TTS did this shorter and sweeter, but I wrote my rant and so it's going up, dammit.
It's not gentlemanly behavior that's the issue—it's the assumption that Nice Guys who don't take advantage of women deserve to be rewarded with sex. The Nice Guy worldview can be summed up as follows:
"I have never beaten up or raped a woman. Yet girls won't have sex with me. I observe that they will have sex with other guys, whom I characterize as the kind of people who will beat them up or rape them. This must be a failing on the women's part and not on mine, because for not forcing sex on women I deserve to be rewarded with sex."
The behavior that characterizes the Nice Guy is often described as outwardly friendly, often overly so, never or rarely directly suggesting romantic or sexual contact, but taking every opportunity to lament lack of same and disapprove of female "friends'" romantic interests. (As an example, one Nice Guy of my acquaintance would check a female friend's fridge when he was over at her house, and then restock it with milk and other essentials. He would walk her to and from "dangerous" locations without being asked, or asking. If asked, he would deny that he expected the privilege of sex with her, but he would "supportively" tell her how her chosen lovers would take advantage of her or abuse her and advise her to date someone who would "take care of" and "deserve" her. In the presence of other Nice Guys, they would together recite a litany of pain and anguish at the hardships all their female friends would experience at the hands of all the Bad Boys they wasted their sexual affections on, and consoled themselves that by not raping or abusing women they were taking the moral high ground.)
It has been suggested in my presence by other Nice Guys (guys who had never done anything overtly unethical to a woman, and were rather excessively proud of that) that the reason why there are so few Nice Guys is because 1) women don't reward them with sex, so most become Bad Boys because that way they are assured that they will get some, and 2) women don't reward them with sex, so the Nice Guy genes don't get passed on.
Now, the problems with this are readily apparent. The presumption that Nice Guys are owed sex for being Nice—i.e., not coercive—is itself coercive. It shifts the blame to women for overtly coercive behavior on the part of men. It counterfactually presumes that there are very few Nice Guys, when in fact it is hard to get away from guys who are so very loud about how Nice they are and how much it pains them to see women lavish sexual affection on Bad Boys who will take advantage of them, when they themselves can't get any. It also rests on the assumption, as one commenter put it, that women should be much like a video game or vending machine in that if you push the right combination of buttons sex should come out. It represents women, as Trinity says, as "something to be used, a 'pleasure' to be tasted"—in other words something that can be given as a reward for good behavior. And it fails to make the distinction between Nice behavior and acting on sincerely felt respect.
The problem is that this self-identity enshrines dishonest, manipulative behavior under a gloss of politeness as supremely moral—where its superlative morality rests entirely on being covertly rather than overtly coercive.
I should add that some of these Nice Guys are friends of mine. Some have outgrown it, some have not. Being a rapist is worse than being a Nice Guy. But what many people fail to see is that it's not a choice between being either overtly or covertly coercive. The better option is to not be coercive at all. |
