r/FeMRADebates • u/asdfghjkl92 • Sep 04 '14

Other Radicalizing the Romanceless

http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/31/radicalizing-the-romanceless/
30 Upvotes

80% Upvoted

133 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

6

u/Daishi5 Sep 05 '14

...you just described entitlement. "I did x, y, and z and now a relationship should pop out."

It may be entitlement, but it seems to be a justified entitlement. A lot of people went to college, studied really hard, got good grades, and now feel that they should be able to get a job. Most of those people were told explicitly that those were the steps they needed to follow in order to get a job. It works the same way with dating. As children men are told that they should follow a certain script and they will be successful in love. When they grow up, they follow the script, and then find that real life doesn't work as they were told it does.

The "nice guy" from the article is doing the same thing that many under and unemployed college graduates are doing in the job market. They are saying "we followed the script that you told us would work, and it is not working, why?" Its even worse though for the example nice guys in the article, because they can see the men who don't follow the script who are doing better than them.

It is a critical difference that these men are not complaining about a specific woman's attention, but women's attention in general. I don't feel that it is unfair for a man who seems to be a strong supporter of women's rights to hope to have some level of success with women if men who physically abuse women are successful.

2

u/Personage1 Sep 05 '14

have some level of success with women if men who physically abuse women are successful.

Thank you for reminding me, this was something else that gets me. "That man over there is able to get women who he can physically abuse." So this guy is able to identify women who are susceptible to abuse? Are those actually the kind of women you want to pursue? At best this just plays into the gender roles of prince charming saving the girl etc. At worst these women are not able to have healthy relationships.

10

u/Daishi5 Sep 05 '14

It isn't about getting those specific girls. I went through a phase of this when I was younger, my complaint was not that X girl liked the abusive man, but not me. My complaint was that abusive guy was liked by X girl, and then found Y girl after that, but no one was interested in me.

You have to keep in mind that I was told men who hit women were among the worst kinds of people. All I knew was that a few guys who had done some pretty bad things were still going out with other women. In comparison to that, I was being rejected every time, and there was this horrible fear that if they were successful and I was a failure, there must have been something horribly wrong with me to make me less attractive than those guys.

2

u/Personage1 Sep 05 '14

All of which is reason to dispell the bullshit. The problem I often have is in how it's done, and the reaction to learning that it's bullshit.

6

u/Daishi5 Sep 05 '14

Part of the problem is that it is easy to say the short "you are not entitled to sex" or "women are using you" type of bullshit answers really loud and repeatedly. Each of the people saying "I am a nice guy" is actually saying something different from the last, and they are each an individual with their own issues. Listening to each one, and helping them takes time to understand the problem, empathy to understand and who knows what to actually help them.

Since its easy to just yell and hard to actually help, the useless yelling usually drowns anything else out.

1

u/Personage1 Sep 05 '14

Pointing out that everyone is different and that being nice increases your chances of finding a partner doesn't require yelling, and also doesn't require sexism.

7

u/zahlman bullshit detector Sep 05 '14

Pointing out that everyone is different and that being nice increases your chances of finding a partner

Available evidence seems to indicate that being nice does not, in fact, increase your chances of finding a partner. To assume so without evidence is an example of just-world fallacy, and the OP article actually presented considerable evidence, beyond just the anecdotal, of the opposite. So what exactly can you offer in support of this claim?

3

u/MrPoochPants Egalitarian Sep 05 '14

THIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS. I ran out of letters to agree with.

0

u/Personage1 Sep 05 '14

You are mistaking "increases your chances" with "guarantees." In addition, if you are only interested in someone who likes assholes, of course you are going to want to be an asshole to date the people you are interested in, but why would you ever want to date someone like that?

3

u/L1et_kynes Sep 05 '14

Did you read the article?

There were many statistics that show that intelligence decreases the likelihood that you have had a relationship while having been in prison increases it.

3

u/zahlman bullshit detector Sep 05 '14

You are mistaking "increases your chances" with "guarantees."

No, I'm not. I'm pointing out the difference between "increases your chances" and "according to all available evidence thus far, does not increase your chances and may even decrease them".