'NiceGuy', 'Asshole' - Different Sides
of the Same Coin?
by Mithrandir
After reading through your "nice guy" section, I
just want to thank you for finally summing up my feelings on the matter more
cleverly and eloquently than I could. In the past, I have had trouble
pin-pointing what it was that bothered me about "Nice Guys." I
guess that, at first, I was too busy being confused to become pissed off:
whenever a NiceGuy would complain that he has trouble with romance because he's
too nice (and being in the middle of a nerdy social circle, I hear these
complaints often), my typical thought would be something along the lines of:
"huh; that's weird; every girl who I've dated so far has
liked me because I'm nice. Conversely, none of the girls who have turned
me down have done so because of my nicer traits; it's not like they say,
"Sorry, but you didn't call me enough nasty names on our first date, and
you forgot to slap the waitress' ass!"
Given this, I'd have a hard time believing that being
(genuinely) nice is the true cause of this person's lack of romantic success,
but I'd figure that perhaps they simply don't have a clue what the real cause
is (and some truly don't, I guess). However, then I read your rants, and
it gave me a laugh and also helped me pinpoint another hypocrisy in the NiceGuy
philosophy; namely, they see the world as being divided between 3 types of people:
nice guys, assholes, and "women." As if being a
"woman" is the only distinctive trait possessed by women, and it is
up to the "nice males" and the "asshole males" to compete
for this commodity known as "womankind." How can anyone hold
such a mentality and still get confused when nobody sees them as being every
woman's dream?
Also, reading the comments that were sent in response to
these rants has convinced me that these people aren't just ignorant hypocrites;
most of them KNOW that they're really assholes themselves, and are just pissed
off that their painstaking tactics are a waste of time.
Basically, the impression that I got from these comments is
that the interests of these NiceGuys are almost identical to those of their
"asshole rivals," and that they think of women the same way as well:
basically, as potential "rewards" for all their hard work pretending
to be a decent person. Basically, the negative responses were divided
between 4 types of people (though you've probably already made these observations):
1)
People who were oblivious to the fact that the rants
weren't about genuinely nice people. It makes me wonder what is going
on in a person's head when their initial reaction to a rant such as yours is
"why, she must hate nice people!" I guess that these are the
people who stopped reading in the middle of the title.
2)
People who whine that whenever they befriend a girl, she
starts going out with some guy who "just wants to get laid," and so
then they "can't even get laid!" They should at least be
aware of the irony here, but no; they're not even aware of the hypocrisy.
As you basically said several times, you can tell the difference between a nice
person and someone who is only pretending because the faker will complain about
how they weren't rewarded for all their "effort."
Honestly, how can anyone devote so much time and
effort into hiding their intentions and feelings towards someone, and then be
surprised when these intentions go unfulfilled? For that matter, how can
they think that it's an injustice that their intentions go unfulfilled when
they're basically identical to those of the supposedly less-deserving
"other guy"? These are the people who convinced me that
NiceGuys know that they are assholes (rather than just being ignorant), and
have some nerve claiming not to be.
3)
Some fucked up people spouting weird shit about how women
need to be protected/ nurturing/ told what their place is/ (insert patronizing,
puritanical gender role here), and how "that damned feminist movement is
ruining everything." These people need a news flash: as we gain
more and more knowledge in the fields of psychology, anthropology, and biology,
it seems that we find less and less cause to believe that gender roles are
anything but socially constructed. Neither sex is "inherently"
anything, and it boggles my mind that people still try and cite some bogus
gender role to back up their argument that women are inherently attracted to
such-and-such, or that this-and-that are in their nature. No they're NOT.
Women, like men, are "inherently" in possession of their own fucking
brains; it's not like they all run off some computer program, and it's not like
they were put here as part of some "divine plan" where step 1 is that
they have to be good mothers and obedient wives.
4)
People who think that women must be attracted to assholes
because they got dumped once or twice. Who hasn't?
People like this need to stop seeing each individual as representing the whole
of their sex. When a woman dumps
you, this is not a mass rejection by all women. There is such thing as "individual
circumstance," which means that people get together, people break up, and
the who/what/why is going to vary. Maybe it just didn't work out, and it
will with another person. Maybe not.
Maybe her reasons were valid, and it's time for some self-examination. In
any case, a breakup or two doesn't say jack shit about what "women,"
as a whole, think.
Anyway, I've written too much, and since you've already said
it all, it's all the more useless for me to just re-iterate for so many
paragraphs. I just felt like ranting, and figured that I may as well send
the rant to the person who inspired it. Keep writing!
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