When people are talking about “Nice Guys”, they are not talking about men who have a quality that is referred to by the adjective “nice”. They’re talking about guys who are embittered because they’re such nice guy but women won’t walk over and say “Hey, let’s have lots of sex, because you’re so nice”.

They’re talking about guys who blame women - generally women as a class - for something that is not the fault of women as a class, and might not even be the fault of any woman at all.

There is often a sense of entitlement: “because I am nice, I deserve a girlfriend”. Like, the Girlfriend Quota Inspector of Nice Guys has deliberately refused to check to see that this Nice Guy has failed to receive his girlfriend in good condition.

Take a guy who is shy, has a hard time making a move, and maybe has some screwed up ideas about sex (”isn’t it rude to put the moves on a woman unless you’re sure it’s what she wants? But I’m not *sure*, so I can’t do it, right?”) and who is, well, nice… that’s not a Nice Guy.

Let him get bitter and blame women for his problems (rather than noting that, hey, life really is unfair, and that sucks, but women aren’t the one to blame for creating the universe), and he might turn into a Nice Guy.

This is a kind of code phrase that most folks who pop by this blog mostly understand.

I could call myself a former nice guy, or a former misguided guy. On occasion, I bought into the bullshit, and felt cheated by women, because no one reached out to make me a boyfriend. I had some times where I wanted “a girlfriend”, without actually having any idea of what it means to be in love with a person. Then again, who *does* have any idea, before they have been? Mostly, though, I recognized that the problem was that I have a hard time connecting with people, and sometimes I blamed the world, and sometimes I just recognized it for myself.

I was occasionally stupid and insensitive and occasionally screwed up and felt entitled; mostly I was confused and unable to figure out how to deal with other people.

I don’t generally think of myself as having been a (capitalization mandatory) Nice Guy. But I did slip into the role from time to time, and I do understand and sympathize with all sides of the issue.

Mostly, if I had a way, I’d like to intervene in a lot of would-be nice guys’s lives to prevent the descent into being a Nice Guy.

Agreed. Especially when that misdirected anger reaches such frightening levels of narcissism that the Nice Guy starts thinking that his female friends keep going back to their abusive boyfriends to annoy him.

The Nice Guy principle really applies to all human relationships. If you’re only nice, thoughtful, caring, considerate, etc. towards people because you think you’re going to get something out of it, you’re missing out on a whole lot of life.

The anger comes from a sense of betrayal. “Nice guys” believe that if they just sit and wait and be ambiguous, women will eventually fall all over them. When that doesn’t happen, they see women get together with men who embody a different relationship schema (often one that they have been directly taught doesn’t work - see my statement about dating sites telling men to act disinterested above) and they become angry and hateful. And why not? They’ve been lied to, their entire lives, implicitly and explicitly.

There’s nothing wrong with anger; anger is transformative. The problem is when they misdirect their anger at women (either individually or as a group) instead of directing their anger at the damaging messages they’ve been taught.

I think what needs to be done is to erase the patriarchal side of the message, that attraction doesn’t have to mean objectification (and that it doesn’t entitle one to anything).

I totally agree.

Yeah, it is. What’s not okay is thinking that they owe you their attention because you’re attracted to them, getting resentful and nasty towards women in general because they like other men instead of you, and seething at abused women who don’t leave their partners and date you instead. Because it really, really isn’t all about you and your feelings.

Unfortunately, I don’t think that telling “nice guys� that they’re just assholes in disguise really helps them.

Do you really see people doing this? At best, there may be a conflation sometimes between the sort of “Nice Guys” in this post, who are mainly just shy and confused, and the ones who are misogynistic, manipulative, and selfish. But I don’t think that the former group are entitled to any special sympathy, especially when it’s hard to tell at a glance which ones are genuinely nice but clueless and which are not.

All that does is further damage their self esteem and fails to get at the root of the problem: that there really should not be anything wrong with male attraction. This is my message to every single “nice guy:� it’s okay to show women that you are attracted to them.

The message about objectification is there for a reason, though; it’s a response to another group of men who put attraction before all other sorts of interaction, no matter what the context. I think what needs to be done is to erase the patriarchal side of the message, that attraction doesn’t have to mean objectification (and that it doesn’t entitle one to anything).

By the way, gender double-standards don’t exist in a vacuum. Women have internalized these double-standards, too. I’ve heard many women complain about how nice guys won’t actually take the initiative and ask them out, but why won’t these women take the initiative themselves?

Because women get patriarchal messages about relationships too, such as “men don’t like women to do the asking” and “if he likes you, *he’ll* ask *you* out.” We should be trying to eliminate these messages too, but that doesn’t mean we should blame the women who have internalized them, just as we shouldn’t blame the men who internalize the message that all attraction is unwelcome.

How many women reading this have ever asked a man out on a date? If you’re not raising your hand (at least mentally) you’re part of the problem, too. A huge part of the reason men grow out of “nice guy� syndrome in their mind to late 20s is because that’s the age that women’s ideas on sex and attraction are finally maturing as well.

It’s probably partly true that it’s easier to get over the Nice Guy thing later - this would have been a lot harder in high school. Still, I can’t help but wish I *had* gotten over it in high school, because of all the stupid things I did (and positive things I didn’t do). I think that everyone puts up with a lot more “dating rules” type bullshit when they’re younger and don’t know any better.

There’s an old saying: be the change you want to see in the world. We’re all in this boat together and neither party is blameless.

Personally, to steal a catchphrase, I blame the patriarchy. (I also find it ironic that “be the change you want to see” becomes “you be the change, and I’ll be here when you’re done.”)

In an effort to combat the objectification of women, we’ve started to send our young men signals that attraction is bad, lust is bad, male sexual desire is bad.

EM: While I certainly don’t dispute that that message is out there, I don’t believe it’s the folks combating objectification who are sending the message that “attraction is bad.” I think that message is a combination of a feminist message (”objectifaction is bad”) and a patriarchal message (”attraction is objectification”).

Unfortunately lots of young men hear that as “Don’t actually reveal that you find women attractive.�

I’ve experienced this one too, but I never thought of it as a “Nice Guy” thing, more of a shyness thing. For me, it goes back to middle and high school, where attraction (especially if it’s not attraction to the right people) is something your peers can and will ridicule you (and the person you’re attracted to) for.

The characters are at their least sympathetic when they’re at their most libidinous.

I don’t think they’re at their least sympathetic, just at their most ridiculous. Humans do crazy things in the name of courtship. (Hence that “don’t be stupid” mantra of mine.)

And the flip side of these messages comes from the stereotypical Nora Ephron-esque romantic comedies where the male lead goes the entire movie not revealing his true intentions until the very end when it’s discovered that the female lead had feelings for him all along. It’s a bullshit schema, and it’s is no less damaging to young men.

Realistic portrayals of dating and sex are few and far between; especially in the kind of movies and music marketed to adolescents.

The romantic comedies (and media in general) are a bad model for relationships; I wrote a lengthy post on this topic a while back. Short version: media has to fit the formula and tell a story that the audience will accept, which means keeping the patriarchal assumptions and shoehorning it into a narrative form.

However, I totally agree with EM and you on the ‘Why don’t women take the initiative and ask the man out?’. And EM’s post was particularly insightful. My girlfriend asked me out and for that I am her eternal grateful as I would never have worked up the courage to do it myself.

And also: nice guys aren’t abusing assholes, but eventually they _might_ be if their resentment is allowed to grow unchecked for long enough. However, then the nice guy is no longer a nice guy, but a pure asshole imo.

My mother was in an abusing relationship (not with my dad) when I was in my late teens. Once I had to threaten him with a loaded shotgun to make him stop strangling my mother. I guess that experience shook my mother (he almost killed her and if he hadn’t stopped I probably would’ve become a killer myself) enough that she finally left him. I will not pretend to understand why so many abused woman (and men) find it so hard to leave the abuser, nor how to make them “stop playing the victim and fuckin’ do something about it’. The best advice I can give is to support them when they need it and steer them in the direction of professional help.

“I’ve heard many women complain about how nice guys won’t actually take the initiative and ask them out, but why won’t these women take the initiative themselves? How many women reading this have ever asked a man out on a date? If you’re not raising your hand (at least mentally) you’re part of the problem, too.”

EM– Now that’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout! Good for you. I wish I had written your post.You hit the nail on the head. The over-simplification I was trying to get at in my poorly written comments on this article.

Auguste does seem to put the responsibiliy of the first move on men, doesn’t he?.

Ladies, if you are interested in a guy, why don’t you make the first move.And don’t you dare use the excuse that you don’t want to be too forward and “look like a slut”. What you are most afraid of is being rejected. Of being turned down. The exact same reason that a lot of genuine nice guys fail to work up the courage to ask YOU out.

I almost puked when I read the self-serving comments by former abusers of women on this thread. Auguste, I hope you’re happy, because you just gave guys like Recovering NG an excuse. A reason to hide behind. The whole nice guy=asshole theroy is one of the dumbist things I ever heard. A long-winded post to nowhere.

For the fuckin’ record. I have never abused a single woman in my life. In fact, all too often I’ve been the someone these women have turned to when the fists start flying. Yet to read the comments above,the comments of former abusers seemed to be more accepted than my comments that women have got to start taking responabiliy for the dumb-fuck choices they make.

Sure it’s hard to leave an abuser. Nowhere did I say otherwise. But life on this planet is fuckin’ hard. Period. Stop playing the victim and FUCKIN’ DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

The very fact that the abusers felt like they could come to this site and make the kind of self-serving comments about how they’ve reformed should concern you.I know from my experience that the first thing these assholes do when called out for their abuse is say-”I can change, give me another chance.I swear I’ve seen the light this time. I really do love you.” A crock of horseshit that I’ve have heard way too often in the 53 years I’ve lived on this spinning ball of blood, dung, and tears.

You know what a nice-guy really is? He’s the guy who gets the phone-call at 3:00 am saying;

“_______ just beat me up and threw me out and I got nowhere to go. I’ve got no one to turn to. Could you help?”

And the nice guy, even though he has to go to work in the morning, gets his tired ass out of bed and picks her up, calms her down, listens to her and tries to be suppotive, and by the time he gets home from work that evening gets another call from the same woman saying

“We’re going to try it again. He says he’ll never treat me that way again and that he’s changed, and that he really loves me, and how he didn’t realize how much he depended on me…..”

etc,etc, bullshit, bullshit, and more bullshit.

A nice guy is a nice guy, period.

An abuser is an abuser, period.

They have absolutly no connection to each other.

Unfortunately lots of young men hear that as “Don’t actually reveal that you find women attractive.” You see movies like, say, American Pie or There’s Something About Mary where the male sex drive is a subject of comedy, even ridicule. The characters are at their least sympathetic when they’re at their most libidinous. And the flip side of these messages comes from the stereotypical Nora Ephron-esque romantic comedies where the male lead goes the entire movie not revealing his true intentions until the very end when it’s discovered that the female lead had feelings for him all along. It’s a bullshit schema, and it’s is no less damaging to young men.

Realistic portrayals of dating and sex are few and far between; especially in the kind of movies and music marketed to adolescents. Sex is still largely portrayed in mass media as a form of currency, something that women have in abundance which they trade in exchange for attention from men. It’s the flipside of the virgin/whore dichotomy. The key to male attractiveness is money and power; if you don’t have money or power, then you have to be “nice.” I like to call it the player/SNAG dichotomy.

Unfortunately, I don’t think that telling “nice guys” that they’re just assholes in disguise really helps them. All that does is further damage their self esteem and fails to get at the root of the problem: that there really should not be anything wrong with male attraction. This is my message to every single “nice guy:” it’s okay to show women that you are attracted to them.

By the way, gender double-standards don’t exist in a vacuum. Women have internalized these double-standards, too. I’ve heard many women complain about how nice guys won’t actually take the initiative and ask them out, but why won’t these women take the initiative themselves? How many women reading this have ever asked a man out on a date? If you’re not raising your hand (at least mentally) you’re part of the problem, too. A huge part of the reason men grow out of “nice guy” syndrome in their mind to late 20s is because that’s the age that women’s ideas on sex and attraction are finally maturing as well. There’s an old saying: be the change you want to see in the world. We’re all in this boat together and neither party is blameless.

Actually, if you want more on Nice Guys, Heartless Bitches actually have a whole section devoted to them:
http://www.heartless-bitches.com/rants/niceguys/ng.shtml
OK, so Heartless Bitches International really aren’t the most subtle of people, but they do get points accross very well. The comments section of the Nice guys section has a lot of mail from recovered Nice Guys.