Whoa! Stop the presses! Waitaminnitwaitaminnitwaitaminnit! Having thunk a bit about the above few posts for several hours, it occurs to me to think we’re getting at each other’s throats over some miscommunications, having to do with differing interpretations of what certain words mean.
(ETA: Just noticed Merneith’s post just above, after posting this. Not sure if that was there before, and I haven’t read it yet, so sorry if there’s cross-talking happening.)
Forget “entitlement” for the moment. We’ll get back to that one.
Forget “bitterness == entitlement” (which, as far as I can tell, is such a non sequitur it’s not even wrong.)
Look at the words “expect” and the related “expectations”.
Nice Guys™ are routinely accused of “entitlement”, which I will argue is incorrect and a loathsome vicious misandrist slander. What they are actually guilty of is “expectation”, properly defined, which isn’t at all equal to “entitlement”
“EXPECT” has two distinct meanings:
(1) Something you think will certainly happen: With Brexit, I expect financial turmoil in world markets. I expect Hillary will be elected. If you toss a coin 100 times, you can expect roughly 50% heads and 50% tails.
(2) Something you think ought to happen, or that you demand: The teacher says “I expect every one of you will have your 12-page essays done by tomorrow.” I expect to get paid on time and in full. And your landlord expects the rent by the first of the month.
Two very different kinds of expect, and two very different kinds of expectation.
Clueless males who can’t get dates have been promised ad infinitum that something will just click someday. I quoted kunilou earlier, here is part of it again:
Every last one of the Clueless Class, males and I suppose females too, have heard variations on that a hundred thousand times. Did you see that recent thread about the possibility of throwing dice and getting box-cars infinitely? Well, some guys try to work the dating game and throw snake-eyes infinitely, and they start to wonder: “This can’t be just random chance, can it? There’s something wrong here. Is it me?” And their so-called friends repeat the lie: Oh, no, no, you’re a really nice guy, somebody just right for you will be along Real Soon Now". Everyone has been told that, or variations, over and over, even on this board, and it is a Big Lie.
Well, anyway, that gets the expectations (def. 1, not def. 2) up. Nobody, I don’t think, gets to thinking “Wow, all the females must and will pow-wow to decide which of them has to shag with me”. I don’t believe for a minute that that is the predominant thinking. They DO get to thinking, “Wow, if I can just chat up 100 females, and get into a good conversation with maybe 20 of those, and exchange phone numbers with maybe 5 of those and get dates with them, something’s bound to click. It’s been promised to me 100 times that it just works that way! I EXPECT (def. 1) that I’ll get a girlfriend out of this yet!” And then when that doesn’t happen, for 40 years in a row, at some time they will realize: I’ve been lied to, even by all my so-called friends.
But the misandrists translate that to: “I EXPECT (def. 2, that is, demand) that all the females must and will pow-wow and choose one among themselves for me”. And that’s where the false accusation of “entitlement” must be coming from. It’s a lie, an insult, a slander, and a vilification that males are so routinely accused of this, and it’s just plain wrong. It’s the wrong interpretation of “expectation”.
Where the idea that “bitterness == entitlement” comes from, I still can’t imagine.
Now, there’s the question: Can an actually nice guy, however clueless, actually realistically expect (def. 1) that he will, in fact, ever meet just the right person and something will click? Is it a virtual certainty, just as a hundred throws of the dice can’t realistically come up snake-eyes every time? OR, if Mr. Clueless is really that hopeless a basket case, does it conclusively PROVE that there is just something wrong with him (i.e., that he’s not the alleged “nice guy”, but a jerk)?
The undercurrent in all these kinds of threads is that Mr. Clueless must necessarily actually be a jerk, and must necessarily always have been a jerk. Yet Mr. Clueless, now proven a jerk, spends his entire adult life hearing the anodyne lies from his so-called friends about what a nice guy he is and how something will click any day Real Soon Now.
Or, is it really true that there just aren’t many females who will give the time of day to a “nice guy”. (One common argument is that such guys are just too bland.) The very suggestion is utterly forbidden. No matter though, it still remains de rigeur to say, instead, that The Great Unwashed Clueless who can never get laid (remember, that’s a proxy for “can never get a relationship going”) must be “entitled jerks”. That’s misandrist victim-blaming every bit as much as all the misogynist victim-blaming (which is also real) that gets thrown around.
I may be banned by tomorrow for writing this post. C’est la mort. (ETA: At least I use paragraph breaks when I write. Give me credit for at least that, okay?)