Men’s Rightsers and Pickup Artists alike are obsessed with the dilemma of the so-called “Nice Guy” who can’t get laid. MRAs see his plight as a symptom of a gynocratic society in which fickle, asshole-loving women are the gatekeepers of sex; PUAs see it as a sign that beta males need to learn how to imitate the vaguely aloof swagger of the natural alpha male.
And both MRAs and PUAs completely miss the point.
To see just how badly they do, let’s take a look at a recent post from the sadly influential PUA shitbag Heartiste, who uses an alleged Facebook screencap of uncertain provenance as a springboard for a diatribe against the “desperate male,” that is, the “desperate, clingy ünterbeta male” who pursues a woman, often in a weirdly apologetic, even abject way, long after she’s made it clear she has no interest in him.
But Heartiste’s example, as you’ll quickly notice, isn’t exactly a textbook case of so-called “friendzoning.” (I’ve blotted out the dude’s face; Heartiste didn’t bother.)
Be warned: it’s a teensy bit long.
Yeah, so I’m thinking that the problem isn’t so much that the dude here is “too beta” as that he’s “a creepy stalker with no sense of boundaries and the obsessive persistence of a serial killer.” It’s not even clear why he’s developed this fixation on her. He says nothing to suggest he knows anything about her other than that she’s a “pretty lady,” and she doesn’t remember ever even meeting him.
Heartiste, naturally, takes him to task not for his creepery but for violating “just about every Poon Commandment” — that is, Heartiste’s set of “alpha male” rules for getting, well, “poon.”
He also notes the fellow’s repeated promises to not “take advantage” of her if she comes over to his place. Generally speaking, when someone casually promises not to rape you on your first date, and presents this as if it’s somehow a generous gesture on their part, it’s pretty much the opposite of reassuring, as it sort of suggests that they were at least considering it as a possibility.
But Heartiste sees it as an example of excessive chivalry:
Any man who thinks promising a woman that he “won’t take advantage of her” is the way to her heart is a power tool. Chivalry works in the abstract (specifically that abstract where unicorns are a possibility); in practice it’s an abysmal failure. A woman, if asked, will always say she wants a man “who respects her need to take it slow”, but in reality, where her words meet the unstoppable force of her tingles, a chivalrous gentleman’s pose is the equivalent of downselling: “Sure, this smartphone looks fast and functional, but it actually has parts made from Fisher Price toys. Try this cheapskate badboy clamshell over here instead.”
No, dude, the problem isn’t that this guy is being too “nice.” The problem is that he’s creeping out a random woman because he refuses to accept that she’s not interested in him.
The trouble with a lot of so-called “Nice Guys” isn’t that they don’t understand when a woman has rejected them — our creepy Romeo in the screenshots here was aware that he was probably “bothering” her only a few messages in. It’s that they refuse to accept these clear if implicit “no’s” as real” no’s.” Because, on some level, no matter how lonely and desperate and “ünterbeta” they may feel, they still feel entitled to sex with a “pretty lady.”
I rather doubt that many “Nice Guys” show up for work at companies that have interviewed them and hired someone else. The solution isn’t for these guys to learn “game”; it’s for them to learn to respect a “pretty lady’s” no as they would anyone else’s.
Those kitties remind of this Garfield strip:
http://garfield.com/comic/1981-07-05
Yep. Rosymask has been banned (more than once, if I’m remembering correctly), and just keeps showing back up. Thick as a brick, this one.
Sometimes, if you poke the trolls enough, they’ll start spouting some funny wild-ass conspiracy theory, like how apparently radfem are solely funding VAWA and the CDC, and every other reputable study about sexual violence.
thanks for the reminders on roseandmask, and I won’t be letting anything more from him through. sorry about that.
Some brain bleach: It occurred to me that MIA’s “Bad Girls” song might go well with some slow-motion kitties. So here it is with a selection of gifs. (Open these up one at a time, or you’ll have four versions of the song playing at once.)
http://gifsound.com/?gif=i.imgur.com/8JmlHX6.gif&v=2uYs0gJD-LE&s=13
http://gifsound.com/?gif=i.imgur.com/EcZ4gd3.gif&v=2uYs0gJD-LE&s=13
http://gifsound.com/?gif=i.imgur.com/l9qLjwz.gif&v=2uYs0gJD-LE&s=13
http://gifsound.com/?gif=media.giphy.com/media/fBIUwTPvPCZry/giphy.gif&v=2uYs0gJD-LE&s=13
Kitteh…ugh, I am in Melbourne from the 17th for the Open, I hope it cools down!
We are working on 2 projects – one to develop a training package to assist low income earners into share accommodation (not a popular option up here but economically necessary) and another project to interface with real estate agents so that they refer at risk tenants to an assessment/referral service (with the tenant’s agreement!) at an early stage so that we can stabilise them in their tenancies. It’s interesting but a change from the face to face work I was used to doing!
I live in the “scottish town’of Australia…I’m not entirely sure what the local aboriginal peoples feel about the tartan lamp posts…actually, I have a fair idea after chatting with some aboriginal work colleagues. Safe to say, Scottish oppression is not high on their give a shit meter.
I actually record a lot of conversations like this on my blog that occur on Second Life (link here) – and I’ve found recording and analyzing them really interesting in terms of rethinking my own attitudes toward men who do these sorts of boring, cold calls. It is vividly obvious that the men who do these sorts of approaches (not all men, but this specific subgroup of men) are not interested in meeting a woman – they are interested in meeting women and treat women as interchangeable.
Also they are fucking DULL. So damn dull.
Also, one of the weird things about Phantom of the Opera is that the original book is a horror, not a romance. I love the original novel, but each re-interpretation of it has rendered the Phantom much less of a scary asshole than he is (he’s also pathetic and pitiable, but never stops being a scary asshole) and Christine much more of a naive idiot than she was. In the book she was manipulated and duped, but it’s clear how vulnerable she was and how quickly she figures out that she’s not only in deep trouble, but what she needs to do in order to survive and keep the man she loves (NOT the Phantom – but Raoul) alive.
In the musical, especially the musical version of it, one can be forgiven for thinking she should ditch the man she loves for the Phantom because he’s portrayed as misunderstood, instead of a threat. I’ve honestly wondered for a while in Webber wrote him that way because he identified with the Phantom, not Raoul or Christine.
Someday I’ll have to run through the various ways the Phantom is rendered toothless (for example, in the movie he threatens to kill Raoul; in the book he’s going to explode the entire Opera House – with a full house above them) and Christine is rendered an idiot (for example, she and Raoul have a chance to escape while the Phantom is distracted in the movie, however in the book it’s clear he’s stalking her and she knows she’s under threat), but I always get a little into it and become completely depressed about what passes for romance a lot of the time these days.
Victorian horror villains seem to have a tendency to morph into sexy antiheroes over time (Dracula, Sweeney Todd, etc.)
“I rather doubt that many “Nice Guys” show up for work at companies that have interviewed them and hired someone else. The solution isn’t for these guys to learn “game”; it’s for them to learn to respect a “pretty lady’s” no as they would anyone else’s.”
God DAMN if that didn’t hit the nail on the head.
Cassandra: That is how I am raising my daughter (like your parents), for the same reason and because of all the horrible sad stories (like Amanda Todd) that are coming to light. I am like a mother Grizzly when it comes to her, so she knows that she never has to just put up with anything from anyone. Sometimes it even backfires on me, dang kid is smarter than me sometimes, lol! In a way I am the parent to her that I wish I had. It has really healed me.
I was the polar opposite of this guy – if I got even the tiniest hint that my attentions weren’t welcome (and the signs could well be something completely unintentional on her part), I’d leave it there and then.
I know for a fact that I missed out on at least three possible dates that way, as the women in question finally told me years later, in one case during a cathartic “God, we were immature dweebs back then” session. Oh well – I suspect it wouldn’t have worked out.
Personally, I never have a clue how to respond to a message that just says “what’s up?” or “how are you?” unless I already know the person well.
Something off-topic, potentially triggering:
Has anyone bumped into some… guy calling himself bloomingdedalus? Because he recently showed up on RationalWiki, and turned his user page into this:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/User:Bloomingdedalus
For the punchline, read until the end to see what he thinks of second-wave feminists… Someone’s in need of education, but given the current state of the community at RW, there won’t be anyone willing or able to give it.
I know he’s been re-banned, but I would like to note that Roseandshitbox was using the effects of rape culture to deny that rape culture exists. The entire point for those ‘word games’ he found so utterly reproachful was that women are often taught to treat non-consensual sex as something other than rape by our culture. If you ask them definitional questions (that is, a question that describes rape or sexual assault, without using the specific terms), you get higher numbers, because rape culture was keeping those numbers lower.
@freemage, good catch, It’s the other side of the coin to those surveys where men will admit to rape as long as you use general descriptors instead of the R word, isn’t it?
Plus he said that it was impossible that 1/5 women had been raped because 70% of women surveyed said they definitely hadn’t been. Maths = misandry.
[blockquote]I have read Dr. Nerdlove in the past. Most of the site in fact. While there are pieces of good advice there, I find that Nerdlove often succombs to the same stereotypical thinking he rightly denounces. In particular I find his idea that men believe they are entitled to a conventionally attractive woman, if they just “try” hard enough, to be both wrong and troubling. [/blockquote]
My recollection is that Nerdlove is ex-PUA, and that still kind of seeps into some of his approach and advice. (I may be misremembering, though.)
And wow, I failed that rather dramatically. 🙂
[Content note: victim-blaming]
From that user page:
The citation at the end is about the Julian Assange rape case. So basically, if a woman is on a man’s bed naked for any reason, then it is expected that it’ll be interpreted as “overt sexual advance.” And so rape is “understandable” or whatever.
Yikes.
I took some life drawing classes in college. All those nudd wimminz (not to mention nudd minz) totally wanted my D. If I polled them, they would have all said, “
Could you please hand me a blanket, I’m freezingSEX ME UP NAOW!”Yup. True story.
I know it’s not the season for these yet (Valentine cards, from one of my favorite fancomics), but if Phantom of the Opera came up:
http://pika-la-cynique.deviantart.com/art/GND-Valentine-Raoul-285405418
http://pika-la-cynique.deviantart.com/art/GND-Valentine-Erik-285349847
And I go back lurking. ^^;
Apparently, not only is it an overt sexual advance but it is consent to any type of sex the man wants. As in, you might think that you have verbally consented to protected sex only and refused to participate in unprotected sex but hey, you’re naked in his bed so you’ve actually consented to unprotected sex.
Excuse me while I go wash the bitter taste out of my mouth.
@lightcastle
You were close, but you have to use
<blockquote>
text
</blockquote>
Myoo. I know. 🙂 I was just dashing it off while at work and my fingers betrayed me.
(DAMN YOU FINGERS!!!!)
It’s funny in that guys scenario he thinks women would crawl into a guys bed naked and just lie there and be all like “this is mine now and you can’t touch me”. He clearly misunderstands the idea of consent. Sure, it’s very likely if a girl is naked in your bed she’s anticipating something, (assuming she’s there of her own free will), but you still gotta consent to whatever the two parties get up to. It’s not actually complicated, as much as they like to blur the whole concept.
I mean for all the MRAs like to talk about male victims of rape their rhetoric about consent kind of effs over not only women, but men. What they don’t seem to understand is that it goes both ways. If a man is naked in my bed, I don’t have the right to do whatever the heck I want to him.
I’m curious as well. Especially because I remember reading one of the PUA books ages and ages ago, and negging wasn’t quite the same as it tends to get used online. (Or at least as I’ve seen it online in these conversations.) Here it tends to be a generalized, “just insult them” thing, whereas from what I remember the idea was very specifically to create cognitive dissonance in the target.
For example, if a woman has clearly put a lot of effort into her appearance, neg that. If she obviously likes being thought of as open minded and tolerant, neg that. In other words, hit them at the point of their own self-image, because the instinct for many people in that circumstance is to *prove you wrong*. They become invested in soothing their cognitive dissonance by getting you to agree with their self image of themselves, and so you now have leverage over them because you can strategically deny them that.
It’s evil, but it makes way more sense as something that can be effective than the generalized “You get women by insulting them!” that negging seems to be portrayed as whenever I encounter it now.
Since you were in the life, I’m curious if you can clarify that.
Many thanks.
One thing that’s bugged me lately is the tendency of people talking about negging saying ‘only an [insert preferred derogatory term for mentally deficient here] would fall for that’. It comes up in discussions about con-men and psychic frauds and the like, too. Thing is, it usually fails to recognize that predators, by their nature, target people who are vulnerable to their tactics, and the reason for that vulnerability is usually something far more than just a lack of mental acuity.
PUAs, con artists, psychic fraudsters–they are quite often re-victimizing their target, who is already in a state of emotional distress. Maybe they suffer from PTDS, maybe they are just grieving the loss of a loved one, or maybe they’ve been abused before. The nature of predators is to seek out people with a vulnerability, and then hit that vulnerable spot as hard as they can.
And so yes, from the outside, it’s often easy to say, “Well, that’d never work on me,” because we don’t share that particular vulnerability. Hell, if you’ve got enough privilege, you may not have any exploitable vulnerabilities at all; failing to realize that this is because of privilege, though, is pure egotism.