Never doubt the ingenuity of the internet’s misogynists in coming up with new reasons to hate a woman they’re already inclined to hate.
Actress and geek icon Emma Watson has been near the top of the new Misogyny hate list all this week, in the wake of the speech she gave at the UN gently praising feminism and suggesting that traditional gender roles aren’t always such a good thing for dudes either. She’s made this point before, declaring in a Tweet last month that
Gender equality not only liberates women but also men from prescribed gender stereotypes. #heforshe
— Emma Watson (@EmmaWatson) August 18, 2014
But wait, the Red Pillers of the internet declare: Watson is herself dating a hunky jock rather than a “bald scrawny impoverished poet.”
WHERE IS YOUR FEMINISM NOW?
According to the UK’s Daily Mirror, Watson is currently dating a fellow Oxford student who also happens to be 1) gigantic 2) a rugby player and 3) handsome. As The Mirror put it
Matt was dubbed Oxford’s most eligible bachelor and was previously named the best looking player in his on-field position by the university rugby team’s Twitter account.
I know, you’re probably not exactly shocked – shocked! – to discover that a famous actress is dating a handsome dude. But in the Red Pill precincts of the internet, the regulars think they’ve got their CHECKMATE FEMINISM.
Right wing “journalist” and blogger Robert Stacey McCain triumphantly cackled
All the hot babes like Emma Watson are crazy for guys who don’t fit “prescribed gender stereotypes,” right? So you will probably be surprised to learn that Emma Watson is dating a
bald scrawny impoverished poetthe biggest jock at an elite university. …In other words, an Alpha male, the epitome of “prescribed gender stereotypes” from which Emma Watson says we need to be liberated.
Smart young fellows figure out that listening to what women say is less important than watching what women do. Women are constantly saying they want sensitive Ashley Wilkes types, even while they’re actually going crazy for the Rhett Butler types. …
When all is said and done, the basic human sex instinct is still as simple as, “Me Tarzan, you Jane.”
On the Red Pill subreddit, the regulars celebrated what they saw as a great victory over feminism. Redpillbanana seconded McCain’s “analysis.”
As a man in our new feminist world, you are liberated from your gender stereotype and have permission to be vulnerable and human. And women have permission to dump you for the next nearby alpha male who decided that he doesn’t need to be liberated from his gender stereotype.
Other Red Pillers made sure that everyone knew that they didn’t think Emma Watson was all that hot anyway.
WOULD NOT BANG.
Meanwhile, proudly racist, woman-hating dating guru Heartiste offered these, er, thoughts on the matter, in his trademark, er, style:
Feminism long ago abandoned any pretense to logic or internal consistency. It’s nothing but feels all day, every day, with an extra helping of feels. Watson’s rationalization hamster, like most rodents residing in the brains of her callow ilk, is 700% thigh and 800% glutes. A swole spinner on the wheel of ego-masturbation.
Ok then.
So how do you respond to this sort of thing? Point out that Watson was previously dating a guy who most Red Pillers would probably consider a big ol beta? Post examples of conventionally hot actresses who’ve dated “nerds” and intellectuals and otherwise not stereotypically macho men – from Marilyn Monroe (playwright Arthur Miller) to Christina Hendricks (nerdy actor Geoffrey Arend, who’s not even as famous as her).
But what’s the point? All you have to do is step outside to see examples of happy couples who don’t fit the “me Tarzan, you Jane” stereotype the Red Pillers are so desperate to assure us is the One True Way.
The human heart and libido are complicated things. Yes, some feminist women date macho dudes. And some traditional women are drawn to nerds. Some women date men who make more money than them; others date guys who are broke. And a lot of women don’t have clear “types” at all. (Watson doesn’t seem to.)
It’s also worth pointing out that, well, you can’t always judge a book by its cover. A gigantic rugby player who is ferocious on the field may be a teddy bear in private. And scrawny nerdy dudes can be horrible people (e.g. Woody Allen).
Feminism doesn’t deny that some women – including some feminists — are drawn to macho men. What feminism says is that traditional gender roles are not the only way to do things.
Emma Watson can date whatever kind of person she wants to date. It’s her own damn business. That’s feminism.
That idea that women are a reward to men for being nice/successful/whatever is so deeply ingrained in a lot of cultures, just as much in the nerds as it is in the “jocks”. It’s one of the most reliable ways to provoke a shocked, outraged response from non-feminist men, just pointing out that if we believe that women are people and have rights then they can’t serve as someone else’s reward for good behavior because that tramples all over their ability to make their own choices.
It’s amazing how many men will say that they understand that women are people and still have that shocked, angry response when you point out that this means that no, whichever woman they’re into isn’t a reward that they deserve, she’s a person who gets to make her own decisions about who she wants to be with.
Could he not try to blame women for liking the guy. It’s alright if he thinks he’s more deserving of love than the asshole who is getting it. Jealousy is what it is and I don’t have an issue with his feelings. My issue is what he does with his feelings, which is be mad at women. It’s skirting very close to the idea that hes entitled to have a woman and angry that they won’t pick him, which is MRA territory.
Why does anger at the women have to be the go to when you hate some asshole who has women flocking around him. Then again the guy could be lying about the women he’s with or maybe he’s not actually the asshole that this guy thinks he is. Maybe he behaves completely different when he’s with them.
It’s gotten almost impossible to watch a movie starring a male protagonist that gets the girl at the end because it’s almost always framed in a way that suggests a woman is a reward for either personal growth or succeeding at something.
I also want to add to the chorus that playing sports in school doesn’t mean a man is an alpha male asshole. The nicest and most attentive guy I ever dated – who was also an activist for progressive causes – was an American football player in high school. There are plenty of football players and other athletes who fit the stereotype but certainly not all of them do.
What about female athletes? Are the supposed to be alpha females? Because I was an athlete in school and don’t fit any jock stereotypes either. Although I was a diver and that’s not a very “manly” dudebro approved sport. It takes more muscle and stamina than people think it does but it’s considered wussy by some people because you’re supposed to look pretty while doing it.
TL;DR ahead.
From Unimaginative’s link:
Just look at the way this is framed. Henry has no trouble with women. He’s abusive, physically beats his partners, but it’s okay because this phrasing ensures that he is the protagonist in his story. He is the one who has no trouble with women.
It seems clear that women have trouble with Henry. He traps partners into abusive relationships (because we all know how and why that works) so that they are unable to be secure and safe in their own homes, and (at least for a while) feel like they cannot escape. But we’re not talking about them, at least not in this paragraph. We’re talking about Henry, and Henry’s problems, of which he has zero in the “women” department. The women are reduced to non-humans. “I had no trouble with that math problem.” “Henry has no trouble with math.” “Henry has no trouble with women.” The women become non-humans, and their problems and troubles are utterly erased.
The next bit goes:
Typical Nice Guy™ resentment, but you can see how the framing is the same. It’s no mystery why he, as he goes on to explain, can’t grasp the difference between a nice guy and a Nice Guy™ and thinks there substantively isn’t one.
There’s a boatload more to his bitter, bitter screed, but that one paragraph is the hinge. That’s where he reveals where he’s going wrong, inadvertently, because he clearly doesn’t understand it himself. He goes on to say this, much much later:
By this, he means that Henry is going to abduct another woman into being his punching bag “approximately instantaneously,” by using his well-honed abusive toolkit. This is framed as being an awesome success story for Henry, because the author has already completely erased the horrific experiences that future woman is going to have, by reducing her to a non-human whose experiences aren’t important and may not even exist at all.
This is the only way that this dude can frame Henry as a success and himself as a failure. This is the core of his complaint and his argument, and the only way to make it work is by assuming that women are like math problems, and they can’t feel physical or psychological pain and even contemplating the possibility is absurd.
Here’s another way to frame the same facts: Henry is a horrible person who performs evil upon the people around him and creates nothing but suffering, and our author has never done that, and in fact is making a profession out of helping people and alleviating. Who is the success now, and who is the failure? The only difference is that now we acknowledge that the women Henry has abused have feelings that are important.
That he compares himself, a Nice Guy™ who doesn’t get laid with the frequency he would desire, with a dude who is working two minimum-wage jobs trying to make ends meet, as though these situations are totes equivalent, shows that again. Because “a job” is an abstract social construction, whereas “a girlfriend” is a physical being with a body and a mind and a suite of rights. The author thinks these two things are absolutely identical. That pretty much says it all.
Isn’t slatestarcodex a dark enlightenment site?
Anyways… I hate the argument that he’s putting out.Why do you want to be with the type of woman who clamors for assholes anyway? Same goes for loveletter-writers to convicts, why would you want to be with such a woman? Why would you be sad that such a woman isn’t interested in you? I mean, it’s pretty weird.
Maybe it’s because of overexposure, but I’ve started to dislike Emma Watson.
I love how Nice Guys see women being abused by their partners and immediately start whining about how hard-done by the Nice Guy himself is. Yes, sure, there are women who are getting beaten and raped and murdered, but HE can’t get a date, and this is the REAL tragedy.
Well, that was a strange read Unimaginative. Bonus points for mentioning Chen Shun, sure, and I saw an “epistemic” in there so that’s nice, yet wow.
I need a word for people who make conclusions that run paralel to the point they’re trying to make.
“I’m not saying I’m entitled to the responses of women but I am saying I’m at least entitled to a better response than “that” guy”
Uhh… Right.
YES! Exactly this!
They really do have a words mean things problem.
Let’s liven things up.
What I think he’s saying, is that if he as a non-violent pleasant person gets less interest from women than a guy who is violent, abusive, cheating etc etc.(and women date this guy knowng these flaws.) then what does this say about the women at hand(or in general). Even if he isn’t entitled to women’s affection, he is saying that the fact that that dude is getting more affection interest than him seems to be bumming him out. I disagree, of course, but I would like to know what you think.
Incoherent, maybe. The construction seems to boil down to: “I am not p, but I am p.”
I totally bought into the “chicks dig assholes” thing. Until I realized:
1. Most of the dudes I thought were assholes were not actually assholes. I was just jealous of them.
2. What I find attractive in women has little to do with how “nice” they are, beyond a certain minimum. In most cases, “interesting” trumps “nice”. The Baroness is way hotter than any of the female GI Joes. Why should I expect women to have a different standard?
3. Love/sex is not a commodity. There is no fair or unfair distribution of it. I don’t feel like I have an obligation to distribute my own affection to women that I’m not interested in just because they’re good people or because that’s what’s fair. Again, why should I have different expectations for women?
@Shadow_Nirvana
He’s entitled to be bummed. I was bummed when I went to the store and discovered that they were out of the brand of pickles I like. We can all have a sad when we don’t get what we want.
That’s not the argument he’s making, though. He’s not saying, “I’m bummed, don’t mock me for being lonely.” That’s the argument he probably thinks he’s making, but only because he doesn’t think that Nice Guys™ are actually different from nice guys, and therefore everything the Internet says about Nice Guys™ that is negative also applies to nice guys.
It says that women are being abused and this dude conflates “being abused” with “being interested in the abuser,” possibly because he doesn’t know that women are people. Not sure why you’re phrasing this as though you agree that there is something wrong with “the women at hand” for being beaten up.
Well, not for being beaten up, but if what the guy says is true, for deciding to date a man who has abused his previous partners physically and mentally. He does say the women decided to date him knowingly.
And I guess it’s a bit “He’s changed” mentality at work there, I don’t think the guy turns immediately into a shithead, but slowly. Me criticisng these women seems a bit rich, especially considering I knowingly dated a girl who cheated on her ex multiple times(maybe even with me, to this day I don’t know.) thinking that she’s changed and ended up cheated on. And I do understand being in a relationship where the option to get out just seems closed off to you mentally and then you look back later on and think “Why the fuck did I put myself through that”. But even with these information I find it hard to sympathize initially(I need to remind myself of the things I said in this paragraph). Might be frustration.
No. We are not trained seals, and I personally feel no inclination to bounce a rhetorical ball on my nose for your amusement.
@Shadow_Nirvana
I’m not in a mood to rehash the “I’m not saying women are stupid, but they sure are stupid, aren’t they?” viewpoint regarding domestic violence and abuse in general. Maybe someone else will take you up on that. The short version of my position is that they aren’t stupid and there is something wrong with you that you leap to the conclusion that they must be.
Oh, Policy of Madness, you hit right with what I was also getting. But if we’re Tl:Dr’ing now, then I’ve got a few cents of my own to add as well beyond just a pithy “You’re making arguments that a match a set of x,y cordinates directly parallel to your intended point”.
——–
So, for instance – to some degree, I actually think there’s a really good point being made here. I think being told, if you ask: “I am lonely and do not know why” that “You suck and will suck forever” is not a helpful response. I also think this is not the case that is actually happening when someone talks about Nice Guys.
I don’t know that the author catches that differences…
Arguing about nomenclature is one thing (“If you like people, why nice guys, you feminazi”, “why don’t you call it equialitarianism if you’re for equality?”). Pretending words mean the same thing and no one can tell the differences is absurd.
Like Policy of Madness above stated, this is an odd odd thing to go on about in this particular context.
I mean, the gap between asking:
a)”A guy I know, Henry, beats his wives and is still succesful with women – why?”
and
b)”A guy I know, Henry, beats his wives and is still successful with women, so how come all those girls go for a guy they know will beat them, I don’t beat anyone, and I can’t get laid or find love, so what’s wrong with the rest of the world(Read=”Those bitches”)?”
is a set of questions I know of no cordinate system that can accurately map the relationship of. They don’t even exist within the same system of numbers, let alone reality-interogating questions.
But apparently they’re the same thing, who knew, and by asking (b, always b, ever and always b) someone gets called a rapist shitlord who thinks women like assholes and want to be beat up. And that’s totes unfair, you guys!
Uh… no it isn’t.
Jackass.
The reason the first guy had trouble making his life work despite holding down TWO minimum wage jobs, full time, and being a hard worker is not because he’s secretively a bad non-hard worker with a money entitlement (what the what, even). The vast and somewhat confusiong conflux of economics, that crisis in 2007 that despite any forecasts still fuck things up, societal structure, heritage, wealth and povery traps, the minimum wage really being the minimum possible wage and often still not enough and a host of other issues. Complaining: “Why do I have to work so hard, it seems I never have time, what’s wrong with the world mama, I can’t make a dime” is a perfectly functional response to an economy that really does not want the best for anyone, at any time.
But no, no, that’s the same as wanting sex and complaining about not finding love, because loveless people are like the jobless, and their desires for something trumps the existence and needs of other people.
Why?
Is it:
A) Because the world is not fair, and people do unfair things, and a guy who has a long history of abusing others and finding people he can abuse will continue to abuse others and find people he can abuse, because he has found a large set of techniques and tactics that work to entrap people in abusive cycles?
or is it
B) Someone is a Better Man Than Henry, and being A Better Man Than Henry, means someone should Find Love Easier Than Henry, because they are, after all A Better Man Than Henry, and when they don’t, it’s because The World Is Unfair And Women Secretively Desire For Someone To PairBondPunch Them?
One of those conclusions leads to the sort where you live in a world that’s like this one, the other leads to writing a really long blogpost about radicalization and romance and conflating the job market with having a girlfriend.
I mean, ultimately, it’s just a lot of words that boil down to thinking “Well, I don’t think I’m entitled to anything, but other people get stuff I don’t, and I’m better than them, but I don’t get it, so that’s wrong and unfair, and whenever I talk about it, people tell me I’m being wrong, incorrect and stupid.
Why won’t those people shut the fuck up and admit I’m right all long? And if they refuse to shut the fuck up, I’m going to go take the red pill and get toxic views and that’ll really show those bitches because at least the manosphere has the answer to my problems!”
@Shadow_Nirvana
That A does not follow B (And does not lead to C). He’s saying nothing, that is not a thing, not one word, not even one sentence, not a single solitary little statment at all whatsoever in any capacity or way, about the women these people date.
Those women don’t matter. Their only importance is their lack of presence in his life up until this point. It’s not about them, it’s about why guys like Henry get to have “Success” with women (“Success” defined as “Horrifically and tragically beating up several people, but at least he gets to sleep with them”).
And about how he’s a total rapist shitlord for complaining about it, which is unfair, because he isn’t, he just wants to know why he isn’t getting more respect than fucking Henry, because at least he doesn’t beat people, you feminazi, is it so hard to understand that he’s a tender loving soul and the system is rigged, RIGGED!, against him? It bums him up. A lot.
I don’t think that, I even opened up my position further in the second paragraph. Being conned doesn’t require being stupid.
Oh, that was me being generous. I could get a lot less so if you keep this up.
Z.E.L.: Women only care about money. They’d never date men that are baroque.
Unless they’re art history majors, of course. (“around 1590 to 1725”).
I’d also at this point like to criticise Platonic lovers – STOP IT! The guy’s been dead for thousands of years – it’s sick and wrong!
“Let’s liven things up” lend itself well to being a bothersome phrase about how you’re just going to throw a few spanners in the works for your amusement.
I’m only a trained monkey for cash and vodka, and if you pay me in either I’ll dazzle you with magic tricks, stories, bad parkour, acting and amazing massages. Since this is the Internet, you can’t, and making us all feel as if we’re supposed to be clowns for your entertainment is… well it’s just not nice.
See, what you’re doing here is that you’re taking a post where someone talks about his frustrations with the nomenclature of “Nice Guys(tm)” and the feminist / manosphere conversations about it, and turn it into… apparently a discussion about how abusers don’t immediately start abusing people and change slowly? And that someone stays with them because the options of escape are sometimes closed off? Which apparently leads to the conclusion that you have a hard time sympathizing with people in abusive situations because you’re frustrated that your former girlfriend maybe-possibly cheated on you and certainly did cheat with other people?
Which.. uh… what?
I mean ,that’s rough, and I think that’s a hard situation to mentally be in. I would recommend letting it go and going on to find other people more wonderful. I know for a fact that one of my girlfriends cheated on me, with my roommate, and… I don’t give a shit and still talk to both of them and they’re great people and we hang out and bake cakes, so really, “Cheat” is the wrong word here, and anyway, do you like apples?
I mean, I can do random word-association too. I hope that’s lively enough for ya.
How the hell does that relate to someone complaining about the term nice guys, and how feminists are wrong, and how a guy who abuses multiple people can still be romantically succesful when the complainer is not?
Can you at least enlighten me on what I did? Seriously. I just thought a joyous introduction to a grim inspection would be funny, not insulting.
My teaching rates are at least $200 an hour, dude, so I just don’t think you can afford the full “how not to annoy the crap out of people on the internet” course.
This statement:
and these statements:
don’t go together. I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to spot the contradictions.