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.
Ami, I don’t agree with Marcotte about a lot of things but there’s one thing she’s absolutely right about: how fucked up of an idea it is that women and men who find themselves in abusive relationships deserve it for dating an abuser. If you think you’re such a nice guy that chicks don’t dig you because they’d rather be with a thug* but, simultaneously, hear about a woman who was murdered by her ex-boyfriend and can only think about all the blowjobs she wasn’t giving you… you are not, in fact” a “nice guy.” Not a drop.
*Did that chuckedee guy ever provide a science-y definition of “thug” to go along with his scienc-y explanation of sexual assault and women’s complicity?
Ami, laziness.
Right, so anyone who can arrange to have his assets entailed is scot free. Anyone who is able to have no garnishable assets, is scot free.
This is what economists call a perverse incentive.
Ami:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ptitle7vljslfu
@tatjna
“Try again. And don’t give me that ‘change the law’ answer you’ve been tossing off so glibly all through this thread – it’s a copout.”
Change the law.
Child support is an issue of:
(1) the letter of the law
(2) vigorous and equitable enforcement of the law
Change the law or suffer. It is not a cop-out, it is reality.
So you’d be ok with the law being changed so that the father of your new wife’s children coming and taking the car that belonged to both of you for an unpaid child support debt she didn’t pay?
Because that’s what you’re suggesting.
Oops, sentence tense-flip fail. That should read “the father of your new wife’s children could come and take the car..”
TREAT UNPAID CHILD SUPPORT LIKE ANY OTHER DEBIT.
Really? Because if I fail to make my car payments, repo men will show up and take my car. If I fail to pay my mortgage, the police will show up and kick me out of my house. What would be the equivalent for failure to pay child support? And do you really want that to happen?
Also, if I fall behind on my car payments, I don’t get the option of going to a judge and saying, “I can’t afford the payments, but I still want the car. How about we agree that I should just pay less?” That seems like a right that non-custodial parents wouldn’t want to lose.
The thing is, we already treat child support similarly to other debts. But we can’t treat it exactly the same because children are not purchases that can be returned to a store.
A helpful comment from Cynikal got caught in moderation hell.
Here it is in context:
http://manboobz.com/2011/08/15/nice-guy-redux-if-youd-gone-out-with-me-you-wouldnt-have-gotten-raped/comment-page-4/#comment-51251
Here’s the meat of it:
“The Federal Office of Child Support in the Preliminary Statistics for 2003 reports that $100 Billion in accumulated unpaid support (up from $92 billion in 2002) is due to 18 million children in the United States”
Total Children 115,783
Dollar Amount Owed $366 Million
Collection Rate 16%
http://www.washingtonchildcustody.com/
Once again what we really see if NWA demanding that men be coddled and never have to take on adult responsibilities. Honestly, I’d love to see universal healthcare and daycare for children. But that’s SOSHULISM!!!!! and INDOCTRANATION!!!!
http://www.vxec.com/2011/08/rick-santorum-schools-indoctrinate-our-children-2/
Anthony, just to let you know, in the future, I’m not going to let you derail topics as you did here.
If, in response to some future post, you do, I will go back and delete all your comments in that thread and put you on moderation.
“Change the law” is non-responsive.
You are complaining about a specific attempt to change the law. That change you don’t like.
The added, “or suffer” is also a bit strange. Suffer what? The sorrow of knowing that Rhode Island has used traditional methods of punitive deterrence in an attempt to see to it children are supported by their fathers?
The question is… what changes would you like to see? You complain that putting men in prison is less than ideal. How is stripping them of their worldly goods better? Sell his house so that his debt is satisfied?
Garnish his wages? Seize his car? His 401K assets?
Those are already options. The law allows for that redress. It’s when a willful refusal to pay is claimed (and proven; see above about the need for legal counsel to defend cases in which loss of liberty is possible: In which case Feminists filed briefs for the defendant) that contempt charges are filed.
Look at the Rhode Island Law. At present it takes 10,000 dollars in arrears before an action can be brought. It takes a number of attempts to get the non-custodial parent to begin paying before actual jail-time becomes an option.
This isn’t a bench warrant. This is a drawn out procedure, and contrary to your assertions, inability to pay is an actual defense.
So, if that’s going to be the threshold of, “oppression” you think justifies, retaliation, because of my bloody hands… you’re an idiot. Not only is it ludicrous, it’s not going to have any public support. It’s a going to be a damp squib, or more individual actions like that of Ball. Men who aren’t willing to face the responsibilities their action created, making grand (and pointless) gestures, and being praised for it by clueless twist who want the right to shirk their own responsibilities.
Ah yes, Scarecrow, who has Got a Whale of a Tale to Tell Ya!
FiletofSwordFish – I am so sorry you had to live through that. I apologise for asking a question that brought up such bad memories for you.
That one has already been tried… think it lasted more than just 40 years, though
This very day a debtor had a warrant issued against him because a refusal to pay his debt where I work. This is no different from the fathers who refuse to pay. So essentially demanding we do no different then a regular civil case has the same outcome.
*rolls eyes*
I imagine that, had she ever gone out with him and then stopped going out with him, she would still be “asking” to be raped… at least that’s the impression I got from a self-proclaimed “feminist” ex-landlord of mine! He had a girlfriend who split with him amicably and then tried to be friends with him, poor lady. So the two of them eventually went out drinking, she (being single) accepted a drink from another guy and chatted with him at his table for a while, then staggered back over to my landlord slurring that she thought the guy had roofied her… so my landlord kindly drove her home, held her hair while she vomited, and then yelled at her for being such a stupid slut (“she drank with a guy right in front of me, can you believe it? What a slut! And then she got mad when I told her she was asking for something like that to happen…!”
…Even while telling me the story he had a complete empathy fail. He honestly thought she deserved to be drugged (and potentially raped) just because she got a drink from a man in front of her male friend. He thought, despite being an ex, that he still owned her. Anyone surprised that I had to move out a month or so later, after he started to sneak into my room at odd hours, get drunk and shuffle through my underwear drawer, and berate me for being “uptight” and a “bitch”? :p
That’s your typical NiceGuy — can’t maintain a relationship with a woman, can’t treat women with respect without a huge effort, and completely willing to invade a woman’s boundaries if she holds still long enough — all while proclaiming what a “great” guy he is.
To be clear, by all accounts his ex-girlfriend was trying her darndest to be sweet and friendly with him (she was certainly “good enough” while he was dating her!) but once he lost access to her genitals she was promptly relegated to “slut” with the rest of the women who dare leave the house or get a drink in public. Nice Guys are only “Nice” until the pussy runs out, if that long.
Yeah, funny how it’s always “she shouldn’t have …” never “he shouldn’t have (roofied her)”
“…MRAL is a liberal?”
Wait, why is that surprising?
Wow, that’s pretty bad. Did this guy actually call himself a nice guy? O_o The only thing I can think of is that it was a little rude of her to just leave him and go drinking with some other guy, but even so…
BTW, I’ve had women say “let’s just be friends” before, and to be honest, I never know if they actually mean it, or it’s just a polite way to say they’re not interested in dating. But as long as I have fun hanging out with them, I don’t mind.
Did this guy actually call himself a nice guy? O_o The only thing I can think of is that it was a little rude of her to just leave him and go drinking with some other guy, but even so…
I don’t recall if he said the exact phrase, but he did call himself a “feminist” and ranted about how nice he was. And yeah, my response was basically “uh…yeah, that sounds mean of her gottagonowit’sbeennicebye!” ‘Cause sure that is a little rude, and I likely wouldn’t do it myself, but I must have forgotten that the punishment for being impolite is having someone drug your drink! At least he got all that out in the open pretty early after I moved in, so I was able to put the later creepy behavior in it’s proper perspective — he clearly felt that assault was an appropriate response to thoughtlessness, so once he made it clear he thought I was being rude (asking him to not go into my room and handle my clothes, etc.) I put two and two together and GTFO.
Hint to Nice Guys or even self-proclaimed “feminist” guys: if you are willing to move people out of the “don’t assault” category into the “asking for it” category if they… well, under any circumstances!… you are doing it wrong.
BTW, I’ve had women say “let’s just be friends” before, and to be honest, I never know if they actually mean it, or it’s just a polite way to say they’re not interested in dating. But as long as I have fun hanging out with them, I don’t mind.
I’ve meant both, at various times. <– I'M SO HELPFUL :p
“…MRAL is a liberal?”
“Wait, why is that surprising?”
Probably has something to with how frothy you get over women and feminists and whatnot. You don’t come across as the most enlightened and liberal dude around these parts.
@Amused
“The day when you get served with divorce papers is a little too late to start worrying about being a hands-on dad.”
Is that why divorce papers are handed down. I’m sure you have this on good authority. Any womans word’ll do for any situation. Funny how it;s never, “her” fault. The instant assumption the man is in the wrong.
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@Nobinayamu
“We’ve (me an the guy, I mean) had so many discussions about his growing up without him, missing him, the promises his dad would make to come and pick him up on weekends – his disappointment when he didn’t. I didn’t realize until very recently that his father lived less than a mile from where he’d grown up in the city and has lived in the same house since his parents’ divorce.”
Yet when an MRA give an example of the exact opposite, like a mother purposely blocking visitation that ends up being misogyny. So if theres an equal number of both happening and feminists deny one than feminism condones that action. Feminism is a lie.
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@Bee
“You’re focused completely on the fathers to the exclusion of the child. In the three examples I gave, I suppose it might be possible that the kid would be better off if Dad had primary custody, but we don’t know that.”
No, you are focusing on the mother to the exclusion of the child. The best interest of the child is equal contact with both parents, period. Don’t you have any examples of women being unfair? It’s easy to claim unfair when one person “owns the property” while the other “pays for the property” while being given whatever rights the owner deems fit.
Feminist love to cry that children aren’t property yet they sure do use kids like a cash cow investment property. Take away the money aspect of child custody and all you’ll ever see is equal custody.
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@shaenon
“Again, I can say this until I’m blue in the face, but custody arrangements are supposed to be about what’s best for the kids, not which parent “wins.”
If it’s about the kids and not who “wins.” Why do men have to fight for custody? It sure sounds like somebody is trying to win something.
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@Rachel
“Also, generally in any form of litigation, including divorce, most parties settle out of court and out of mediation. So while it is possible that more women gain custody of children in mediations and trials, you are completely discounting the situation where people leave a relationship amicably and create a custody arrangement that both parents deem will work best for them and their child/children.”
Yes, when they settle out of court it is amicable. However when the courts are involved that’s when women wield the power of the State over men. By the very sta you people gave me, when a woman uses the violence of the State the man will lose 83% of the time. No amount of your feminist chatter will change that into your claim of default 50/50 custody. That number would have to be close to 0% for your claim of default equal custody to have any validity.
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When Anthony Z shows you how 1 in 10 men default to being a part time parent there’s a reason for that. You’ll probably have to cough up 20K for a lawyer with only a 17% chance of getting equal custody. Not many men can afford to throw that kind of cash away on a losing proposition. Mother = primary caretaker reguardless of who does what. Father = payer of bills reguardless of who does what. Who would invest 20K with only a 17% sucess rate. I can’t afford that, how many of you can afford to toss 20K in the trash?
Nah, Mr. Al sounds like my uber-liberal baby brother, who likes to call me “Woman” as an insult when he’s really drunk. Haven’t really talked to him since the “Woman! Woman! You will do what I say woman!” incident. Liberal dudes can, and often do, have huge blinders when it comes to treating women as people.