Stages of Nice Guyism

[mmcirvin]

kate_nepveu linked to a number of things, and among them were two more articles on the phenomenon of the Nice Guy; that is, not an actual nice guy, but the type of person who spends a lot of time whining, "I'm a nice guy; why don't women like me?" These discussions tend to become sloppy and wide-ranging, and I think some distinctions need to be made. Following james_nicoll on primary, secondary and tertiary Engineer Syndrome, I think I can detect similar syphilis-inspired stages of Nice Guyism:

Primary Nice Guyism is just being a shy, awkward teenage boy, not entirely clued in yet to the idea that you can sometimes attract girls by relating to them as people rather than by knowing some secret seduction information, and not fearless enough to blunder ahead anyway like more successful boys do. I think that's all the guy who wrote the Pandagon article ever was. Really, it's kind of normal to be clueless about women when you're 14. Worrying about it too much is just going to make a budding Nice Guy susceptible to...

Secondary Nice Guyism, which is the stage (usually beginning in the late teens or early twenties, but it can continue for decades) in which the Nice Guy starts worrying that he's been inexperienced too long and that this is a source of shame. He starts thinking in terms of some sort of massive project to remake himself, which is scary enough to provoke conscious procrastination. He acquires an unattractive funk of desperation and gets serial crushes on his female friends that make him behave oddly. My 2005 "Desperado" essay applies here, and explains why I think some of the advice in these articles isn't going to be very useful. You might just have to grow out of it. I had some serious Secondary Nice Guyism going on in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It's no fun. But it doesn't necessarily always lead to...

Tertiary Nice Guyism. This is the full-blown, misogynistic delusional complex that the benighted soul mocked in the Mightygodking post is suffering from. The key feature of Tertiary Nice Guyism is that the Nice Guy blames women, often as a class, for his problems. There's nothing wrong with him at all; it's just that women are too shallow to recognize his greatness and give him the sex he deserves. I think I was too self-aware to ever get this bad.

I'm not sure what the precise risk factors for falling into Tertiary Nice Guyism are, but I think that, while being brought up with a sincere feminism may actually be a mild risk factor for Primary and Secondary Nice Guyism (by leading one to worry overmuch about the problematic aspects of sex and romance), it probably inoculates one against Tertiary Nice Guyism. On the other hand, if one has adopted a stance of feminism as a means of scoring with chicks, the failure of this stratagem often leads directly to raging Tertiary Nice Guyism.

Tertiary Nice Guyism may be irreversible.

Comments

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Following james_nicoll on primary, secondary and tertiary Engineer Syndrome

Really? I seem to have completely forgotten this.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Well, I at least recall you describing the worst manifestations as "tertiary Engineer Syndrome", but Google Groups is not being kind to me right now.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

In some of the earlier discussions on Pandagon, to keep things from getting out of hand and avoid the usual accusations of wild man-hating, Amanda tried to limit the use of the term to describe basically the tertiary variety, since those were the people who were the big pests on Web feminist fora.

But that did hide the fact that they and mere frustrated male geeks did have some things in common: a recurring theme is that, whether they say it or not, they're trying to relate to women not as people with the same kinds of feelings as themselves but as something else, a prize or a symbol or some kind of mysterious alien species.

[graydon.livejournal.com]

I found myself in a rather different but probably related track of nice-guyism. Also stems from a feminist upbringing, though I don't resent that; it's just a risk. The problem is that I learned to relate to women as friends quite well -- fully human and enjoyable friends -- but for a long time just stuck with that. Wound up with lots of women-as-friends and comparatively few women-as-girlfriends. The sort of friends you aren't behaving sexually with. Like work buddies or something. This is awkward.

The problem is that there's a real different set of behavior and language -- mostly subverbal, at times pretty corny -- that you need to be speaking when you're expressing sexual interest. It's not the same thing as expressing general enjoyment of someone's company. It can be related -- you can start from the same place as you would start building friendship from, and it can contain friendly language as a subset -- but you need to actively speak a different, expanded language.

This is not to say that the awful "speed seduction" community has it right, but they do have a point: there is an etiquette to presenting your sexual interest, to interpreting the responses you get, etc. A fair number of men remain stuck relating to women using a single "just friends" language, simply unaware of what they're saying or hearing. We don't learn to say what we're interested in, or hear signs of intent, in a language that is more socially appropriate than just blurting out "omg u r hot lets fuck".

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Though, as you've undoubtedly discovered, knowing how to relate to women-as-friends does make things a lot more convenient once you're married. I think a lot of guys who don't fall into the Nice Guy trap instead have problems with this later on.

[graydon.livejournal.com]

I find this notion somewhat boggling, yes. I'm glad I have not found myself in a marriage with a woman I don't know how to be friends with. I can't imagine what that feels like.

[antikythera.livejournal.com]

I suspect that people who are good at making friends with the opposite sex and are bad at dating are just as successful as people who are good at dating but bad at making friends. If the ultimate goal is to find a life partner, it doesn't matter whether you speed-date or whether you don't date at all. The average time until you find the right person is probably the same.

[graydon.livejournal.com]

Sure. But if your "ultimate goal" isn't so lofty -- if for example you're sexually attracted to a woman and simply want to sleep with her -- it helps to know what an appropriate, effective, but non-creepy way of flirting looks like. How to present yourself as a sex object, and ask to see if she'd like to take you up on it.

I think a lot of the problem stems from a miscommunication of a single fact. The fact is that on a broad sort of numerical average -- really trying not to provoke flames here, certainly not talking biological certainty or essentialism or whatever -- men seem a bit more wiling to have quick, anonymous, sex for sex's sake. Higher average sex drives, less concerned with getting to know one another. Gay men have park sex and bathroom sex. Prostitutes overwhelmingly cater to men. Men just ... more often want to jump someone's bones without really knowing much about them, or picturing any sort of set-up situation or sexual tension or anything. I don't know how to put this point politely. It's not something I think has deep significance; transsexuals often report a shift in their feelings of sexual urgency when they shift on or off testosterone, and I'm perfectly willing to accept such dull explanations of it. Might be cultural too. Who knows. It seems to me to exist, as a trend. Draw a couple bell curves for gender and sex drive, one of them is shifted a bit to the left and one to the right. Plenty of overlap though.

I think this broad statistical trend gets miscommunicated to men in early years. A lot of us wind up hearing and thinking that women's sexuality is strictly and entirely based on long-term emotional bonds, cuddly and friendship-like, without any rough, urgent animal aspect driven by physical desire or longing. This is false -- individual women have all manner of feelings towards sex, and many are quite lusty and objectifying -- but I think a lot of "nice guy" behavior is simply this misunderstanding in action. You figure that you are relating to a woman "sexually" when you're just hanging around being an available friend. This is how you (wrongly) believe women like their men. Their sex partners. Wrongo bongo.

Of course, if you make this mistake you are likely to find yourself expecting "sexual" reciprocation that never appears; you were really just being a pal, not sexy at all. If you ever get frustrated enough to just tell the woman that you are attracted to her, she's likely to be surprised! You have failed to engage as a desirable sex object. Failed to present yourself as attractive or interested. Failed to use language or behavior that indicates that you want to be thought of that way. It is this latter category of behavior I think "nice guys" need a little more practice at. Many need to simply learn that such a category of behavior exists, separate from "being friendly", period.

[jecook]

I'm pretty sure I'm in the secondary phase.


Thanks for the advice, by the way, via the 'desperado' post. How I missed it is beyond me.

[chicken-cem.livejournal.com]

That Craigslist rant was just a little scary. I spent way too much time reading the rebuttal and all the comments. I suppose some people, whether they are simply awkward, bad communicators, or actual creepy stalkers, simply do not have enough self-awareness to see how creepy their behavior seems. Ugh. You've mentioned self-awareness several times above, and I think that's a key thing. Being self-aware enough not be descend into hopeless, finger-pointing misogynistic cynicism is a good thing.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

"just a little"?

[smashingstars.livejournal.com]

I've been disappointed with Pandagon before, so I expected to be this time, but that article was actually pretty good. I agree that the guy wasn't a full-fledged "nice guy" because, seriously, he was 14.

One of the things I always liked about Eddie was his ability to completely ignore certain bits of culture, like the bit which says he was "supposed" to be ashamed that he was a virgin at 18. A high school friend of his, though, wasn't able to shake off the idea that something was so wrong with him that he must not even be human; he now believes he's a female dragon vampire. I think that was his way of dealing with the shame that "required" him to remake himself.

Our culture romanticizes high school and college as "the best years of your life" to the point to where people who suffered during these formative years are considered weird or faulty. It's no wonder many people think there's something inherently wrong with them, so they attempt to remake themselves into something else. Sometimes this remake works -- both the Pandagon blogger and mightygodking feel like their make-overs worked. They both basically say that a remake into a woman-hating jackass doesn't work at all, but I'm not so sure. With our current culture being intensely anti-female, I think that type of man is readily accepted.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Pandagon has a lot of people blogging there these days and the quality varies. Regardless of what people said about her during the Edwards-blogger flap, I still think Amanda Marcotte is generally awesome, though I couldn't really empathize with her post about the vast cultural significance of the death of Kurt Cobain (she seems to be the exact age such that that was the day hope and innocence died).

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Also, I think young teenage girls really are somewhat prone to behave like asses when choosing partners, because they're kids. They may be more mature than teenage boys at that point, but that's really not saying much. Teenagers do a lot of stupid and mean things for no good reason.

But generalizing about adult female behavior on that basis is a really bad idea.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

One thing that does happen on Pandagon a lot when talk turns to these subjects is that the admirably sex-positive attitude on the site can quickly turn into unsavory crowing in the comment boards about how we liberals were the cool freaks who had lots of sex and got stoned in high school, while today's conservatives were the ones who sat around being toady virgins and playing Dungeons and Dragons. I can definitely say that generalization does not apply to me or to most of my friends.

[jwgh]

Reflecting about this sort of thing eventually made me come to the conclusion that I am under no obligation to like someone (no matter how worthy they may be), and that nobody is obligated to like me. This was kind of freeing.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

It's also a little scary. But that's how you know it's freeing, eh?

[smashingstars.livejournal.com]

Ooh, your "Desperado" post! It played a part in the mini-fight I had with marlowe1 several months ago (the guy who claimed I wasn't sane like him, and stalked me a bit on LJ for a few weeks to prove the point.) When marlowe1 claimed no one else would ever think the way I did about lonely nerdboys, I searched for your "Desperado" post just to reassure myself that there was at least one other human being who felt the same way I did.

[ice-hesitant.livejournal.com]

These are very useful distinctions. Thanks, Matt.:-)

[kate_nepveu]

These are very useful distinctions, thanks!

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

Coincidentally, Seattle Weekly (free tabloid, but not the alt Weekly) columnist Judy McGuire ("Dategirl") has just published a book called "How Not to Date," a nice excerpt of which appears in this week's issue as the cover story. On the fourth and final page of the online text, she discusses "nice" guys verses nice guys (http://seattleweekly.com/2007-12-26/news/dategirl-in-hardcover-how-not-to-date.php?page=4), and covers some of the same territory.

She takes an "I've seen it all" attitude in the excerpt, but after 7 years of giving dating and sex advice in Seattle, well, she might not have seen it all, but she's gotten wind of most of it. The whole thing is worth reading-- it starts on personal experience and some personal (and on its face good) advice, it transitions into interviews with people in particular professions, i.e. "how do I date a pornstar/DJ/therapist," etc. I've only read the article, but I'd read the book if I had a few hours to kill and a soft chair at B&N.

[mskala.livejournal.com]

I don't think this analysis shows much respect for the people involved. Was it meant to?

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

All I can do here is give some idea of my own background: I spent about a decade and change of my life wondering why I wasn't getting anywhere with dating, and coming up with lots of bizarre ideas about what was blocking me and what the dark secret was that I was missing. And even after things got better for me, I was somewhat frustrated by the fact that the secret seemed to be that there was no secret, and I didn't actually have much in the way of useful advice for the many, many young and not-so-young men that were still in that hole.

So if my first and second stages sound somewhat flippantly described, I think it's partly because a certain amount of self-deprecation is involved. As for people like the author of the Craigslist lament, it's hard for me to extend a lot of respect to those guys given that they've essentially withdrawn respect from half the human species, as surely as any predatory lounge lizard. Since they tend to be pretty sad guys, I suppose some pathos is called for, but there's a limit to these things.

Part of what I'm trying to do is draw some distinctions, because the phrase "Nice Guy(TM)", which has become popular in feminist discussions of the subject, is gradually expanding in application in such a way that people who don't really deserve a full measure of contempt are in danger of falling under contempt, and I don't regard that as useful.