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:
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.