I laughed.
One hopes. It does seem like people who feel marginalized have more time to pen manifestos which ultimately declare the author superior to his/her subject. Surely even the most marginalized human recognizes the futility of seeking the secrets to human interaction from the written word alone. There are few if any shortcuts to having a rich social life. Kinda have to jump right in the pool and flounder till you get the hang of it.
I wouldn’t say “predator” or “victims”. I would say “assertive” or “passive”. The assertive man is the guy who decides what he wants and goes after it. The hunter. The warrior. The arctic explorer. The entrepreneur. The salesman. The athlete. Even the much derided “pick up artist”. He’s the guy who says “I want that” and actively takes steps to get it through skill, charm, strength and sheer awesomeness.
The passive man does what he is told. The nerd. The office drone. The “nice guy”. This is the guy who does everything he believes he is “supposed to do”, hoping that it will someday pay off. He’s the guy who thinks his corporate performance review is anything more than a mechanism for the company to tell him how insignificant he is and wonders why he can’t get promoted. They guy with straight As who can’t figure out why all the girls go after the dumb jock frat guys. The perfect husband who obediently followed his wife to Pottery Barn every weekend and wore all the stupid clothes she picked out and is then surprised because she is sleeping with his best friend. He is neither honest with himself or those he interacts with because he is either unable or unwilling to make his true desires known.
Is it a “dichotomy”? Probably not. I think most men have both traits in them. And I think that it is when these traits come into conflict that people do stupid self-destructive shit.
I’m mostly just making this up as I go along though so take it with a grain of salt.
Oh my god you did not include pick up artists in your assertive male archetype grocery list. Phonies and posers do not fit on any level of the admired assertive male model. Good grief.
Also, you left out monsters of great intellect, charity, and discovery: Dean Kamen, Mark Bezos, Bill Gates, Neil deGrasse Tyson; powerful men who distribute wealth and garner an audience every time they speak. Maybe we need a list your modern heroes thread in order to balance out all the “jerks get all the pussy” laments.
Crap. 
I have a book to read.
Because like all cafeteria Christians, they want to use the bits that fall into their particular prejudices, as given fact.
Like ‘homosexually is an abomination’, but they still eat crab and shrimp although the bible says the same about shellfish. Or they know it’s the only true religion, because it’s in their book. Or that even though it was written centuries after Christ’s birth, and been translated many, many times, it’s still uncorrupted truth, because he made sure of it, somehow.
How is it a mystery, why people do this? Because religious freaks justify everything as ‘it says so in the Bible’, and in the next breath say, but you shouldn’t really sell all your possessions and give all the money to the poor, even though it says so in the bible, more than once too!
Put me in for rejecting the author’s definition of “nice guys” and his description of nice guy syndrome, in short because what he describes either isn’t nice or is simply unrealistic.
“If I am a good guy, then everyone will love me and like me (and people I desire will desire me).” Really? Possibly that’s why this guy is a therapist because those he met that caused him to develop this tenet of his theory are plainly disturbed. Everyone didn’t love and like jesus Christ (who could possibly be held up as the iconic nice guy)
If I meet other people’s needs without them having to ask, then they will meet my needs without me having to ask." If one believes one will be rewarded for specific behaviort, that’s not being nice.
If I do everything right, then I will have a smooth, problem-free life." Again, only someone mentally disturbed believes that such a thing as a problem free life exists.
As I reject the bases of his premise, I must in turn reject his conclusions.
no you don’t
Everyone does that - religious people of both the cafeteria and supposedly fundamentalist types - it’s human nature and it probably happens in other contexts than religion too.
I think you both have this thread confused with JohnClay’s other thread in the same forum.
“They say ‘He’s sick. He’s obscene.’”
Wait— make that “obscee-ee-ee-ene, ee-ee-ee-ene, ee-ee-ee-ene!” Thanks a lot, OP—now that song will earworm me all day long.
I said nothing about being “admired”. A lot of wealthy and successful men are outright hated. I included “pick up artists” like Mystery because his whole shtick is about putting together a plan for increasing your odds of meeting women (or at least marketing such as a business which is the same thing IMHO). As opposed to the typical passive approach of "I’ll go up and say ‘hi’ and hope she really really likes me.
I feel the need to emphasize this one point. The assertive man doesn’t care about your respect, admiration or approval other than as a temporary means to an end. It’s the “nice guy” who criticizes from the sideline.
I agree with you about phonies and posers. “Fake it til you make it” is bullshit and people see through it. Or the smart ones see they you only attract the sort of idiots who can’t see through that bullshit, which is at least as bad.
How are they not included under “entrepreneurs”? They are exactly who I am talking about.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that the “alpha” male (for lack of a better term) is a narcissistic, selfish prick to all those around him. I’m saying he is the guy who makes things happen while other people sit back and bemoan their circumstances.
I’m just not buying the general concept that ‘nice guys’ are all wolves in sheeps clothing. It may be the case sometimes, but the range of personalities that exist is very broad, and I think it’s just defining ‘nice guy’ to match that particular personality, of a guy whose niceness is hiding a dark inner self. There are plenty of nice guys out there who are just nice, who aren’t doormats, and who aren’t hiding a secret personal agenda. So yes, there are some ‘nice guys’ who using the ‘nice guy’ personality as a defensive shield, but identifying them with the label ‘nice guy’ tends to paint a lot of guys who simply aren’t aggressive or lack confidence, or are just polite with the same broad brush as the creeps.
Re-read your own post. You bestow positive, admirable attributes on the assertive list, and negative, patronizing attributes on the passive list. Your own words imply admiration of the archtypal male hero and derision for the duds.
And I would say you’re wrong. We’ve seen evidence that some highly successful people have sociopathic tendencies, but correlation isn’t causation, and there are highly successful people who achieved great things thanks in large part to empathy and the ability to relate to a wide audience. Assertive is the opposite of passive, sure, but assertive behavior need not come at the expense of others.
This is a load of crap. I spent most of my twenties as a friendly, single guy working with children and nobody shunned me or even implied I had a creepo vibe. I didnt in the least bit feel oppressed given the fact that I am a White Male and have comparitively little to complain about or fear due to privlege.
The type of guys who fret about unjustly being thought of as a pervert are probably doing something (unconsciously) to ping people’s Rapist Radar. Like standing conspicuously alone in the middle of a playground, or talking to a stranger on the bus about their encyclopedic knowlege of My Little Pony or something.
It isnt that these type of guys are being oppressed by any stretch, its that they kind of lack the self awareness to know things that might genuinely creep other people out.
Well, the way I see it, there isn’t anything admirable about being a dud.
I agree with you. And really it’s hard to achieve great things unless you can relate to and motivate those around you.
It’s not so load of crap. We’ve had whole threads about it.
We’ve recently suffered threads wherein guys who behave suspiciously are regarded with suspicion. Pick-up artists, catcallers, men who lurk around women at work have been picked apart lately.
We haven’t had any recent threads about men who conduct themselves with wit, courtesy, or philogyny mainly because it isn’t extraordinary to expect human beings of both sexes to employ empathy and generally be awesome to one another.
How do you know?
I had a discussion with my wife some time ago about how compelling a single adult man to move if he was seated next to an unaccompanied minor was bullshit. She personally didn’t believe it was segregation of the adult because when it came down to it, the child’s safety trumps the adult man’s comfort.
She drove the point home by asking if it was our kid, would I be comfortable with our kid sitting next to some man I dont know on an airplane for hours? I admitted she had a point- at the end of the day I would take actions to prioritize my kid’s safety.
However, I think that’s an extreme example. In the real world I’ve seen people show a lot more common sense about this than some posters on the SDMB would have you believe. Most people are fine with a male preschool teacher/pediatrician/gynocologist/etc for example.
Like you said, Troppus, there seems to be far more discussion about people talking about a lack of trust that they think is unjustified, vs situations where somebody showed an exceptional amount of faith in spite of the situation.
I am assertive fairly self confidant and get told regularly that I am a nice guy both here on the dope and in real life.
I doubt my deepest darkest sexual secrets would rate more than a 2 on someplace like fetlife.
Some of us are nice guys because we believe in treating people like we would want to be treated.
:::shrug::: YMMV