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.”
Dude, I can scroll up.
Impulse control disorder =/= changes resulting from brain damage (and/or brain surgery).
“There was evidence that the patient could volitionally control his criminal behavior.”
Yep, because of brain damage (actually, brain surgery, but I’m nitpicking)
“But who would be upset if someone talks about his brain
disorderdamage as a cause for his behavior? [hint: no psychologist or psychiatrist] The authors even deny his criminal responsibility (we can argue about that).”Fixed that for you.
Get it yet? No? You don’t get to claim an impluse control disorder that’s sometimes controlled in the absence of brain damage. And that’s still not an impulse control disorder as Impulse Control Disorder is a thing with an actual medicine condition, as is Kluver-Bucy syndrome, and they aren’t the same definition.
Everyone else — yeah you can wiggle your way out of sexual assault charges if you know the right people, thanks for reminding me to check if narcissist ex is still on the sex offender registry. Got caught “receiving sex acts” from a minor…got probation and a month in jail when Pittsburgh rounded everyone up for the G20 (fun times, they arrested NLG members for “obstructing traffic”…on public sidewalks…but that’s a topic for another time) Point here is that the US criminal justice system is the biggest oxymoron on the planet.
@CassandraSays:
No, I couldn’t care less about that Steubenville guy, I just stated a simple fact.
@hellkell:
1. You certainly could find a correlation between the introduction of the registry and decrease in sex crimes. Proving a causal relationship might be difficult, though.
2. You should consider what I’ve written about deterrence, ok? We should assume that the sex offender registry is a deterrence because like being in prison, it’s not nice to live under the Tuttle bridge or something like that. If that doesn’t work, why should longer prison sentences be effective?
I suppose every system can be gamed, but in the case of the registry it’s getting difficult, though.
@Marie:
That wasn’t intentional, I didn’t expect you would mistake UK for US, it was more like “are those sentences laughable?”. You can’t expect US sentences to be much lighter, but we’ll come to that.
I didn’t exlude them, they’re excluded in the original study, so the average sentence is in reality higher.
US sentencing statistics are problematic because most don’t break down sexual offenses. Maybe you give me some evidence? (remember, I certainly agree that there are lot of cases where light sentences have been given, but we’re talking about the average sentence, which we can expect to be somewhere between 8 and 9 years, 50% of the time served).
Requests for statistics? Ooh, there’s one right up my alley!
http://www.mincava.umn.edu/documents/sexoff/sexoff.html
“For rape defendants sentenced to prison, the average term imposed was just under 14 years. About 2% of convicted rapists received life sentences.
While the average sentence of convicted rapists released from State prisons has remained stable at about 10 years, the average time served has increased from about 3 years to about 5 years; for those released after serving time for sexual assault, the sentence has been a stable 6 years, and the average time served grew about 6 months to just under 3 years.”
That’s less than half the ~8 years in the UK.
Give me a sec to dig up correlations between Megan’s law and offense rates.
Tangentially, that ex? Clearly got an ass kicking and is back in jail…I’m sorta thrilled.
http://www.rainn.org/get-information/statistics/reporting-rates
Ignore all the math before the felony conviction stage. Even among those with a felony conviction there’s a 40% chance they’re not going to jail.
@Argenti
That ex in jail? Good.
I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry about the fact that somebody thinks that 8 years isn’t a light sentence for rape. Again, dude gives away far more about himself than he intends to.
I’m pretty amused that he thinks those of us who live in the US and have been to a this rodeo before are just totally guessing at our own criminal justice system. Whereas he’s got stats on the UK! So he is not guessing about the US! Reasons! Troll logic! Bullshit!
@somegal, clearly whatever numbers a man pulls out of his butt are more valid. It’s not like women are smart enough to understand scientific studies. /sarcasm tag because the trolls here would say that for real
This is a masterpiece of the “not very clever people who don’t know much about a subject try to explain said subject to others, hilarity follows” genre of trolling.
We should consider what he’s written, OK? I mean sure, his arguments have so many holes in them that you could use them to drain your pasta, and the logic isn’t exactly flowing smoothly, but he knows how to use Google, so obviously he has many things to teach us.
See? He’s put his teacher’s hat on. Everyone find a desk, it’s time to listen to the man pontificate.
Go here — http://www.bjs.gov/ucrdata/Search/Crime/State/TrendsInOneVar.cfm
Select US total; violent crime rate, murder, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault; and use all available years. Seeing how the result is unreadable for comparisons, I made a chart (I’m bored, I like math, deal with it)
Chart
Megan’s Law was enacted in 1994, I tossed in a line at 1994 and those rates are per 100,000. Note that violent crime includes the rest of the crimes, also, the Oklahoma City bombing is included, but 9/11 is not.
You were saying?
You know, I do love when the math is so obvious that no explaination is needed!
Some Gal — I’m mildly concerned there were “contacting a minor” type probation violations, but back in jail = good.
@CassandraSays
IDK about that. I like my pasta to stay in the strainer and yeah, there are enough holes, but they look a little big to me.
@Argenti
Well, I’ll hope he’s back in jail because he punched a corrupt cop or missed a meeting or something.
And applause for your chart!
Maybe if you were making manicotti or ravioli it would be OK. I’m thinking that for spaghetti he’s going to have to tighten up his logic a bit.
Lol, touché, and in his case, there was probably pot involved (legalization aside, no minors were harmed if he simply failed a piss test).
As for my chart, thank you 🙂 It took more work than it looks like!
As for his arguments and straining pasta, it’d only work for lasagna noodles. But you can always just pick those up and flop them around a bit…is his argument the noodles or the strainer then? Both?
Lumi — “@somegal, clearly whatever numbers a man pulls out of his butt are more valid. It’s not like women are smart enough to understand scientific studies. /sarcasm tag because the trolls here would say that for real”
Owly always assumed my gender to be female, and besides his entirely bullshit thoughts on gender, he refused to acknowledge my statistical retorts. To the point of laughing at me for using CDC data (yeah, that was hilarious, pretty sure everyone found his idiocy funnier than he found the use of CDC data).
But yes, he probably said similar and meant it. There’s one I am not, at all, sad to see go.
@CassandraSays
Tightening his logic? That should be fun to witness like watching a cat trying to catch the light from a laser pointer.
I look forward to his continued attempts to chase the concept of logic, which for him seems to be about as solid as the glowing dot of light that the cat chases. He’s determined! But doomed to amusing failure.
@Argenti Aerthi:
Actually, 40% is a bit rounded up.
2002: 36% probation
2004: 35% probation
2006: 33% probation
But that doesn’t change anything about the average sentence.
@Some Gal Not Bored at All:
Actually, that served as some kind of an example and no, I wasn’t guessing with that 8 – 9 year sentence, I don’t know where I got that, but now I’m right, so what?
@lumi:
Just Argenti Aerthi has some problems to distinguish between average sentence and time served. As I’ve suggested, average sentence for rape in the US is between 8 and 9 years, 50% of time served. Now we’ve got an average of 5 years of time served. So?
@CassandraSays:
I’ll admit, that was a good one, far better than the moral indignation stuff. 😉
@CassandraSays:
I wonder if one could kind of automate that, I mean, your posts, like ELIZA or something.
But actually, you don’t have much to look forward to, because well, I’m getting a bit tired, I don’t have much hope that this could suddenly become productive. I’m not used to arguing under snark barrage.
Poor little chew toy, we gnaw on him just a little and already he’s running away.
sorry, it’s my fault he’s here, and I’ve been at work.
@Jaro
You weren’t “proven” right. You skipped over (didn’t understand?) part of Argenti’s posts and made up an answer.
But you sure are making us look dumb.
@Big Momma
It is always awesome to watch Argenti get all mathy on the trolls. No apologies ever necessary for bringing us chew toys.
Although, a tougher one might be nice. He got punctured rather quickly… 🙂
The maths stuff makes my head spin sadly. Not my strong point at all. Jaro just sounded a bit “rapers gonna rape” to me and I was uncomfortable with the analogy/inferences he made and was just trying to work it through in my head,
Which one? The post with the chart? I’ve NO idea what she wants to tell me with that chart.
Mocking the idea of moral indignation about rape and rape apology.
Yup, outed yourself nicely there, boyo.
Go fuck yourself with cactus-embedded legos.