Time for me to jump on the bandwagon and discuss the phenomena of “nice guys finish last”. There seems to be a backlash brewing against the proverbial nice guy (as if we needed it). Lindsay Beyerstein, it seems, made the opening shot by attacking all those whiny nice guys as perhaps not as nice as they think they are. Matthew Yglesias blames it on class issues, and accuses nice guys of commodifying women by believing their are owed sex as a reward of their niceness.

Both I think miss the point. That point is made clear by Neil Sinhababu:

It’s a necessary condition for being a nice guy that you apply high standards to your behavior with women. You deny yourself recourse to strategies that don’t meet these standards. Minimally, you don’t hit on girls impolitely or in inappropriate contexts, and you don’t try to pressure girls into doing things that they might not want to do. You make sure they have an easy way to say no if they’re not really interested — strategies that don’t leave the other person an out are rejected.

His entry is very good for understanding this issue. I’ll see if I have anything to add. First I suppose I should respond to Matthew’s point about feeling owed women for niceness. For me at least, an unashamed nice guy, it isn’t feeling owed, but frustration that the high standards of behavior we adopt are unappreciated, and at times deliberately scorned. As if we’ve spent the day in the kitchen making a gourmet meal only to find our mate choose instead to pick up a Big Mac and a bag of chips.

It is both disappointment in being unappreciated, and disappointment that women don’t hold themselves in as high regard as we do. Its like men who buy into the feminist ideals Neil stated fell for a bait and switch with no straight women left who still care about the feminist ideas we subscribe to. Not to say that we picked up this feminist jazz as a ploy to get chicks. Even if it made be fabulously popular with the ladies I couldn’t imagine ever treating them as a piece of meat.

As for the whining… well I must come clean and admit its just a passive-aggressive ploy to win our way into your hearts through sympathy. Pathetic, yes I know, but our high standards have precluded more direct methods. It doesn’t, I feel, take away our claim to niceness, just shows what a limited supply of tactics we have left in our quiver. Only nice girls would fall for it anyways, and they are the only ones worth our time in the first place.

What bothers me most about the whole situation is a more deeper level problem of values. Traditional gender roles really smack of really Nietzschian values of respect for power, strength and dominance. As if we are stuck in a Darwinian trap that humanity can’t escape from. The ape who beats his chest the loudest and frightens away all the other males is deemed the most desirable mate. To think that crude, dehumanizing forces of evolution still guide many people’s dating choices drives me batty.

As if civilized (and indeed Christian) values of fair play, compassion, equality and love have been kicked to the curb. Relationships should be built on trust, and come from a place of equality. Dominant-submissive hierarchies should be no more acceptable in relationships and dating than in general society. Men and women should not seek to dominate others, and should not devalue ourselves by worshiping or respecting those who dominate us.

With all that said, increasingly I have grown less upset over the neglect of nice guys in recent months. Partly, of course, since I know have a girlfriend, so its just not as much an issue anymore, but even before that my views were changing. Those women who would turn their nose up at me and prefer instead to jump in bed with a Neolithic thug really aren’t my type anyways. I really don’t find women like that attractive, and couldn’t imagine having chemistry with one who unhealthily admires money, power, strength and celebrity. I know, I’ve dated one before.

So yes, I’m a nice guy, and I’m damn proud of it.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 13th, 2005 at 11:10 am and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.