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Are Nice Guys sociopaths?

Cats: The world's most adorable sociopaths

A reader alerted me to this post on a very interesting blog I haven’t written about before. Regular readers of Man Boobz may find some of these, er, arguments to be a bit familiar:

Our culture is absolutely fucked up. Girls and women hold all control of sex. … [F]rom the first interest in girls, we’re expected to pursue them, and they’re expected to reject us. …

I’m a perfectly healthy man. I’m stronger than a lot of other men, more intelligent, more competent, I think I’m reasonably good looking, and I’m very well endowed. None of that matters though. Somehow, women go for men that fail on a comparison on multiple accounts. …

There are things like rejecting a woman, or pretending to be uninterested that make her even more interested. … Women subconsciously measure a man’s performance in bed by his dancing and posturing. If only they knew how fucking stupid and wrong they are.

I don’t know what happened with me. I’ve always had a strong sex drive, but I got fucked over socially. I wasn’t even “in” in the reject crowd. All girls rejected me, and most rejects rejected me. People made fun of me, laughed at me, picked on me, and all the girls that I lusted after were either repulsed by me, or didn’t know who I was. Even the girls that were “friends” with me, wouldn’t have sex with me. Meanwhile, they went around whoring themselves out to whatever man played this fucking dumb-ass social flirting game. They [crude sexual remarks redacted —DF] like the dirty little whores they are. I’ve been available my whole life, but the only person that ever chose me as a mate were paid prostitutes, and my wife, who is emotionally and mentally fucked up beyond comprehension.

On the surface, this reads like almost every “nice guy” lament I’ve ever seen on the internet. Oh, it’s a bit more bitter than most, but this “nice guy” hits all the right notes: like the Holocuast-trivializing “nice guy” we looked at last Sunday, he complains that women get to actually choose whom to have sex with; like the “nice guy” Redditor we looked at Monday, he still holds a grudge against former crushes who chose to go out with (and have sex with) guys who weren’t him.

The difference? For one thing, this new guy is a bit more self-aware than most “nice guys,” in that he doesn’t actually describe himself as “nice.” For another, he is (or at least claims to be) a sociopath. As might have been immediately apparent had I quoted these comments, which immediately follow what I quoted from him above:

This is the reason I don’t care about people. Why the fuck should I? Everybody [wears] a mask. I want to rape and murder people, and I pretend I’m “normal.” Normal people wear a mask where they pretend they’re friendly and honest; whereas, they’re really deceptive, insecure, and emotionally hostile.

This posting comes from Sociopathworld, a fascinating blog written by a sociopath who is basically trying to explain to non-sociopaths how people like him or her think, to clear up misconceptions about them, and to help sociopaths themselves deal better with their disorder. (The author of the blog didn’t write the comments above; they were sent in by a reader.)

For those not intimately familiar with abnormal psych, “sociopathy” (often used synonymously with the term “psychopathy”) is a term commonly used to describe what is known clinically as Antisocial personality disorder (ASPD). The blogger at SociopathWorld quotes a journal article that gives this useful capsule description of psychopaths as people

characterised by an absence of empathy and poor impulse control, with a total lack of conscience. … They tend to be egocentric, callous, manipulative, deceptive, superficial, irresponsible and parasitic, even predatory.

So are “nice guys” a bunch of sociopaths? Well, no. They may be egocentric – like the “nice guy” on Tumblr who compared his lack of dates to the Holocaust. They may lack empathy – like the “nice guy” Redditor who couldn’t feel sympathy for a female “friend” who had been raped. They may be manipulative – hoping that by being excessively “nice” and doing favors for women they will earn themselves some sex.

But they lack, among other things, the impulsiveness and routine deceitfulness that tend to characterize real sociopaths. Sociopaths can be deceptively charming, but very few people would ever describe them as nice. (Indeed, if anything, it’s pickup artists that act the most like real sociopaths; indeed, I’ve heard “game” described before, I think accurately, as an attempt to get guys to think and act more like charming, conscienceless sociopaths.)

So why do “nice guy” laments make them sound so much like sociopaths? I think their egocentricity and their almost total lack of empathy are key. “Nice guys” get crushes on a lot of girls and women, but these crushes often seem to have nothing to do with the objects of these intense feelings: the “nice guys” have whipped up a romantic and sexual drama in their own head, and simply projected it onto some convenient romantic object . The “nice guy” Redditor was once obsessed with his female “friend” – but when she was raped he did not react as a true friend would, with sympathy and sadness. He responded with a callous “she had it coming.”

Combine this lack of empathy with a sense of wounded entitlement – I DESERVE a cute girlfriend! – and you have a recipe for a pretty noxious stew.

“Nice guys” may not literally be sociopaths. But sometimes they think and act in some pretty sociopathic ways.

 

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speedlines
speedlines
13 years ago

The majority of sex toy buyers today are women. So, yeah.

bekabot
bekabot
13 years ago

“They’re the kind of person who thinks that Hannibal Lecter is the hero of The Silence of the Lambs.”

Or else they’ve seen The Dirty Dozen too many times.

Hershele Ostropoler
13 years ago

@Skyal:

It’s extremely rare for a woman to just leave for absolutely no reason.

That’s probably true; however, I imagine plenty of relationships end through no fault, so to speak, of the person being left. But if the courts decided that the divorcing partner would get full custody of the kids and a high enough percentage of marital assets to make a serious dent in the other’s lifestyle (let alone the litany Antz recited), either the family court system is even more fucked than I realized or the person being divorced is more than partly to blame.

bekabot
bekabot
13 years ago

“On a deeper level though, it’s not like these guys are completely untouched by the patterns of social interaction proper to our culture. It looks to me like they’ve absorbed plenty of them: men pursue and women are pursued, men deserve to have their social “needs” met, women are commodities but men are agents—-these are all narratives at work in our culture, and to believe in them, these people must first have been socialized into them.”

They might be kind of Aspergerish in the sense that they’ve satisfactorily absorbed these social rules but interpret them too literally. They don’t understand that a very large asterisk coupled with a YMMV tag is situated next to each cliché. They don’t read the fine print. They think the strictures are more straightforward than they are. They don’t realize that, since our social commonplaces may have been formulated by jerks but were not formulated by fools, the Real Rules actually read something like:

* men pursue and women are pursued, except in second grade and in all cases in which the women are the pursuers

* men are entitled to have their emotional needs met by women, but if a woman proves deliquent in this duty, there’s no way a man can exact damages from her in court; hence, the wise man meets his own needs emotionally as well as in other ways

* women are commodities and men are agents but anybody who’s ever done any kind of financial stuff knows that commodities can have a sneaky mind of their own; if your ownership of your own house is foggy, imagine how uncertain must be your ownership of your date (or whatever); therefore, guys, don’t trust in your possessions, and that includes your women; rather, depend on yourselves.

Lots of MRA/MGTOW guys strive to live by the Real Rules, and to that extent, I’ve got some respect for them, b/c the Real Rules make some sense. It’s the guys who put their faith in nominal gender privilege who puzzle me. Surely they’ve got to perceive that what they’re dealing with is not some kind of legally binding contract but a myth…you can get a lot of mileage out of a myth. But not if you keep trying to enforce it as though it were a traffic ordinance.

Holly Pervocracy
13 years ago

women are commodities and men are agents but anybody who’s ever done any kind of financial stuff knows that commodities can have a sneaky mind of their own

I’m pretty sure that I have a mind of my own in a much, much less metaphorical way.

redlocker
13 years ago

AntZ, do you have any ideas on gender relations or science that aren’t completely fucked?

How did you and your wife meet up? Why did you get married if that’s what you really think of her?

VoiP
VoiP
13 years ago

Anthony:
In particular, Kennedy Jr. and Kennedy Sr. jointly scuttled the “Child Medication Safety Act”. The bill would have prohibited schools from forcing children to take certain addictive and/or hazardous medications, including Ritalin. Proving that the Kennedys acted under the direction of feminists has been tougher.

This…is dumb. Dumber than “The only problem with my True Love is that I can’t read my wife’s mind.”

(1) Girls get put on Ritalin as well (including me, ADHD as all hell. Actually, this touches on my second-biggest problem with MRA complaints against the school system and desire for single-gender education: the assumption that every child involved is stereotypically gendered)

(2) Joseph Kennedy was not only a private citizen during the Kennedy administration, meaning that there’s no way he would have been in position to sign off on legislation, he had suffered a debilitating stroke in 1961, rendering him unable to speak, as he would have had to do to plan such a dastardly scheme.

(3) Of which there’s no record during the Kennedy administration. The bill you are looking for is this. It’s from 2007.

(4) It would have to be: while Ritalin was approved for use in 1955, they only realized it was a stimulant in ’71, and it didn’t become widely used until the ’90s.

VoiP
VoiP
13 years ago

This is all very odd for someone who claims to be such an accomplished biochemist. Wouldn’t this have come up in your quals or something?

redlocker
13 years ago

“This is all very odd for someone who claims to be such an accomplished biochemist. Wouldn’t this have come up in your quals or something?”

I’m pretty sure being a biochemist is one of AntZ’s RP characters, next to the conspiracy theorist and (possibly) NWOSlave. If he polished his act just a tad, I’m pretty sure he would be fun on the Manboobz forums RPG section.

redlocker
13 years ago

“next to the conspiracy theorist and (possibly) NWOSlave.”

Oh, wait, I put those two things as seperate. Silly me.

Anthony Zarat
13 years ago

“I’m pretty sure being a biochemist is one of AntZ’s RP characters …”

I am a biophysicist, not a biochemist.

“To be fair, Anthony has promised the ladies coin-operated boys of their own.”

It is much better than that, Shaenon. Women will embrace, and enjoy, virtual life partners much more than men.

Most women can conjure a more or less satisfying fantasy just by closing their eyes. Men usually require a significant visual assist. When the technology is in its infancy, and the interface between thoughts and computer projected images is not great, women will stitch together the missing pieces much more readily than men. Remember, the key is LOVE and INTIMACY. That can only happen with exploration, discovery, growth, encouragement … virtual partners have a big role to fill. On average, a woman’s brain will probably find it easier to fill in the missing pieces, transforming “images” into a real relationship.

ohiken
ohiken
13 years ago

So, everyone has a shitty divorce story, but I’ll anecdotass myself, anyway.
Friend of mine got divorced. She and her husband have 6(!) Kids under 10. Dude just didn’t want to play Daddy anymore.He moved in with a girlfriend and felt that since he wasn’t fucking their mother, the kids had no need to eat. Threatened to quit his job so that his wages weren’t garnished for childsupport so my friend didnkt fight for it. One word, benefits. 6 kids going to the dentist is killer. He didn’t care to see the kids at all, except the one time he demanded to have the second daughter – creepy. My friend went bankrupt because she couldn’t afford the house, the bills and the childcare so she could work.

Yeah, that feminist court system really works well.

VoiP
VoiP
13 years ago

Remember, the key is LOVE and INTIMACY. That can only happen with exploration, discovery, growth, encouragement

If you can only get that with an agentless reflection of your own ego, you’re missing out. Have you read this? I think you’d learn a lot. SPOILER ALERT: The dude who’s surrounded by nothing more than extensions of his agency may believe he’s got absolute power, but is actually miserable, because really making stuff and really having relationships with other people is more fulfilling than drifting around in the puppet room.

I am a biophysicist, not a biochemist.

Shouldn’t you still have learned things like “Ritalin isn’t poison” and “The Kennedy administration was 1961-1963” by now though?

redlocker
13 years ago

“Most women can conjure a more or less satisfying fantasy just by closing their eyes. Men usually require a significant visual assist.”

Huh. Guess my entire childhood was a hallucination or a dream, considering how I came up with wild stuff just based on text and stuff that I heard.

Molly Ren
13 years ago

Antz, show me a woman that’s not visual and I’ll show you the Chippendales.

Wanderer
Wanderer
13 years ago

I am a biophysicist, not a biochemist.

Where’d you get your doctorate from? What was your thesis on?

I’m sorry if I sound hostile, but at this point it might be nice for you to post some proof that you’re as an accomplished scientist as you claim to be. On a lot of other websites/forums I’ve seen teenaged ne’er’do-wells derail decent threads by claiming to be “experts” in some esoteric field. Looking at your facebook page doesn’t tell me anything besides your status as an MRA (and the fact that you graduated from high school, and I think it takes more than a high school diploma to be a biophysicist) and I still can’t find any research which “Anthony Zarat” seems to be associated with. If you want to make claims of your storied scientific accomplishments (and before you ask me to do the same, note that so far I haven’t claimed to be anything but an Internet wanderer in all the time I’ve been here), I think it’s time for you to provide some evidence that you actually are–I, at least, am not going to simply take your word for it.

redlocker
13 years ago

“Antz, show me a woman that’s not visual and I’ll show you the Chippendales.”

Silly molly, male erotic dancers aren’t real men. Genius astrochemist (oops, astrophysicist) AntZ knows that, and so should you! 😉

redlocker
13 years ago

“Looking at your facebook page doesn’t tell me anything besides your status as an MRA (and the fact that you graduated from high school, and I think it takes more than a high school diploma to be a biophysicist) and I still can’t find any research which “Anthony Zarat” seems to be associated with.”

Hahaha, wow, I can’t believe I missed this.

So, AntZ, what do you know about the field of biology itself? I’m curious.

VoiP
VoiP
13 years ago

Genius astrochemist (oops, astrophysicist) AntZ

Is he also versed in metaphysico-theologo-cosmolo-nigology?

Molly Ren
13 years ago

“Most women can conjure a more or less satisfying fantasy just by closing their eyes. Men usually require a significant visual assist.”

So, Antz, aren’t you saying here that most men are dreadfully unimaginative? I don’t hold out much hope for your sex bot designs, then.

redlocker
13 years ago

“Is he also versed in metaphysico-theologo-cosmolo-nigology?”

That’s not all! He’s so smart his arguments become true simply because he said them. He’s like a mini god or something…but don’t piss him off, or he’ll turn you into an Apple and eat you up.

ALL HAIL THE GREATNESS THAT IS ANTZ (The person, not the movie).

katz
13 years ago

AntZ:

Here is a scientific publication of mine from the Journal of the Western Association for Art Conservation (PDF). I’m barely a scientist in any capacity–literally, I’m an ascended volunteer–so if I’m published, you absolutely must be. Please link us to a publication with your name on it. Otherwise we shall assume that you have nothing but a high school degree, as your Facebook page indicates.

Bagelsan
Bagelsan
13 years ago

They might be kind of Aspergerish in the sense that they’ve satisfactorily absorbed these social rules but interpret them too literally. They don’t understand that a very large asterisk coupled with a YMMV tag is situated next to each cliché. They don’t read the fine print.

That’s not “Aspergerish”, that’s lazy and entitled.

So, Antz, aren’t you saying here that most men are dreadfully unimaginative? I don’t hold out much hope for your sex bot designs, then.

Sex bot: “Oh baby. I want you so bad. My boobs are so super big like your penis. Your ex is dumb. Let’s make sex.”

MRM ‘scientists’: “It’s fucking perfect!”

Bagelsan
Bagelsan
13 years ago

I mean, the very definition of “relationship” is contingent on having more than one thing involved in it:

“The way in which two or more concepts, objects, or people are connected, or the state of being connected.”

David, biophysicists don’t need to know shit like what the definition of a relationship is! It probably never comes up in their research. 🙂