Things Not to Say About Women

I think it’s going to be “serious conversations” week here at Accidental Historian.  There are a few things I’ve been meaning to write about but I haven’t exactly gotten around to, y’know, writing them.

So let’s start:

Serious Conversation #1, How Not to Talk About Women:

I ended up reading a couple posts on a blog off of Michael Mock’s blogroll because, as with so many of these things, the blog name was fascinating.  The female proprietor of the blog solicits discussion of shit between guys and gals and whatnot.  I didn’t really give a crap about the post in question (or, well, the blog), but I did run across this:

i met a guy this weekend who said, “i’m a serial monogamist.”  he also said what ended up being my favorite quote of the weekend…”a girl took a shit in my heart and now i’m an asshole.  down deep i’m still a good guy, but one the surface, an asshole.”

Grammar, capitalization, and spelling issues aside, everything about this comment pisses me off.

Speaking as a guy who dabbles in being an asshole, were I to meet random, nameless dude quoted on the internet face-to-face I’d be forced to seriously consider hitting him with something heavy.  Because what we’re looking at here is a classic nice-guy-who-actually-isn’t-nice.

For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, Former Conservative offered a pretty good explanation of the “Nice Guy” right about here.  The “Nice Guy” isn’t actually nice.  He’s just called this because he thinks acting “nice” will get him somewhere with the women.  Then when it doesn’t work, he blames the women for not falling all over themselves to give him a lifetime supply of blowjobs and ribs.

The Nice Guy seems to think that all he has to do to get a woman to love him forever is to prove to her that he’s better than everyone else.  And by “everyone else” the Nice Guy often means “the guy she’s actually dating or even married to.”  This, it should be obvious, doesn’t actually take in to account the opinion of the other person in this creepy pseudo-relationship: the woman in question.  Why would she matter, after all?  She’s just the prize to be won.

That’s the problem with the Nice Guy.  He’ll have you believe that because he’s a Nice Guy he’s totally better than those douchebags who just want to get in the pants of the woman in question.  See, he doesn’t just want to get in her pants.  He wants a relationship with her based on her acknowledging that he’s exactly everything she really wants and needs.  Because that’s, like, super healthy.

FC pretty much summed everything I’m saying here up in a way I can’t improve upon:

It is a terrible, terrible way to treat women. Its unfair. Its dishonest. It makes you look pathetic. Its disrespectful and says volumes about your own lack of self-esteem. It puts your feelings above those of the woman you are pursuing, despite your insistence that you care about her. Its completely rooted in self-centeredness, self-pity, and self-importance. Its even disrespectful to the man she’s involved with who probably you only think is a horrible person because he’s dating the person you want to date. There are few things in life I’m more embarrassed about than this particular episode.

So you’re probably asking yourself, “If someone else already said what he wants to say, why the fuck is Geds writing this post?”

I’m glad you asked, theoretical reader.  See, the writer of the blog that originally drew my ire managed to take that quote in exactly the wrong way.

ennyweigh, the conversation was familiar.  sailor talk and all.  he’s an eligible bachelor being told he should be out spreading his seed far and wide and that just doesn’t sit well with him.  he even teetered on thinking he’s in the minority.

Um, no.  No he’s not.  Unless there was a lot more in the conversation that just never made it in to the blog post, the guy in question wasn’t having problems with being told he’s supposed to be out “spreading his seed.”  He was having problems with women.

Let’s talk responsibility.

There exists in this world no woman who can cause a man to become an asshole by taking a shit in his heart.  There exist in this world women who are fully capable of using some dude’s heart as a commode.  There exist in this world men who have had enough dumps taken in their tickers that they’ve become callous and cruel and mean.

There is absolutely no causal relationship between those two things.  None.  Period.

I don’t know anonymous dude quoted on the internet, but I strongly suspect he’s a Nice Guy.  Even if he’s not specifically a Nice Guy, I strongly suspect he’s pretty close.  And, at the very least, the words he chose to use are close enough to how Nice Guys speak that he’s a pretty damn good stand in.

See, the Nice Guy lives in a world where there are two types of men: nice guys and assholes.  If women won’t go for the Nice Guy, then they’re obvious off searching for the assholes, who will treat them like shit and then dump them and then they’ll go crying back to the nice guys who will sit and hope that this time she’ll finally figure out to stop chasing assholes.  Eventually, though, he decides to be an asshole, just because that’s obviously what women want.

Notice how this thought process completely takes the supposed most important variable out of the conversation.  It’s all about how nice guys finish last and assholes get the girl without actually bothering to ask, “Why, precisely, does this happen?”  That’s an answer that completely and totally depends on the woman in question.  It’s possible that she just likes assholes.  It’s also possible that she doesn’t like assholes, but the self-absorbed Nice Guy is filling in the blanks with his own pre-conceived notions.  It’s also possible that the asshole actually makes a move, while the Nice Guy sits around and waits for the woman to figure out that she’s supposed to just fall in love with him because he’s, like, there.  Then, of course, there could be other factors.  Like, maybe the Nice Guy just isn't her type, in that she's not a fan of whiny, self-absorbed dweebs with self-confidence issues.  Or maybe she just doesn't like him as a potential romantic partner, period, because sometimes shit like that happens.*

When it gets right down to it, too, if you’re going to say, “This other person caused me to become an asshole,” you’re not being nice.  You’re actually pretty much the definition of a passive-aggressive asshole.  So, really, it wasn’t that long a walk in the first place.

Either way, that’s the first thing on my list o’ things that have pissed me off lately.

 

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*EDIT:  I added a couple sentences to that paragraph, since I kinda cut myself off mid-thought while I was writing it and didn't realize I'd done so at the time.

Comments

[Firedrake]

How not to talk about women? Any way you (the generic-presumed-straight-male "you") wouldn't talk about men.

To say "it's all a woman's fault" is to say "I am not responsible for my actions". Way to go winning my respect, there.

Also this: http://www.girlswithslingshots.com/comic/gws-1280/

[Geds]

Well, fine. Say in two sentences and a linked webcomic what I said in 1100 words. And just go right ahead and say it in a more pithy fashion. Be that way. I'm not bitter, not bitter at all.

[Firedrake]

Nah mate, you were relating this particular post to the central memeplex, and I didn't touch on that at all! I'm just digging at that memeplex until (with any luck) it comes apart.

(My girlfriend once met a man who seriously claimed that all car accidents were caused by women. All? Yes, even if it's two blokes running into each other, it'll be the fault of some woman who gave one of the men a hard time earlier in the day. He seemed seriously to believe this.)

I've gone through my own phase of "didn't get laid very much, if at all" and it ended only because someone propositioned me very bluntly. I'm hardly an expert on this sort of thing. I just start with the basic assumption that women are people...