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.”
Plus just imagine having to live the rest of your life with the knowledge that someone you were once involved with did that. I totally feel for the girlfriend.
Sweet jesus I hope the girlfriend is getting some counseling. Because the other thing commonly heard is suspicion that the wife/girlfriend knew her partner was a rapist and just didn’t care.
Cases like this one just really blow my whistle. May god strike him dead with a freak lightening strike.
May the victims and their families find peace and a place where they can feel safe again.
On the nice guy topic, I had a neighbor who was strangely insistent that the area I live in is really dangerous and he should walk me home from work every night. I’ve lived in this area for a decade. I knew better than he did how to avoid trouble, and really, this area isn’t any more dangerous than any other. He was really pissed with me when I flatly refused to have him come pick me up from work. Not sure what a perennially drunk man walking with me at midnight is going to accomplish safety wise.
He complained to my friends about my being a bitch for that. Their response was “try telling pillow that to her face. If you can survive the ass kicking she lays on you, you might have a point but she still doesn’t have to accept”.
Did I mention I love my friends?
@pillow in hell
You have awesome friends. That guy does sound creepy though :/ Sorry you met him in non-internet world. (maybe it’s just me but it always feels worse there?)
I love your friends too, pillow! 🙂
pillow, your friends are awesome!
Aussiesmurf – this is the thing that gets me with rape trials in particular. Mustn’t have any mention of the same crime being committed by the defendant, even if they’d been convicted, and even though rapists seldom have only one victim; no, must make sure they’re given a fair trial. But heaven help the victim, because their totally non-criminal sexual history will be brought up as fair game for the defence to lie about; turning the victim into the perpetrator is just fine dandy.
Kitteh and astrosmurf, here here! The fact that you can’t bring up a rapists proclivity to rape has always struck me as a gross injustice. And its salt in an open wound when the victim is relentlessly grilled on their sexual history, what clothing or perfume they were wearing etc.
Some day the justice system might live up to its name. Unfortunately, it won’t be in time to give this particular disgusting waste of carbon the treatment he deserves (locked away permanently where he can do no harm. I want slimebags like this miserable for a good loooong time, not dead or hurt).
@Kittehs Not to mention that it’s totally unfair to mention the accused’s name but not his victim.
I would like someone to explain this to me in a way that doesn’t boil down to “OMG it’s totally not fair for you to take away all of my privilege!”
@pillow Especially when so many rapists are repeat offenders with a demonstrated proclivity to rape and to manage to get away with it.
And to rape after they’ve served time for it, too.
Am I the only one who hears about someone accused of rape and thinks “probably already has three prior victims”? And “wonder what happened that the rapist chose someone who would turn them in”?
Having someone go to the cops is a very serious misstep for a rapist. Something about their ability to read people would have to be very off that day.
No, pillow, you’re not.
“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.””
I will never understand why liberals constantly use the behavior of mentally ill persons to make inferences about society.
No pillow, I tend to have a first thought, how did he get caught THIS TIME.
I think I’ve hit that point in the evening where I keep writing up angry screeds and then deleting them because I sound unhinged even to myself. Plus my cats are starting to misbehave because I’m not there (I’m their favorite furnture).
I’m off to bed. I’ll leave you with
this to help offset the urgh upthread.
Cheers!
Marie, nice guys anywhere aren’t fun to deal with. But as the OP shows, in real life you get the added fun of trying to predict what they will do based on your potential responses.
The guy I’m talking about had a serious case of Nice Guy, and was really getting nasty about it towards the end. I’m tiny and cute in a lot of mens eyes, but I aint the kind to put up with bullshit or fools silently.
And, as always, having a boyfriend tends to back men down. I don’t think Beloved ever met the asshole, but the asshole decided to go back to a miilder form of bullshit when he heard I had a boyfriend. Which is stupid, because it aint Beloveds wrath that needs fearing.
I actually can’t picture Beloved as wrathful…
@aussiesmurf
Can any writings of similar things be admitted to establish a history? I don’t know anything about the Australian legal system
I hate the term “I tried to be nice.” It’d would be nice if the reports put the tried in bold.
Gillian, niters! And AWWWW to the kitties.
If you want something happy to read, check Mr K’s blog entry!
/shameless self promotion
@pillow in hell
Ok. I assumed it’d be worse in person, but didn’t want to say for sure because I haven’t met any who revealed themselves to be ‘nice guys’. Sorry you had to know that jerk 🙁
That reminds me of an old Onion article:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/romanticcomedy-behavior-gets-reallife-man-arrested,757/
Mute button comes in handy for things like that.
Pillow, it’s also interesting how many ” nice guys” you meet in the workplace. I work in a very male industry (or did til I got so sick) and I would frequently have this “how big or your balls” type interaction. Where mr nice guy, (my subordinate) would see if he could try and intimidate me.
The difficulty was how to put them back in the box without being labelled as a bitch, at which point things could get a whole deal worse. I found that there is also a cadre of men and women who are amazingly good at manipulating other people. I suspect many of these serial rapists probably have some of the same pathology.
@ The Kittehs’ Unpaid Help That blog post was lovely. I didn’t even know I was craving 17th century-esque talk about romance and then cats, but I totally was. You should shamelessly self-promote more often.
::blush blush:: Thank you from both of us, augochlorella! 🙂
I’m just so chuffed that 1) he was in the mood to do a diary and 2) it was quiet enough at work to write it at lunchtime (and slack off afterward to do the picture, heheh).
I’m sorely tempted to do a pic of him sporting that tail …
@Behind the Orange Curtain
When guys like this say “I tried to be nice,” it is just another way of attempting to portray the woman as irrational and unreasonable. It should mean that (at best) the guy tried to be nice and failed, thus being not nice, but it doesn’t. It means that the niceness wasn’t received correctly and so the guy had no choice but to be something else. As if when niceness doesn’t win her over, moving on to threats and violence is something everybody does and something over which no person could possibly have control.
And we are right back to men having no control over their own actions and women being responsible not only for what they themselves do but for what men do as well. It is a disgusting way to look at the world.
And then we’re back to the fact that if someone is honestly and sincerely unable to control their tendency to get violent when they don’t get their way then they need to be locked up so they can’t hurt anyone.