I apologize for mischaracterizing your situation. There’s quite a lot to unpack there. And I’m certainly not competent to do it justice.
I will say I agree w @Beckdawrek and the others that whatever movement you want to create, don’t also burden it with trying to rehabilitate or repurpose the “Nice Guys” term.
You’re certainly correct that there’s a lot wrong with the US-standard gendered attitudes to sex and dating. And that’s before we add all the non-binary or neurospicy parameters into the mix.
The Barbie movie was super popular, and I liked it well enough, but everyone went apeshit over America Fererra’s big monologue about how women have to do this and that and be this way and not that way and all this pressure and I was just thinking… No, at least half of that shit is entirely optional. There’s no law that says women have to wear high heels. There’s no rule that men have to act horny. If your movement involves disabusing young people of the idea they have to do a bunch of socially expected bullshit based on their gender, I’m all for it.
As a cis woman, I’ve been a pursuer in the vast majority of my relationships because I don’t have time to sit around all day wondering if my future is going to include some guy. Maybe I’m impatient, maybe it’s my difficulty with the unknown, but either way I just can’t sit on my feelings for long. I got plenty of rejection and yet it ultimately worked out well for me, even though I had to spell it out for my husband 23 years ago.
So much of this is people having a hard time getting over reality. I realized relatively young that I wasn’t playing the act-dumb-flirting game and that it would probably diminish my prospects considerably. Oh well. Putting up a facade of idiocy is not worth it to date a guy who is intellectually insecure. I would rather be alone than inauthentic. It’s probably best to stop pursuing people who are just not that into you. Why would anyone want someone who is just not that into them?
From the time I was old enough to be interested in girls I heard “you’re really nice, but I just like you for a friend.” In my teens and early twenties I figured I must just be really physically unattractive. But I was always in good shape, and the mirror told me that I was at least average looking if not slightly better. I could have gone the incel direction, but blaming others for my shortcomings ain’t my style. I figured that there was something about my personality that made me not dating material. There were years of “what in the hell is wrong with me?” I’m not even talking about sex; just a date once in a while, and even an occasional second date would have made me happy. I didn’t figure out what the problem was until I was married. Apparently there were women who were interested, but I could never tell who was and who wasn’t unless I was told directly. My wife would say, “did you see how she was looking at you?” No, I never did. All’s well that ends well, but I was miserable and bitter for the better part of a decade, and there was a lot of self hate.
How common is it for someone (male or female) to not be able to tell? Even with the benefit of knowing later that someone had been interested, I just didn’t see it. There were other times earlier when I thought someone was interested when they weren’t, so my default became “no one is interested.”
I was beating the crap out of boys in grade school, so that probably wasn’t much better. I meant it in good fun and I didn’t realize it was a bit much for them. Frequently I was re-enacting Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with the boys… I always had to be April, of course.
That’s the one trait associated with autism that I have. When I’ve taken tests my overall scores have been very low. As for asking, I got rejected so often it got stressful enough to make me feel physically ill when I considered asking someone out. I’m sure the deer in the headlights vibe I gave off was a big turn off. Add to that there being women I never would have dreamed were Interested who actually were. My dating life from my teens until around 30 can charitable be called a dumpster fire.
I think it’s very common in men. I certainly couldn’t tell, most of my friends couldn’t tell. I don’t know if we couldn’t read the signs that a woman was interested, or we simply had never learned to read them. Add to that a few unfortunate times when you’re told the crushing “you’re really nice, but I just like you for a friend” that @P-man and I and every guy in the world has been told and you have a vast pool of men who are permanently scarred by the time they graduate from high school.
I got that from a lot of guys, too. And some cruel comments as well. Rejection is probably easier to deal with in hindsight coming from the experience of a decades-long marriage. I didn’t date anyone in high school until I started meeting guys outside of high school, my senior year, and neither of them went particularly well. Then I had one very short-lived thing with a crazy guy in college before I realized I was in love with my husband.
It’s my distinct impression that Nice Guys with the capital letters in the modern sense don’t like women at all. They do want to fuck women; but they don’t like women. Certainly not as individual people. Do you like the individual women you’re being nice to? Do you still like them, and keep being nice to them, if they don’t want to fuck you? Are you also nice to people of whatever gender who, for whatever reason, you don’t want to fuck? If so, you may be a nice guy, but you’re not a Nice Guy.
Trying to get across to boys and young men that the way it fits for you to live is a legitimate choice that may fit some of them also seems to me an excellent ambition. But I’d use some other terminology.
ETA: re-reading: “choice” may be the wrong word. You don’t choose who you are. But you choose what you do about it.
You don’t. What you need to do (and apparently have done) is to find some women who don’t like that game any more than you do. We do exist. (Some of us also hate that game at least in part because we’re terrible at it. Being terrible at it, from the side of the dance societally assigned to either sex, isn’t limited to men.)
Very, I think. In both directions: thinking that somebody’s not interested when they are, and thinking that they might be when they’re not. And, while I don’t know whether there are more men than women who have trouble telling, there are certainly plenty of women who have trouble with it.
I suspect that the complicated rituals human societies tend to develop around this exist in large part to try to get around this; though for all too many what they do is get in the way.
That’s actually more or less how I’d describe a vast and noisy subsection of the mainstream hetero male identity. The frat boys. The guys who just see girls as party favors or long-term exploitation resources. But yeah, you’re right, the VOICE, at least, of incels, is really nasty towards women. Let me draw you a parallel. In the late 1960s a lot of activist women trying to be a part of the left felt really fucking marginalized by the men, who treated them like party favors or long-term exploitation projects but not as colleagues. Out of that came 70s-80s radical feminism. SOME of the people drawn to the movement came in with an attitude that all men were toxic by definition, that in no possible future would they be with men in any conceivable sense of the word, men were the problem. Well, if I’d been among the others of the movement I wouldn’t have declined their participation or lectured them about not blaming maleness, either. What was more important was making this movement open to everyone. And maybe she’d get over it.
So yeah, the radical feminist community didn’t keep such people out.
Over on our end, the voice for sissy / Nice Guy / incel etc etc that’s out there is hateful, anti-female. Similar and yet not because it isn’t an equal situation, given the fundamental fact of patriarchy. Each sex role is person-limiting but it specifically stuctures males over females.
Tbh I find it really bizarre that you are trying to align yourself with such a hateful group, when from everything you have said the only thing is common is the phrase “nice guy.” I guarantee that “Nice Guys” do not think of themselves as feminine, “sissies” or “male girls.” They are not trying to act like nice girls. You trying to defend them because of your completely opposite identity is way tone deaf.
Beck had it absolutely correct when she said you can be proud, and a boy, but a Proud Boy is something else. You are not a “Nice Guy.”
I’m not. To identify with someone is not to defend them. If anything, I’m unsure that i’m not equally responsible for what we’ve collectively done, even if I personally didn’t do much of it.
Those “frat” boys and jocks don’t need to hate a woman for not fucking. They just move over to the next. Which makes them less appealing to women. Mostly.
There’s always those women who go for the he-man, confident types.
It has “not much” to do with looks. Of course some sort of pleasing attributes are always nice.
I could go down a laundry list of the issues I had growing up and wanting to date or have a friend. Fucking not even on the table. I accepted, finally I was not a prize with all my problems. And just let it go. It wasn’t worth another minute of my time.
I was happy enough, as I was, at a very young age. Wasn’t worth a movement or gnashing my teeth over.
Sometimes you just gotta know your limitations. And don’t expect anyone else will listen to you grousing over it.
Especially if you get nasty about it. Sure way to turn folks off.
Well, having tried for over 40 years, I don’t have the expectations of success I started out with. But I’m stubborn and I think at least I’m not hurting anybody.
I am, however, referencing the term as women have used it. To describe a category of guy that, ermmm. yeah kinda fits me. Not in all ways but in enough unavoidable ways.
I refuse to use “nice guy” to mean “jerk”, as it seriously annoys me. And it’s insulting, it’s consistently used to deny that actually decent men even exist.