though I don’t know what that is, but I can guarantee you, I HAVE NEVER RAPED ANYONE!!!
The sound you hear is me banging my head, ever so softly, on my desk. Empathy is what connects human beings to one another, what allows them to understand one another on a deep level.
When people are suffering – as you are, Dog, in dealing with your mental illness – a little bit of empathy from someone else can make all the difference in the world.
If you can’t feel even a little bit of sympathy for this woman you were once “infatuated” with, you’re not a nice guy at all; you’re an even bigger asshole than those drunken high school partiers you disdain. You may never have raped anyone — as you’ve repeatedly insisted, as if this should win you a prize – but “in your own way” you’re thinking like an abuser. Your lack of empathy for the victim, your continued bitterness towards her for turning you down, your sense of wounded narcissism; none of this is healthy, for you or for anyone who comes into contact with you.
You need help, dude. Please, please get it.
Er. People who believe that empathy is useless are people to avoid…
Somehow I am not really surprised at his opinion. Disgusted by it, yes, but not surprised.
Wow…
Empathy is bad.
The things one learns from Nice Guys™.
This dude makes some of the more appalling members of the MRA look good.
“I’m not a rapist” is not enough to get you laid.
If “date me, I’m a nice guy” is “buy my car, it has wheels,” then “date me, I won’t rape you” is “buy my car, it won’t kill you.”
And he still considers this person, who he can’t or won’t (he’s not sure which to choose) have empathy for, his friend. Well, as the saying goes, with friends like him…
It seems like the only way to not deliver a mortal insult to certain guys is to sleep with them. Literally any response other than “okay, we can do it right now” seems to go through the Entitlement Filter and come out as “you are inferior and disgusting and I hate you. *spit, spit*”
Or hell, for all we know she was really rude to him. For all we know she literally spit on him, and that still wouldn’t fucking make it okay that she was raped.
Either Dogma Dog genuinely doesn’t understand the point of the woman’s sign, or he’s so hard-hearted because of his “friend” that the sign aroused resentment in him and he just wants to lash out at it. Personally I suspect the latter, but either way, yeah, he needs help.
Being new to this blog and to awareness of MRAs, it strikes me how they use words and phrases in ways that seem almost completely backwards relative to a normal understanding. They seem to have a whole dictionary’s worth of bizarre, backwards definitions that make the world innately hostile when they try to interact with anyone inhabiting it. Somebody needs to compile a lexicon of the MRA/MGTOW understanding of terms like “Nice Guy”. Here are a couple of proposed entries, based on what I’ve seen so far:
Nice Guy: Not a rapist. Also does not get laid. Hint, hint.
Women’s Rights: Rights denied to a Man.
Disturbing definitions and their implications abound in these people’s writings.
Moewicus – This lexicon could go far.
Marriage: An institution of male slavery and confinement, which is tragically dying out.
Custody: Freedom from paying child support.
Hey, he has a point about empathy. It leads to Nazism, you know. (Seriously, if anyone hasn’t heard this ridiculousness, Google “glen beck + empathy”.)
Jeez. Yet another dickwad thinks that displaying the bare minimum of human decency makes him some kind of saint. Maybe we should add this to that list of examples of male privilege:
#XX: The bar is set so low for your behavior that if you refrain from doing something heinous, people will give you accolades as if you had done something extremely noble.
By “people” you mean the tiny handful of MRAs in the world, as opposed to the other 6,999,999,500 people on the planet?
Your attempt to paint this as male privilege FAILS, asshole.
Wow. MRAL called me an asshole. I must be doing something right.
MRAs, sadly, do not have a monopoly on assholery.
Hell, this guy in the OP isn’t an MRA, as far as we know. He’s just a garden variety misogynist.
No, he’s a victim.
Let’s look at this logically, a novel idea for feminists. The fact that he privately doesn’t care whether someone was raped doesn’t hurt anyone. It’s his business. On the other hand, pointlessly cruel rejection does hurt someone. Thus, pointlessly cruel rejection is worse than not caring if someone was raped.
Basically, yes.
Cynickal: Hey, self…
Cynickal Self: Yeah?
Cynickal: Have you ever really wondered what good your emapthy does?
Cynickal Self: Makes me a better human being that can relate to other people and perhaps understand their situations and experiences.
Cynickal: That’s it?
Cynickal Self: Well, that and it allows me to use shared experience to create a connection that has often help foster teamwork and a sense of community so that I could work with people of different backgrounds.
Cynickal: Huh.
Cynickal Self: …
Cynickal: So, you going to eat that?
Cynickal Self: Fuck you, dude! Make your own sam’ich!
What man-hating sexists like Futrelle refuse to recognize is that the MRM is a movement for EQUALITY. Women consent with their silence to the feminist war on men and boys. Why should men feel responsible for the safety of women? The same women who say nothing when feminists campaign to throw fathers who fall behind on child support into prison (not jail) for many years (not days) on felony (not misdemeanor) charges? The femi-fascists have already succeeded in changing the law in 30 out of 50 states so that falling behind on child support is a felony with years or decades of imprisonment. The NOW is currently campaigning to have Rhode Island become the newest “felony” state, where men are thrown in prison for decades because they lose their jobs and fall behind on child support:
http://rinow.org/legislative-agenda/2011-legislative-agenda-draft-as-of-21411/
When you support man-haters like Futrelle, this is the kind of madness you support. Throwing fathers in prison for decades because they lose their jobs. Feminists will never wash the blood off their hands for the violence, rape, torture, and abuse that these fathers will receive in PRISON. Neither will you, if you continue to support man-haters like Futrelle.
Go to the source. Read the words of the feminist man-haters themselves. Read as they ask for hard prison time for dads who lose their jobs. Read and open your eyes.
Men’s Rights: Equal treatment under the law and equal protection of government.
Feminism: Hate
MRAL – Speaking of logic, how about consistent standards here?
The fact that he privately doesn’t care whether someone was raped doesn’t hurt anyone.
Okay, but then the fact that we think he’s an asshole doesn’t hurt anyone.
On the other hand, pointlessly cruel rejection does hurt someone. Thus, pointlessly cruel rejection is worse than not caring if someone was raped.
What if I don’t care if he was pointlessly cruelly rejected?
Who does that hurt?
….whut? What the fuck, MRAL? If he doesn’t care about his ‘friend’ getting raped, why the fuck should any of us care about him?
And it does fucking hurt people, you jackass. If your friend got, i dunno, assaulted and mugged, you don’t think it would hurt them if you said “So? What of it”? If god forbid you got raped, you think it would be painless to have the people around you act as if it doesn’t matter? Fuck you, asshole.
Oh fucking hell. Is the bar for victimhood that friggin’ low in MRAland? Being rejected by a girl he was infatuated with in high school doesn’t make him a “victim”, you putz.
I do find it interesting that he keeps calling her a “friend”. If I feel like someone has mistreated me so badly that I feel no empathy for them being a real victim of a real crime, I don’t consider them a “friend” and I would never address them as such. Even though he puts quotes around the word at one point, how could he have thought she was a friend at any point if she looked down on him so much.
There is one fair point he does have…
High school is shitty, and if you don’t act in the right way or go to the right parties, you are a pariah. But that has nothing to do with this one girl or women in general. It’s to do with how shitty humanity is as a whole at that age in that place.
Looks like MRAL needs to read less Heinlen and more P. K. Dick.
Maybe it wuold give him some ideas on what it means to be human. Because right now, he’s failing.
Um…. Holly’s post is hard to process.
Of what, exactly? Taking his exact words, the girl he hoped to date treated him “disrespectfully” (and not, I might note, with “pointless cruelty.” Those are your words, not his). That sucks, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say it makes him a victim. If I’m shopping, and the store only has one of the item I want, and someone else elbows me aside in order to get to it ahead of me and then shoots me a smug, condescending look as they grab it, have I been victimized? Of course not. I have encountered a jerk and must try my luck elsewhere. That’s not victimization, that’s life.
You do realize that these laws are intended for THE State to be refunded the cost of providing child care for Scoff-Laws who refuse to take EQUAL responsibility for the care and support of they children they created then abandoned, don’t you?
Of course not. It doesn’t fit into your ideas that men should be free of all rights and responsibilities while having “mommy” take care of their every need.
You seem to be putting words in their mouths. Are the courts banning unemployed from petitioning them to have their child support reduced due to unemployment? Or are you pulling shit out of your ass and flinging it at the walls hoping it’ll stick?
Or is it just that you like seeing tens of thousands of your tax dollars going to guys who abandon their children?
Well, a) Saying something on the Internet isn’t “privately”.
b) Of course it will hurt someone! I guarantee you that there were some people reading that thread who’d had experiences similar to the one that happened to that girl. Do you really think they won’t be hurt when they see this smug guy saying that he doesn’t care? You do not like it when you feel that others are discounting the seriousness of your experience… why do you think other people aren’t like that too?