One reason so-called Nice Guys ā¢ 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 ā and sometimes not that far underneath ā the ānice guyā 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 ātrying to be nice.ā
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 ālooked distraughtā and he thought he could āhelp.ā And he only became angry at her when she rebuffed his kind offers.
āIt wasnāt really my intention to hurt her, you know that?ā he told police.
I spoke to her, you know and said, look, Iāll just ā Iāll ā Iāll help you, you know. ā¦ She flipped me off and that made me angry, because I was trying to do a nice thing. You know that? ā¦
I was just ā I was trying to be nice and ā she kept going from being nice to nasty, to nice, to ā you know what I mean?
Earlier in the evening, Bayley had reportedly argued with his girlfriend about his ājealousy and possessiveness issues.ā 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 ā¢ 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 ānice.ā
If you have to ‘try’ to be nice to someone, there’s your problem right there.
He was so nice he killed her. What a skidmark.
People who are simmering with barely suppressed rage and trying to keep a “nice” lid on it scare the shit out of me, because you never know what will set them off.
Also, The Gift of Fear talks about this. If someone constantly goes on about something they would never do, it’s often a sign that they’re thinking about doing it.
Ugh. I should make myself a rule: No reading manboobz until after my first cup of coffee. I’m going to have to brush my teeth for at least a half hour to get this taste out of my mouth.
Also… Wtf?! “I just wanted to help her so I raped and strangled her”? I hope this guy gets *all* the books thrown at him, starting with the fourteen inch thick unabridged dictionary I use to prop up shelves.
Glerb.
The sense of entitlement here is definitely akin to that of the “Friendzoned NiceGuy who thinks women who date douchebags deserve what they get because they won’t date guys like him.” He just takes the next logical step, and instead of wallowing in schadenfreude over the girl getting beaten up/raped by the “bad boy”, does it himself.
It sounds a lot like the distraught woman was acting distraught. If women were, as Glenn P and the raping murdering asshole think, merely passive receptacles for male action, it might make sense to think that a “nice” guy approaching with niceness should flick the female switch from the distraught setting to the nice one. As such, when the distraught woman did not in fact turn out to have such a switch (being a woman and not a machine), the “nice” guy got upset.
Although, even when machines break and make people with anger issues angry, they don’t rape their computers (or example).
Trying to figure out how they can see women as merely machines, but also as a special kind of machine that you force to act “correctly” (before destroying it) like you might make a child go back and pick their jacket up off the floor and hang it up is making me angry-sick.
Brain bleach:
I think this is the first time reading a manboobz article has really upset me… probably because of how common the Nice Guy attitude is…
(If I don’t look familiar, it’s because I mostly lurk)
@somegal: awww.. That brainbleach was so cute.
Sounds like this guy was a ticking time bomb. If it wasn’t this poor woman it would probably have been his girlfriend. Fucking terrifying to think people like this are just walking around.
@Fade
Welcome (back)! And, yeah, this is really upsetting. I hope the brain bleach helped a little.
@ somegal. Thanks. And yes, it did help. š
Being “nice” to a woman you meet on the street doesn’t mean that woman is obligated to be nice back. You just walked up to a stranger (who even if they weren’t distraught) was likely nervous about being approached by a man larger than yourself at night…..I don’t respond well to that either. And thing is that men sometimes get upset when you treat them like they might harm you, but experience says they might. This is exactly what could happen and mrms wonder why women are paranoid.
Judas priest…
@melody
The boyfriend has gotten home from walking at night near a strange woman and hoped he hadn’t scared her. He walked a bit faster on the opposite side of the street to pass her so she wouldn’t feel like she was being followed and she could see him. He wasn’t offended, he’s aware he’s a larger guy out on the street at night.
I will never understand how this isn’t the first reaction to the knowledge that women get scared. (Okay, I understand it: some men actually like being scary, but don’t want to be blamed for scaring. I just wish sometimes that I didn’t.) Like the guy we are talking about on the other thread who likes using up women’s souls, only assholes like to scare nonconsenting people. Blaming the people/women for giving the reaction they wanted is just the icing on the asshole cake.
@Melody: word.
Ah, this bit where he says, “she kept going from being nice to nasty, to nice, to ā you know what I mean?”
Like, maybe this poor woman was distraught because he wouldn’t go away and he was terrifying her, so she was trying to ‘nice’ her way out of it. And clearly she was completely right to be terrified.
But, if she’d gotten away safely, (which she didn’t š ) and later was all, ‘OMG, scary man scared me last night’ some people would be all, WHY are you so SCARED of RANDOM DUDES WHO ARE JUST TRYING TO BE NICE.
No winning.
Reminds me of a (fairly triggery, as may be obvious from the url, but very well written) post from Fugitivus. Wot everyone probably knows about already, so ho hum. However:
http://www.fugitivus.net/2009/06/26/another-post-about-rape-3/
I didn’t mean to imply that women aren’t people, I just wanted to make it clear that it applies to everybody, but especially to women. I’m pretty sure that I should have been clearer. Sorry.
And here’s why I keep trying to communicate to a friend of mine with Nice Guy (TM) leanings. Being nice with an ulterior motive is not being nice, it’s being manipulative, and it can lead to really horrible places.
Oh my god, that’s a horrible story. My heart goes out to the people Ms. Meagher left behind.
I’m going to go hold my children now….
This is depressing. I am going to go read about Great Old Broads for Wilderness v Kimbell instead.
http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2013/03/04/11-16183.pdf
That is such a fun name and the case is serious.
Urgh. Ugh. This is just… I have no words.
@Hyena Girl
The manipulative niceness reminds me of an ex…..
@beshemoth
It is sad that that is the response.
@SomeGal
I wish that was the response to freaking out someone.
It’s like the inverse of a hero. The person who ‘helps’ people who are sexually attractive when they don’t need it against their wishes and when they refuse, tries to impose there physicality on the woman, and as she refuses him yet again, beats on her. I mean is it like a misplaced “protect the female” instinct? Just odd although eerily familiar. That follows the script of many date rape scenarios as described by people in journals on the subject.
He worked for a drainage company? Maybe he should’ve done the human race a favor and “gotten lost” in his work.
This piece of shit is also facing two other rape charges. In one, he’s accused of telling a woman a man was following her and offering her a lift – he raped her in his car. She was afraid he’d kill her, and suggested they go back to her flat. He said no, she’d tell the cops; she promised she wouldn’t, and when they reached her flat she got away, screaming, and locked him out (or he took fright and drove off, not sure which).
He’s like so many rapists, a repeat offender, and all the “I’m so distraught” and “I was trying to help” and “They should bring back the death penalty for people like me” stuff is so much bullshit. He’s a predator.
Exhibit Z in the case against victim-blaming “advice”.
As to the whole issue of “nice guys”… phew. As someone who feel into and escaped that trap long ago, I know there’s a lot of delusion in the Nice Guy mentality… but this takes the cake.