One reason so-called Nice Guys ™ seem so creepy to so many people is that it’s easy to see the rage and the bitterness and the weird sort of self-hating entitlement that is so often lurking underneath – and sometimes not that far underneath – the “nice guy” exterior.
Consider the gutwrenching case of Jill Meagher, an Irish woman who was raped and murdered in a suburb of Melbourne Australia last September by a man who accosted her on the street as she was walking home from a bar. A man who later told police that he had only approached her in the first place because he was “trying to be nice.”
In a lengthy interview with police, in which he confessed to raping and strangling Meagher, Adrian Ernest Bayley explained that he had only approached Meagher because she “looked distraught” and he thought he could “help.” And he only became angry at her when she rebuffed his kind offers.
“It wasn’t really my intention to hurt her, you know that?” he told police.
I spoke to her, you know and said, look, I’ll just – I’ll – I’ll help you, you know. … She flipped me off and that made me angry, because I was trying to do a nice thing. You know that? …
I was just – I was trying to be nice and – she kept going from being nice to nasty, to nice, to – you know what I mean?
Earlier in the evening, Bayley had reportedly argued with his girlfriend about his “jealousy and possessiveness issues.” The girlfriend returned home, where she reportedly told her landlady that she was “hiding from Adrian.”
The newspaper The Australian paints a picture of a man with rage issues and very little self-awareness.
Mr Bayley was working for a drainage company until his arrest six days after Meagher went missing. The workmate he had been drinking with that night told police Mr Bayley would become “angry and aggressive” after fighting with his girlfriend.
“He had a very short fuse and didn’t like to be told he was in the wrong,” he said. “In the times that I worked with Adrian, he was often talking about women. He would say he couldn’t understand how men could hurt women or be abusive towards women.”
None of this is to say that all Nice Guys ™ are harboring killers inside of them, or anything even remotely like that. But those who most loudly proclaim their “niceness” often turn out to be pretty awful, in part because they think that women owe them something for being so insistently “nice.”
Dammit, wrong thread.
@Argenti Aertheri
I’ve read it now XD It took so long to finish…
Jaro (well, not really, since I suspect he’s gone): Also, I actually agree with Cassandra, we have a low conviction rate (though not to that extreme, but I’m not going into a debate about one of the most controversial issues in criminal statistics)
Nope, you’d rather assert that the stats presented by other people are false, but you are going to be, “decent” and not prove it. Passive aggressive bullshit, and weak argument to boot. That’s cheap politician style rhetoric there: Rick Santorum levels of dishonest.
So at least the focus switched away from “teach men not to rape”… Which is bad how? Men commit the rapes. Better to teach them not to do it than to make an impossible set of rules for women; and then blame them when that fails.
Futher, that there is a real risk of punishment for rape is teaching men not to rape; on the theory that they are cognitively able to assess risk and determine that committing rape is a behavior (like kiting a check) which has direct repercussions.
So when that Steubenville guy cried “My life is over!”, I would say “Yes, it is.”.
And the problem with that is…? he raped someone. A crime of personal violence. If he’d gotten a felony conviction, with the same prison term, for assault no one would be complaining. The only thing which seems to underly the, “OMG their lives are ruined” is the assault they perpetrated was against a 16 year old woman, and it wasn’t that they hit her with a club, it’s that they raped her.
For which, it seems, punishing them as the law directs is a horrible thing; at least that seems to be the widespread belief with which you are concurring.
I’m not used to arguing under snark barrage.
So you don’t take this show on the road much? Thank goodness for that.
Also just because I compared a single feature in both crimes (few rapists and arsonists get convicted) it doesn’t mean it’s a great idea to compare them otherwise (just one thing: is pyromania about power and control? Or an ICD as the WHO claims? psych 101 😉 ).
Interesting confusion here (and you’ll have to forgive my suspicious nature, but I don’t think it accidental). Only a small number of arsons are pyromanical: most are crimes of either revenge, or for pecuniary interest.
Why not mainly blame the legal system?
Because “the legal system” isn’t some abstract thing. It’s choices people make, which reflect the things they believe to be unacceptable. Which is why the, “how you can blame rape culture and still want society to avenge rape” makes sense.
one could claim the decrease would’ve not continued as strong without Megan’s law (not that this is plausible).
Go look at the chart. The decrese is in step with the decrease in other crimes.
@The K:
I’m doing neither, “laughable” if we’re honest and look at the context, was always just a facon de parler for “a sentence so light, that it can be shrugged off”. I’m not making any judgements about what SOs deserve. To pretend the opposite is like the the other over the top irrational argument “you’re sorry for the rapists!!!!” which regularily raises its head here when I explain why the registry is a serious punishment.
@Argenti Aertheri:
It is extremely broad, because it includes every contact SO like groping. Also your data is 15+ years old which does make a difference, e. g. you’ve got an average of 6.4 years served in FL for sexual battery (broader than the FBI forcible rape definition) now, probably because of the 85%-rule.
Now for the sake of argument let’s accept your 3.75 years number for an unspecified contact SO. Do you really believe there are that many SOs out there who think “four years that seems like a fair deal, but twenty years that’s not worth it”?
reg. unimportant sideshow argument: 1. yes, ice cream sales and flu cases are negatively correlated 2. I said victimization rate not number of arrests.
@Pecunium:
Not wrong, it’s inconsistent with believing rape is a serious crime. There has to be a good argument, why normal people can be so wrong. We’re not talking about fly-tipping here.
Of course you can believe that rape culture can be compared to delusional attitudes of societies where everybody thinks it’s ok to deny certain people basic human rights, or you can believe rape is like DUI manslaughter, something that not-totally-evil people can somehow end up doing but they still have to pay the full price for it. But those two options will give rise other inconsistencies.
Rules =/= advice. Is it so bad to discourage drinking to unconsciousness? You’re dependent on other people, and though you may cringe (and Cassandra leave a snarky comment like “he wants a medal for not raping”) there indeed has been a woman (who destroyed my couch) at the mercy of the evil-incarnate rape apologist who is talking to you. That can be avoided. I doubt the other usual advices have any value, though.
If we want this teaching permanently and as a major point to include cautioning about the punishment, it seems to me we assume a biological propensity for men to rape.
reg the rest of your post, if I find time I’ll adress it.
@Argenti Aerthi: the claim about FL: http://www.dc.state.fl.us/pub/timeserv/doing/
There’s nothing wrong with saying ‘don’t drink until you pass out, it’s really bad for you, you might lose your belongings, make yourself ill, annoy your friends, etc. etc.’. There IS, however, something wrong with saying ‘women, if you are drunk*, you’re responsible for someone else choosing to sexually assault you’.
Why are you so invested in arguing with women** about how they feel about an issue that primarily affects them? Seriously, it’s… weird.
(*ignoring the fact that rapists will consciously trick women into drinking more than they wanted to, relying on this idea being permeated through society)
(**Not all posters here are women, but the majority are, and you didn’t come here to talk to men, certainly)
I’m necroing this thread to let Manboobzers know that Bayley pleaded guilty to Ms Meagher’s rape and murder today.