Category Archives: nice guys
Is she really going out with him?
Some guys get all the chicks!
This is a bit of a rant inspired by some of the discussions of my recent post on Susan Walsh.
In my defense, I’ve enlivened it with a couple of videos.
Let’s say you’re a young, horny, lonely heterosexual guy. You’re walking to the store to buy some, I dunno, pretzels, and you see the woman of your dreams walking arm in arm with some hideous toad of a man. You say to yourself: how is it that a nice guy like me can’t find any girl who will return my phone calls, while ugly boy here seems to have won the girlfriend jackpot? If you’re Joe Jackson, you write a song about it:
Pretty women out walking with gorillas down my street
From my window I’m staring while my coffee grows cold
Look over there! (Where?)
There’s a lady that I used to know
She’s married now or engaged or something so I’m told
Is she really going out with him?
Is she really gonna take him home tonight?
Is she really going out with him?
‘Cause if my eyes don’t deceive me,
There’s something going wrong around here
A lot about the world seems desperately wrong when you’re young, horny and alone. But maybe in this case there is something that you’re missing. Maybe the ugly dude is charming as fuck. Maybe he’s a brilliant thinker. Maybe he’s awesome in bed. Maybe she’s shallow and materialistic, and she likes him just because he’s rich. Or maybe there’s nothing redeeming about the guy – intellectually, sexually or financially — and the woman in question simply has horrendous taste in men. It could be any of these things.
But here’s the thing: no matter how wounded you feel, whom this woman goes out with is really none of your business. She doesn’t have to have a good reason to be going out with him. It’s not your call. The world doesn’t owe you a hot girlfriend, and this particular woman has the inalienable right to go out with whoever she chooses, even if you personally feel ill at the thought of them doing it. Women you find attractive aren’t obliged to date men you think are appropriate for them.
A lot of guys in the manosphere seem to have hung on to this young-man’s anger and sexual jealousy. But instead of somehow turning their resentment into a catchy song, and then moving away from the rock world to a more jazz-inflected sound, these men cultivate their resentments. And talk about them endlessly.
Soon they’ve developed the uncanny ability to demonize any woman who makes any romantic choice – other than picking them. If a “hot” women is dating an ugly dude, well,
He must be rich! All women are filthy golddigging whores! She’d never give a decent, hardworking beta like me a second look!
If the same woman is dating a conventionally handsome man, the reaction can be just as strong:
She’s a shallow bitch! They always go for the alphas! She’d never give a decent, hardworking beta like me a second look!
Weirdly, a lot of manosphere dudes also get angry about the sexual and romantic choices of women they aren’t interested in at all. If a woman they don’t think is all that hot is with a conventionally handsome man, it’s still the woman to blame:
Ha! She’s punching above her weight class, looks-wise. I guess any bitch can get laid, while a hard-working beta like me doesn’t even rate a second look. But eventually he’ll dump her and I will laugh and laugh. Live it up now, bitch, because you’re going to end up alone with a bunch of cats!
This is the thing that’s weirdest to me. Getting worked up about a woman you like who’s dating a loser? I can understand that. I did that, a lot, in my twenties. But quite a few manosphere dudes – and women like Susan Walsh who are manosphere-adjacent – seem somehow deeply affronted by the notion that any women could hook up with a man either lower or higher on that universal 10-point hotness scale so beloved by PUAs and other manosphere dudes.
Walsh speaks of “equilibrium” in the “sexual marketplace” (or SMP as she and her fans like to abbreviate it), and seems to consider any deviation from it to be a moral failing – of the women involved. (The slut-shaming is strong with this one.) Her idea of “equilibrium,” as I mentioned in my last post on her, is one in which fives date fives, tens date tens, and female sixes and sevens know better than to try to get the attention of male eights and nines by wearing low-cut dresses and “slutting it up.”
But here’s the thing. If you’re going to try to mix economic terminology into your dating advice, it helps to actually know what the terms mean. Market equilibrium, as Wikipedia handily summarizes it,
refers to a condition where a market price is established through competition such that the amount of goods or services sought by buyers is equal to the amount of goods or services produced by sellers. This price is often called the equilibrium price or market clearing price and will tend not to change unless demand or supply change.
Guess what? Insofar as the dating world is a marketplace, it’s already at equilibrium. Potential daters size up their prospects, and make a guess as to who is and who isn’t “in their league.” Those who are aiming too high (setting their price too high) and not hooking up with anyone (selling themselves) may end up lowering their standards (lowering their price) to make a sale (get laid). Some products (people) appeal to a wide demographic; others to a nice market. Some have better marketing then others. Some products look good at first glance, but turn out to need a lot of repairs. All this is mighty familiar to students of economics. This is how markets work.
Of course, the dating world is even more complicated and messy than economic marketplaces. But in a lot of ways it really does act like one.
The interesting thing here is that Walsh and her followers aren’t thinking like capitalists at all. Essentially, they’ve decided that they know better than the SMP they so love to talk about, that their imaginary 10-point scale should predict who chooses whom better than those who are actually doing the choosing. That’s not capitalism; that’s a Soviet style command economy. It’s not the way marketplaces work, and it’s not the way the dating world works.
Guys: if no one is buying what you’re selling, you could try to change what you’re selling so that it appeals to buyers more. Or if you are confident in your product you can simply wait until a more discerning buyer shows up.
Or you could sit by yourself stewing in your own bitterness and blaming everything on the bitches. Much like the jealous narrator of David Bowie’s classic Queen Bitch, only much less sexually ambiguous. And, frankly, much less appealing. In this song, Bowie manages to make sexual resentment somehow glamorous.
I would like to apologize for talking about this song and bitter manosphere dudes in the same sentence. But I’m still posting the video. This is Bowie, in 1972, performing it live, and fucking killing it:
Man Boobz Summer Video Fest: MRA Robot speaks!
Since I’m on vacation this week, I decided that maybe it was time for a Man Boobz Summer Video Fest, featuring enlightening videos from some of the Men’s Rightsers and assorted freelance misogynists on YouTube. My idea was that this would take very little work on my part yet produce many lulz.
Unfortunately, I sort of forgot why I almost never watch MRA videos on YouTube – that they tend to be completely fucking boring and interminably long. Well, to be honest, any MRA video longer than about three minutes seems interminable to me, and I assume they would also seem interminable to most of you.
Nonetheless, after much painful and tedious searching, I have found a few gems to share with you this week – all of which are shorter than 5 minutes, and most of which (I hope) will be entertaining and enlightening to you all.
To start off, here’s an adorable little MRA robot thing talking about the evils of feminism and why it’s unfair to Nice Guys.
Atheist Elevator Redux, Part Deux: The Return of the Nice Guy
You wouldn't want him propositioning you on an elevator at 4 AM either.
So now it’s all about the “nice guys.” It’s not just that mean, mean Rebecca Watson slandered the good name of all men in the world by suggesting that one amongst their number had committed a somewhat creepy act in an elevator at 4 AM. Now some commenters are accusing her of something like a hate crime against the Nice Guys of the world.
According to cranky sometime-Men’s Rights blogger The Damned Olde Man, the woman he refers to only as “Rude Elevator Bitch” has publicly humiliated a man whose only crime was that he was a little bit shy. Embroidering liberally on the scant few facts we know about the case, Olde Man sets forth a brand new narrative of the incident — based largely on his own imagination –with the mysterious man at the center of the story now transformed into a sweet, awkward fellow he calls Nice Elevator Guy:
By all accounts, NEG appears to be a rather shy, somewhat unconfident nerd or geek who appears to be lacking in the social graces.
When Olde says “by all accounts” he actually means “by no accounts.” We have no idea what sort of personality this fellow has, only that he apparently propositioned Walker in an elevator in Dublin at 4 AM.
It was probably not a good idea to ask REB for coffee just after she finished a lecture on how she is offended by men who sexualize her, especially late at night in an isolated elevator. That would be her point of view which she and all of her supporters have stated quite eloquently. So if one only accounts for REB’s feelings, it was the wrong thing to do. But how about looking at the situation from NEG’s point of view?
That is, from the imaginary point of view of the imaginary character Olde has simply superimposed on a real man we know almost nothing about.
A shy, socially awkward nerd who lacks confidence is likely to feel uncomfortable in any situation where he intends to proposition a woman. But he is likely to be terrified of doing it in a public setting with plenty of people around to witness his humiliation when she turns him down. So from his point of view, an isolated elevator in the middle of the night is probably the ideal location, especially since he was probably never going to have this opportunity again.
Note to shy guys of the world: this is not a good idea. It’s not going to work out well for you.
I’m not quite sure if that’s necessary. I’m a shy guy, and I’m pretty sure most of us shy guys already know that propositioning a woman when the two of you are alone in an confined space is a bad idea. Many of us who sometimes feel awkward in social settings have what is known as “empathy” towards other people and thus are aware when something we do might just make someone else feel awkward. Olde Man continues:
His fear of humiliation is probably not as irrational as her fear of rape and in hindsight, it was definitely more justified. He didn’t rape her, she did reject him. She not only rejected him, she humiliated him, publically, for all the world to see.
Yeah. She “publicly” humiliated a guy she never named. According to a guy who has just written a long post in which he repeatedly refers to her — a blogger who posts under her real name — as a “bitch.”
It’s bad enough to read this bullshit in MRA blogs, where it’s irritating but hardly surprising.
It’s a bit more troubling to find much of this dumb argument repeated – in somewhat more polite language, admittedly – in Psychology Today. In a post entitled “What’s a Shy, Geeky, Nice Guy to Do?” cognitive psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman offers a very similar version of events, in which
a nervous, presumably geeky, socially awkward guy gets on [the elevator] ]with her … [his] heart probably beating fast and palms sweety as heck … .
“Presumably,” “probably” – in other words, these details are simply invented.
While Kaufman acknowledges that the mysterious (alleged) Nice Guy’s approach was “lame,” he, like Olde Man, turns the story into one in which Nice Guys are the real victims:
many entitled, narcissistic males have commented to the effect “what an ungrateful bitch, she should be grateful for being complimented!”, and quite a few feminists have commented “good for Rebecca for scolding men, they need to be put in their place!” All the while, shy, geeky, genuinely nice guys have sat there, reading these extreme comments, no doubt scratching their heads and wondering what in the world they are to do.
What is a shy, geeky, nice guy to do?
Then Kaufman gives some advice on how the Nice Elevator Guy could have handled the attempted pick-up better:
Don’t be creepy. Asking a girl to your hotel room in an elevator at 4 in the morning when the girl has already announced she is tired shows very poor mating intelligence. …
Well, yeah. He continues:
Look for indicators of interest. Any dating coach will tell you how important it is to look for signals of interest. Pay attention to her state. Does she look exhausted?
Generally speaking, when a woman gives a talk about how she hates being hit on at atheist conferences, then later announces that she’s tired and wants to go to bed, these are what you might call “Indicators of Leave Me the Fuck Alone.”
Kaufman goes on:
Does she cringe when you start talking? That’s probably not the right time to put your arm around her.
Can’t argue with that one, really. Cringing: never a good sign.
Kaufman barrels ahead with this mixture of the obvious and the creepy:
Build some sort of rapport first. The guy in the elevator was a complete stranger. There was zero connection. What could the guy have done to increase his chances of receptivity in this particular situation, when she clearly was not in the mood? It’s hard to imagine he could have done anything, but at the very least he could have tried to make some sort of connection.
Or, here’s a radical notion: he could have just LEFT HER ALONE. This one tired lady in the elevator is not the only lady in the world. There will be other chances. Stand down, dude.
But Kaufman, who can’t leave well enough alone himself, goes on to imagine a scenario in which Nice Elevator Guy manages to charm Watson utterly.
RUPERT: Oh, hi Rebecca! I’m a huge fan of yours. I really liked your ideas earlier about skepticism…feminism…blah…blah…And I totally hear you about the guys here. They really are creepy, aren’t they? [Insert witty joke here about how if you were a female at this conference you'd become a lifelong skeptic of geeky men]
WATSON: [Laughs] Yea, thanks for understanding. You were really listening to what I said earlier. What do you research?
Ungghhhh. Excuse me, but I have to go lie down for a moment. The stupid here is too much.
After a bit more of this imagined witty banter, the charmed WATSON is inviting HIM to HER room!
It was at this point that I discovered that there was another whole page worth of this shit. I couldn’t bring myself to read it.
Man Boobz Mad Libs #1: Love is a battlefield
Chicago New Wave pioneers Phil 'n' the Blanks (pictured above) want you to FILL IN the blanks.
Last night, 540-or-so comments into the Atheist Elevator thread, Ion took a moment to school us all in the cold, hard realities of love in our time. Offering his own formerly flailing but now highly successful sexual career as evidence of this theories, he explained why it’s better to be called creepy than courteous. And apparently, acting like a five-year old will score you heaps of hot poon. Who knew?
As much as I learned from Ion’s autobiographic account, I feel as though there is much more wisdom to be gained from reading the stories of other commenters here. So, using Ion’s tale as a template, I would like to offer the first in what I hope will be a long and successful series of Man Boobz Mad Libs. Simply fill in the blanks in the text below to tell your own tale of heartbreak and triumph, and post your results in the comments below. We will all be the wiser for it.
You know what’s funny? You try to come off as [ ] and [ ], but in fact, I actually used to think like you when I was younger and [ ]. I bought into all the “men are [ ], men are natural [ ]” crap spouted by feminist [ ] and their neutered mangina [ ]. I was concerned about not coming off as [ ] or creepy. I was courteous and [ ] and [ ], I respected women, but I forgot to respect [ ]. And while the [ ] boys, playa gangstas, and abusive [ ]bags were [ ]ing around town with an “I take what I want” attitude and a new [ ] on their [ ] every week, I was hearing “Wow, you’re a great [ ], but I like you as a [ ]. Well, see you later, gotta go have [ ] with the [ ] boyfriend I’ve been complaining to [ ] about!”
So you’re right about the [ ]-puffing part, but not so much about the being [ ]. I’m less [ ] now than I ever was. I put myself [ ]. I don’t apologize for being a [ ]. It took me a while to [ ] up, but I did. And let me tell you, things are better than [ ]. I got my first [ ] after acting ‘inappropriate’ and going for a [ ] the night we first met. A day later, she was the one would wouldn’t [ ] me [ ]. So much for “[ ] give in because of [ ] pressures”, I guess. Second [ ], in college, I [ ] like a five-year old [ ]. Totally out of character, even I was ashamed of my [ ]. Afterwards, she was [ ] me to hang out. Sometime later, I met [ ] I really [ ]. Like an [ ], I decided to play it cool, be [ ], be [ ], take [ ] slowly. Guess what? Zero interest. Learned my lesson then and haven’t [ ] back. As for “friends who will [ ] me”… I don’t know what the [ ] are like where you live, but the [ ] I know just don’t fit your [ ] [ ]. Also, currently half my friends are [ ]. Weird, huh. But uh, keep telling yourself you’re so much better for being a neutered [ ]. I’ll be busy having [ ] in the [ ] world meanwhile.
Stare me up, stare me down
That bitch in the white boots -- what the fuck is she staring at?
Women truly are devious creatures. Over on MGTOWforums.com, a young fellow named Deano exposes yet more evidence of their accursed misandry: the dreaded stare-and-sneer!
Let’s let him explain:
[M]any women have trouble making eye contact when they approach a man who they know to be perfectly harmless and friendly. As they come within the range where a male acquaintance would simply look you in the eye and nod or say “Hi”, our female friends will stare down and sneer as if you’re a giant slimy turd they cannot bare to look at.
I confess I haven’t run across this so much, but let’s take him at his word: this happens ALL THE TIME! What’s even worse, those pretty princesses often do this even after you’ve spent the whole morning Going Your Own Way helping out cute girls in case this might lead one of them to give you a blowjob.
You may have just gone out of your way earlier that day to fix her hairdryer or carry something heavy up 10 flights of stairs but all of that is forgotten when she sees the opportunity to show what a sulky little bitch she really is.
But Deano is ready for them.
I like to point at the spot they’re staring at as I walk past - as if I have some special powers to direct their gaze. I don’t do it all the time, but it can be piss funny especially when other guys watching are in on the joke.
In your face!
Surprisingly, the story got a bit of a mixed reaction from the other fellows over there. Stonelifter, a true blue MGTOWer, responded with a terse:
I don’t have female friends
Dr. Poon, a medical doctor Going His Own Way who for some reason seems to have specialized in the ickiest parts of a woman, was a bit more supportive:
It is counter-intuitive, but you are doing everything right.
NEVER avoid a woman’s gaze, let HER break the eye lock first and look to the side or to the ground. The establishes DOMINANCE on your end and SUBMISSIVENESS on hers.
LivingFree has a simpler approach:
I usually avoid looking at them during passing. I dont want to give them any impression I value anything about them.
Exactly! That’s why, whenever I spot a girl, I run and hide in a bush. Totally puts them in their place.
I am glad I gave up that whole feminism thing yesterday. I am learning so much about these foul creatures I used to worship.
EDITED TO ADD: I found the picture above here. I added the little red arrow.
MGTOW Out Loud
You may not have realized that you wanted to hear dramatic readings of comments from NiceGuy’s MGTOW forum. But, trust me, you do. And so here you go, courtesy of the folks behind Troper (a series of dramatic readings of terrible shit from the TV Tropes message boards). There are two episodes of the NiceGuy series so far, with more (eventually) on the way.
On The Spearhead, it’s always women’s fault
It wasn't me.
A sex offender in Washington state who has spent most of his life behind bars, convicted of an assortment of different crimes ranging from check kiting to child molestation, is close to his release date. Not surprisingly, given his long history of preying on young girls, prosecutors are pushing for him to be sent instead to a facility for sexual predators, as a recent story on SeattlePI.com notes.
A state psychologist has described Donald “Theo” Holmes as a remorseless psychopath and a pathological liar who has managed to rack up an impressive array of crimes, many involving underage girls, during his stints outside of prison. As the psychologist observed:
“He uses women and children to feed his sexual desires, and he uses other members of society to supply him with money, clothes, and cars that make him look important and fuel the grandiosity which is an ingrained part of his personality. …
“He admits to multiple sexual conquests and is proud of the fact that he has 22 children and that he has had mothers and daughters … pregnant at the same time with his child.”
Holmes, for his part, simply describes himself as a “womanizer.” Apparently 12-year-old girls count as “women” in his world.
Over on The Spearhead, W.F. Price uses this case as an example of what is wrong with, you guessed it, women.
Fathering 22 children is not easy even without spending so much time incarcerated, so one can only assume that his criminality had absolutely no ill effect on his success with women. In fact, it may have enhanced his love life.
Here again, we see that being a good man has nothing to do with one’s success with women, and often is an impediment. One of the big lies of feminism is that women will shower affection on well-behaved men, and have no desire for the low-life thugs of society. Sadly, this is not the case.
Perhaps the most important message we can get out there to young men is that there is little connection between what turns women on and what is objectively good for society.
I don’t know any feminists who think that women only go for “good” guys; indeed, the feminists I know spend a lot of time discussing (and trying to help) women who are or were involved with not-so-good-guys. Evidently the imaginary feminists Price hangs out with, though, are reincarnations of Victorians who assume all women are perfect little angels.
Price is bad enough. Do we have to look at the comments too? Yes, yes we do. Let’s start with the very first one, from Opus, who asked:
but is he really so bad [?]… there is nothing to suggest that the minors were anything other than enthusiatic. Whatever views one may have as to the age of consent, the girls were not infants or children but adolescents.
Yep, in Opus’ mind, sex with 12- and 14-year-olds is no problem, so long as we assume (based on nothing) that they were “enthusiastic” about it. Last I checked, this comment had 16 upvotes and only 3 downvotes, so apparently he’s not the only one willing to blame underage girls for being raped. Sorry, having “enthusiastic” sex with a career criminal many decades older than them.
Meanwhile, Anonymous Reader (in another heavily upvoted comment) takes aim at:
the state of Washington. There’s no way this guy could have spawned 22 children if he had to support them on his own. How many are on AFDC, WIC or other welfare programs, paid for by ordinary, working Beta men? Yes, this is a result of liberalism but it also is a result of feminism.
AFDC and WIC are, of course, intended to make sure that the children of poor women don’t, you know, starve to death. Now, I’m pretty sure Holmes wouldn’t have given a shit if his kids all starved. But apparently neither would Anonymous and his numerous upvoters. Why exactly should the children – some of whom may well be the result of the rape of underage girls — have to pay the price for Holmes’ despicable actions?
Yes, you can blame liberalism and feminism for the fact that these children are being fed. That’s not a bad thing. The actions of Holmes weren’t the actions of a liberal or a feminist; they were the actions of a seemingly psychopathic sexual predator who assumed, like many traditionalist men, that women and girls are put on this earth for men to use as they see fit.
NOTE: I didn’t set out today to write yet another post about The Spearhead. But I read Price’s post and sort of had to say something. My next post will have nothing to do with The Spearhead. I promise.
EDITED TO ADD: Picture credit: Zampieri, “God reprimanding Adam and Eve,” detail; photo G. Piolle.
>Saturday links: Not-so-nice Nice Guys and not-so-hypergamous women
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A couple of interesting posts on topics near and dear to readers here:
Amanda Marcotte takes on “Nice Guys,” and the oft-repeated notion that women seek out abusers and assholes to date:
My counter-theory is that Nice Guys® group together traits like confidence with aggression, so they can convince themselves that confident men are always assholes, and thus that they’re being unfairly deprived of pussy by women who are sick fucks that enjoy being abused. Are some confident men abusive assholes? Absolutely; look at Charlie Sheen. But are all confident men? … [W]hat I can say is I’ve known many men who are great husbands/boyfriends and are also confident … Some shy men are also very nice people, just shy. But many shy men are inconsiderate fuckwits or even wife-beaters. I just don’t think there’s a strong correlation between “alpha”-ness and basic human decency.
And a couple of posts on some new research on gender and casual sex that challenges a lot of manosphere myths about women and hypergamy, suggesting that: 1) women, in general, are as interested in casual sex as men, so long as they feel they will be safe and 2) women, in general, aren’t so addled by their alleged hypergamous proclivities that they actually find Donald Trump to be attractive. In fact, the study suggests, women considering casual sex are driven by a desire for, er, hot sex with a dude who won’t kill them and who they think will be good in bed, not by a desire to get their claws into some random rich dude. Or, as the paper itself puts it:
Sexual strategies theory clearly predicts that higher status proposers should be accepted by women more readily than low-status proposers. The fact that status did not predict women’s acceptance of casual sex offers is therefore a problem for SST. Neither status, nor tendency for gift giving, nor perceived faithfulness of the proposer (nor, more precisely, the interaction of any of these variables with gender) predicted whether a participant would agree to the sexual offer, contradicting SST.
Here’s a brief summary of the research. And here’s a more detailed (if a bit convoluted) discussion from Thomas on Yes Means Yes, from which I got the above quote.
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