I get letters from self-professed Nice Guys, complaining that women must WANT to be treated like shit, because THEY, the “Nice Guy” have failed repeatedly in relationships. –Heartless Bitches International

This has been written about in the feminist blogosphere time and time again and hardly requires a post from me. However, I’ve just experienced a conversation so excruciatingly tedious from a bemoaning young man that it warrants a diatribe. Early this morning at a cafe, he thought it appropriate to interrogate me for personal information, and, upon my polite declination of his advances, engaged in such miserable self-deprecation that I mustered all obtainable resistance from swiftly kicking him in the shins. As I continued to pointedly read my book, he complained that he should have known not to try, because “beautiful women” never go out with “nice guys” like him, and he then proceeded to list superficially “deep” attributes that he believed entitled him to my number, as if I’m supposed to give a fuck.

On verge of murder, I deliberated whether it was best to retain a steely boiling silence or ceremoniously throw my coffee up his nose. He was of course passively manipulative, hoping to shame me into submission by evoking sympathy. Masquerading manipulation as desirability to engender a potentially sexual relationship is a pattern consistent with both abhorrent Nice Guys and the assholes from whom they claim to differ. This is because they are the same asshole, the only distinction being Nice Guys incorporate themselves into the “nice guy” category to champion the delusion that “women don’t like nice guys”, conveniently avoiding any unpleasant realization that they themselves are assholes: petulant, passive aggressive, and manipulative. In their thinly veiled true arrogance they expect a woman to sleep with them for “being nice” the criteria of which includes but is not limited to opening doors, pulling out chairs, paying for dinner, other shit you never asked for, and not forgetting your birthday.

Furthermore, their entire show of self-pitying broodiness to buy sympathy is an abominable impersonation of earnest gesture, thereby a violation of integrity, disguising their malignant intentions. Abusive relationships very often involve emotional blackmail of a similar nature, the height of which is suicide threats. This is so poorly executed that upon the very first encounter I was well aware of these pathetic inequities: the entitlement is apparent in that “women don’t like nice guys” really means “beautiful women” (as though beautiful women owe them something and as though only beautiful women are really women) and such militant commiseration would never be extended to conventionally unattractive women, who would instead be told sneeringly to lose some weight and “what the fuck, you’re not entitled to a date.”

Of course, he only pursues beautiful women precisely because he would wish to only associate himself with beautiful women: your looks are his status.

Nice Guys predictably whine about how they’re told off by women “who aren’t even pretty enough to act bitchy”, as if they’re the fucking ego police and the world is concerned with their irrelevant measurements.

And then they judge the men with whom women are in relationships, as though they know or it’s any of their businesses.

Likewise the unthinkable conceit is embedded into the presumptions of the very framework of approach, which I won’t bother write about here, since I’ve done so already.

I never considered myself a beautiful woman, but on the event that I am, the presentation of generic contemplations that men believe to be original and insightful (“The universe is such a big place!”) is unimpressively parallel to “I own a boat.” I suppose that sitting there, with my hair in beach waves and a flowing skirt that gripped my waist and a blouse I had discovered later had inadvertently unbuttoned at the top, I might have looked beautiful. This would provide my bitchy advice with some credibility*; of course, Nice Guy still prefers I shut up and sit quietly on my pedestal where I won’t have the audacity to be human, and will ideally act as a silent muse while he does important manly things like contribute to civilization.

*I am mocking you.

Related: Shakesville on Nice Guys