{"id":5511,"date":"2008-11-18T09:26:18","date_gmt":"2008-11-18T16:46:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=5511"},"modified":"2008-11-18T09:26:18","modified_gmt":"2008-11-18T16:46:06","slug":"nice-guys%e2%84%a2-finish-last","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=5511","title":{"rendered":"Nice Guys\u2122 Finish Last"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pity the Nice Guy\u2122<\/a>. Please. His world is all topsy-turvy. All he wants is to know exactly what all women want, so that he can have sex with them. But it turns out that different women want different things. Some women believe firmly in traditional gender roles, while others are believers in egalitarianism. Some women are all about hooking up, others want a commitment. And this means that a Nice Guy\u2122 is completely unable to get it right on every single date. Quelle horreur<\/em>!<\/p>\n

The latest bit of Nice Guy\u2122 wankery comes courtesy of Kay S. Hymowitz, writing in City Journal<\/em><\/a>, who explains that the rules just don’t matter anymore, and that’s just terrible for the menz. She had written a previous article arguing that today’s men are too childish (which is another stupid stereotype for another day), and men wrote in to say nuh-uh, it’s all girls’ fault:<\/p>\n

It would be easy enough to hold up some of the callow ranting that the piece inspired as proof positive of the child-man\u2019s existence. But the truth is that my correspondents\u2019 objections gave me pause. Their argument, in effect, was that the SYM is putting off traditional markers of adulthood\u2014one wife, two kids, three bathrooms\u2014not because he\u2019s immature but because he\u2019s angry. He\u2019s angry because he thinks that young women are dishonest, self-involved, slutty, manipulative, shallow, controlling, and gold-digging. He\u2019s angry because he thinks that the culture disses all things male. He\u2019s angry because he thinks that marriage these days is a raw deal for men.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s Jeff from Middleburg, Florida: \u201cI am not going to hitch my wagon to a woman . . . who is more into her abs, thighs, triceps, and plastic surgery. A woman who seems to have forgotten that she did graduate high school and that it\u2019s time to act accordingly.\u201d Jeff, meet another of my respondents, Alex: \u201cMaybe we turn to video games not because we are trying to run away from the responsibilities of a \u2018grown-up life\u2019 but because they are a better companion than some disease-ridden bar tramp who is only after money and a free ride.\u201d Care for one more? This is from Dean in California: \u201cMen are finally waking up to the ever-present fact that traditional marriage, or a committed relationship, with its accompanying socially imposed requirements of being wallets with legs for women, is an empty and meaningless drudgery.\u201d You can find the same themes posted throughout websites like AmericanWomenSuck, NoMarriage, MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way), and Eternal Bachelor (\u201cGive modern women the husband they deserve. None\u201d).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ah, yes, the mating call of the MRA: “Women suck and they just want our money and they totally suck and they’re slutty and icky and dirty and I really hate them because they don’t want to be with me.” You’d think, at some point, that these men would be happy that they’d figured out that women were all evil whorebags, and be satisfied with being single. I mean, if women really are as universally evil as the MRAs claim, why would men want to be with them?<\/p>\n

Now, I would tend to think that this level of anger comes from a deap-seated hatred of women, one with roots probably going back to childhood. Through self-examination, these men might be able to overcome these problems. But Hymowitz knows better. These men are really upset that women aren’t all on the same page:<\/p>\n

The reason for all this anger, I submit, is that the dating and mating scene is in chaos. SYMs of the postfeminist era are moving around in a Babel of miscues, cross-purposes, and half-conscious, contradictory female expectations that are alternately proudly egalitarian and coyly traditional. And because middle-class men and<\/em> women are putting off marriage well into their twenties and thirties as they pursue Ph.D.s, J.D.s, or their first $50,000 salaries, the opportunities for heartbreak and humiliation are legion. Under these harsh conditions, young men are looking for a new framework for understanding what (or, as they might put it, WTF) women want. So far, their answer is unlikely to satisfy anyone\u2014either women or, in the long run, themselves.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ah, yes. What do women want? Let me ask a different question: what do men want? Well, it depends, you might say. Some men want a family. Some want sex. Some want an equal. Some are looking for a homemaker. Some are looking for someone to snuggle with on a cold winter’s night, and some are looking for someone to cuckold them while they hide in the closet and take pictures. If there are 150 million American men, there are 250 million different things that those men want.<\/p>\n

And the same goes for women. There is no one thing that “women want.” Different women want different things. Some are looking for a friend and companion that will be with them as they build careers. Some are looking for a potential father. Some are looking for a night of commitment-free sex. Some are looking for a threesome. Some are looking for all of the above, or none of the above. And many women — and many men — aren’t sure exactly what<\/em> they’re looking for.<\/p>\n

Confusing? Yes, it is. Welcome to the 21st century. Two hundred years ago, it was easy — everyone was supposed to want the exact same thing. Of course, many women and many men were deeply unhappy then.<\/p>\n

Now, men and women have probably been a mystery to one another since the time human beings were in trees; one reason people developed so many rules around courtship was that they needed some way to bridge the Great Sexual Divide<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The older I get, the more I believe that women and men are a mystery to each other only because we are constantly told from birth that women and men are a mystery to each other, who speak different languages and are unable to actually communicate. It turns out that men and women are a lot alike. There may be minor differences, but nothing that can’t be figured out by asking questions. Indeed, much of the trouble in relationships could be solved by teaching our children that if they have questions about that boy or girl they’re interested in dating, the best thing to do is just bite the bullet and go ask them. And that if they get asked an honest question, then give an honest answer. Instead, we teach boys and girls that they have to deal with girls and boys through an elaborate system of games and deception. It’s a wonder any relationships work at all.<\/p>\n

By the early twentieth century, things had evolved so that in the United States, at any rate, a man knew the following: he was supposed to call for a date; he was supposed to pick up his date; he was supposed to take his date out, say, to a dance, a movie, or an ice-cream joint; if the date went well, he was supposed to call for another one; and at some point, if the relationship seemed charged enough\u2014or if the woman got pregnant\u2014he was supposed to ask her to marry him. Sure, these rules could end in a midlife crisis and an unhealthy fondness for gin, but their advantage was that anyone with an emotional IQ over 70 could follow them.<\/p>\n

Today, though, there is no standard scenario for meeting and mating, or even relating. For one thing, men face a situation\u2014and I\u2019m not exaggerating here\u2014new to human history. Never before have men wooed women who are, at least theoretically, their equals\u2014socially, professionally, and sexually.<\/p>\n

By the time men reach their twenties, they have years of experience with women as equal competitors in school, on soccer fields, and even in bed. Small wonder if they initially assume that the women they meet are after the same things they are: financial independence, career success, toned triceps, and sex.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And you know, there are a lot of women who are<\/em> into those things. And a lot of women who aren’t. A lot of men aren’t, too — for example, I don’t even know where my triceps are, and I assume they probably aren’t toned. And if a woman wanted to date me, but was insistent that my triceps were toned…well, it wouldn’t work out. Because I tone my triceps for no earthly being.<\/p>\n

But then, when an SYM walks into a bar and sees an attractive woman, it turns out to be nothing like that. The woman may be hoping for a hookup, but she may also be looking for a husband, a co-parent, a sperm donor, a relationship, a threesome, or a temporary place to live. She may want one thing in November and another by Christmas. \u201cI\u2019ve gone through phases in my life where I bounce between serial monogamy, Very Serious Relationships and extremely casual sex,\u201d writes Megan Carpentier on Jezebel, a popular website for young women. \u201cI\u2019ve slept next to guys on the first date, had sex on the first date, allowed no more than a cheek kiss, dispensed with the date-concept altogether after kissing the guy on the way to his car, fucked a couple of close friends and, more rarely, slept with a guy I didn\u2019t care if I ever saw again.\u201d Okay, wonders the ordinary guy with only middling psychic powers, which is it tonight?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, here’s a way to find out, guy with middling psychic powers: ask the girl. She’ll tell you.<\/p>\n

Or maybe she won’t, but then you’ll know that she’s just looking to play games. And you’ll have to decide whether you want to play along.<\/p>\n

Now, maybe the woman gives you an answer you don’t like. Maybe you want a relationship, and she just wants sex. You know what you do then? Thank her for her time, and move along. Because there’s another woman out there who does<\/em> want a relationship, and you’re looking for her. And there’s another man out there who’s just looking for sex, and you’re getting in his way.<\/p>\n

In fact, young men face a bewildering multiplicity of female expectations and desire. Some women are comfortable asking, \u201cWhat\u2019s your name again?\u201d when they look across the pillow in the morning. But plenty of others are looking for Mr. Darcy. In her interviews with 100 unmarried, college-educated young men and women, Jillian Straus, author of Unhooked Generation<\/em>, discovered that a lot of women had \u201cpersonal scripts\u201d\u2014explicit ideas about how a guy should act, such as walking his date home or helping her on with her coat. Straus describes a 26-year-old journalist named Lisa fixed up for a date with a 29-year-old social worker. When he arrives at her door, she\u2019s delighted to see that he\u2019s as good-looking as advertised. But when they walk to his car, he makes his first mistake: he fails to open the car door for her. Mistake Number Two comes a moment later: \u201cSo, what would you like to do?\u201d he asks. \u201cHer idea of a date is that the man plans the evening and takes the woman out,\u201d Straus explains. But how was the hapless social worker supposed to know that? In fact, Doesn\u2019t-Open-the-Car-Door Guy might well have been chewed out by a female colleague for reaching for the office door the previous week.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Please. You know what you do when you go out on a first date with a woman who’s really upset that you didn’t open the car for her (or did, wev)? You don’t go out on a second date with her. The reverse is true, too. First dates aren’t binding, long-term contracts. They’re a chance to meet someone and decide if they’re right for you. If you find a person whose idea of a relationship is different than yours, then you’ve probably found a person you don’t want to build a relationship with.<\/p>\n

I don’t believe in relationships where the man is supposed to be the guy in charge, and so I’m going to avoid them. If I meet a woman who expects me to plan every date, she’s going to be disappointed in me, and I’m going to be disappointed in her, so why would I be upset that she didn’t want to date me again? If she and I are so incompatible, I don’t want to waste my time dating her again, either.<\/p>\n

The cultural muddle is at its greatest when the dinner check arrives. The question of who grabs it is a subject of endless discussion on the hundreds of Internet dating sites. The general consensus among women is that a guy should pay on a first date: they see it as a way for him to demonstrate interest. Many men agree, but others find the presumption confusing. Aren\u2019t the sexes equal? In fact, at this stage in their lives, women may well be in a better<\/em> position to pick up the tab: according to a 2005 study by Queens College demographer Andrew Beveridge, college-educated women working full-time are earning more than their male counterparts in a number of cities, including New York, Chicago, Boston, and Minneapolis.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is a bit of a muddle, but only because we’re processing through the change from the era when men worked and women didn’t to an era where everyone’s equal, and that means that the bill question isn’t cut-and-dried. But again, so what? My ex-wife wasn’t overly impressed that we split the bill on our first date (I was being egalitarian, and I was also poor), but it wasn’t a deal-breaker for her, because she understood that it’s not cut-and-dried. She didn’t let a minor faux pas<\/em> become bigger than it was.<\/p>\n

By and large, I think moving to a he-or-she-who-asks-pays rule is probably good, but it will take time to work itself out. And until it does, everyone should be patient and let it work itself out. And women and men alike can show patience in that process — and those that can’t might not be worth another go-round.<\/p>\n

Sure, girls can\u2014and do\u2014ask guys out for dinner and pick up the check without missing a beat. But that doesn\u2019t clarify matters, men complain. Women can take a Chinese-menu approach to gender roles. They can be all \u201cLet me pay for the movie tickets\u201d on Friday night and \u201cA single rose? That\u2019s it?\u201d on Valentine\u2019s Day. This isn\u2019t equality, say the male-contents; it\u2019s a ratification of female privilege and, worse, caprice. \u201cWomen seemingly have decided that they want it all (and deserve it, too),\u201d Kevin from Ann Arbor writes. \u201cThey want to compete equally, and have the privileges of their mother\u2019s generation. They want the executive position, AND the ability to stay home with children and come back into the workplace at or beyond the position at which they left. They want the bad boy and the metrosexual.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well…I want to be able to stay home with my daughter and come back at the position I left. You see, being able to be with your kids isn’t simply something women want, it’s something parents want. You make choices and sacrifices, but wanting the best outcome isn’t the end of the world.<\/p>\n

Again, though, look at all the they<\/em>s in the above sentence, all the painting of women as a monolithic entity. But they aren’t. Some women want to pay for movie tickets and melt at a single rose for Valentine’s Day. Some women want the executive position and really hope their husband will stay home with the kids. Different women want different things<\/em>.<\/p>\n

This attraction to bad boys is by far guys\u2019 biggest complaint about contemporary women.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No it isn’t. Not remotely. It’s Nice Guys’\u2122<\/em> biggest complaint about contemporary women. The “bad boy” exists primarily in the fevered imagination of Nice Guys\u2122<\/em> everywhere, primarily defined as the guy the girl I’d like to be dating is dating.<\/span><\/p>\n

Young men grew up hearing from their mothers, their teachers, and Oprah that women wanted sensitive, kind, thoughtful, intelligent men who were in touch with their feminine sides, who shared their feelings, who enjoyed watching Ally McBeal<\/em> rather than Beavis and Butt-Head<\/em>. Yeah, right, sneer a lot of veterans of the scene. Women don\u2019t want Ashley Wilkes; they\u2019re hot for Rhett Butler, for macho men with tight abs and an emotional range to match.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes, some are. Other women are most certainly attracted to sensitive men. Other women are looking for a mixture of the two extremes — a sensitive man who can also be assertive when he needs to be. <\/span><\/p>\n

According to a \u201cRecovering Nice Guy\u201d writing on Craigslist, the female preference for jerks and \u201cassholes,\u201d as they\u2019re also widely known, lies behind women\u2019s age-old lament, \u201cWhat happened to all the nice guys?\u201d His answer: \u201cYou did. You ignored the nice guy. You used him for emotional intimacy without reciprocating, in kind, with physical intimacy.\u201d Women, he says, are actually not attracted to men who hold doors for them, give them hinted-for Christmas gifts, or listen to their sorrows. Such a man, our Recovering Nice Guy continues, probably \u201ccame to realize that, if he wanted a woman like you, he\u2019d have to act more like the boyfriend that you had. He probably cleaned up his look, started making some money, and generally acted like more of an asshole than he ever wanted to be.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes, I remember, we’ve dealt with this asshole before<\/a>. And that’s what he is — an asshole. Because only an asshole could write, “You used him for emotional intimacy without reciprocating, in kind, with physical intimacy,” and not realize that he was betraying a completely facile and stereotypical idea of What Women and Men are Supposed to Want. Men want sex, women want emotional intimacy. If you’re a guy, and you’re a friend to a girl, she owes you sex. That’s the payback. Never is it noted that the guy might have received emotional intimacy from his female friend — what guy feels emotion? No, he wanted sex, and didn’t get it, and now he’s gonna whine about it.<\/p>\n

There’s a ton more to the article — it goes on and on an on, talking about the Seduction Community and Darwinist Dating and how women really want to marry a rich guy, before coming to the obvious conclusion:<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, you might ask, are there really so many dating Darwinists on the prowl? Is dating really hell, as the website would have it, for the majority of contemporary SYMs and Fs? Probably not. It\u2019s a safe bet that for all the confusions and humiliations of dating, most men will still try to be nice guys who say \u201cplease\u201d and avoid asking a woman about her sexual history until, say, the third date. And if the past is any guide, most of them, even the most masterly PUAs, will eventually find themselves coaching Little League on weekends. In a national survey of young, heterosexual men, the National Marriage Project, a research organization at Rutgers University, found that the majority of single subjects hoped to marry and have kids someday.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Um…yeah. You see, as most of us who live here in the real world know, dating isn’t particularly hellish. There are awkward moments and bad dates and people you don’t want to see again, but there are funny stories and entertaining anecdotes and every so often, a person you really, really are glad you met. Equality hasn’t ended dating, it’s just made it more chaotic and free. And while it may take a bit more time to find the person who fits with you, in the end you’re more likely to. And that makes all the difference.<\/p>\n

(H\/T Jezebel<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pity the Nice Guy\u2122. Please. His world is all topsy-turvy. All he wants is to know exactly what all women want, so that he can have sex with them. But it turns out that different women want different things. Some … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[95],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anti-feminists-and-their-pals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5511\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}