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silveradeptFor those in the know, there’s a big even called Three Weeks For Dreamwidth going on, where persons pledge to keep their content only on the Dreamwidth site for three weeks, after which they can cross-post. If I participate in something like that, it will likely be for fluffy things, like squeeing over Amy as perhaps the best of the New Who companions. For one, I have excellent audiences on both sites that I post to and welcome all your comments, here and there. For another, I don’t really feel that this sort of content should be on one space or another exclusively. The idea is inspiring, however, and it might convince me ot finally post some of the things I’ve been sitting on for months. If you have persons who have Dreamwidth accounts, you may want to peek in on them with your OpenID or your own Dreamwidth account to see if they’ve got exclusive content.
With that announcement out of the way, we continue with our regularly scheduled Special Comment, in lieu of complaining about a slow news day, with one exception - We are throwing daggers, knives, axes, and anything else with a pointy or sharp end at the Oklahoma legislators that overrode the gubernatorial veto on two abortion bills. The first requires women, including rape and incest victims, to undergo an invasive ultrasound that shows them the various appendages of their fetus, with the doctor required to describe those parts to them, and the second shields doctors from malpractice suits if they lie about the possible developmental disabilities of the fetus. There are still two bills to go that could be vetoed and face override votes - one restricting insurance coverage of abortion procedures, and the other requiring statistics be gathered and posted about abortions in the state. Oklahoma is well on its way to becoming a state consisting solely of men, much like Arizona is on the path of becoming a state consisting entirely of WASPs, if not consisting of noone. (Oh, and the governor who signed the papers please law is now three polling points behind her competitor. Anyone shocked?
And now, the promised Special Comment, where a cisgendered pale-skinned male talks about intergender relationships, privilege, and the precarious position he is in by doing so.
----------
This is a Special Comment, as it were - a post devoted to a single topic that I probably can’t really speak with any authority to, but I’m going to try anyway. On this topic, opinions on my ability to speak about it range from “necessary, to break the culture” to “get out of the way and stop trying to protest - you’re only making yourself look like what you claim you aren’t.” It involves the perennial deserving targets, the Nice Guys(TM), trying to find a way to get guys to see the world the same way women do, and the kind of media messages we should be putting out, instead of the ones we are.
But first, let’s start with the article - Schrodinger's Rapist, Or: A Guy's Guide to Approacing a Strange Woman Without Being Maced. I was first sent this link by a family member as the most accurate article she had seen yet about what life was like for her, every day. It then showed up in![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nebris‘s feed, and elsewhere around, so clearly, the article is getting traction around the Intarwebs.
The premise of the article is thus: Women live in a reality where all men, regardless of whom they are, their background, their upbringing, and their personaliy, are potential rapists. Women cannot afford to let their guard down in any situation where there are unfamiliar men, lest one of those potentials turn out to be an actual. Depending on what situation a woman finds herself in, and the social cues that the man gives off, that Potential Rapist can be upgraded to Probable Rapist. The article devotes itself to some useful tips for men on how to avoid putting themselves in situations where they communicate being dangerous. Examples include: alone in a dark alleyway is not the place to meet women, if you’re someone who doesn’t respect a woman’s boundaries in polite company, you’re probably going to be someone who doesn’t respect her sexual boundaries, either, and not respecting boundaries can be as simple as trying to chat up the woman who is clearly not interested in you and is giving you all the signals that say “Go away.” Another possibility would be wearing shirts that say women should check their breasts (for possible cancer lumps), or the wearer of the shirt will do it for them. While it may seem like a harmless joke to the wearer, it can be very uncomfortable for the recipients.
This is clearly not a favorable situaion for anyone identifying as female. The part where I’d get told off and that I can’t possibly understand is that, well, being both white and male, I benefit from Capital-P Privilege. Being male, I don’t have to live in a world where half the population might intend to do me harm, where there are places where I just don’t go, routes I don’t take, and people (or animals that have very little compulsion against savaging someone that’s going to try and hurt me) I have to have with me at all times just so that I feel safer. Privilege is so good, in fact, that trying to imagine that kind of world is difficult, because I have no experience with that kind of mindset. (And thus, I need things like The Male Privilege Checklist to remind me that while it’s not wine and roses to be male, there are a lot of things that I benefit from, invisibly, by being male. Or, if I really wanted to, I could make a comparison between girls' occupational costumes for Haloween and boys' occupational costumes for Halloween.) Thus, to a significant portion of the population concerned with such matters, I am eminently unqualified to make any sort of comment on the matter against it. This is where I get told to get out of the way or blown off because I’m a man and couldn’t possibly understand or work toward the changes that are necessary to stop that kind of culture. I’m a roadblock, and impediment, and no matter how much I try, I will always get in the way. Or worse, everything I do as a male, even if I’m trying to be helpful and break the culture, is something that will reinforce the society where women are always on guard against potential rapists.
The other side of that argument is that I am a necessary part of changing the situation. As a guy endowed with the Privilege, I can change minds, laws, and hearts and teach other men to be aware of their own Privilege and the ways that women are disadvantaged, so we can build a society where women don’t need to treat every man as Schrodinger’s Rapist. Other men will listen to me more readily than they will listen to a woman on these subjects, and so it’s part of my task to educate those other men that need it. In that particular department, there’s always a chance that I will turn into Freddie, the guy who thinks he knows more about feminism than a woman does, despite lacking most of the experience and need to be beaten soundly about the head and shoulders for presuming to know more than I ever can. (On the viewpoint in the paragraph above, I am probably always Freddie any time I try to talk about the subject, and am helping the cause best when I simply shut up.)
No matter which result you believe in, there’s a few things I feel I can extract from this article. Namely, there are a few types of responses I see to these kinds of reality checks on the world. The people those reactions create can be sorted into roughly three major divisions, in my opinion: Morons, Nice Guys(TM) and the rest, who may or may not be Feminists, but are all generally Upstanding Men. The Upstanding Men are closest to the mark of being helpful against the society that produces the fearful mindset, and if all men were of Upstanding caliber, we’d have a more mythic society. For reasons of them being the people we want to achieve, they’re getting short shrift. Instead, we concentrate on the other two possibilities, starting with the worser, the Morons.
Morons are people that react to these revelations and others by decrying feminism as a “special rights” movement, assume all feminism is radical feminism, or say point blank that Feminism is a Mental Disorder, claim that Domestic Violence statistics are intended to induce hysteria and that events like Domestic Violence Awareness months are mythology compared to the "reality" that women lie, fake, and otherwise say whatever they can to make the men they hate suffer. (Objectify Chicks is full of these Moronic arguments, and is sort of the polar opposite to something like I Blame the Patriarchy.) The Moron, who may or may not be of the Cross-Eyed Knuckle-Scraping variety, is convinced that men are the truly oppressed species, that women are out to stick it to them in any way they can, and any woman will tearfully lie about anything if she can get special rights for herself or punishment for men out of it. I call these men Morons because they exhibit the same behavior as people convinced that white people are being oppressed by blacks and other minorities or that heterosexuals are being oppressed by homosexuals, seeking “special rights” so they can be more powerful than the equality that is already here. While there may be exceptions of people gaming the system, for the most part, you can probably find plenty of examples where being the WAS(M)P puts you at an advantage compared to others. At the point that men fear for their lives going down a dark alley because there’s a woman there that might rape him, then we’ll talk. Would one of these Morons tell their daughter, “Go ahead and walk down those alleyways alone! Naw, you don’t need to keep an eye on your drink! You can trust him to respect your ‘No’ when he’s been trying to grope your breasts all night!” We doubt it. Thus, the cognitive dissonance present there makes it easy to say, “Moron.”, or at least, “Hypocrite.”
A few steps up the ladder from the Morons are the Nice Guys(TM). They share some characteristics with the Morons, and some with the Upstanding Men - and their inclusion here is the other article I was sent as the catalyst to the first one - an examination of how comic strips like xkcd can sometimes glorify the Nice Guy(TM) in geek culture. Geeks can be a breeding ground for Nice Guys(TM), because a lot of geeks are outcasts from the Morons caste (either by choice or by exclusion) because they lack the proper Moron Manly Man-ness to qualify, or have interests that no self-repecting Moron would have. The Nice Guys(TM) see themselves in a bit of a quandary. They, like all other beings that want to pass on their genetic material, want to mate, but are not meeting with success in their efforts. From what they can observe of the world around them, women seem to be going for men that exhibit the stereotypes of Moron Manly Man-ness, in both physical characteristics, and in an attitude toward their date that would appear to put them up on the Probable Rapist scale. Some Nice Guys have body image issues (which isn’t given any help at all by those very Manly Moronic Men appearing to snap up all the attractive women). Given that many geeks pride themselves on their differences from the square-jawed and brainless clique, and possibly believing that there is an inverse ratio between the presence of physical muscles and mental ones, physical modification would be becoming one of THEM, and that is anathema. And, being Nice Guys(TM), instead of the callous jerks, they also are not planning on adopting what they percieve to be the attitude of THEM. Thus, their attack vector is to be themselves, the Nice Guy(TM) alternative to the heartless jerks, and that women will see their virtues and flock to them, perhaps after having been spurned by THEM.
I freely admit, I can easily follow the logic train of the Nice Guy(TM), which means I probably have been one at least once or more in my life. I hope I’ve gotten better, but required schooling is Hell, and no person escapes from it without scarring.
Nice Guys(TM) have a lot working against them. Not only is their mental model of the world flawed, it mixes poorly with things like feminism, often with volatile results. A Nice Guy(TM)’s exposure to feminism often results in fear. Perhaps because he’s replaying earlier incidents that didn’t end well (and that he didn’t take the right lessons from), or perhaps he’s heard of (from “reputable sources”, Morons, or through the grapevine) that one woman who turned “Hi.” into a diatribe about men ending in a macing (most of those stories are fabrications or distortions of reality, of course), or being the subject of a post like Freddie (who we met eralier), or he’s just unsure of himself in relation to whether he’s going to be a Proper Feminist so that his Nice Guy(TM) charm shows through, but a lot of Nice Guys(TM) are pretty afraid of things going catastrophically wrong in their mating and dating endeavours.
So, from my privilege-enhanced point of view, the xkcd comic in question is about a guy who wants to make a comment about how cute the laptop is of the woman next to him, but that his mere comment will be rebuffed, he will be humiliated, and he may be branded as some sort of sexual deviant or “avoid” person not just by the cute laptop woman, but by the observers and/or the people they tell the story of his attempt to. In other words, he’s afraid the situation will turn out like how the Morons think every woman reacts to anything. It’s a worst-case scenario, and to someone with insecurities and fears already in place about body/brain/social awkwardness, those worst-case scenarios have greater impact. It’s risk-avoidant behavior, and it’s well-documented that Humans do not choose or imagine otherwise sane (and soemtimes positive) scenarios when there are possible negative consequences. As the omniscient audience, the last panel tells us that he fears are for naught, and that if he could simply muster the courage to say what he’s thinking, there would at least be an opening for further romantic possibility. The flip side of that is the non-privileged point of view says “What he’s imagining is exactly what would happen if a woman were able to tell off the creepy guy on the train without worrying about retaliation”, (thus, the Nice Guy(TM)‘s fears are right), and the later part that lets the audience know she’s interested is actually something more akin to saying that victims of sexual assault were “asking for it” or “really wanted it”, despite what their outward position would be. Thus, the strip creator, for this particular strip, from the non-privileged point of view, is a Moron. Two very different interpretations to the same setting.
To someone who can’t read signs, it’s damn hard to tell whether any possible romantic situation will turn out well or with getting maced at “Hi.” Thus, most Nice Guys(TM) will opt to not take the risk, in case it turns out to be a negative, and a statistical outlier on the negative side at that. Risk avoidance makes us do a lot of irrational things. They will double down on the strategy of “My niceness will show through to the women I meet and they will accept me and want to date/mate with me”, while continuing to exhibit the desperation that will get them avoided further, or continuing to complain to their friends about how no woman ever wants or looks for a nice guy, and doesn’t want to keep one once she’s got him. Given enough time and rejections, they can slide down into becoming Morons themselves, and start a new cycle on a younger generation.
Of course, Nice Guys(TM) can also pull or be pulled up into the Upstanding Men category. Patience is going to be a virtue in such an endeavor, however, because there’s a lot to unlearn. They have to be able to distinguish between someone trying to help them for their own good and the mace-wielding feminist of their own fears. They also have to be able to realize the way they're thinking right now is a flawed model, as this example aptly proves. In some ways, it falls to other men to provide the necessary leverage - being good role models for those Nice Guys(TM) to aspire to, but also being willing to step other men through the process of changing their point of view. Somewhere along the way, even though men are privileged (and thus have difficulty imagining themselves in the female perspective), they have to be able to communicate to each other what it looks like to women when they behave poorly. At this point, we can append on a basic essay about the need for good role models, in geek media and normal media - less Bond, less Muscle Men, more in some ways of Beauty and the Geek, at least in the sense where both beauties and geeks got to know each other as more than their stereotypes, and more of Geeks who make good, even stumbling and screwing up some while they’re at it for regular reasons, not for things like “The Big Bad speared her through the heart as a season finale”. Even male actors who are supposed to be playing geeks are makeup’d and meet certain beauty standards. And most of those geek characters are side characters and assistants to the Hero. Television and movies are not exactly providing a whole lot of role models for men who men who don’t meet the beauty standard. (Side note here about the apparent encouragement of rule-flaunting and bad behavior by the athlete and “popular” class in required school and university. If necessary, develop into fuller standalone comment piece.) So, really, lacking sufficient amounts of good role models, the message that gets through to men is “Be Morons or Nice Guys(TM), and the women will flock to you”. It’s the one that The Dominant Male Uber-Pickup Artist's Guide To Getting Laid Using On-line Dating is trying to lampshade. It gets taken as gospel far too often, because it appears to work.
It’s a problem that hurts both men and women. Women deserve a world where they don’t have to treat every man as Schrodinger’s Rapist, and men deserve a world where they get and can believe messages that say “People other than the super-athletic, the super-popular, and the super-beautiful succeed and have meaningful relationships.” Both of these things are about changing attitudes and inducing the ability to see things from a different point of view. It’s going to take men teaching other men in addition to women continuing to fight loudly (and perhaps with a can or two of mace) to change the way the system works.
This has been a Special Comment. Things I have gotten right, wrong, need more explanation, or other perspectives I have not considered are welcome.
With that announcement out of the way, we continue with our regularly scheduled Special Comment, in lieu of complaining about a slow news day, with one exception - We are throwing daggers, knives, axes, and anything else with a pointy or sharp end at the Oklahoma legislators that overrode the gubernatorial veto on two abortion bills. The first requires women, including rape and incest victims, to undergo an invasive ultrasound that shows them the various appendages of their fetus, with the doctor required to describe those parts to them, and the second shields doctors from malpractice suits if they lie about the possible developmental disabilities of the fetus. There are still two bills to go that could be vetoed and face override votes - one restricting insurance coverage of abortion procedures, and the other requiring statistics be gathered and posted about abortions in the state. Oklahoma is well on its way to becoming a state consisting solely of men, much like Arizona is on the path of becoming a state consisting entirely of WASPs, if not consisting of noone. (Oh, and the governor who signed the papers please law is now three polling points behind her competitor. Anyone shocked?
And now, the promised Special Comment, where a cisgendered pale-skinned male talks about intergender relationships, privilege, and the precarious position he is in by doing so.
----------
This is a Special Comment, as it were - a post devoted to a single topic that I probably can’t really speak with any authority to, but I’m going to try anyway. On this topic, opinions on my ability to speak about it range from “necessary, to break the culture” to “get out of the way and stop trying to protest - you’re only making yourself look like what you claim you aren’t.” It involves the perennial deserving targets, the Nice Guys(TM), trying to find a way to get guys to see the world the same way women do, and the kind of media messages we should be putting out, instead of the ones we are.
But first, let’s start with the article - Schrodinger's Rapist, Or: A Guy's Guide to Approacing a Strange Woman Without Being Maced. I was first sent this link by a family member as the most accurate article she had seen yet about what life was like for her, every day. It then showed up in
nebris‘s feed, and elsewhere around, so clearly, the article is getting traction around the Intarwebs. The premise of the article is thus: Women live in a reality where all men, regardless of whom they are, their background, their upbringing, and their personaliy, are potential rapists. Women cannot afford to let their guard down in any situation where there are unfamiliar men, lest one of those potentials turn out to be an actual. Depending on what situation a woman finds herself in, and the social cues that the man gives off, that Potential Rapist can be upgraded to Probable Rapist. The article devotes itself to some useful tips for men on how to avoid putting themselves in situations where they communicate being dangerous. Examples include: alone in a dark alleyway is not the place to meet women, if you’re someone who doesn’t respect a woman’s boundaries in polite company, you’re probably going to be someone who doesn’t respect her sexual boundaries, either, and not respecting boundaries can be as simple as trying to chat up the woman who is clearly not interested in you and is giving you all the signals that say “Go away.” Another possibility would be wearing shirts that say women should check their breasts (for possible cancer lumps), or the wearer of the shirt will do it for them. While it may seem like a harmless joke to the wearer, it can be very uncomfortable for the recipients.
This is clearly not a favorable situaion for anyone identifying as female. The part where I’d get told off and that I can’t possibly understand is that, well, being both white and male, I benefit from Capital-P Privilege. Being male, I don’t have to live in a world where half the population might intend to do me harm, where there are places where I just don’t go, routes I don’t take, and people (or animals that have very little compulsion against savaging someone that’s going to try and hurt me) I have to have with me at all times just so that I feel safer. Privilege is so good, in fact, that trying to imagine that kind of world is difficult, because I have no experience with that kind of mindset. (And thus, I need things like The Male Privilege Checklist to remind me that while it’s not wine and roses to be male, there are a lot of things that I benefit from, invisibly, by being male. Or, if I really wanted to, I could make a comparison between girls' occupational costumes for Haloween and boys' occupational costumes for Halloween.) Thus, to a significant portion of the population concerned with such matters, I am eminently unqualified to make any sort of comment on the matter against it. This is where I get told to get out of the way or blown off because I’m a man and couldn’t possibly understand or work toward the changes that are necessary to stop that kind of culture. I’m a roadblock, and impediment, and no matter how much I try, I will always get in the way. Or worse, everything I do as a male, even if I’m trying to be helpful and break the culture, is something that will reinforce the society where women are always on guard against potential rapists.
The other side of that argument is that I am a necessary part of changing the situation. As a guy endowed with the Privilege, I can change minds, laws, and hearts and teach other men to be aware of their own Privilege and the ways that women are disadvantaged, so we can build a society where women don’t need to treat every man as Schrodinger’s Rapist. Other men will listen to me more readily than they will listen to a woman on these subjects, and so it’s part of my task to educate those other men that need it. In that particular department, there’s always a chance that I will turn into Freddie, the guy who thinks he knows more about feminism than a woman does, despite lacking most of the experience and need to be beaten soundly about the head and shoulders for presuming to know more than I ever can. (On the viewpoint in the paragraph above, I am probably always Freddie any time I try to talk about the subject, and am helping the cause best when I simply shut up.)
No matter which result you believe in, there’s a few things I feel I can extract from this article. Namely, there are a few types of responses I see to these kinds of reality checks on the world. The people those reactions create can be sorted into roughly three major divisions, in my opinion: Morons, Nice Guys(TM) and the rest, who may or may not be Feminists, but are all generally Upstanding Men. The Upstanding Men are closest to the mark of being helpful against the society that produces the fearful mindset, and if all men were of Upstanding caliber, we’d have a more mythic society. For reasons of them being the people we want to achieve, they’re getting short shrift. Instead, we concentrate on the other two possibilities, starting with the worser, the Morons.
Morons are people that react to these revelations and others by decrying feminism as a “special rights” movement, assume all feminism is radical feminism, or say point blank that Feminism is a Mental Disorder, claim that Domestic Violence statistics are intended to induce hysteria and that events like Domestic Violence Awareness months are mythology compared to the "reality" that women lie, fake, and otherwise say whatever they can to make the men they hate suffer. (Objectify Chicks is full of these Moronic arguments, and is sort of the polar opposite to something like I Blame the Patriarchy.) The Moron, who may or may not be of the Cross-Eyed Knuckle-Scraping variety, is convinced that men are the truly oppressed species, that women are out to stick it to them in any way they can, and any woman will tearfully lie about anything if she can get special rights for herself or punishment for men out of it. I call these men Morons because they exhibit the same behavior as people convinced that white people are being oppressed by blacks and other minorities or that heterosexuals are being oppressed by homosexuals, seeking “special rights” so they can be more powerful than the equality that is already here. While there may be exceptions of people gaming the system, for the most part, you can probably find plenty of examples where being the WAS(M)P puts you at an advantage compared to others. At the point that men fear for their lives going down a dark alley because there’s a woman there that might rape him, then we’ll talk. Would one of these Morons tell their daughter, “Go ahead and walk down those alleyways alone! Naw, you don’t need to keep an eye on your drink! You can trust him to respect your ‘No’ when he’s been trying to grope your breasts all night!” We doubt it. Thus, the cognitive dissonance present there makes it easy to say, “Moron.”, or at least, “Hypocrite.”
A few steps up the ladder from the Morons are the Nice Guys(TM). They share some characteristics with the Morons, and some with the Upstanding Men - and their inclusion here is the other article I was sent as the catalyst to the first one - an examination of how comic strips like xkcd can sometimes glorify the Nice Guy(TM) in geek culture. Geeks can be a breeding ground for Nice Guys(TM), because a lot of geeks are outcasts from the Morons caste (either by choice or by exclusion) because they lack the proper Moron Manly Man-ness to qualify, or have interests that no self-repecting Moron would have. The Nice Guys(TM) see themselves in a bit of a quandary. They, like all other beings that want to pass on their genetic material, want to mate, but are not meeting with success in their efforts. From what they can observe of the world around them, women seem to be going for men that exhibit the stereotypes of Moron Manly Man-ness, in both physical characteristics, and in an attitude toward their date that would appear to put them up on the Probable Rapist scale. Some Nice Guys have body image issues (which isn’t given any help at all by those very Manly Moronic Men appearing to snap up all the attractive women). Given that many geeks pride themselves on their differences from the square-jawed and brainless clique, and possibly believing that there is an inverse ratio between the presence of physical muscles and mental ones, physical modification would be becoming one of THEM, and that is anathema. And, being Nice Guys(TM), instead of the callous jerks, they also are not planning on adopting what they percieve to be the attitude of THEM. Thus, their attack vector is to be themselves, the Nice Guy(TM) alternative to the heartless jerks, and that women will see their virtues and flock to them, perhaps after having been spurned by THEM.
I freely admit, I can easily follow the logic train of the Nice Guy(TM), which means I probably have been one at least once or more in my life. I hope I’ve gotten better, but required schooling is Hell, and no person escapes from it without scarring.
Nice Guys(TM) have a lot working against them. Not only is their mental model of the world flawed, it mixes poorly with things like feminism, often with volatile results. A Nice Guy(TM)’s exposure to feminism often results in fear. Perhaps because he’s replaying earlier incidents that didn’t end well (and that he didn’t take the right lessons from), or perhaps he’s heard of (from “reputable sources”, Morons, or through the grapevine) that one woman who turned “Hi.” into a diatribe about men ending in a macing (most of those stories are fabrications or distortions of reality, of course), or being the subject of a post like Freddie (who we met eralier), or he’s just unsure of himself in relation to whether he’s going to be a Proper Feminist so that his Nice Guy(TM) charm shows through, but a lot of Nice Guys(TM) are pretty afraid of things going catastrophically wrong in their mating and dating endeavours.
So, from my privilege-enhanced point of view, the xkcd comic in question is about a guy who wants to make a comment about how cute the laptop is of the woman next to him, but that his mere comment will be rebuffed, he will be humiliated, and he may be branded as some sort of sexual deviant or “avoid” person not just by the cute laptop woman, but by the observers and/or the people they tell the story of his attempt to. In other words, he’s afraid the situation will turn out like how the Morons think every woman reacts to anything. It’s a worst-case scenario, and to someone with insecurities and fears already in place about body/brain/social awkwardness, those worst-case scenarios have greater impact. It’s risk-avoidant behavior, and it’s well-documented that Humans do not choose or imagine otherwise sane (and soemtimes positive) scenarios when there are possible negative consequences. As the omniscient audience, the last panel tells us that he fears are for naught, and that if he could simply muster the courage to say what he’s thinking, there would at least be an opening for further romantic possibility. The flip side of that is the non-privileged point of view says “What he’s imagining is exactly what would happen if a woman were able to tell off the creepy guy on the train without worrying about retaliation”, (thus, the Nice Guy(TM)‘s fears are right), and the later part that lets the audience know she’s interested is actually something more akin to saying that victims of sexual assault were “asking for it” or “really wanted it”, despite what their outward position would be. Thus, the strip creator, for this particular strip, from the non-privileged point of view, is a Moron. Two very different interpretations to the same setting.
To someone who can’t read signs, it’s damn hard to tell whether any possible romantic situation will turn out well or with getting maced at “Hi.” Thus, most Nice Guys(TM) will opt to not take the risk, in case it turns out to be a negative, and a statistical outlier on the negative side at that. Risk avoidance makes us do a lot of irrational things. They will double down on the strategy of “My niceness will show through to the women I meet and they will accept me and want to date/mate with me”, while continuing to exhibit the desperation that will get them avoided further, or continuing to complain to their friends about how no woman ever wants or looks for a nice guy, and doesn’t want to keep one once she’s got him. Given enough time and rejections, they can slide down into becoming Morons themselves, and start a new cycle on a younger generation.
Of course, Nice Guys(TM) can also pull or be pulled up into the Upstanding Men category. Patience is going to be a virtue in such an endeavor, however, because there’s a lot to unlearn. They have to be able to distinguish between someone trying to help them for their own good and the mace-wielding feminist of their own fears. They also have to be able to realize the way they're thinking right now is a flawed model, as this example aptly proves. In some ways, it falls to other men to provide the necessary leverage - being good role models for those Nice Guys(TM) to aspire to, but also being willing to step other men through the process of changing their point of view. Somewhere along the way, even though men are privileged (and thus have difficulty imagining themselves in the female perspective), they have to be able to communicate to each other what it looks like to women when they behave poorly. At this point, we can append on a basic essay about the need for good role models, in geek media and normal media - less Bond, less Muscle Men, more in some ways of Beauty and the Geek, at least in the sense where both beauties and geeks got to know each other as more than their stereotypes, and more of Geeks who make good, even stumbling and screwing up some while they’re at it for regular reasons, not for things like “The Big Bad speared her through the heart as a season finale”. Even male actors who are supposed to be playing geeks are makeup’d and meet certain beauty standards. And most of those geek characters are side characters and assistants to the Hero. Television and movies are not exactly providing a whole lot of role models for men who men who don’t meet the beauty standard. (Side note here about the apparent encouragement of rule-flaunting and bad behavior by the athlete and “popular” class in required school and university. If necessary, develop into fuller standalone comment piece.) So, really, lacking sufficient amounts of good role models, the message that gets through to men is “Be Morons or Nice Guys(TM), and the women will flock to you”. It’s the one that The Dominant Male Uber-Pickup Artist's Guide To Getting Laid Using On-line Dating is trying to lampshade. It gets taken as gospel far too often, because it appears to work.
It’s a problem that hurts both men and women. Women deserve a world where they don’t have to treat every man as Schrodinger’s Rapist, and men deserve a world where they get and can believe messages that say “People other than the super-athletic, the super-popular, and the super-beautiful succeed and have meaningful relationships.” Both of these things are about changing attitudes and inducing the ability to see things from a different point of view. It’s going to take men teaching other men in addition to women continuing to fight loudly (and perhaps with a can or two of mace) to change the way the system works.
This has been a Special Comment. Things I have gotten right, wrong, need more explanation, or other perspectives I have not considered are welcome.
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Date: 2010-04-28 10:04 pm (UTC)Or maybe, in honor of the Ukrainian Parliament, eggs and smoke bombs?
Also Amy Pond is totally the best companion!
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Date: 2010-04-28 10:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-28 11:16 pm (UTC)Amy Pond is totally the best companion. Resourceful, mischievous, awed about the right things and able to read and react to this Doctor's mood swings far better than any of the New Who companions before her. (It's like they took the best bits of Martha and Donna and rolled them together.)
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Date: 2010-04-28 11:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-28 08:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-28 08:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-28 08:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-28 08:27 am (UTC)I did not give him any signals that welcomed this approach, but I still had to be Friendly Customer Service BT, because I was at work.
If he'd done it outside of work, I would have probably either exited when he grabbed my elbow, or kicked him somewhere sensitive when he grabbed my hands. He thought he was being charming. I wanted him out of my gym.
A different guy who comes into my gym a lot was chuckling under his breath at this man's clumsy attempts at courting me. I couldn't tell whether Creep was his friend or not.
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Date: 2010-04-28 10:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-28 01:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-28 02:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-28 02:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-28 07:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-28 07:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-28 07:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-28 11:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-29 12:04 am (UTC)I was trying to note that "better" people tended to have a lot of sex, but that didn't denote a meaningful relationship. Nothing special, really.
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Date: 2010-04-29 12:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-29 05:25 am (UTC)(But then we had to make a uniform policy at our school because of a kindergartner wearing low rider jeans and a rhinestone thong, so I guess some people are more sensitive to it than others...:P)
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Date: 2010-04-29 07:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-27 04:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-27 07:58 am (UTC)