Mandolin Wrote

No, the premise of the cartoon is that he is using friendliness and supportiveness not because he likes being friendly and supportive, but because he wants sex.

I disagree with this. It’s pretty clear in the comic that the Nice Guy’s goals aren’t sex, they’re a committed romantic relationship. At the end of row 3 they kiss. And after that the next scene is domestic, not sexual.

I think this is a point you’ve been getting wrong. Nice Guy’s TM (in my experience) are after a relationship that likely includes sex, but sex is not the sole or main goal.

There is a difference, in my mind, between ending up with your friend, and trying to end up with your friend. A bit Zen-ish, granted.

Ya know, the Lord may have shown me the way here. Perhaps it’s a cunt vs. Kant thing.

As I mentioned earlier, I’m not a very goal-oriented guy. I lust after lots of friends. Some of those lusts turned into physical relationships, some didn’t, but pretty much any planning that extended beyond a weekend was done by my girlfriends. Thus I try to understand things from the Nice Guy point of view, but I’m sensing that I just don’t have the ambition/organization/long-range planning skills to be a Nice Guy.

I admire goal-oriented people, at least in theory. But in practice, I get annoyed when I perceive that I’m one of their goals. I suspect most of us were the goal of one or more parents. Their obsessive interests in the status of my relationships and oh-so-helpful newspaper clippings about careers and diet made it perfectly clear that there were things I could do to please them. Is there something wrong with parents having opinions about their kid’s lives? Maybe not, in the abstract, but it does piss me off.

Occasionally a distraught friend (or my wife) vents to me about a situation. Occasionally I offer a suggestion or opinion. This almost always proves to be unwelcome. While journalists sometimes refer to a person as “a close friend and advisor to the President,” I’m always reminded that playing the role of friend largely precludes playing the role of advisor. Either I’m “on the team” or I’m not. Dichotomous, if you will.

Then last night I heard Terry Gross interview Frank Schaeffer about his life growing up in an evangelical community, and the gradual evolution of his thoughts since then. All his life he had been trained to focus on the goal of saving people by bringing them to Jesus. Every word from his mother had to end with some moral. And every casual conversation with a stranger on the bus was an opportunity to evangelize. Wow, what a focused, disciplined guy! And then he remarked on how liberating it was to be free from that burden, to simply interact without agenda, to be open.

Immanuel Kant argues that we should treat all rational agents as “ends in themselves,” not at means to some other end. I’ve often found this idea loosy-goosy. How specifically should I manifest this idea in my role as a job interviewer? As a job interviewee? A bus driver? A bus passenger? A voter? A candidate? A student? A teacher? A husband? A father? A dog owner?

I still find it loosy-goosy. A bit Zen-ish, even. But arguably this discussion about the behavior of Nice Guys identifies a practical difference between people who regard others as ends in themselves, and people who merely regard others as means.

The counter meme is
“Guys that say they are nice guys are really passive aggressive potential date rapists who don’t realized what they call being nice might better be called being manipulative.” Men don’t like this meme because they think they’re being maligned just because they were intimidated and shy around girls at one time or another.”

I note that the guy has a voice in both of these, even if filtered (”guys that say”), but the gal only has a voice in the latter. The root behavior may be partly human, but the twists sexism gives it is what brings it to feminist’s attention.

(I also note that only guys are concerned about more that just “what this says about them.” um, ok)

Also, “guys that say they are nice guys” usually aren’t. (Especially if they say it a lot.) Whether they genuinely think they are nice or not. Simply by virtue of the fact that, as others have pointed out elsewhere, “niceness” is not a trait one usually bestows upon oneself. People that say this about themselves - especially in the context of talking about relationships - are essentially really saying “I’m normal/not a bad person” Sadly, for them and for us, “I’m normal” = / = “I’m nice.” And that’s before we get to the point already talked about a lot here, which is that neither “nice” nor “normal” equals “attractive.” Which would be where much of the confusion starts.

Also, feminists care about the phenomenon not because we think that only guys have flaws or have one sided relationships (they don’t), but because sexism and male entitlement says that “normal” guys deserve pussy/true love, but being considered “normal” is very rarely seen as enough for girls/women to get the guy. Which is itself partly a product of the whole “guy does the asking” norm.

It also goes back to the femininity/masculinity Nice Girl/Nice Guy issue discussed earlier. Often the “girls date jerks” bit is amended to include “who are rich/drive nice cars/etc.” The accusation then becomes that girls are shallow/manipulative/whores with a reiteration of the idea that girls overlook “normal” in favor of things. The idea that “men date bimbos,” however, is essentially accusing men of not wanting a real relationship. The idea is not that men overlook “normal”, but that they are too selfish or childish to want “normal.”

The Nice Girl lament isn’t any nicer or healthier than the Nice Guy lament, but it’s interesting to note that while the Nice Guy seems to be concerned about not getting what he wants (a girlfriend/sex), the Nice Girl is essentially concerned about not being what is wanted. While both turn fears of being unworthy into reassuring themselves that they are too worthy, the Nice Guy usually accuses the object of his affection of being stupid, but the Nice Girl usually accuses the object of her affection of wanting stupid. Or, rather, of wanting a thing rather than a person. There is overlap - immaturity is a kind of stupidity and treating girlfriends as things to have rather then people to be with is a way to insulate oneself from not being wanted - but there does seem to be a power discrepancy.

Which is part what drives most feminists I know crazy. Yeah, life sucks for the shy boy who fears possible rejection, but it hardly sucks less for the shy girl who for whom never getting asked is a constant rejection. And yet only the girl is really expected to go to great - but downplayed - lengths to make herself more attractive. This is why a lot of Nice Guy laments are greeted with “take shower” and the like by even feminists. The accusation isn’t so much that all Nice Guys have bad hygiene , it’s more observing/venting that similar complaints from girls and women are almost always greeted with advice on how to be more attractive to men.

Yay! ;)

No, the premise of the cartoon is that he is using friendliness and supportiveness not because he likes being friendly and supportive, but because he wants sex. The friendliness and supportiveness aren’t just a way of makign a friend (who also happens to be attractive), but a way of trying to coerce that person into sleeping with him.

Almost all my friends are women, I’m a straight man, and I’ve only been romantically attracted to two of them. I’m not sure how this “maintains clear dichotomous modes of behavior” unless you’re starting out with the attitude that women are fucks, not friends.

That’s interesting. I don’t see the “fucks, not friends” dichotomy, but perhaps other people do.

2. The man’s duty to declare his feelings is independent of the likelihood that this declaration will lead to romantic attachment. The fact that he might better develop a relationship by not immediately disclosing his interest is irrelevant.

That he might better develop a relationship by not immediately disclosing his interest is improbable and deceptive….

But that’s the premise of the cartoon, isn’t it? That the guy lures some woman by being friendly and supportive, and then the relationship turns sexual?

3. If the object of a man’s affections does not share his feelings, the man’s duty is to Get On With His Life, which precludes Being Friends. The act of Being Friends would violate the dichotomous norms.

I have no fucking idea where you’re getting this.

I’m sorry. I meant to refer to the second and third panels of the cartoon, which say “I could ask you out, and move on with my life if you said no. Or, we could be friends!” I read that to suggest that the author approves of the dichotomous perspective (go out or “get on with your life”) and disparages the being friends with someone you find sexually/romantically attractive. But perhaps there’s more than one way to understand that passage.

Similarly, if a relationship is gratifying to a man but not to his mate, it is the man’s fault. After all, the man is responsible for other people’s happiness, not his own. To think otherwise would be unchivalrous.

I see no relationship that is gratifying to a man but not to his mate here.

“It’ll feel comfortable and natural. You’ll quietly revise your definition of love and try to be happy. And sometimes you will be.”

I read this to suggest that the guy is contented with this relationship – he’s pursuing it, after all – but the woman isn’t.

Admittedly, maybe the author’s just being snarky, implying that the guy is acting in a self-defeating manner because, even if he achieves his objectives, he’ll just be in a relationship he won’t like.

5. Being in a relationship that was started on the basis of sexual attraction is the only road to fulfillment. Being in a relationship that was started on the basis of friendship is a road to perpetual longing for others.

If anything, the strip says the opposite.

“Only the wistfulness in your gaze and the tiny pause before you say, ‘I love you’ will hint that this wasn’t the ending you’d hoped for.”

I read this to imply that it’s a foregone conclusion that a woman who forms a couple with a friend – that is, a guy to whom she was not initially attracted by sexual desire – will be dissatisfied. Again, perhaps there’s more than one way to read this.

Please! Be friends with people you’d like to fuck! Be friends with everyone! Friends, friends, friends.

Well … ok, but just cuz you asked, Mandolin. And it’s Xmas.

This is just about the opposite of the point most of teh women in this thread (and other nice guy threads) have been making.

Please! Be friends with people you’d like to fuck! Be friends with everyone! Friends, friends, friends.

But don’t be friends only because you want to fuck them, and declare teh friendship bad and irrelevant and manipulative and a waste of time because no sex results from it.

1. Asexuality is the norm; sexual (romantic) attraction is unusual. If a man feels such attraction, his duty is to declare it to the object of his affections. Thus, we maintain clear dichotomous modes of behavior.

Romantic attraction is unusual. Almost all my friends are women, I’m a straight man, and I’ve only been romantically attracted to two of them. I’m not sure how this “maintains clear dichotomous modes of behavior” unless you’re starting out with the attitude that women are fucks, not friends. No one is saying men should not have or express romantic feelings for their friends.

2. The man’s duty to declare his feelings is independent of the likelihood that this declaration will lead to romantic attachment. The fact that he might better develop a relationship by not immediately disclosing his interest is irrelevant.

That he might better develop a relationship by not immediately disclosing his interest is improbable and deceptive (where “immediately” means “shortly after it becomes manifest to him”).

3. If the object of a man’s affections does not share his feelings, the man’s duty is to Get On With His Life, which precludes Being Friends. The act of Being Friends would violate the dichotomous norms.

I have no fucking idea where you’re getting this.

4. A man who fails to fulfill his duty to declare his feelings out of fear of rejection should be ridiculed.

Sure, if he then behaves as though he’s expressed his feelings (ignoring your use of the rather loaded phrase “fulfill his duty”).

A woman who feels uncomfortable that some guy has unexpressed feelings towards her, but fears to initiate a discussion with the guy, should be pitied.

Ah, I think I see where you’re going astray. No woman feels uncomfortable that some guy has unexpressed feelings towards her. Because he hasn’t expressed them. She doesn’t feel anything about them, they’re unexpressed, she doesn’t know about them. I promise you, that girl who doesn’t seem to know you’re alive? Doesn’t.

Similarly, if a relationship is gratifying to a man but not to his mate, it is the man’s fault. After all, the man is responsible for other people’s happiness, not his own. To think otherwise would be unchivalrous.

I see no relationship that is gratifying to a man but not to his mate here.

5. Being in a relationship that was started on the basis of sexual attraction is the only road to fulfillment. Being in a relationship that was started on the basis of friendship is a road to perpetual longing for others.

If anything, the strip says the opposite.

1. Asexuality is the norm; sexual (romantic) attraction is unusual. If a man feels such attraction, his duty is to declare it to the object of his affections. Thus, we maintain clear dichotomous modes of behavior.

2. The man’s duty to declare his feelings is independent of the likelihood that this declaration will lead to romantic attachment. The fact that he might better develop a relationship by not immediately disclosing his interest is irrelevant.

3. If the object of a man’s affections does not share his feelings, the man’s duty is to Get On With His Life, which precludes Being Friends. The act of Being Friends would violate the dichotomous norms.

4. A man who fails to fulfill his duty to declare his feelings out of fear of rejection should be ridiculed. A woman who feels uncomfortable that some guy has unexpressed feelings towards her, but fears to initiate a discussion with the guy, should be pitied. Similarly, if a relationship is gratifying to a man but not to his mate, it is the man’s fault. After all, the man is responsible for other people’s happiness, not his own. To think otherwise would be unchivalrous.

5. Being in a relationship that was started on the basis of sexual attraction is the only road to fulfillment. Being in a relationship that was started on the basis of friendship is a road to perpetual longing for others.

Of all these assumptions, the first seems the oddest to me. I’ve never had a sexual relationship with someone who was not first and foremost a friend. Weirdo that I am, I have never picked up anyone in a bar or had a one-night stand.

I often wonder about the social good that might be achieved if everyone were in fact an “open book”. Does Texas want to criminalize sodomy? Fine; let’s have everyone who engages in the practice turn themselves in. In many respects it might improve life.

So how about if people actually behaved in accordance with the first assumption? What if people – especially men – actually announced each time they found someone (or something?) sexually attractive? Would that really be helpful? It might, because after the initial shock of realizing that lots of people are attracted to lots of people, we might come to accept this fact as commonplace.

After all, isn’t it creepy to imagine some middle-aged high school teacher masturbating to fantasies about this or that student? I always thought so – until I became a middle-aged guy. I fantasize about all kinds of people all around me. If I were a high-school teacher I can’t imaging that I wouldn’t be fantasizing about students. It’s really creepy to think about only because we imaging that sexual attraction is somehow unusual, aberrant. If we could accept that sexual attraction is extraordinarily common, then we might get over this.

Perhaps the real issue with the cartoon doesn’t involve assumptions about sex, but about goal setting and closure. Specifically, I don’t. I’m just not a guy who sets goals, and I’m reasonably comfortable with ambiguity, with maintaining multiple competing ideas. So the idea that there was a point in my life when all my romantic feelings attached to one and only one person, and all my hopes and plans revolved around that one person, and my attentions moved in serial fashion from one object of affect to another, is simply inaccurate. Romantic, perhaps, but inaccurate.

And now we come to the last assumption. I have a great marriage and some lovely kids. And I still ponder how my life might have been different if I’d married someone else. (Although, to be fair, I do so less and less over time.) Is that really so unusual? While I still don’t get Nice Guys, I’m fond of the song One of the Good Guys by Richard Maltby, Jr.:

Right here you see one of the good guys:
One of the nice ones with sensible drives.
What else could I be? I’m one of the good guys
who play with their children and dote on and pamper their wives.

Oh hell, why defend all of us good guys
drowning in plenty yet whining for more?
Truth is, my friend – just between good guys –
It’s not which road you take. It’s not which life you live in.
Whichever choice you make, the longing? That’s a given.
And that’s what brings the ache
that only the good guys know.

(Stupid, actual work.)

Now I’m glad I was delayed. I’m not really plugged into what everybody’s talking about here. Still, reading over this whole discussion I get a real “tempest in a teapot” type of vibe. All this seems to boil down to some kind of general “fed-up-ed-ness” (if I may invent a word) with a modern masculine subset that has an admittedly timid and assbackwards approach to sexual conquest, and, when defeated, likes to put the onus on the modern woman’s dating habits. (At least, that’s what I’m getting out of this.)

Seems to me this stuff is pretty straight forward. Some guys don’t do well at straight-up seduction, bitch about the facts of life, and then you guys slap ‘em around for being Darwinian failures. I’m sure their kvetching is really off-putting, but it strikes me as though whomping on these guys is a bit like taking time to stroll by the fat kid’s house after he was picked last for baseball and laughing at him for grousing.

Between these “Nice Guys” you’re talking about, and the amount of “he done me wrong” stories we hear in real life and through the media, I’m honestly surprised women don’t give up on men altogether. But, whatever their various virtues and faults, I don’t see great degrees of superiority between different types of men. Only between different men. I’m switching off this theme and heading back to the big fish.

I think as Elkins notes above that this depends tremendously on one’s own socioeconomic and cultural norms. Among professionals with an advanced (i.e. beyond college) degree, women who are highly domestic and not hyper competitive in the academic/career realm have a harder time getting matched up than women who fit the prioritization of having a JD/MD from a highly-ranked school and a six figure salary. (To be bluntly personal about this, my older sister who is a great cook and homemaker wasn’t as hot a commodity in my group’s dating market as my younger sister, who graduated from an Ivy League college and is at a top 5 medical school.) It might be expected that the woman will reduce her work hours once she starts a family, but the resume expectation in the dating game remain.

The burden of complaints on both sides tend to be that the positive traits the Nice Guy/Girl has aren’t being sufficiently valued on the dating market and especially by the person in whom the Guy/Girl is interested.

I’m not talking about anything near a perfect correlation here. I think if we took the complaints of every tragic, love-shy fool, (including but not exclusive to Nice Guys/Girls,) put them up on a graph somehow, the results would kind of be all over the place - but the line of best fit would be toward guys complaining about uber-masculinity, and gals complaining about uber-femininity.

I mean, it does make sense. Take all the cultural images we have of otherwise regular people who are inexplicably supposed to repel the opposite sex, and the common denominator is that they’re not good at “performing gender”. And while most of these representations I get from media rather than from real people, I consider cultural ubiquity to be the best approximation we have here for the social average.

With absolutely no ill will or anything like that implied, I suggest that feminists are often unwilling to embrace this kind of narrative because they think it will encourage everyone to go out and reinforce traditional gender norms. This is a remote possibility, but I think the change of social attitudes that happened over the past few decades, while by no means complete, have been embraced far more thoroughly than some social critics credit. We’re never going back, ever, and excuses if this sounds callous, but I think the only reason we’ve sort of reached an impasse is because the older generation, too set in its ways, has yet to die off.

My female friends and relatives who are very domestic (surely a “feminine” trait) have complained that the guys they like seem to be looking for women who are higher-achieving in education and their careers (a “masculine” trait).

Yes, and I’ve known big, brutish sort of fellows (of the Zeta frat, of course) who complained that women only liked “gay guys” (by which they meant cosmopolitan). The exceptions don’t disprove the general rule.

How often does one hear that “guys never go for domestic women” - or some variation of such? Personally, I hear “guys are intimidated by strong/independent women”, which are most definitely standard masculine traits.

I think, by and large, this behavior arises far less from unrepentantly misogynistic men seeking a new way to degrade and hassle women than it does as one symptom of many of a sexist societal model of romance and sex. The best way to minimize (not eliminate, since that’s totally impossible) the suffering involved in the process is to have open, honest communication on the part of everyone involved, but the cultural narratives tend to work against this. The narrative of the dishonest or manipulative woman is very strong (as are other sexist images like the smart, attractive woman who stands by her “dumb” husband), and many sources actively encouraging women to match these stereotypes in order to succeed romantically. The same factors come into play, just with different stereotypes, on the men’s side. (As usual with oppressive systems, both genders lose freedom to behave in the way they’d prefer, but the “better” roles are saved for the men’s side.)

Mix this in with the general distrust of honesty in American culture, and the intense association of couplehood (or sexual prowess) with success, and you get a huge list of entirely dysfunctional romantic/sexual behaviors, of which Nice Guy behavior is particularly notable but by no means the only example.

Right, and possibly the specific positive traits that Nice Girls ™ cite differ somewhat from social circle to social circle. My own experience with the Nice Girls’ ™ equivalent of “Chicks Dig Jerks” has been “Guys Dig Stupid Women.” I’ve never heard the complaint of “Guys Dig Career Women” before. So I’m guessing it just varies a bit from circle to circle, although of course the fundamental dynamic of the complaint (”the positive traits I feel I have are of no romantic value to the opposite sex, how unfair!”) remains the same.

Probably best not to get into whether one considers stupidity a masculine or feminine trait, though. Heh.

(Although, in truth, I’d say that societally, we tend to associate intelligence in both sexes with the refusal or inability to perform gender at all. The stereotypical male nerd fails at performing masculinity, but he is usually not precisely femme. The female bookworm fails at performing femininity, but she is hardly ever butch. It is the extreme performance of either gender expression that we associate with stupidity — stupid men are stereotypically hyper-masculinized brutish louts, while the stereotype of the stupid woman is the air-headed, hyper-feminized ditz.)

That’s an interesting idea: that hetero Nice Guys complain about women’s interest in hypermasculine guys, and het Nice Girls complain about men’s interest in hyperfeminine girls. I just don’t think it’s necessarily true.

Both a Nice Guy and a Nice Girl could complain that s/he puts a lot more effort into a gift for the “friend” than the friend’s significant other does. Are they complaining about a hypermasculine or hyperfeminine aspect of the SO? The burden of complaints on both sides tend to be that the positive traits the Nice Guy/Girl has aren’t being sufficiently valued on the dating market and especially by the person in whom the Guy/Girl is interested. My female friends and relatives who are very domestic (surely a “feminine” trait) have complained that the guys they like seem to be looking for women who are higher-achieving in education and their careers (a “masculine” trait).

But I’m not going to ever, ever act like these guys have done me wrong by not wanting me. That’s just silly. People are allowed to not be attracted to me no matter how much I want them and how good a person I am and I understand that. That’s why I’m not a Nice Girl (TM).

Sure it’s hard when you like someone and they don’t like you back. Been there, done that. But you have to realize that your unrequited attraction is your problem, not theirs, and you have no right to make it their problem. If you have to stop being friends with them, then do it. There’s no rule that says you have to torture yourself by pretending you don’t like someone you are head-over-heels for.