[This is a comment left by Defenestrated in one of the male oppression threads. With her permission, I’m making it a post of its own. ((The original disagreement turned out to be a misunderstanding, but Defenestrated’s comments apply very well to several to self-proclaimed “nice guys” I’ve encountered, even if they were a little mis-aimed in the original context.)) –Amp]
So, for example, if a young UU man likes a young UU woman, what he does is he goes over to her and tries really hard to be harmless. He doesn’t want to oppress anyone by expressing interest or desire, so he just hangs around and acts cooperative. The more he wants her to like him, the more submissive he acts. Not surprisingly, the young UU women find this boring, frustrating, incomprehensible, and just not sexy. He doesn’t understand why this doesn’t work, or why all the young UU women are off dating “bad” men instead of “nice” men like himself.
I think that in this particular instance, there’s something to be said for having had the experience of living on the opposite end of it. There’s a reason that there’s a Nice Guy™ moniker, and it’s not because women don’t dig actual kindness.
From the young UU woman’s perspective, there’s this guy hanging around her (or, more likely, multiple guys doing the exact same thing), pretending to only be interested in friendship when, from your description of the situation, it’s clear that his interest doesn’t end there. Even if the attraction is painfully obvious, since it’s never stated the woman can’t very well come right out and turn the guy down for something he hasn’t asked for. If she does, trust me, she’ll get torn to pieces for being so full of herself (after which the guy will probably resume the kicked puppy pose).
The specific male quandary you’ve described stems from a belief that by hanging around and being “nice,” a man is entitled to female affection. I have a lot of sympathy for a lot of situations that hit men, but being upset by not getting what they won’t ask for (and will thus often try to extract through manipulation, like pretending to be a friend when the friendship is treated as a tedious and insulting means to something else) isn’t one of them. Also, many – by no means all, but enough to make it a more than reasonable concern – of the kinds of guys who make this particular kind of complaint are only a step or two a way from outright stalking the object of their desire. The use of the word ‘object’ isn’t accidental.
I sympathize with the frustration and confusion, but that’s not the same as sympathizing with the reasoning behind the complaint. When I hear one of my own male friends voicing these kinds of concerns (or other anti-feminist thoughts that since we’re friends I know don’t come from malice or any intentional disrespect) I’m happy to help him see the opposite side of his experience and understand why things are that way. What I won’t do is agree that he gets to complain that his female friends aren’t all over him for being so cooperative and friendly. Especially if it comes along with a blanket disparagement of the judgment and tastes of said women (who says the men they date are “bad”? The men they don’t date? Is there a bias there?).
That doesn’t make me an unempathetic person. It makes me a person who knows that to actually relieve this form of “harm” against men without them changing their own behavior would have to mean taking the right to choose one’s own partners away from women. It’s empathy that makes me more interested in pointing out and clarifying the communication disconnect than commiserating about how selfish these independent women are for not being available for every man’s every whim. It’s also empathy that makes me understand that the situation you describe is also difficult for the woman involved, and likely provokes a (well-founded) fear that the man in the equation probably hasn’t faced, and usually doesn’t register.
Ah, but isn’t that the gift of ageing! At a certain point in youth, one feels like one will die unrequited.
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“The other friend, when i did the same, got odd and distant. perhaps she–like you, apparently–believed in the narrative that one could only be friends or have a crush, not both. Perhaps she thought my friendship earlier was “fake” (it wasn’t). But for whatever reason, her reaction was, let’s just say, not as nice. We weren’t friends for long thereafter. ”
Are any of you actually reading what I wrote?
I had no clue they felt anything beyond friendship until *years* later when they bitterly told me how much they resented just being friends with me.
Not ONE of them asked me out, hinted at feelings deeper than friendship or bothered to bring it up. They were pissed that I didnt read their damn minds and they were pissed that I JUST offered them friendship.
2 of them, I might have gone out with. 1 absolutely not, because I saw how he was with girlfriends and he was too emotional and clingy. Another, we would have killed each other, we were far too alike. But I never even got the opportunity to accept or deny anything.
So for that *IM* the bitch in their eyes? Fuck em.
Q Grrl writes:
Heh.
Nope, I’ve been this way most of my dating life. I moved too often up until I was 27 to treat friends like they were disposable. People who don’t want their ex’s to be happy either don’t care about their friends or never thought of the person as a friend.
Never underestimate how not having the same zip code for more than a few years at a time alters ones perspective on friends. I have an ex-lover I’ve been friends with for 33 years or so now. I’ve known her through 2 divorces, 2 new husbands, a couple of pregnancies, and all sorts of things. I have another ex-lover I’ve been friends with, though not as close, for 25 years now.
Myca, I should have been clearer that I wasn’t disagreeing with your larger points. That imbalance just struck me, partly in its contrast to your overall sentiment (do you see me calling all these guys on individual semantics?).
What I was trying to get at is that – since a lot of the issues at hand seem to come from underlying, tacitly and/or unconsciously expected gender roles – it’s worthwhile to examine our perhaps less-than-thought-out ideas about what men and women are supposed to do.
My point was that in your compromise explanation combining the perspectives of the one who’s interested with the one who doesn’t reciprocate – a combination I support making, since things can be complicated – the lines you drew were unfair. The guy is only a bastard if the woman is totally misreading his motives. The woman is a selfish bitch because of how she feels, regardless of why she finds the interest or its expression offensive.
It may seem like quibbling to you, but you’re not the one being forced into the role of selfish bitch.
pheeno:
Short answer: no.
(I mean, some of us are, but.)
I see your objection, and I actually don’t disagree.
I was originally going to use the example I used in post #105, wherein the ‘pursued’ plays on and exploits the feelings of the ‘pursuer’, but I anticipated many posts objecting to how I was demonizing women as evil and manipulative, so I toned it down.
I’m feeling a little piled on here, especially because I don’t really think that the stuff I’m saying is all that far out, so I’m going to bow out for a bit.
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I don’t know if you’re still reading this, Glitch, but have you tried any online dating sites? Maybe it would be easier for you if you could get to “know” someone and practice flirting without the pressure of face-to-face contact. Also, the women on those sites are obviously interested in meeting someone, so you might not have to worry about being slotted into the “friend” box as much.
I used to be painfully shy myself, so I really do empathize with men who just can’t approach women without the friendship first. As a dating strategy though, it’s just terrible.
I think some of the problem with shy men is that they may not be as adept at reading social cues; shy people spend too much time in their own heads, instead of in the moment, and that makes it harder to accurately judge other people.
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My experience has been that, for men, this is an exercise in futility, for a number of reasons:
1. The sex ratios are skewed against men.
2. Many men have adopted a strategy of spamming as many women as possible, which means that any moderately attractive woman will get more mail than she can reasonably be expected to read. The result is that there’s a good chance that the mail you send won’t be read.
3. A lot of the women on these sites aren’t serious. They put the ads up on a lark and then forget about them, or only sporadically check their mail.
4. And a lot of them are just plain rude. I’ve had several women solicit my attention and then just ignore me when I wrote back, and even more who responded positively to my initial mail and failed to respond at all to subsequent mails. In fact, this is by far the most common way they tell you they’ve lost interest, so much so that I got in the habit of writing a thank you note to every woman who had the decency to reject me explicitly.
And I’m a fairly good catch, so it’s not as though I ran into these problems because I’m just undesirable. There is an important caveat here: I was dealing mostly with women in their early ’20s. Older women may behave somewhat differently.
Yeah, you’d think that, wouldn’t you?
Oh, well. There goes my idea. :( I actually have no idea how to meet people in the “real” world; all of my friends are marrying/seriously dating the people we were with in college.
“Doesnt seem to be, Ive met many men who’ve met and exceeded that standard.”
Perhaps it wouldn’t seem as so if you had read the rest of the paragraph, where I made some significant qualifications to my initial statement. Obviously, a ‘nice guy’ who, say, focuses all his much vaunted niceness only on the girls he deems attractive, isn’t actually nice. But is a guy not nice if he gives any sort of special attention to the girls he thinks are attractive? Is he not nice if he ever bemoans his social situation at any time? My main problem with your initial statements is that it wants to define away the opposition. Girls want niceness, and any guy who doesn’t agree with that statement must by definition be not nice. This seems to skirting very close to saying that women’s actions and preferences should always be beyond reproach.
Look, a lot of us here have been 17-year old boys before, and like Myca pointed out, most of the ‘nice guy’ rants are just frustrated young men blowing off steam. Some may even have something to them, who knows? The point is, the sexism or niceness of these guys should be something that should be evaluated after the fact, not something that must be there or not there by definition.
“There seems to be a distinct lack of articles, cliches, catch phrases ect about those nice girls never getting a guy and it being the GUYS fault.”
Yes, that’s a problem, and that was precisely what I was railing against. In many cases it should be seen as the guy’s fault. Nice girls have it worse than nice guys, who at least get the benefit of token sympathies every now and then. Nice girls are taught, sometimes even by their own friends, to internalize the blame for being so irredeemably unattractive. (Their friends, of course, are victims of the same game in their own right.) At the very least, we all should talk of nice girls in the same breath we talk about nice guys, though there are still many people who believe that girls not conventionally attractive DESERVE to be given less consideration and will actually be quite offended if things start moving in the other direction. I mean, don’t get me wrong, we the Politically Correct will execute them en masse by around 2030 pacific standard time, but it’s such a ludicrous place to make their stand, no? Remember Dove’s delightfully hypocritical but brownie-points-for-trying ‘Real Beauty’ campaign? I can attest that I know several people who were actually offended by it.
Almost everyone I know who’s dated using online sites has had positive experiences. I’m sure there are many anecdotes out there; they aren’t all BB’s.
My wife and I met and largely courted online. It seems to have worked OK.
Of course, we’re Republicans. So you have to factor that in.
“we’re Republicans. So you have to factor that in.”
Lessee. Common affinity for the color red working in favor… possibility of being crushed by elephants on first date working against…
Date alert level: red hot!
Date alert level: red hot!
When I explained how a MSA combined with savvy 401(k) allocations could reduce our joint taxable income to $0, meaning more money for the diamond budget, she was mine.
Her realization that this meant inevitable cuts in the welfare state, additional physical suffering for poor people, and purse-lipped disapproval from welfare afficionados of the sort who always advocate high taxation for the rich but never earn more than $39,999 in a year – that just made it hot.
Bean, with all due respect, it’s enough to say that Brandon’s advice was bad, or doesn’t reflect the experience of the people you know. Please avoid making personal attacks on other posters on “Alas.”
Robert writes:
Oh, do me, Baby, do me!
Now, if I could find someone who understands what you just wrote, I think I’d fall head over heels madly in love on the first date.
When I was a junior in high school there were three parts of the newspaper I paid attention to — world news, the financial pages, and which horses were racing. We don’t have much by way of horse racing here, which is a shame, because international affairs are a complete disaster these days.
Oh, do me, Baby, do me!
Sorry, sweet thing. These tax-defyin’ fingers already have a ring on ’em.
I thought so. but then I read it again–and I misread. Sorry.
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Brandon,
With due respect, I have trouble getting over this line:
I’m not trying to insult whatever qualities you’re referring to, because I don’t know what they are and I haven’t met you and I wouldn’t know, but I don’t trust anyone’s self-report on this. The creeps over at Hugo’s, for instance, often complain that they’re great catches because they have sooooooooo much money.
Also, whatever the problem is, if you are not getting the dates you want, it indicates that in that situation — this being not generalizable to other situations –, to those women, you are not a good catch.
In fact, your willingness to say that you’re a good catch in the specific context of not being able to get dates from women, to imply therefore that the women are unreasonable, rude, and flighty (just there for a lark) — seems to me exactly what this thread is about.
You don’t get to decide what women should want, and then dictate to them that they’re doing something wrong for not wanting it.
Or, rather, feel free to do those things, but be aware that you look a bit silly while doing it.
I don’t know what Brandon intended with his comment but my interpretation was that his lack of success was specific to online dating. I also didn’t pick up any animosity (towards women or otherwise). He also had some explanation of why it was the way it was that didn’t place any blame on women. His first three explanations add up to a decent justification for the 4th . I have to agree that silence is a bad way to tell someone that the relationship’s over.
But I could be wrong so go ahead and bash him if you like.
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“But I could be wrong so go ahead and bash him if you like. ”
A calm explanation that his comments reflect bias is bashing?
mandolin, that’s passive-aggressive-speak for “If you disagree with me, you’re unfairly bashing Brandon.”
Yeah, I was replying with passive-aggressive speak for, “You think I didn’t notice that you were trying to poison the well by implying that I’m unreasonable and overemotional, but I did, and I can do wide-eyed innocence better than you can.” ;-)
The bashing comment was directed more at Bean, who accused him of hating women.
Sorry if I colored with too broad of a brush.
Robert,
I’m thinking the difference had a whole lot more to do with your age and the age of the women in question, than anything else. Your goals changed, why the hell wouldn’t theirs?
I also think a lot of people seriously underestimate how often girls and women put up with jerks simply because they think they are “hot.” As someon else pointed out, women complain about men letting “hot” women treat them like shit and ignoring their nice girl selves all the time, it just rarely turns into “he likes her because she’s a bitch.” Everyone understands that her being attractive has something to do with him being with her. When it’s women that are chasing after the jerks, however, they almost always like them because they are jerks (supposedly) rather than because they are hot jerks. Like with a lot of things that set off my feminist radar, this seems like a pretty illogical assumption to me.
Yes, some women do “like” jerks for the reasons bean listed. But women, in general, tend to like nice looking men as well, and this is almost always discounted, despite the fact that even women who “like” jerks tend to like nice looking men as well.
I’ll also add that I never trust any guys “but I am nice looking!” for various reasons. The first being that cultural standards of “average pretty” are vastly different for men and women. It may be equally unlikely for men and women to be born supermodel gorgeous, but average looking women are considered, well, much more average looking than average looking men.
The second being that, in my experience, women tend to have a less homogeneous idea of what consititues “hot” for men than men do when it comes to women. Personal tastes vary for both men and women, but women recieve less pressure to conform to the norm in this area simply because there is much less cultural diologue about the female gaze than the male gaze. So, you get a lot more women professing to find Lettermen the epitome of male hotness than you get men rhapsodizing about, well…is there even any woman that would equate?
Bean:
You go, girl! Truth to power and all that.
Mandolin:
Joe’s half right. I can’t say I have much luck with women in meatspace, but this is due primarily to circumstance—the young, single women who get to know me are attracted to me more often than not, but I work in the software industry, as do most of my friends, so such women are few and far between, and they’re usually at least five years older than me and/or live too far away.
Also, I want to make it clear that my complaints about the behavior of women in the context of on-line dating aren’t due to my lack of success with them. There were a few decent, considerate women with whom things just didn’t work out (one didn’t like my atheism, one met a meatspace guy just before we were to meet, and a couple of times there just wasn’t much attraction on either side).
But they were the exception. This kind of thing is the rule:
-One woman moved out of town after exchanging several e-mails and didn’t see fit to tell me until several weeks later.
-One strung me along for two months, saying that she was busy with school but that she was interested and would get back to me when classes got out, and then didn’t bother to check her e-mail for weeks after they did, and threw a fit when I told her (politely) that she was being rude.
-One stopped responding to my e-mails while she got back together with and then broke up with her ex-boyfriend, apologized, and then disappeared again immediately after I responded to her apology.
-One promising young moral philosopher told me, when I IM’d her several days after she started ignoring my e-mails, that it was okay to do that because she’d never met me.
-Several told me that they didn’t have time for dating (!).
-Several more just disappeared into the ether, never to be heard from again. It’s okay if a woman doesn’t want to go out with me, but once we’ve established correspondence I expect the courtesy of an explicit rejection before breaking it off.
Granted, I realize now some of the things I did wrong (strategically, not morally), and I realize that I could have handled some of these situations better, and possibly salvaged things. A person with better social skills and more experience with dealing with strange women probably could have done better. I don’t think Glitch is that person. I’m not saying he shouldn’t try it, especially if he doesn’t see much hope anywhere else, but expecting too much is likely to bring disappointment and heartbreak.
And again, I was going for women in their early ’20s, which probably made things harder, partly because they’re less mature, and partly because I had to compete not only with men my own age, but also with men all the way up into their ’40s. Women in their late ’20s and early ’30s may be easier and/or more considerate.
“But is a guy not nice if he gives any sort of special attention to the girls he thinks are attractive? Is he not nice if he ever bemoans his social situation at any time?”
Not when she’s the bitch and the cause of his social situation.
“Girls want niceness, and any guy who doesn’t agree with that statement must by definition be not nice.”
Failure to recognise women or girls as individuals and saying things like ” girls want this” and “women want that”um, no I dont call that nice. What, were we all turned to borg or something and I just didnt notice? And while he may be a nice guy, he just exhibited a stupid, assbackwards, steeped in sexism belief.
So now for me personally, this guy might be nice, but thats no longer why I wouldnt date him. He’s an idiot who thinks girls all think alike.
No thanks.
“The point is, the sexism or niceness of these guys should be something that should be evaluated after the fact, not something that must be there or not there by definition.”
Got any other qualifiers that I have to use before I decide what offends me, or strikes me as not nice or I find sexist?
“Myca pointed out, most of the ‘nice guy’ rants are just frustrated young men blowing off steam. ”
I dont care. If they’re blowing off steam and use sexist stereotypes to do so, game over. You dont get a free pass when you use gender stereotypes that cause harm in general to women. Sorry.
“One woman moved out of town after exchanging several e-mails and didn’t see fit to tell me until several weeks later.”
Im sorry, you must have forgot to inform her of her obligations to a guy on the net she emails, and let her know how high priority you should be to her.
“-One strung me along for two months, saying that she was busy with school but that she was interested and would get back to me when classes got out, and then didn’t bother to check her e-mail for weeks after they did, and threw a fit when I told her (politely) that she was being rude.”
She didnt put you first either? The bitch.
“One promising young moral philosopher told me, when I IM’d her several days after she started ignoring my e-mails, that it was okay to do that because she’d never met me.”
Um, its ok for her to end contact at any time she wants to. Ya know, being a free human being and all.
“Several told me that they didn’t have time for dating (!).”
And?
“Several more just disappeared into the ether, never to be heard from again. It’s okay if a woman doesn’t want to go out with me, but once we’ve established correspondence I expect the courtesy of an explicit rejection before breaking it off.”
And again, you must have forgotten to inform them they must meet your demands and expectations on how and when and why they decide to end contact with you.
“Women in their late ’20s and early ’30s may be easier and/or more considerate.”
Maybe other men know better than to think they have the right to expect anything from women they email.
Pheeno:
While I recognize that others have the right not to conform to my expectations, I reserve the right to regard their behavior as classless and inconsiderate.
What the hell does UU stand for??
[Unitarian Universalism. –Amp]
Hows that panned out so far for you datewise, Brandon?
I’m especially amused by the responses by bean, pheeno and mythago.
Feminists: Listen up, men! Don’t objectify women, don’t sexually harass women, and don’t pressure women.
Men: Ok, but then how should we act around women?
Feminists: It’s not our job to provide you with a dating manual, you have to figure it out yourselves.
Men: We are working on that, but it would help to have some general guidelines about what is and what isn’t objectification/harassment/pressure. Because right now we are feeling kind of paralyzed around women.
Feminists: You obviously aren’t trying to understand. “These things are actually quite clear for those who are actually interested in learning them and understanding them.” (actual quote from bean)
Men: Umm, ok, but we are saying that it isn’t clear.
Feminists: That’s because you men are STUPID and you just want an excuse to bash feminism! STUUUUPID!!
(Of course, this dialogue is polemical, and it doesn’t represent the complaints of all straight men or the responses of all feminists. It’s merely my perception of the dialogue, or lack thereof, between feminists and men who believe their dating ability has been hurt by feminism.)
bean seems to think that the messages feminists give men about how they should and shouldn’t behave sexually are clear, or at least can easily be figured out by men. Apparently, young men men should be able to figure out what is and isn’t objectification, sexual harassment, and pressure without feminists explaining it to them. Men who say they cannot do this and remain confused must be (a) not trying to understand, (b) deliberately misunderstanding in order to bash feminism, or (c) just plain stupid.
Both bean and mythago claim that men should be able to figure out how to behave, yet neither actually give an account of how shy, socially inexperienced, young men can figure out what is and isn’t objectification/sexual harassment/pressure. I’ve maintained that these terms are vague and broad. bean has not given any arguments actually showing otherwise, and can only resort to the assertion that they “are actually quite clear for those who are actually interested in learning them and understanding them.” (One qualification: I do think it’s clear what quid pro quo sexual harassment is.)
What basis, however, does bean have to assert this? None that I can see. I guess those concepts are clear to bean, but what is clear to you isn’t necessarily clear to everyone else. Men and women perceive heterosexual interaction differently, so it’s silly to assume that what is clear to women is clear to men, and vice versa.
I am willing to accept the possibility that men who become heterosexually paralyzed around women in response to feminist messages make an unreasonable interpretation of feminism, just as I willing to accept the possibility that girls who become anorexic partly in response to cultural images of beauty make an unreasonable interpretation of what female bodies are desirable. After all, they were never explicitly told to become that thin (I wonder if bean would call anorexic women STUPID?). I was never told to be that paranoid about treating girls in sexist ways. Still, feminism / the media should be well aware of these responses, so they should be held partly responsible, or at least considered negligent.
Unfortunately, the responses by bean and pheeno show that it’s a lot easier to blame men about their romantic confusion than even to consider the notion that feminism could be part of problem, or to actually think up constructive ways to help men follow feminism’s dictates with becoming romantically paralyzed and alienated from feminism.
defenestrated said:
I think there is a difference between assertiveness, and sexual assertiveness. Although they often go together, one doesn’t guarantee the other. While feminism has done some work encouraging women to be more sexually assertive, it has done a lot more work encouraging men to be sexually passive. What outreach have feminists done to encourage female sexual assertiveness that are on the scale, of say… date rape seminars that are institutionalized in many high schools and colleges?
I said:
defenestrated said:
It’s different because this attitude, of obsessive and paralyzing worry about “pressuring” women is a product of feminism. If feminists don’t intend their messages to men to have this impact, then that’s comforting, but it doesn’t change the fact that feminist messages do have this impact, and feminists don’t qualify their messages in a way to not paralyze men (not all, or even most men, but especially shy men). Feminists cannot wash their hands of this by claiming ignorance of this paralyzing impact on some men, because men have been telling feminists this for decades and feminists haven’t been listening. At best, this is gross negligence.
Hugh, re: #147: We’re on the internets. At a certain point you’ve got to recognize that the “but you didn’t provide me with all the information I could possibly need” is a little bogus when, again, we’re on the internets. There’s information on those tubes, I hear.
Sure, I’m all for the shy and socially awkward of every gender getting a better handle on how to treat people in a progressive world. But why should every – and seriously, this topic comes up on a lot of feminist blogs, and un-heavily-moderated threads pretty much always go this way or far, far worse; so I really mean every – discussion of the asshole behavior that sometimes (and sometimes not) is masked by shyness/awkwardness/”aw shucks, I didn’t know that was sexist” turn into a how-to for all the shy awkward guys who don’t know how not to be sexist?
It doesn’t have to be, because we’re on the internets, but it sure is a handy way of shutting down those uppity chicks.
And now, I will read the comment that I see is addressed to me. I just wanted to get that out first.
In a previous post, I asked some questions to demonstrate the vagueness and ambiguity of feminist notions of appropriate male sexual behavior:
mythago responded:
How should I, as a shy, socially inexperienced 17 year-old have known the answers to those questions? I know the answers now, no thanks to feminism.
Btw, the kind of guidelines that you and Dianne give are reasonably good (though for me personally, they are many years too late). This is just the kind of thing that I am asking of feminists, not to give me some kind of 1000 page manual on exactly how to act in every single situation. I know that context is important, and I know that most rules have exceptions in the social world. Yet I think the guidelines mythago and Dianne give show that feminists can give qualifications to their directives to men that make them easier to follow. Now all we have to do is get feminists to give out these guidelines of their own accord, not just to defend feminism when its effect on men is challenged.
You mean there’s a difference between assertiveness to get what one wants for herself, and assertiveness to get what men (or, really, a man, should he find her attractive enough to want to see her…assertiveness) want her to want. Why all the hand-wringing these days about the hookup-culture and “zomg the college girls don’t want the hand-holding, just the sex!” pearl clutching if women aren’t sexually assertive? Feminists in particular don’t tend to be wilting flowers, which might make us a rather useless bunch to ask “How do I approach a female who by nature or training won’t approach me first?”
That’s…wow, that’s what an imbalance looks like to you? Date rape seminars teach men how not to rape. There has been no historical corollary problem of women…fuck, what’s the opposite of not raping? Being human? Women have, historically speaking, tended to be human. I’m lost, Hugh. Help my tiny female brain.
I know, I know, when will I learn – men can’t be expected to figure things out for themselves or bother learning how to respect other people if those damn feminists don’t wrap everything up in a pretty bow for them.
No. I’m sorry. Men don’t inherently need that, as evidenced by all the happy feminist women dating kind pro/feminist men. There are dictionaries to explain concepts like “objectification;” there are literally entire bookstores devoted to feminist thought one might browse through; etc, etc – *if* one is actually interested in learning how not to objectify women or otherwise not be an ass, instead of just needle feminists pointlessly over every topic they raise.
Somehow, I feel like I already said this: Do you think that this conversation has never happened before and is original to this thread?… After a certain point (decades, say), the ignorance is hard not to see as willful, especially on a cultural level.
defenestrated said:
I’m not asking feminists to provide men with all the information they need to know how to treat women in a non-sexist manner. I know that’s impractical I’m advocating that feminists do a better job of explaining their criteria for which behaviors are sexist and which are not, instead of insisting that it is “clear.”
Are you saying that men can find this kind of explanation on the internets? If so, where?
While feminists continue to be impossibly vague about the boundaries of sexist and non-sexist behavior, shy, awkward guys will, and should, continue to call feminists to account. I never asked for a personal how-to, however.
I joined this discussion was because of my perception that you and others were painting them too broad a brush, as if all men who call themselves “nice guys” are guilty of feigning friendship with women or of manipulating them. The goal isn’t to shut down you uppity chicks, but to respond to what I considered to be an unfair generalization. I think more men would be willing to discuss manipulative Nice Guys(tm) if you were clearer that you didn’t consider all self-identified nice guys to behave in that sexist manner.
But you raise a good point that discussion of the genuinely sexist self-identified nice guys is necessary. I think entitlement can be part of this problem, but I think the root of the problem is the commodification of female sexuality: the notion that female sexuality can or should be exchanged for some kind of non-sexual positive treatment (e.g. paying for a date, doing favors, buying presents).
P.S. Although we may never see eye to eye on this subject, I want to make clear that I do think this is a valuable and interesting discussion even if it might be getting a tiny bit heated.
“Both bean and mythago claim that men should be able to figure out how to behave”
Read, Hugh. Read widely. Read all the feminist blogs. Let your anger response go “AHHHHH THAT ISN’T WHAT IT’S LIKE YOU ARE MEAN TO ME TERRIBLE WOMEN” and then chill for a while. Think about it.
Eventually, things go “click” and you start to see why women are objecting, and why they aren’t.
It seems to have worked for me, more or less, in trying to understand people of color. I can now usually tell when things are going to go south in a thread (oh, god, that recent Pandagon thread) and why they’re going south, while some white feminists are shouting at the people of color, “OMG, you’re so angry and you’re not making sense.” Well, they do make sense. And when you go in with that assumption, and do the shut up and listen thing, the sense they make is pretty obvious — after you learn to shift your frame.
(A few things I still don’t get, but I have high hopes.)
Look, I’m not going to say this doesn’t suck. Most of our culture is about presenting the way that white men view the world. So, when you want to learn the way that women view the world — and yes, women are pretty much like men, but our social position is different, so we have to deal with different shit than you do. We know about your shit. Generally, you don’t know about ours — you have to step back and listen to us talk about it.
Also, and I don’t know if this is true for other women on this thread, but Hugh, you’re throwing off some signals that are triggering for me. I know a guy who is… um. Extremely awful to women. And has confided in me that he gets sexually excited when women display fear, and that he fantasizes about killing women he’s attracted to — while, at the same time, he aggressively pursues women who have rejected him… well, it’s not a huge step to imagining him as a rapist and a murderer. He’s very frightening.
And on the surface of his arguments about women, he sounds much like you do.
I’m sure that you’re nothing like him. But if other women have had the same experience I have, that may be why some of the women on the board are holding you at arm’s length. Nice guys aren’t always nice or even niceTM, sometimes they’re really dangerous. And it’s hard to tell who’s in what category based on the superficial rhetoric.
“And on the surface of his arguments about women, he sounds much like you do.”
Which is to say, you say “You women don’t like how men get together with women. I don’t understand. What’s harrassing and what’s not? What am I *supposed* to do?”
And he says the same thing.
And I’m sure your behavior is harmless and all like, “Um, ma’am, may I compliment the highness of your heels?”
But his is very, “Do you mind if I stalk you, showing up at unexpected times leering in the dark, and even after you’ve asked me to stop, cornering you someplace you can’t leave easily while you shake with fear and I get an obvious erection?”
But you come out of it with the same complaint. He professes to be baffled about what he’s done wrong.
I honestly imagine this is a conversation better to be had in person. Do you have feminist friends you could take it up with?
“Failure to recognise women or girls as individuals and saying things like ” girls want this” and “women want that”um, no I dont call that nice. What, were we all turned to borg or something and I just didnt notice? And while he may be a nice guy, he just exhibited a stupid, assbackwards, steeped in sexism belief.”
Is it sexist to say women, say, like chocolate? Now, I know there’s a far cry from carelessly ascribing collective faults, as opposed to fairly neutral statements – bad dietary habits aside – but sometimes it’s just an issue of verbal shorthand. In our hypothetical situation, for instance, our guy’s still in a rant mood.
“Got any other qualifiers that I have to use before I decide what offends me, or strikes me as not nice or I find sexist?”
If all you were arguing for was your own right to feel whatever way you want, then all power to ya. I took your statements to mean that ‘nice guys’ (let’s just use the term ‘losers’ from now on, it’s more illuminative anyway) must never rock the boat as far as their social situations go or else be forever stripped of the right to be called ‘nice’, and that this, far from a personal judgment, was to be more or less an operational definition to be used in rational discussion. The sentiment seems to be similar to be ‘it’s being a loser to complain about being a loser’ – don’t discomfit the non-loser. Defer to him. Be meek and humble. Acknowledge your inferiority. In time, maybe you’ll be initiated into regular society.
In case the last three or four sentences made no sense at all to you, what I’m really getting at is the general plight of the social loser. Remember, losers are ostracized often along the very same (gendered/heteronormative/what-have-you) axes as women or homosexuals or the transgendered. If you have compassion for a fat woman who is shunned by her friends and overlooked by her employers and coworkers, you should also have some for a painfully skinny and greasy man-child who lives in his parents’ basement playing World of Warcraft – and is probably a Nice Guy (TM) to boot. I don’t know if this is the intent, but the subtext here seems to be that when losers make their self-pitying rants that generalize about women, that this makes them sexist EQUIVALENTS to, say, any old-fashioned high rolling chauvinist who notches his scores on the dashboard of his Lotus and who probably sniffs panties. Shy people may harbour sexist beliefs, but that’s a far cry from the brutish ones who put those beliefs into practice. At best, this pigeonholing betrays an inability to see all social hierarchies as equally harmful. The cynical side of me thinks that saying all men are sexist anyway is an awfully convenient way for some individual women to justify their preferring the company of the most sexist and chauvinistic men, especially for romantic partners. Believe me, I’ve seen more than my share of people who talk big but are unwilling to live by their ideologies when inconvenient. This goes for people of all ideologies.
Given the general ‘maleness’ of the popular image of the loser, this could just be a case of PHMT. But it’s one of those special cases of PHMT where the men being hurt too is demonstrably something that deeply affects and ruins lives for a minority.
Mickle, you raise interesting points in #140. My thoughts are, expectations that physical attraction play no role in determining partners is an unrealistic and unnatural demand. Rather, the expectations placed on men – to be good-looking, but to a standard that is reasonably low (don’t laugh, you know it’s true) and highly variable to individual tastes. So many problems could be solved if similar expectations were held for women.
“Is it sexist to say women, say, like chocolate? Now, I know there’s a far cry from carelessly ascribing collective faults, as opposed to fairly neutral statements – bad dietary habits aside – but sometimes it’s just an issue of verbal shorthand. In our hypothetical situation, for instance, our guy’s still in a rant mood. ”
Not to be pedantic… okay, to be pedantic… it would be more accurate to say “most women appreciate being given chocolate.”
I know a few inveterate chocolate-hating women who are not amused by my “are you sure you’re human and not some kind of freakish alien in human form?” jokes.
So, anyway — yes, that was pedantic. But at the same time, if I followed you correctly, you were using “women like chocolate” as an example of an appropriate and justfiable generalization, and I know some humorless* women who would disagree.
*They don’t laugh at my jokes, so they must be humorless.
defenestrated said:
Date rape seminars, while necessary, also have the side-effect of encouraging men to be more passive. I’m saying that if men are going to become more passive, then we need women to become more proactive to pick up the slack, otherwise everyone will become too passive! To accomplish this, we would need a cultural intervention on the level of scale as date rape seminars, not just feminists talking among themselves.
We are not just talking about respect, we are talking about feminist notions of what constitutes respect. And yes, feminists need to explain these notions for men to follow them. Honestly, why wouldn’t feminists want to spell out exactly what their expectations of men are as precisely as possible so men can follow them better? I know that “precisely as possible” will still not be very precise, and depend on context and all that jazz. I’ve already acknowledged this. You act like asking for anything more than “treat women like a human being” or “respect women,” or “don’t objectify/sexually harass/pressure” women is tantamount to wanting some complex algorithm for how to behave. As I said above, even some general guidelines like mythago and Dianne gave above would be an improvement; that’s hardly requiring feminists to wrap everything up in a pretty bow, and I don’t know why you insist on interpreting it that way.
All those happy pro-feminist men, like say… Robert Jensen, who believes that he must abstain from sex with women because he can’t see a way to approach sex with women without dominating or controlling them (see his essay entitled “Patriarchal Sex”)? Or how about Allan Hunter? Maybe he can explain it better than I can:
While some pro-feminist men might be able to figure out how act in a way that feminists consider completely non-sexist and which doesn’t destroy their dating lives, not all of even pro-feminist men can do so. Some pro-feminist men come to the same interpretations of feminism that I did, which feminists here call “misinterpretations.” For instance, I’ve argued that the feminist conceptualizations of “objectification” don’t provide any way to distinguish what is not objectification. John Stoltenberg also interprets objectification so broadly that just about any male sexual fantasy or visualization about women is objectification in his terms. From the chapter “Sexual Objectification and Male Supremacy” in Refusing to be a Man: “male sexuality without sexual objectification is unimagined. Male sexuality without it would not be male sexuality.” The only ethical conclusion to take from Stoltenberg’s analysis is to not express any sexual interest in women, or to entertain any sexual thoughts about them: essentially, to become celibate like him.
The more I read feminists, the more I learn about what is objectification and other feminist sins, but I don’t learn much about what isn’t those things. It just made me even more paranoid about doing them, and obsessively scrutinize my behavior and become even more self-conscious. Sorry, but a while ago I decided that I wasn’t going to do that anymore, and I became alienated from feminism and realized that I wasn’t going to get answers from it.
You seem to be saying that the ignorance of men of acceptable ways for them to behave with women (in feminists’ eyes) is due to willful ignorance. I’m saying that feminists have never given an account of the boundaries of sexist and non-sexist behavior. Men cannot read feminists’ minds. And yes, this conversation has happened many times before. And it will happen many times in the future, until feminists more clearly define those boundaries, and stop trying to deny the experience of men feeling paralyzed sexually with women because they try to take feminism’s mandates seriously.
bean said:
I’m also beginning to think that you have no way of answering my arguments. That’s because you seem to be arguing from an article of faith that the meaning of feminist concepts are self-evident or easy to divine, and that what is clear to you should also be clear to young men (if you think that’s an unfair summary of your views, then feel free to clarify). All this shows is a lack of consideration for other perspectives than your own.
I have asked you for justifications for these articles of faith, and you have not been able to provide them. I think that’s why you are left just asserting your opinion and accusing me of nasty motives. For instance, you have not been able to provide an explanation of how young, shy, and socially inexperienced young men are supposed to figure out what is and what isn’t objectification/sexual harassment/pressure according to feminists. Nor have you explained why what is clear to you should be clear to other people, particularly men.
If you think you have established your position and explained it to the best of your ability, then fine, I think I’ve done the same with mine, and I’m quite happy to agree to disagree.
Sorry, bean, but due to limited time and energy, I can’t respond to every single point made at the same time. I’ve already been doing monster posts in this thread. The issue of feminists teaching women to be sexually assertive seemed like a different thread of this discussion from the rest, so I decided to save it for later. So what?
This is just a silly analogy. The confusion of whites over what to call people of color does not harm whites in any significant way. In contrast, the confusion of men over how to behave sexually with women does harm men (and women!).
OK, new point.
Why does someone who runs a blog with the entire purpose of criticizing feminism characterize himself as a nice, oppressed dude, who just can’t seem to get women to like him for inexplicable and incomprehensible reasons?
Could it be because you’re an anti-feminist?
If you think feminism hasn’t taught women to initiate or say “yes” — maybe it’s because they don’t want to initiate or say yes to you.
Stop criticizing. Listen, try to learn, see if maybe things change.
Or, you know, keep stomping your foot because you don’t understand feminism, and keep up the whining, too.
Brandon, It’s pretty likely that the women who said that they didn’t have time for dating were trying to give you a ‘gentle letdown’ to spare your feelings. I don’t know exactly how things went down but if I had to guess I’d assume that was an explicit rejection phrased to minimize personal insult.
mandolin said:
I do have a fondness for feminist standpoint theories, but I’ve never quite bought the claim that women “know about our shit.” The fact that so many women in this thread cannot consider the perspective of a shy, inexperienced 17 year-old trying to figure out how what behavior is acceptable and unacceptable with women, shows that, no, you don’t know about our shit.
I’m sorry that you have that response. All I can say is that if you want to be sure not to be triggered by my posts, then don’t read them. Anyway, I’ve said most of what I need to say in this thread, and I can feel discussion grinding to a halt.
Maybe if he knew those answers, he would treat women differently. His ignorance and confusion are real, and shared by many men, abusers or not. That is not a license, however, for him to mistreat women.
This sounds like almost the opposite complaint from mine. Taking your account at face value, this guy mistreats women based on his (stated) lack of knowledge of acceptable behavior with them. In my case, my lack of knowledge left me paralyzed with women. For me, it’s not that I did things that were wrong; rather, I couldn’t do anything, because I was so afraid of doing something wrong.
I get it, you can make superficial comparisons between some things I’ve said and some things he has said. I do think the motivations are different, though. My motivation was to do the right thing with women and conduct my sexuality in a way consistent with feminist principles. Do you think he ever had this goal? From your description of him, I doubt it. It sounds like he is using confusion over how to behave as an excuse to behave in ways that he should be able to know are over the line.
Ummm, ok then. Good to know that you don’t think I’m like the guy who fantasizes about killing women he’s attracted to. But if you are sure I’m nothing like him, please quit comparing me to him. Otherwise, it feels like you are trying to shame me out of taking a stance that you and other feminists don’t like. When you compare someone to an abusive person, even if you insist that you are sure they are nothing like that, you are actually insinuating that they are to some degree. That is likely to provoke anger and defensiveness, rather than empathy or open-mindedness.
I don’t characterize myself this way. I don’t complain of women not liking me in the present. I have never characterized myself as “nice” either. I don’t like that word.
I doubt it. If anything, I’m still too feminist, dammit. I need to hang out with frat guys more. (Btw, here is a big expression of my anti-feminism.)
Ironically, this hasn’t been a problem. Actually, all the women I’ve been with have initiated something at some point (partly because I’m still afraid of being too pushy: even when a woman looks into my eyes and tilts her face up, putting her lips close to mine, there is a still a part of me that feels like I’m molesting her by kissing her and wonders if she is really consenting, and I have feminism to thank for that). I wasn’t able to count on them to do it, or anticipate when they were going to, and neither can men in general with women in general.
I disagree with both Hugh and Bean.
I think Hugh is asking for an unreasonable amount of cohesion from feminism. He admits that some feminists are providing the explanations he’s looking for, but this isn’t enough. Why not?
Hugh, why do you seemingly expect feminists to put as much effort into solving 17-year-old Hugh’s (and 17-year-old Amp’s) problems as feminists do fighting rape? Unless you’re saying it’s never valid for feminists to ever consider rape a more pressing problem, your standard of comparison here seems unreasonable.
Also, given the fact that we share the culture with fundamentalist Christians, do you really think that seminars in public high schools about how girls should make passes at boys who wear glasses are even one-tenth as politically viable as anti-rape education? Not that anti-rape education is at all where it needs to be, by the way. (“Feminist critics” often talk as if feminists have infinite political capital, time and resources. This is part of the reason that you seem, to feminists, to be unfair and unreasonable in your expectations of what feminism should have accomplished.)
Feminism has actually done a huge amount to change the sexual norms of our culture, and to make it more acceptable for women to be sexually and romantically assertive. Not in the form of seminars (although that happens), but in the form of pop culture, magazine articles, talking among ourselves, and all the other forms of transmitting social norms across a culture. The differences between the dating norms in, say, Ithaca New York (where feminism has had a huge influence) and small-town Georgia (less influence) are enormous. But you don’t seem to want to acknowledge that feminism has ever done any good at all, Hugh.
It’s telling that you don’t “thank” feminism for the fact that you’ve been able to meet women who initiate, but you do “thank” feminism for your shyness. That one single pro-feminist post aside, you do seem to have an attitude of blaming feminism for all bad things but never crediting it for any good things.
Do you really think that some shy, good-natured 17 year olds never had problems knowing when was the right time to kiss before feminism came along? Do you really think that if you had been born 50 years earlier, you might not have had similar problems but found a different scapegoat for them? Feminism is not an all-powerful god that is responsible for all the bad things in the universe; but if you realize this, it’s not evident in the way you talk about feminism.
Where have you read feminists saying that “even when a woman looks into my eyes and tilts her face up, putting her lips close to mine,” then there’s no reason to infer that she might want to be kissed, and that if you do kiss her she’s not consenting? And have you honestly never in your life read a feminist saying that it’s okay for girls to initiate (be it a kiss or asking boys out on dates)? When feminists talk about things like the “enthusiastic participation” standard, it seems pretty obvious to me that what’s being discussed is the need for both sexes to be active participants in sex.
Here I pretty much agree with you, Hugh. There are ways in which women are pressured by society to know more about men than vice versa, but it doesn’t translate into knowing what it’s like to be male in all cases, and especially in the cases of men who don’t fit neatly into the male gender role.
* * *
Bean, I really disagree with you that only a stupid or insincere person could have confusion about what something like “objectification” (and a host of related concepts) means. I’ve been in women’s studies classrooms in which I was the only male, and even in a crowd of 30 women who are not stupid nor anti-feminist, there can be a great deal of confusion and dissent about what objectification means.
Plus, there’s obviously a great deal of disagreement among feminists themselves, not only about what exactly objectification is but also about if it’s always harmful, or only harmful in the wrong contexts.
That, right there, is a perfect example of male privilege. I couldn’t have came up with a better example myself.
Hugh, I’ll say it again, with a little more detail this time: I have been dating women for twenty years, courting them, sexing them, etc., etc. I have never once felt bewildered about how to treat them with human decency.
You are completely missing the forest for the trees: men *should* feel paralyzed by what women are saying about dating, courtship, seduction, and sex with men because the way things currently stand all of these areas are highly problematic and potentially hurtful and degrading to women. Men should be left with a huge list of questions and with some nagging sense of doubt about how they have acted in the past. If men sincerely wish to have adult, meaningful relationships with women, I would think the very first place to start would be *listening* to what women have to say about how heterosexual courtship, sex, and relationship are difficult and problematic for women because of men’s socialized sexist expectations.
Where is the mystery in figuring out how not to objectify women? That’s really one of the basic social structures we learn, as children even, along with concepts like sharing, playing nice, etc. etc. It’s codified in the Golden Rule, the New Testament, western judicial systems. It’s everywhere. We learn not to covet, not to hoard, to treat others as ourselves. It’s a very practical and prominent fearture of our modern ethos.
Yet men are socialized towards one particular loophole: sexual relationships with women. Men are socialized to be honorable, stoic, do-unto-others type individuals, but all these norms, all these systems are as fickle as Spring and fall away into the moral distance when it comes to male approaches to heterosexual relationships. Where women are concerned, men re-create the larger social mores and, in essence, reduce women to a sub-adult/sub-human category where the rules change and men think the can honestly expect *women* to tell them *specifically* how not to objectify them.
Good fucking grief.
It’s not rocket science Hugh. And even if it *were* that complicated, men have proven themselves to be “experts” in just about every field of science, art, philosophy and relgion there is, so no doubt there are men out there that do get it. Unless you’re suggesting that even though men can ponder the face of god, woman is such a mystery that she can never be known.
Oh, wait. I thought that particular mind-fuck had died. What year is it? 2007 you say? Get out!
Hugh,
I don’t know how old you are, but from what I’ve read others say, my recollection is that you’re still fairly young — early to mid 20’s. If that’s correct, a lot of what you write strikes me as profoundly impatient — that you want to know the answers and you want to know them NOW and you’re upset that you’re not being given them. Which is its own set of problems …
What strikes me the most is your fixation on dating. This attitude that feminists somehow owe you the knowledge you need in order to find a woman who’s going to fulfill your sexual needs — and that’s the fairest reading I can give you, because that’s where I keep seeing emphasis. I could give you a less fair reading, like, that you see feminist groups as some kind of brothel, or that you’re stalking women through feminism, or a lot of other more negative, more scary things.
Your complaint, over and over, is that feminists aren’t telling 17 year old boys how to get the girls, and that’s not at all the purpose of feminism — making sure teen aged boys and young men get laid. If anything, feminism is more about making sure women understand the ways which teen aged boys and young men will manipulate women in order to get laid.
You quoted this from Allan Hunter —
I’m not sure what Hunter means, but being male, attracted to females and effeminate has problems, but one of them is not being sex-starved. The problem seems to be that you, and Hunter, have both sat down and defined what kinds of people are like what — the sissy is a eunuch, literally or figuratively, who has no interests towards women (assuming that’s his orientation), and who women find so uninteresting that he’s stuck at home, and blah, blah, blah, you’ve got it all figured out. There’s a name for that kind of behavior — objectification.
Objectification isn’t just “I want to separate her from her panties”, which is how too many men view “objectification” — “If I stop expressing my desire to separate her from her panties, I will have stopped objectifying her.”, and if you carry that to its logical conclusion, you’re still objectifying her, because YOU are deciding for HER what SHE is supposed to be wanting.
Here’s a news flash — there are women out there, including perhaps some women you’ve met, who would like to separate you from your boxers. Or briefs. Or whatever. Because just like the sissy that Hunter seems to imply (from how I’ve read your writing of him) is a eunuch, you seem to have this belief that women are not also interested in sex. That if “you” show up as “you” and you let her show up as her self, that somehow you still have to make some move or she has to make some move, because it all seems to be about “moves”.
This is how men seem to be socialized — goal-oriented behavior. Tell a man the objective, tell a man the rules, and he will follow the rules until he reaches the goal. Doesn’t matter if it’s succeeding in business, or sports, or politics, or the bedroom — goal, rules, results. This is so NOT a workable approach to relationships. Men who study feminism the way others study how to invest in the stock market are NOT feminists. Using feminism to get laid doesn’t make anyone a feminist. And that’s what I see people saying to you — feminism isn’t a tool you should be using to get dates, and if feminism seems to not have answers to your dating problems, perhaps you have the wrong understanding of why feminism exists.
If you can’t figure out something that basically boils down to the golden rule, your problem isn’t feminism.
Short of taking a hammer and beating it into your head, feminism has clearly, repeatedly stated
Treat us like individual HUMAN beings. Not lesser human beings, not inferior human beings, not hive minded group think borg .(among other rather specific things) Now applying that, it’s rather simple.
Instead of asking ” what do women like/want” you ask ” what does the woman I would like to date like/want”. Specifically.
“It’s different because this attitude, of obsessive and paralyzing worry about “pressuring” women is a product of feminism. ”
It’s a product of generations of men pressuring women. Go to the root of the problem. Where did it start? Did feminists just one day wake up and proclaim ” dont pressure us for sex” with no reason? No.
And disliking being pressured into things is hardly gender specicfic. Do *you* particularly enjoy being pressured into something you’re not sure you want to do or something you think you might regret or might end up harming you in some way? No? How would you prefer the request to be made?
“because men have been telling feminists this for decades and feminists haven’t been listening. At best, this is gross negligence. ”
*snorts* do you really want to bring up listening ability?
“How should I, as a shy, socially inexperienced 17 year-old have known the answers to those questions? ”
They’re called books. Unless you *always* have questions that you just wait around for someone to answer. Or were kept in a bubble that prevented you from ever being exposed to feminism. Or lost your tongue in some sort of accident and were unable to oh..I dont know, ASK.
Amp writes:
I don’t think women “know” so much about men because women are somehow pressured. I think it’s more like how Jews seem to know so much about Christianity, the good, the bad and the ugly, because we live in a Christian-dominated culture (okay, and I was raised Christian, but I digress …) and it all comes pounding down on us, and people make assumptions and assertions, all from the perspective that “Christian” is the norm.
It’s precisely because Christians don’t have to care about when Yom Kippur falls out, or what’s chametz, or what’s the real purpose of Chanukah, that Christians don’t know anything about Jewish beliefs or practices. In the same way, men can ignore what women are about because it doesn’t harm men (okay, it does, but that’s another thread) to just ignore women.
Hugh, it’s taking just about all my restraint not to talk to you as if you’re five years old.
Remember two weeks ago when I asked what feminist theory you had read? When I questioned what your source of feminist information is?
And your response: you said my question was irrelevant and a diversion.
Yet right here in this thread you’re bitching and moaning that you just don’t get it and it’s *our* fault.
Fuck off.
Or in a more polite tone: do your own fucking homework.
Neither bean nor I were born with an inherent understanding of feminism. We were both raised in this sexist culture and feminism came to us as theory and politics, much of which we hadn’t heard before. So we did what any curious, intelligent, and independent adult would do: we read, we studied, and get this, we SEARCHED for answers.
Bean and I, and all the other intelligent feminists out there, do not have the time nor energy to repeat, in every single FUCKING thread, the premises of Feminism 101.
That my friends is not dialogue but a very calculated male approach to dominating feminist discourse. And the funny thing about that Hugh, is that you think you’re unique, intellectually astute and somehow cutting edge in your edgy approach to “feminist critics”. But the sad fact is that you are a stereotype, you are archaic in your thought processes, and you can be (and will be) replaced by any other sad sack man who “doesn’t get it.”
And no, that’s not a personal attack. That’s a critique of your political agenda. That’s a critique of your questionable motives.
You, Hugh, are our own personal “Nice Guy”.
Ah Hugh, you just keep lining them up for us.
Again, perfect example of male privilege. You, my good sir, can’t be bothered to respond to every single point due to your precious time commodity. Yet the bulk of every post of yours consists of lambasting feminists for not taking enough time to address “every single point made at the same time.”
You couldn’t make it any clearer than this.
Your time is no more precious than ours.
Hugh:
Pandagon
Feministe
Feministing
The Chicken
Fetch me my Axe
I Blame the Patriarchy
Brownfemipower
Echidne of the Snakes
These are all excellent jumping off places to learn about feminism. Of course their disadvantage to you is that they are all created, run, and hosted by women. I recognize that you are hesitant to explore outside of your comfort zone, specifically that one in which men are trying to create, run, and host “feminist” discourse. But really, if you’re going to continue to blame feminism for your list of social ills, then you need to go to where the feminism is. Quit hiding behind other men.
Oh, and:
A View from a Broad
But that one, of course, demystifies your whine about women not serving in combat roles, so it might be a little over your head.
“My motivation was to do the right thing with women and conduct my sexuality in a way consistent with feminist principles. Do you think he ever had this goal?”
Yep. It was his stated, repeated, and emphasized goal.
(oh, but shockingly, when it was explained to him that what he was doing was awful, he just — didn’t get it.
A) How could he be doing something awful?
B) How is he supposed to *know* it’s awful. Begin cycle again.)
Eh, Hugh, you smack of an awful lot of privelege, including what seems, to me, a deliberate misreading of my attempt to explain why your behavior may be triggering, so I, personally, shan’t waste more breath on you. You do a good impression of an anti-feminist.
*
Amp, with respect, I don’t see anyone on this thread unable to grasp what it’s like to be a shy 17 year old who is supposed to be in an initiator role. I see people on this thread unable to concede that it allows entitlement and whining and blame of women and feminists for the problems it triggers.
Men who study feminism the way others study how to invest in the stock market are NOT feminists.
[Delurks just long enough to pass Julie a plate of oatmeal cookies]
[Relurks]
After reading through this thread, I feel worse and worse for my male friends. As a lesbian (for the uninitiated, that means I am a woman who, in some freudian psychoanalysis order, has sex with, dates, lives with, and is permanantly coupled with another woman), I am no more in tune with what a woman wants than any male. Any woman on here who pretends that she knows what another woman wants at all times is wrong, Golden Rule notwithstanding. Do unto others as they would do unto you doesn’t work when the woman does not want the same thing as you, i.e. I hate being coddled when I’m sick but the woman I adore needs it.
I find that most feminists conveniently neglect lesbians, since we are a little harder to bash. The more I read feminist theory, the more I am glad I do not associate with many women at all.
Veronica, wait – it’s the feminists in this discussion who’re trying to make a monolith of womankind?
Men: Chicks dig assholes. I know this because chicks don’t dig a nice guy like me.
Feminists: Women want all sorts of things; maybe your behavior has something to do with women not liking you.
Men: But I can’t behave in a way that’ll lead to women liking me until you tell me What Women Want
[hey wasn’t that a movie? funny that that phrase is associated with Hollywood’s most outspoken bigot du jour]
Feminists: But there is no “what women want.” Just don’t be an asshole, and you should be fine.
Men: But Teh Women won’t tell me how not to be an asshole! (me! me! etc.)
No offense to lesbians, but I don’t think it’s a huge sin of omission not to bring up the desires of women who don’t date men in a conversation about the dynamics that occur when – ding ding ding – women date men. An analogy: if we were discussing the appreciation of the regional differences of Chinese cuisine, would we be remiss in not mentioning that a whole lot of people really prefer Japanese food? We wouldn’t be pretending that there are no sushi lovers out there [mmm….sushi], just not bringing up every topic that could possibly relate to the love of Asian food. See?
(that may not be a great analogy, but now I’m hungry.)
“I find that most feminists conveniently neglect lesbians, since we are a little harder to bash. The more I read feminist theory, the more I am glad I do not associate with many women at all.”
Voila — exceptionalism.
I have been approaching the debate from the perspective as a woman who also dates women and who at times has been as mystified as any man about the desires of the women/woman I wanted to be near. Incidentally, I also used to date men and could talk about that, but that’s another story. Oh, and let’s not speak about what your use of sushi as a food means what you’re thinking about my sexuality.*
The entire discussion seems to be framed around the notion that a man being interested in a woman sexually is a bad thing. The very act of the man trying to garner the woman’s attention is terrible because…er…um…well, I got nothing. I see a lot of privilege and entitlement being thrown around in these arguments, but my own views allow desire and entitlement to be two different things. In my experience, this has been the case for men and women of all types in most situations. I can covet something or someone without taking it. For the Bible-minded above this post, that’s why those are two different commandments.
It is a lovely situation where a mutually non-sexual friendship develops into a mutually sexual relationship. The problem is that for many of us, that situation does not ever come into being. We actually need to work our way into a sexual relationship, not necessarily due to our having unsightly personality and/or physical characteristics. (Living in Wisconsin, and previously the deep South, while homosexual is why my darling was single for seven years.) I believe that the need for a sexual partner is a normal desire for all genders and sexes; there is nothing shameful, in my mind, with approaching someone with that goal in mind. So, why not figure out how to interact with someone you find interesting and potentially sexually compatible without insulting her, hurting her, or driving her away?
You said it’s because asking those questions comes off as impatient and self-centered. Should men therefore look in the opposite direction for inspiration and assume that their being noticed by a woman is an unlikely event that they dare not merely DREAM of? That doesn’t sound very kind to anyone who wants to date women, nor does it seem very egalitarian. When someone like pheeno adamantly insists that the golden rule is the way to garner a woman’s affection, I am reminded of Hillel. (Come with me on this. It makes sense.) The golden rule, “Do unto others as they would do unto you” only works when both of you want the same things. In the great universals of not murdering, not stealing, not raping, this works wonderfully. In the great non-universal of dating, it fails utterly. That’s why you have a man being nice to a woman and following her around like a hopeful puppy…because that’s what he thinks she wants from him as a man, what he thinks he has to do to attract her. Hillel’s approach was “Do not unto others as you would hope they not do unto you,” which works in many more situations, since it never presumes someone’s likes.
Incidentally, I hate it when people use friendship as a way of “getting to” sex in either direction. A man who tries to be a woman’s friend in the hopes she will sleep with him, without her saying something to indicate interest, have no right to be upset. However, a woman who expects a potential sexual partner to know her as a friend before consenting to sex should not be surprised when her friends are disappointed they do not become sexual partners. They met the condition she set forth, in those partners’ minds; what else are they supposed to do? Apply the golden rule? They already did! Do you see what I am talking about?
A woman, if she feels like she is being pressured, has the right to tell the person to buzz off. A man should have the right to ask directly without needing to apply pressure or be stupidly covert. Asking “Would you like to be my sexual partner?” might not be socially correct, but it’s honest and disambiguous. Perhaps instead of guessing and social dancing, we should try that approach?
Maybe I’m on another planet. That’s why I used a dating site. We all knew what we were after. In my mind, asking what you want greatly increases your chances of getting it.
*I might be joking.
Another two notes; sorry for the long discussion.
Most of my comments had men as the requestors and females as the requestees, since that is what this post addresses. In my world, it is woman A and woman B and there is no reason, other than social conventions, that the roles should not be reversed for heterosexuals. Replace nouns as you wish.
As someone who spents many decades trying to learn social cues since they never came naturally, I am infuriated by sexual dynamics. I don’t watch much TV anymore since they revolve around “amusing” miscues that I have acually made because I didn’t know better. Perhaps it is a mark of my true geekery that I have little patience for this form of obfuscating. Ask for what you want, accept the answer you receive. If there is a “yes, if…” determine if the “if” is something you’re willing to adhere to. So much simpler.
OK, first, because I won’t be able to focus on the rest of your comment until I get this off my chest – the sushi thing had nothing to do with your sexuality. I came at it from my initial idea of comparing dating to Chinese food, because – since China is a very very large country – has a wide spectrum of regional cuisines. Kind of like hetero dating involves a wide spectrum of individual desires, but is by no means the be-all-end-all of Asian food. I mean, dating in general.
I now notice not only the implication you alluded to, but also the massive size difference between China and Japan that isn’t really representative of the number of lesbians in the world. Neither implication was intentional – I was just sort of picking a nearby country with tasty but different food. I’m sorry for not thinking through that comparison more. Now, onward…
ms_xeno writes:
[Grabs a glass of milk and eats the cookies while reading the rest of the thread.
Nice cookies.]
Veronica, thank you for adding your insights to this discussion; I happen to agree with a lot of what you’ve said. The ever-increasing irrelevance of the gender roles that, as you point out, don’t apply to your love life – that irrelevance is exactly what the feminists here are trying to show exists. We’re (rather pointlessly, I think at this point) trying to drill it into these dudes’ heads that there are no such inherent roles – as proven in part by their irrelevance to lesbian interactions – and that some men’s desire to frame their dating problems in terms of such roles are their own issue.
I think that the part where you and I are looking at this conversation differently can be opened up here:
The feminists in this discussion have been saying that in this context, by these guys, the questions are being asked in an impatient and self-centered way. No one here has negated the awkwardness of the shy 17 year old, but there is no such 17 year old here.
When we do start getting specific, the response is “Well why are you telling us? We’re not the ones who need it, it’s all the kids out there who have No Opportunity Ever to learn these things! You feminists should hold a seminar. ” [although, note that the suggestion there is still to change women’s behavior through so-called assertiveness training; not actually to teach men where the lines are to be drawn]
So when we explain how there are endless opportunities for the kids out there to learn these things, like the decades of feminist writings and real-live feminists out there, the guys here come back with “But what ARE these things that are out there for the kids to learn? No one ever spells them out, and I think you’re making up their existence entirely. What is the poor shy awkward 17 year old to do? You ladies really need to be more specific.”
And so it begins again. In other words, they’re borrowing one of the most basic tactics of emotional abuse and setting up a cycle where there is no way for the women and/or feminists to not be at fault for everything in these guys’ eyes. This discussion isn’t happening in good faith, is the thing, though it might not be readily apparent if you haven’t had this conversation five million times, as a couple of us seem to be weary of having done.
Disappointed, sure. Angry and making accusations against all women and their monolithic and misguided preferences? It’s too common to be surprising per se, but it’s certainly grounds to call “asshole.” And that’s what the OP was about*, the guys who 1) use their interpretation of gender roles to 2) twist their disappointment into rage against women. I really, really recommend that any of the feminists here who have some (oh all right, a lot of) time on their hands go over and read the Thinking Girl thread that tracked back to here for more on this rage.
Like you said, Veronica, this kind of pining and disappointment aren’t gender-specific. That’s precisely why it irks me so much to see “in love with a friend and sad” dressed up as a problem that only affects the sad little nice guys, and a problem that we feminists created with all our “don’t rape me” crap.
Yes. Yesyesyesyesyes. I’m slowly figuring this out for myself, too – I’m an introvert, I live in my head, so I’ve always kind of assumed that the people who don’t live in my head have a better idea of what the world is like than I do. I grew up following their cues, and am only in my mid-twenties realizing just how utterly fucked up those cues were. They’re not supposed to come naturally to everybody, because they’re made-up constructs. And among the less crappy results is that it keeps me from watching the majority of tv shows, too :(
Veronica, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that I see your initial impulse to pin a lot of the guys’ tactics on the feminists here as a not-at-all-uncommon result of very skilled divide-and-conquer tactics. Just like the feminists are supposed to now get frustrated with the supposed “women who love assholes” instead of focusing on the issues behind a man’s instinct to say that women love assholes, women in general are supposed to join the men in blaming the feminists for the existence of oppressive gender roles. We didn’t invent them, we’re just pointing them out. Don’t shoot the messenger, jump on the back of her bike and join her in fighting the root causes. On the way, you could help her clear up her metaphors if you’re so inclined.
__________
*I’m going to seriously fly off the handle if anyone tries to dispute that, seeing as I wrote the damn OP and know damn well what it was about. I know these guys have been pretending it was about something else entirely, but that’s the exact skewed perspective that the post was about. It’s all very meta ;)
Julie, I’ll trade you a spring roll for a cookie :D
Hey lookie! I’m invisible!
:0
*snort*
Veronica, to state the obvious, no one can ever know another person. Not unless you objectify them. Then you think you know them. Then you think you have a leg up on guessing their desires. To treat someone as yourself, to value them equally with yourself, is to drop the guessing and ask. What is the point in trying to create and maintain a mystery about someone else’s life? I know romanticism is a grand thing in the patriarchy, but one has to wonder why. Get the women in your life off pedastals.
Further, just because you’re a woman, and just because you’re a lesbian ™, doesn’t preclude you from sexism or sexist beliefs.
defenstrated writes:
Are these kosher or vegan spring rolls?
Right. “You know, I could lay a big line on you and we could do a lot of role-playing, but the simple truth is, is that I find you very interesting and I’d really like to make love to you.” That worked so well in Tootsie.
beanDefenestrated writes:It could also be that Veronica is a few years older than you and remembers a time when lesbian politics were different than they are today. There was a time when this sort of thing was absolutely forbidden (I’m the one who’s sitting down) and there was a lot of backlash in the lesbian universe about “feminism” and “feminists”.
The women I’ve dated who are older than me, which is most of them, and who survived that era, have a very negative attitude towards feminism. It can take a lot of effort, and G-d knows I’ve been through it a few times over the years, to get those women to understand that feminism is not supposed to be about making sure all women behave like some kind of feminist-approved robots.
nobody.really writes:
Ignoring that Tootsie was a movie, that un-line is a line. It’s the “I’m not going to play any games with you” game.
The point that keeps being made over and over and over, is that it’s the games, the role-playing, the putting other people into boxes, that is wrong. I’m constitutionally incapable of walking up to a stranger and saying “I’d like to have sex with you.” because it’s just … uh … weird. But it is possible to find oneself in a situation where “sex” just … happens. And it can be done without clever pickup lines or “I’ll buy you dinner, you’ll lay there and moan, I’ll sneak out the door while you’re asleep” nonsense. It can also not happen, and that’s fine as well. But all the “I have to say the right thing or act the right way or ….” (besides not acting like a rapist or a stalker …) is B.S.
Bean,
You’re right — that was defenstrated.
Amp, can you fix the attribution?
Julie – it’s definitely a vegetarian spring roll, so sure, kosher and vegan too, why not? Ah, the power of the mind (over imaginary objects).
Good point about people a few years older than me; I knew there was something in Veronica’s thinking that just didn’t make sense to me, and I think an age difference is likely to be part of it. I’m still inclined to see the same divide-and-conquer tactics in that part of the history of feminism, though, since by no means are straight and/or younger feminists immune to such tactics. My of-debatable-accuracy observations (so really, please correct me on any b.s.):
As lesbians and non-lesbian feminists have gotten on better terms over the years, that divisional tension has been partly shifted to ever-louder rifts between white feminists and feminists of color, cisgendered feminists and transwomen (neither feminist nor non-feminist transwomen can help but push society’s gender boundaries until such a time as society gets over transgenderism, so the ‘feminist’ distinction seems less necessary there), etc. It’s fighting over scraps, which to me makes a lot of sense as semi-natural responses to marginalization. Not to say that such rifts are good or useful, but they’re there – and always shifting, hopefully always decreasing, as feminism & society both shed their layers of outmoded conceptions of womanhood, and assimilate to women’s autonomy over time.
Huge nerd that I am, I always think of the factory scene from Les Miserables when I’m thinking about this, the scene where all of Fantine’s coworkers gang up to shame her for having a kid and get her fired for not screwing the boss; of course the other poor women don’t like their shitty range of shitty options, but as long as that’s the way things are, “better her than me,” y’know? [fwiw, which may be nothing, itseems like the prostitutes were in general a much kinder and more welcoming bunch. maybe there’s something to be said for not having any illusions of power left, hence no need to scramble over others to assert what power you do have. what was I talking about?]
Why oh why do I go about trying to make cultural observations after half a cup of coffee? Pardon and and all of the nonsense, please :D
defenestrated,
The particular time in history, which was the late 1970’s and into the early 1980’s, wasn’t caused by any sort of men-dividing-women conflict, it was a purely internal rift that grew out of a particular ideology, which was that lesbians shouldn’t be immitating gender roles within relationships. There remain some lesbian feminists, even today, who believe that any sort of expression of genderedness — butch or femme — is wrong, except that the norm is much more towards butch than femme.
Now, there’s immitating gender roles, and there’s immitating gender roles. Which is to say, that the model of the gentlemanly butch opening doors and valiantly protecting her femme wife, who probably stays home and irons boxers and cooks dinner, is something that I’m more than delighted to see go buh-bye. But when you have a woman, like my (deceased) wife in that photo who’s just not at all comfortable in dresses, and someone like me who draws snickers if I try to get all butch, what the heck were couples like that to do? The result was known as the “Sex Wars” and remains a very sad, and bitter, memory even today. That link does little justice to the complexity of the issue as well as the lasting bitterness.
Much of that conflict required more analysis than many were willing to give it, but those “many” were all within the lesbian community — it wasn’t men or straights dictating terms, though even that statement is subject to analysis, it was women IN that community dictating terms to women IN that community. This continues today and there remain prominent feminists, or at least, vocal feminists, who seek to dictate what lesbian sexuality looks like, what lebian relationships look like, et cetera, ad nauseum.
Anyway, that’s the background. I return you all to our regularly scheduled discussion about why men can’t ever seem to figure women out …
Julie, I’m really sorry to hear about your wife. Your “Sex Wars” link doesn’t go anywhere, alas. Always up for reading about sex wars.
On a lighter note, that photo reminds me of a priest of exceptional physical beauty I knew in high school. The gals in church youth group called him “Father What A Damn Waste”. Forgive this heterosexual male for classifying you as “Tragically Lesbian”. ;)
“Anyway, that’s the background. I return you all to our regularly scheduled discussion about why men can’t ever seem to figure women out … ”
That was fascinating, Julie, thank you. I was aware of parts and pieces.
The photo is gorgeous.
Julie – Thanks for the background; this topic is way more interesting than rehashing why the monolith of men can’t understand the monolith of women. Helped along somewhat by this thread, I’m seeing it as somewhat akin to debating how Smurfs propagate, ie a discussion based on fantasy premises.
See, I think my ideas mesh with what you’re saying, just with different framing: from an overall cultural standpoint [toss in a few academic-terms-I’m-not-clear-on to taste], I’d mostly take the opposite hypothesis in said analysis. IMO, just because it’s women (or whoever, really) perpetuating patriarchal roles doesn’t make them any less patriarchal, but for my earlier comment to make sense in that context one kinda has to anthropomorphize patriarchy and allow that it can be described as having “tactics” as such. Which I can understand being a semantic leap not everyone’s down with taking, but I think most clearly in those kinds of terms.
I see it as something along the lines of there being collective (conscious and/or unconscious) motivations behind the constructs available for individuals to choose from – I’m not totally sure where I’m going with that, but your second paragraph has sort of gotten me thinking in that [nebulous] direction, as far as behavior vs. style and appearance, and how the latter are conflated with the former. On the surface, it’s absurd that there would be an inherent connection between preferring pants and opening doors; that we as a culture think there is one is pretty illuminating, in my view.
Heh, btw -when I first looked at that picture I had my laptop screen slanted away from me, and it was shading-distorted in such a way that it looked like you were using the front of your shirt as a vase, with the stem standing up out of your cleavage.
And – as a feminist, natch – I would’ve had to object to that. Putting thorns down one’s shirt just seems downright foolhardy. ;)
Urph. I’m guessing the link shouldn’t have been in quotes. Here’s the URL —
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_Sex_Wars
defenestrated writes:
I guess at lower resolution it does look like that!
And that’s not a shirt — it’s the jacket for the dress I wore when she and I ran off to Vermont and got civilly unionized. That’s also the tux she wore ;)
(And apropos a comment I made upthread, my ex-girlfriend from college was supposed to come over with her wife (they live in Mass. where marriage-marriage is legal), but her wife was ill and it was just my ex-girlfriend, my wife and I romping around Vermont, acting like tourists. Which should be a clue for the guys that it really is possible to be friends with women, including women one was once romantically attracted to, and not have your head explode.)
Yeah, uh, Julie, would I be objectifying you if I said you were quite lovely? I mean I know lovely is an adjective and an adjective only describes nouns and nouns are things and I don’t want to make it seem like I think you’re a thing, even though technically a person is a noun too and I’ve seen you use adjectives to describe people so really doesn’t that mean you want me to objectify you? – oh alack! Why did we feminists have to introduce such concepts!? My brain hurts.
[Heh, I’m sorry, I really couldn’t resist. And I did try. It is a beautiful photo, though, and I too am sorry to hear it didn’t come with a happier ending.]
“Subtle sexism. Covert sexism. Overt sexism. It’s all sexism and it’s all harmful. And each of these forms of sexism allows the other forms to exist.”
So it’s a bit of an in for a dollar, in for a million type deal? To use a specific example within sexism, there’s therefore no difference between making an inappropriately offhand comment about an applicant’s figure and, say, making a full grab for her titties?
All sexism isn’t equally harmful. If male sexist attacks against women could be charted on a radar screen, the ones committed by shy, loser-ish men would be the blips that could be mistaken for puffy little rainclouds. You can dislike these guys all you want but don’t pretend it’s because of sexism.
defenstrated,
It’s a professional photo — if I didn’t look good in it I’d feel like I didn’t get my money’s worth :)
And, yeah, the ending to the otherwise happy story sucks. I wrote a piece recently, on the occassion of a friend’s wife passing away, and I’m in one of those “I think I’ll stay home and cry in my beer. A lot” moods. If Amp starts a thread in which something like it (I titled it “Reflections on our own mortality” where I posted it earlier) can be posted I’ll sanitize and post it. Then we can all get really depressed.
Ugh!
“Don’t complain about this, ladies, it’s not that important…”
As far as whether there’s a difference between the thinking process behind the two – hell no there isn’t.
The rest is just a matter of degrees of expression. It’s shitty to scream “YOU FUCKIGN ASS I HATE YOU” at the top of your lungs in somebody’s face, and only slightly less shitty to say “You fuckign [sic ;) ] ass, I hate you” in a calm voice. Just because one carries an implicit physical threat doesn’t make it any less hateful.
To clarify:
“just because one carries an implicit physical threat”
is meant to apply to both ends of that analogy – there’s a physical threat in grabbing someone’s “titties,” but there’s no less hate in….well hell, in describing women’s bodies in general, as a whole (which is the implication when a word like that is used in a general analogy about sexism as a whole) in misogynistic terms like that.
IOW, don’t anybody worry, we don’t expect little anti-feminist brains to be capable of grasping this one. After all, in prehistoric times*, the anti-feminists were the ones cleaning lint out from between their toes. They haven’t evolved a genetic reason to think beyond their toes and, on a good day, navels.
———-
*Which I know all about, and you can’t prove me wrong because that’s why it’s *prehistoric*, duh. So there won’t be any pesky “evidence” getting in the way of pushing my self-serving fantasies on the rest of y’all. Crimey, I think somebody laced my coffee with snark this morning.
sylphead, it’s disingenuous of you to pretend that the post you quoted said there was no difference between physical and verbal assault. The difference is a matter of degree, though; not type.
“Well, I could be doing something a lot worse!” is never an excuse for bad behavior. Sorry.
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I am not an older lesbian, no, but I am someone who has sadly perpetrated at least once butch prejudice. (Additionally, I dated someone who had lived through it and she impacted my views significantly.) Although it is not a look/gender/preference that I am attracted to, age has made me accept it much more than in my youth that being butch and filling a butch gender role is an acceptable part of lesbianism. There is a very large segment of the lesbian community who idealizes almost total androgynity in action, dress, and physical appearance. Others can accept traditional trappings of femininty but abhor those who take on any aspect of masculinity. Others can accept the masculine characteristics but feel that femininity is unacceptable because it provides heterosexual privilege. Some find butch-femme too reminiscent of heterosexuality, some find butch-butch disturbing, and femme-femme too fitting into heterosexual male desires. All these based mainly on dress, partially on behavior. By having long hair and occasionally wearing a dress, I’m a femme. By owning power tools, being aggressive, and walking with confidence, I’m a butch. And depending on how I classify myself, regardless of anything else, certain women would be more or less attracted to me…even if the only thing that changed was the label. Julie did a wonderful job of explaining this before me, but I wanted to reiterate that.
Right, but to me, it is weird only because you’ve been taught that doing so is wrong and that sex should be approached with delicacy. Taking this to its logical extremes, you don’t walk into a restaurant and nervously shuffle around before asking to maybe get a table, then maybe hint at being hungry and hoping. Food is pragmatic. I think that sex should be equally pragmatic. Having never seen Tootsie, I don’t know the line quoted so derisively at me, but your failure to agree with the presmise does not make my view any less correct.
But contrasted againsted the above discussion, in my mind, even the act of “asking and discussing” is unpleasant and presumptuous. How does a potential mate get to that point?
Totally back on the oroginal topic, I talked to my male friend who is in a UU theology program. He says that part of the problem is lies with how the UU has approached its children. UU has produced a generation of confident, capable women, which is univerally lauded. The problem is that it has produced a generation of submissive, powerless men as well. It is not that both cannot exist at once. Rather, in addition to bolstering the women, they also subjegated the males. Some may think that’s normal or desirable, but teaching all children to get to the same level of confidence should be the goal (to me.)
“Nices guys finish last. Women seem to like that”
Bad jokes aside,
I was a nice guy while I was single (hopefully I still am). I didn’t have problems finding partners.
Not as many as I’d have liked or always the ones I wanted, but I ain’t Clark Gable so that’s just the way it goes.
I doubt being a nice guy stands in the way of any man’s romantic aims.
I’m dropping in here without reading most of the discussion, and I got here via a comics blog, but I have a tip for the guys who seem to be having problems negotiating this situation:
If you make sure you’re around, and being your best self, and the woman in whom you’re interested _is also interested in you_, things will happen. Most likely, she will make things happen to move from friends to dating.
If she doesn’t, and you’re not actually interested in friendship, then best to move on.
I got my first date, my first girlfriend, and got together with the woman who is now my wife of eight years (and love of 16 years) that way, and at the time those things happened I was almost pathologically passive, and borderline incompetent at reading positive signals.
I grew out of the whole “why do girls like bad guys instead of nice guys like me” mindset when I was about 18. The first step was realizing it was not my problem. Realizing it wasn’t actually a problem at all came later.
Wait! You mean you treated a woman like an equally human person….and she didn’t eat you alive?
Eric, your last paragraph reminds me of some other, similarly great advice from a menz on the tubes.
FWIW, the whole outlook of mine, corresponding to Nice Guy Syndrome, was in a way part of a larger social paranoia that made me standoffish around any guy I didn’t know whom I perceived to be “cool” in High School (who I would have identified, sometimes, as bad guys).
The paranoia was honestly earned in grade school and after, and took much longer to identify than the NGS (and I’m still trying to shake it).