What is the origin of the meme that women dig total bastards?

In My Humble Opinion
21

[QUOTE=RickJay]
But lots of women DO like that, and it’s absurd to pretend otherwise.

Women don’t go for jerks any more than men go for bitches. Some people have bad taste and make bad decisions, and some don’t.
[/QUOTE]

And some people think that the height of entertainment is getting drunk out of their minds. And some people live for the weekends they spend at NASCAR. And I guess if you really really want one of those people in your life, then you’d have a gripe. I’m not interested in someone with what, in my estimation, constitutes bad taste.

I’d not be bemoaning the fact that some female-type persons are interested in ‘bad boys’. I’d be bemoaning my own bad taste in preferring that sort to the sort who’d prefer me. (were I of the male persuasion, that is).

22

[QUOTE=msmith537]
I don’t know that women truly like total bastards. At least they don’t like them BECAUSE they are total bastards. Women like strong, confident, good-looking alpha male types who provide a lot of excitement. Quite often those guys can be arrogant jerks, because they can.

Another thing - sometimes people seem like bastards because quite frankly, they don’t want to put up with your shit. If someone finds your boring, weak, timid, dull, wining, obsequiousness, (traits often associated with “nice” guys) annoying, they might at best actively avoid or ignore you and at worst maliciously seek to be a jerk to you.
[/QUOTE]
Conversely, some people seem very confident because they don’t take any shit, even when they should; hence, for some women (especially those who grew up in the influence of an arrogant asshole masquarading as a “strong, confident alpha male”) being arrogant and jerkish is equivilent to being strong and confident; never mind that it’s entirely possible, and usually easier, to be strong and confident wthout being a jerk to anyone. This is why Vera Miles picks Jimmy Stewart over John Wayne, even though Stewart can’t fight and can’t shoot. (Points for the first person who gets the reference.

And as much as it pains me to agree with msmith537 on the topic of dating and subjects pertaining to, I have to completely agree with him about “nice guys”. “Nice” as a self-decriptive label is almost invariably a proxy for “weak, passive-aggressive, whiny, self-entitled jerk”. A guy who lets a woman walk all over him, and then turns around and complains about it (or bottles up his resentment) is scarcely more appealing than a threatening, abusive son-of-a-bitch. At least the latter is showing his true colors; the former conceals them in the veil of politeness and civility. From an evolutionary standpoint (and thus, underlying even modern civilized relationships) a woman wants someone who will stand up for her and, to some extent, will stand up to her. You can’t respect someone while you’re walking across their back.

Stranger

23

[QUOTE=John Carter of Mars]
Uh huh. “This thread” is being contributed to while the women are sitting at their 'puters typing away, and in a rational state of mind.

Now put her walking down a sidewalk and let Bad Boy get off his Harley wearing his bad boy outfit with a day’s growth of beard and she gets a visceral reaction.

Posting on the SDMB is in the abstract. That IRL bad boy is real, and when she sees him, something gets triggered.

“Bad boys get the women” is not a myth. You don’t even have to be a real bad boy. Just look like one and be perceived as a bad boy and things will work out for you. :wink:
[/QUOTE]

I’ve seen that guy on a bike, and I’ve though “if I were a different type of girl, I’d do that.”

But women - at least most women I know - don’t react on that purely hormonal level (and didn’t even as hormonal teenagers), unless they are perhaps drunk. For women, there is a lot of risk and baggage to sex, and a lot of enculturization or even biological behavior about picking “Mr. Stable” over “Mr. Exciting.” And I know some women who aren’t exactly prudish.

Perhaps its my age. Women might date bad boys - but the women I know all married fairly nice, stable guys. Its kind of like guys want to date a slut, but they want to marry a woman who is going to be a good mother to their kids.

There is, however, an enculturated “Beauty and the Beast” myth - if you love him enough, he will change. Doesn’t work, but it doesn’t mean a lot of women don’t try. And there are women who are happiest when they are being treated poorly.

24

[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train]
“Nice” as a self-decriptive label is almost invariably a proxy for “weak, passive-aggressive, whiny, self-entitled jerk”. A guy who lets a woman walk all over him, and then turns around and complains about it (or bottles up his resentment) is scarcely more appealing than a threatening, abusive son-of-a-bitch.
[/QUOTE]

I can’t recall where I read it, but someone once pointed out that the adjective “Nice,” applied to a person, is virtually meaningless and has no clear definition. If someone claims to be nice, what the hell does that mean? They’re polite? Generous? Good to their parents? If you’re generous, say you’re generous. “Nice” hasn’t got any meaning to it; you call someone “nice” when you can’t think of anything specifically good to say about them.

SOAT is bang on. Every guy I have ever met who complained that they didn’t get women because they were “nice” was in fact a weak, passive agressive jackass, and as likely as not simply didn’t have the basic social skills to get dates or impress women (or anyone else.) Quite a lot of them were in fact NOT very nice at all, at least that I could see.

The “nice” guy’s hero is Ross Geller, a clueless “nice guy” who’s not the slightest bit nice - jealous, sarcastic, defensive, projective, and prone to passive aggressive displays of monumental assholery. The difference is that in real life, Ross Geller wouldn’t have two kids because he couldn’t find two women stupid enough to waste their time on him.

25

[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train]
This is why Vera Miles picks Jimmy Stewart over John Wayne, even though Stewart can’t fight and can’t shoot. (Points for the first person who gets the reference.
[/QUOTE]

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance?

26

[QUOTE=Giles]
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance?
[/QUOTE]
“This is the west, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

Point to Mr. Giles, and I’ll buy you a beer (“Just a beer! A beer’s not drinkin’!”) if I ever catch up with you.

Stranger

27

[QUOTE=SHAKES]

Like maybe stay away from bars. I’m not saying women who go to bars are unstable. Just that, Bars to unstable people is like a moth to a flame. (That’s just one example but you get my point.)
[/QUOTE]

While I don’t agree with you 100% about bars, you do have some points. People who go to meet people in bars are generally not looking for their soul mate. They are looking for someone to have a good time with. A lot of times, you have women who stalk out a particular bar because they know that I-bankers, lawyers or guys from the local Fortune 500 company frequent there after work. These women aren’t looking for a “nice guy”. They want either some meathead to take them home for the night or to land some sugar daddy. In these instances, the “nice” guys are the quiet shy guys sharing a beer in the corner while some other guy hits on the girl.

28

[QUOTE=msmith537]
People who go to meet people in bars are generally not looking for their soul mate. They are looking for someone to have a good time with. A lot of times, you have women who stalk out a particular bar because they know that I-bankers, lawyers or guys from the local Fortune 500 company frequent there after work. These women aren’t looking for a “nice guy”. They want either some meathead to take them home for the night or to land some sugar daddy.
[/QUOTE]
Damnit, stop saying things I agree with. :wink:

Goldbrickers don’t want a nice guy, and they don’t want an alpha male, at least not in the sense of someone who’ll stand up for himself except insofar as it puts more money in [del]his[/del]her pocket. They want some guy who’ll bend over backwards to shower her with gifts and put up with her attitude; in other words, a wimp with money. Ever wonder why goldbrickers have such a reputation as, well, gold-plated bitches? It’s all a part of the testing criteria: will he put up with my crap, and my unreasonable demands to put me before anyone else in his life? Bingo!

I get the impression that a lot of women in bars really have no idea what they’re doing there or what they want; hence, getting drunk and being passively agreeable–especially to a guy who is willing to fight over her–allows someone else to make up her mind for her. She’ll swing with an alpha male if he comes along, or she’ll go along with a total bastard disguised as an alpha, then later wonder why she didn’t see what a complete dipshit the guy was to begin with. (Never mind that her friends keep warning her about him.)

Now, on the topic of why guys like completely psychotic bitches…

Stranger

29

Mostly it’s been covered above. The thing is, that whether girls don’t go for ‘nice guys’ depends sorta on who’s talking. Guys who are not total bastards but qualify as decent human beings think of themselves as ‘guys’. Guys who base their self image on being these ultra-romantic, roses-every-week, do-anything-for-love types classify themselves as ‘nice guys’.

I couldn’t speak for all women, but personally I find being the center of anyone’s universe really really creepy, and so I don’t go for the self-described ‘nice guys’. They’re as prone as anyone else to sour grapes, so you get the immortal statement:

“Girls just don’t like nice guys.”

On the other hand, someone who is genuinely a total bastard won’t care about anyone else’s feelings, and the odds that they think their former girlfriend refusing to return their phone calls has anything to do with them are pretty slim. So out of them, you get:

“Yeah, she was a psycho hosebeast. Good riddance. She doesn’t know what she’ll be missing.”

Most people are thankfully somewhere in between, but they’re not usually as vocal. The extremes in thought, as on most subjects, tend to be louder.

30

[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train]
I get the impression that a lot of women in bars really have no idea what they’re doing there or what they want; hence, getting drunk and being passively agreeable–especially to a guy who is willing to fight over her–allows someone else to make up her mind for her. She’ll swing with an alpha male if he comes along, or she’ll go along with a total bastard disguised as an alpha, then later wonder why she didn’t see what a complete dipshit the guy was to begin with. (Never mind that her friends keep warning her about him.)
[/QUOTE]

Well, I never know what I want but when I was a little girl sometimes I liked it if someone was only nice to me. It made me feel like I was supergirl to be able to boss around the meanest boy. Maybe being drunk makes people regress back to the schoolyard. As an adult I don’t get any kind of thrill from that type of thing.

I agree with RickJay that “nice” just doesn’t mean a lot. It’s not the same as good, or responsible or even compassionate. A person can be very nice and not be any of those things.

Usually I picture the scenario that the reason the guy wants the girl in the first place because she’s a loving and accepting person who sees someone’s inner beauty and is loyal to it. The rest is sour grapes. Otherwise, if a guy really thinks the girl is just a terrible judge of character with no sense of self worth, why does he admire her so much in the first place? If the movies are my guide, it’s just because she’s pretty and he doesn’t care what type of person she is. When people say that all the best girls like jerks I think that jerks like jerks. If the boyfriend is a jerk then she probably likes him because she’s a jerk, and the nice guy probably likes her because he’s a jerk too. They’re probably all a bunch of bastards.

31

Speaking as a former “Nice Guy” (now happily married for 7 years) who heard variations on “I only like you as a friend” and “I love you but I’m not in love with you” more times than I care to admit…

I’ve given this lecture before, but will do it again. I think it’s a safe bet that no woman EVER turned me down because I was too nice. Rather, they turned me down because I was nice BUT just a little too __ (fill in any number of adjectives; dull, shy, nerdy, flabby, whatever).

And I think it’s a safe bet that 99% of the self-proclaimed “nice guys” who can’t get dates are in the same boat. Such guys should look at themselves in the mirror and ask point blank, “Is the problem REALLY that I’m too nice? Do I REALLY think the only flaw women see in me is that I’m too nice? Do I really think the women who’ve turned me down were thinking how perfect I’d be for them if I were just a bit more of an abusive prick?”

My hunch is, my fellow “nice guys” know deep down that they have genuine problems that are turning women off, and that they know exactly what those problems are. But sometimes, it’s a lot easier to scowl at the guys women DO choose than to work on those flaws.

I mean, if you’re 50 pounds overweight, you’d do well to spend more time on the Stairmaster and less time griping about how the girl of your dreams keeps dating jerks. Whatever your problem is, own up to it, and do something about it.

32

[QUOTE=lavenderviolet]
The key thing is this: Niceness often comes across as weak and boring. Jerks are usually strong personalities with a bit of “danger” or “excitement” (which is sexy to many women). Nobody consciously wants to be mistreated by a jerk, but for some of us the risk of that is preferable to being bored to death with a “nice” nebbish.
[/QUOTE]
I’d like to say that I’m not someone who can validate this, but I am. Months later, guess which of these guys I still can’t get out of my mind?

33

[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train]
And as much as it pains me to agree with msmith537 on the topic of dating and subjects pertaining to, I have to completely agree with him about “nice guys”. “Nice” as a self-decriptive label is almost invariably a proxy for “weak, passive-aggressive, whiny, self-entitled jerk”. A guy who lets a woman walk all over him, and then turns around and complains about it (or bottles up his resentment) is scarcely more appealing than a threatening, abusive son-of-a-bitch. At least the latter is showing his true colors; the former conceals them in the veil of politeness and civility. From an evolutionary standpoint (and thus, underlying even modern civilized relationships) a woman wants someone who will stand up for her and, to some extent, will stand up to her. You can’t respect someone while you’re walking across their back.
[/QUOTE]

My brother went and married a controlling bitch and pampers her no-end. She walks all over him and doesn’t even notice, because he makes sure that she doesn’t notice. The way he regains control is by having some areas that are exclusively “his” and through some seriously passive-agressive behavior; any time that he pulls up a card he’d simply never shown her, her perfectly designed world breaks apart. He copied this behavior from our mother, who was a controlling bitch to us but a doormat to Dad (who didn’t even realize how much she was doormatting).

I don’t know which of the two makes me want to use a Clue By Four the most.
What Stranger said applies to other relationships as well. One of my last jobs was in a local company owned by two sisters and their cousin. Being from my local culture, the owners tested all the consultants by provoking them and watching the reaction. Previous consultants, all of them outsiders, had mostly gone belly up and said “yes yes” to anything the customers demanded; some were being passive agressive. Then I arrived and the first zing in my direction got zanged right back; the two sisters respected me from that first conversation on. Their cousin cussed at me in one meeting because I was telling him something he didn’t like; I outcussed him and told him that’s a field where he really doesn’t want to compete with yours truly. He laughed and never again told me “I don’t believe you”. As their IT manager put it: “we’re paying you guys to defend our own interests in a field we really don’t understand. If you don’t have the bollocks to defend your own mother’s honor, how are we supposed to trust you?”

If I ever got married, it would have to be to a man whom I could trust to take good care of himself and my kids (or cats or the fish) if I’m not around. How is a doormat supposed to be able to do that, if he can’t even care for himself?

34

While there sure are a lot of doormats out there, I think it should be said that you can be a “nice” person as well as aggressive and confident.

I once was one of those nice guys that couldn’t get a woman. Now I have no problem with women, yet I am still a gentleman. I’m no doormat though, and while I am a decent human being with those I know and love, I don’t take shit from anybody, and my current girlfriend thinks I am too rude and mean with people I don’t know.

35

There are also frequent threads in which, contrary to conventional wisdom, many male posters claim to find fat women sexy—interspersed with complaints by zaftig female Dopers lamenting the way men ignore them in real life.

It could be that the meme is inaccurate. Or, maybe the SDMB is a sort of Mecca for chubby-chasers and ladies who prefer their men thoughtful, courteous, and a bit wimpish.

36

I think most women know, rationally, that the stable, polite, non-dramatic guy is better relationship material in the long run. On the other hand, the aggressive, impulsive, bad-boy guy offers immediate gratification. The key for a nice guy is to ignore the wild-oats-sowers and zero in on the woman who’s ready for the stable relationship. (It worked for me anyway. :slight_smile: )

37

[QUOTE=pokey]
I agree with RickJay that “nice” just doesn’t mean a lot. It’s not the same as good, or responsible or even compassionate. A person can be very nice and not be any of those things.
[/QUOTE]

“Nice” has an interesting history.

[QUOTE=Jane Austen]
But now really, do not you think Udolpho the nicest book in the world?"

“The nicest – by which I suppose you mean the neatest. That must depend upon the binding.”

“Henry,” said Miss Tilney, “you are very impertinent. Miss Morland, he is treating you exactly as he does his sister. He is forever finding fault with me, for some incorrectness of language, and now he is taking the same liberty with you. The word `nicest,’ as you used it, did not suit him; and you had better change it as soon as you can, or we shall be overpowered with Johnson and Blair all the rest of the way.”

“I am sure,” cried Catherine, “I did not mean to say anything wrong; but it is a nice book, and why should not I call it so?”

“Very true,” said Henry, “and this is a very nice day, and we are taking a very nice walk, and you are two very nice young ladies. Oh! It is a very nice word indeed! – It does for everything. Originally perhaps it was applied only to express neatness, propriety, delicacy, or refinement; – people were nice in their dress, in their sentiments, or their choice. But now every commendation on every subject is comprised in that one word.”
[/QUOTE]

If by “nice” a gentleman indicates that he is not a cad or a bounder–well, that ought to go without saying. Not every man can be a Mr Darcy, but preserve us from the Wickhams. However, there’s no need to settle for Mr Collins.

Strong interests are interesting. If that means you’re looking for a Lady Vulcan–live long & prosper! (Regular showers & a bit of exercise help. If you’re a 1, don’t expect to date 10’s. Strive for five!)

38

A friend of mine was a woman who wanted to be with a bastard. She had grown up in an abusive household and just wasn’t comfortable with a “nice guy.”

Every time she was in a relationship with a nice man, she would treat him like shit and do everything she could to drive him away. It was only when she was with a man who was physically or mentally abusive that she was happy. Well-- not happy, but she was in her “comfort zone” with them. She bent over backwards to try to keep these relationships going, whereas with “nice guys” she couldn’t get rid of them fast enough.

Having worked in a battered women’s shelter, I often tried talking to her about this. She actually acknowledged the issue but for her, abuse was almost an addiction. Something in her fed off of the degredation.

39

[QUOTE=Vinyl Turnip]
There are also frequent threads in which, contrary to conventional wisdom, many male posters claim to find fat women sexy—interspersed with complaints by zaftig female Dopers lamenting the way men ignore them in real life.

It could be that the meme is inaccurate. Or, maybe the SDMB is a sort of Mecca for chubby-chasers and ladies who prefer their men thoughtful, courteous, and a bit wimpish.
[/QUOTE]

Or perhaps the fact that there are a few billion people means there are a few billion combinations of tastes and preferences and that trying to categorize ‘women’ and ‘men’ simplistically is a fallacy in thinking?

Why call it a ‘meme’? It’s just your plain old garden-variety popular myth. Like ‘all (insert politcally correct name for persons whose skins are quite dark) can dance’ or ‘women are always late’.

However these little myths are excellent tools to weed out ‘prospects’. Find someone who believes them and you’ve found someone who prefers accepting popular myths to thinking independently. As in no longer a prospect.

40

Eh.

Virtually everyone dates someone… sub-optimal in their romantic career. An asshole, a doormat, a psycho - whatever.

I think a lot of the meme comes from people looking around and taking note of the relationships women around them are having that aren’t so good. How often do you take note of dating relationships of the women you know that are tranquil and content? Girls dating assholes are flamboyant.

The notion that women somehow prefer jackasses is hooey in the vast majority of cases. The only women I’ve ever met who preferred jackasses were emotionally not in the best place themselves. Damaged, really. Like the woman Lissa mentioned.

I’ve dated a few assholes myself - one in particular was an Olympic-class asshole. But he wasn’t that way when we started dating - and it wasn’t until I was good and invested in the relationship that his true colors started to bleed through.

I think a lot of women start dating guys that are (or are presenting themselves as) nice guys who, over the course of the relationship, relax their Just-Getting-To-Know-You Party Manners into a less-salubrious normal state. And, frankly, a lot of younger women will date guys who are jackasses because they look exciting or are charming and they flat out lack the dating experience to see the pitfall. Lord knows I did. When you’re 20, your ability to evaluate people isn’t as honed as it is when you’re 30. Practice taught me what I will and won’t put up with in a relationship.