One of the persistent assumptions in this thread that really pisses me off is the notion (sometimes stated bluntly, sometimes hinted at indirectly) that we all just want sex, that getting sex is the purpose of the behavior, and that what makes it creepy is that the behavior masks that (or tries to), that what we have here is people who want sex but pretending that their interests involve something else.
Thanks — every time I run into that, it feels like a cup of raw sewage has been flung into my face.
Look, if I only cared about sex, I would be forthright and honest about it. I might or might not develop an attitude towards girls and women who were not interested in just plain old sex for its own sake, but whether I did or I did not, I would have learned how to find the women whose interests are indeed along those same lines.
But no.
Those girls and women that I just mentioned, the ones who aren’t particularly interested in sex by itself, sex for its own sake? Their reaction, when approached in that fashion, when expressed kindly and without exasperation and indignation, often amounts to “I’m not that kind of girl. I would have to get to know you better first”. Feel free to raise your hand and call bullshit on that if you don’t recognize that as a behavior-pattern. No hands? Good, let’s move on.
I’m like that. Therefore I’m all about “I want to get to know you better (first)”, except that typically speaking, over the course of my lifetime and especially as a younger person back in the day, the “first” part remained unspoken, in parentheses, because I had not first been propositioned by the girl so I did not need to say “I’m not that kind of boy” and the getting to know you better therefore did not get expressed as something that I wanted to happen before we considered the sex part.
People have asked why I brought up the “high school” stuff. Because my most classic Nice Guy™ behavioral moments were back when I was younger, back then. Who I am has not changed, but I haven’t spent the intervening decades whining that it isn’t fair that nice boys get passed over by nice girls in favor of bad boys.
That does not mean it isn’t partly true though. The observed phenomenon exists. And not because Nice Guys are shits who deserve nothing better, and not because Nice Guys are too timid or not assertive enough or not direct and honest enough, and also (while I’m at it) not because Nice Girls are dishonest about what they want or aren’t really very nice or any of that hostile shit that Nice Guys have accused them of. Nope, none of that.
The observed phenomenon exists because the sexual dating and courting script calls for the boy-person to make an overt sexual advance, to which the girl-person replies “I’m not that kind of girl, I’d have to get to know you better first”, and so the two of them date some, they fool around some, and perhaps proximity and time cause them to become emotionally involved and they become boyfriend and girlfriend, or perhaps proximity and time cause them to get horny enough to overcome reluctances and concerns about reputation and, to express it in the sexist vernacular, he scores.
The observed phenomenon exists because that script is a sexist script and doesn’t fit very well for male-bodied people who aren’t really very boyish, whose priorities aren’t typical boy-priorities, whose personality isn’t right for the role of boy in that little pageant.
