We Hunted The Mammoth
Some Men Going Their Own Way are reacting to news of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death with a certain malicious glee. “Ding Dong the Witch is Dead,” writes one fellow in the MGTOW subreddit. “HAHAHA prayers do work, now let’s end abortion,” responds another.
Ah, the Nice Guy, perpetually confused that women aren’t vending machines that dole out a serving of sex for every five kindness tokens you insert in them.
And this is why the notion of the “friend zone” is so damn toxic.
The comment below the meme seems pretty accurate to me, though.
H/T — r/GamerGhazi
Pop quiz!
Today, dear readers, I present you with the following one-question pop quiz to test your knowledge of Men’s Rights Activism.
UPDATE: D’oh! It looks like this Craigslist ad is a fake. A very similar “gentleman” posted a very similar Craigslist Personal a little less than a year ago, as this Huffington Post story at the time reported. That gentleman claimed to be living in California, not Canada. So unless the fellow who wrote this ad just moved to Edmonton, it looks like a big ol FAKE.
But it’s still pretty funny.
Hey ladies! Are you a “worthy” woman between the ages of 18-27? Do you like men who think most women, including possibly you, are terrible? Are you looking for a long-winded, judgmental jackass who is definitely older than you but who won’t specify his age, what kind of music he likes, or whether or not he likes dogs until after you’ve met? Do you enjoy reading giant walls of text on the internet that randomly erupt in ALL CAPS and inappropriate “quotation” marks?
Oh, and do you live in Alberta, Canada?
Well, then, you’re in luck, because I have found the man for you! Correction: the GENTLEman for you. Nestled away in the men seeking women section of Craigslist, Edmonton, there’s a self-described
very nice, mature , “gentleman.” with a higher college degree and education. I have my own house (not apartment), car, motorcycle, income, etc. I am of European descent (Spanish/Austrian). A professional man with a GOOD BACKGROUND. Better than 99% of what you will find, GUARANTEE #1.
And all you have to do to in order to meet this fine fellow is to read through his 3500 word, 28-question FAQ to make sure you don’t disagree with him about anything, from the playing of video games (bad) to the proper age difference between men and women in relationships (“Generally speaking the MAN should be OLDER than the woman because females mature or age faster than males (both physically and mentally). This is a scientific fact.”)
From Comedy Central’s Inside Amy Schumer, here’s a little skit taking on the phenomenon of the Nice Guy. No fedoras so be seen, but other than that she pretty much covers all the bases, right on down to the neckbeards on some of the fellas. Caution: Mild creepshaming.
NOTE TO ANGRY MRAS: This video does not represent an official statement on the part of feminism. Amy Schumer is a COMEDIAN.
Hey, Chicago readers: If you can make it up to Evanston this Monday, I’ll be giving a talk titled “Escape from the Planet of the Friend Zone,” exploring some of the mythology of this dreaded place. The talk, like my talk two years ago, will be part of Northwestern’s Annual Sex Week, sponsored by the College Feminists. (The talk itself is cosponsored by NU’s Men Against Rape and Sexual Assault.)
It’s at 7 PM in Kresge Hall 4365, which is on the Southern end of campus, near “the rock.” (Here’s a map.) If you’re taking the el, get off at the Foster stop and head east; then a little ways south when you hit campus. I’ll check about parking for non-students and provide details later.
The last time I gave a talk during Northwestern’s Sex Week, some MRAs got a little overexcited and started making up things about what they assumed my talk was about. (They were wrong.) So, just to make clear: I will not be teaching impressionable college students “how to have good sex,” except insofar as I will be talking about how sexist and self-defeating the concept of the Friend Zone is, which means it’s possible that some dude could attend the lecture and decide to stop whining about getting stuck in the Friend Zone, and thus improve his romantic and sexual prospects with that one simple step.
I haven’t finished writing the talk yet, so if any of you have any thoughts on the Friend Zone — or the closely related topic of the “nice guy” — let me know in the comments below.
I’m also curious about what role the concept of the Friend Zone plays in your everyday lives, so I’m going to spit out a bunch of questions that I may address in the talk and may ask the students as well. I’d be interested in your answers.
Have you ever been put in a situation that you or other people might describe as the Friend Zone? Whose fault do you think it was? Have you ever been accused of putting someone else in the Friend Zone? Did you find this insulting? Has someone else, through their own obsequiousness, put themselves in the Friend Zone with you?
Is the Friend Zone a male thing or are there a significant number of women and girls who find themselves friendzoned as well?
Does the notion of the Friend Zone grow out of male entitlement? Is it a fundamentally manipulative to try to pressure a woman into romance and sex? Or does it grow out of male awkwardness — the inherently difficult situation of shy or perhaps socially awkward guys who are still nonetheless expected to be the ones who pursue women rather than the other way around, as MRA types might argue?
When did the term start getting used? The concept is certainly not new, but I don’t think the term is that old. When did you all first start hearing it?
How can guys (or gals) get out of the Friend Zone?
Can a Friend Zone situation — by which I mean one in which one person is romantically interested and the other isn’t — be transformed into a real friendship, or will the different feelings/expectations of the two people make this impossible?
Alternately, can a Friend Zone situation turn into a real romance?
Is the Friend Zone really a useful concept at all? There are very few relationships — platonic, romantic or purely sexual — in which each partner feels the exact same way about the other. There are mismatches all the time. Shouldn’t we just learn to roll with it? Maybe the answer to the old When Harry Met Sally question — can a man be friends with a woman he’s attracted to? — is, “why the hell not?”
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.
Blog posts by the New Misogynists I write about here often seem to be little more than combinations and recombinations of a relatively small number of very bad ideas. Today, let’s look at a blog post from a “conservative libertarian” and creepy Nice Guy ™ who identifies himself only as TIC, which combines a bit of “consent is hard” and “women only like bad boys” with some muddled notions from Evo Psych to conclude that women are such mysterious creatures that no one could possibly know what they really want — and so therefore it’s women who are the ones who are really responsible when they get raped.
A veritable anthem for average looking guys with nothing particularly interesting about them who are pissed off they can’t date women much more conventionally attractive than they are.
