Yes, I agree. It’s false and toxic.
Perhaps that is what you meant by putting quotes around the phrase “nice guys”? It is not the clear reading of what you wrote. Seriously. I read that as offensive to me, which is of zero concern, but also as attacking someone simply sharing that he is a nice guy looking for a nice girl without current success and that he agrees that what matters is being “a good human being” (letting being masculine or feminine fall out as they may); such is what he wants to model, has modeled, for his kids, hopefully along with a model for a more successful romantic relationship with a future partner than he and his ex provided. That knee jerk attack, which had no justification based on the content of the post, again is the sort of thing that @DemonTree is talking about. @scudsucker is I am sure secure enough that he is not too bothered, any more than I am, but seeing it happening here is proof that her point is not completely without merit.
I honestly think you are just reaching for anything to be offended by at this point. The poster I responded to was the one who originally put “nice guys” in quotes, and women tend to know what that means when incels do that. There is a subreddit called r/niceguys which is all about people posting their experiences with guys who say they are nice but don’t actually act that way.
Don’t attack me just because you don’t comprehend what I was saying.
Yeah. I tend to distinguish it as Nice Guy™.
I agree that the terminology is confusing. However, anyone saying something along the lines of ‘women are all such bitches, they don’t want to date me and I’m such a nice guy’ is almost certainly a Nice Guy™.
(I am not accusing anybody in this thread of saying things along those lines.)
Do you think this thread is toxic? I certainly don’t.
I have been part of a number of conversations among women discussing dating relationships that weren’t toxic. This may well depend on the particular people in your social group.
Non-toxic discussions of politics among people of differing views have become a lot more difficult to have over the last decade or two. It seems to me that much of the problem originally came from the right but a lot of the left has now responded likewise. There are still significant numbers of people trying to talk with each other, at least occasionally. I’m not sure how much this has to do with incels; but it probably does make dating harder for people of any gender who are of minority political views in their area – though I don’t see why it would make it any harder for men than for women.
Carnivores by necessity are predators (well, unless they’re scavengers, which presumably isn’t what the people looking down on herbivores want to be seen as.)
They’re also exhibiting a massive degree of ignorance about herbivores. There’s nothing remotely passive or docile about a bull in mating season or a goat defending her young.
Oh, good grief. Saying that one’s social status has been shaped by patriarchy isn’t remotely the same thing as saying that the person is evil. Everybody’s social status has been shaped by patriarchy, by racism, by all sorts of other things. Some people benefit from this more than others, but this doesn’t mean that they’re all evil.
He’s supposed to make a reasonable attempt not to behave like an evil human. Just like anybody else.
I am not remotely seeing it here. What I’m seeing here is a few people misunderstanding what is now fairly standard terminology and a couple of them refusing to have the misunderstanding explained to them.
Allow me to apologize for obviously coming off too much as a personal attack. Nothing in @scudsucker’s post was however consistent with incel ideology. He actually does seem like a nice guy who uses the words “nice guy” to describe himself. Of course an endorser of incel ideology who describes themselves as “a nice guy” is an endorser of incel ideology, which is misogynistic and therefore not really “a nice guy” to women … tautologically. Sometimes “a nice guy” is just a nice guy. Even when they are nice guys looking for a relationship that includes sex.
Moving along.
I did not take it as an attack. So no need for an apology, although I do thank you for doing so. You are a nice guy!
I thought that understanding was pretty universal. “Nice guys” = shit-heels who fallaciously think they’re nice or pretend to be nice, but really aren’t. Nice guys are just nice guys.
Apparently we haven’t all received that memo 
. More of our species’ endless communication breakdowns as we argue about something with two entirely different definitions.
Incidentally I agree with Boudicca90 that labeling yourself an “incel” (note the quotes) when you just can’t get laid but are otherwise a perfectly decent person is not a good idea. I see Incel and I immediately think fucking whackadoodle who hates women because he can’t get laid. People refer to themselves as “incels” in jest, but it probably isn’t a great idea if you’re not actually a follower of the ideology that has accreted around that term. Same way as I would suggest to the nice but clueless Hindu guy down the street that adding decorative swastikas to his new porch trim is probably a bad idea.
Thank you for your apology. I agree that there was nothing in his post to suggest he was a typical incel, and I hope I didn’t come across like I considered him as such. And there are a lot of genuinely nice guys out there. I had a reaction to him labeling himself as an incel even when he didn’t fit the typical incel patterns of behavior. I just don’t think that calling himself that is helping his chances in any way when it comes to finding a partner.
I suspect that his small talk getting to know you conversation does not start off with “technically I’m an incel… and a nice guy!”
Trying to imagine how that conversation would progress on the first let’s just have coffee meet?
Yet again very glad I have been with the same partner for over four decades. Single life seems hard! Mind you marriage has its challenges too …
Anyway as to masculinity and femininity? I suspect the majority of us do not consciously model ourselves to any such standard, excepting I suspect those with gender discordance. And we aren’t “nice” as much as we are just trying to be decent humans in all interactions to the best we can.
“Evil”?? Sorry, I’m really baffled by the apparently incomprehensible reasoning here.
Nobody in this thread AFAICT is suggesting that individual men in a patriarchal society are somehow blameworthy just for being successful/high-status.
My point was just that the fact that high status in men is attractive to women in a patriarchal society—where women have traditionally been encouraged and/or required to identify themselves with their husband’s status rather than achieving status in their own right—is not separable from those basic facts about patriarchal social structure.
I have no idea how you’re getting any accusation or insinuation of “evil” out of that.
Because “patriarchy” is consistently used as a synonym for “evil”. Given the way patriarchy is talked about saying that somebody owes their position “to the patriarchy” is like saying somebody owes their position “due to their ties to organized crime”. It’s fundamentally hostile to them.
This is absurd nonsense. Patriarchy is something that’s been entrenched in all aspects of society due to thousands of years of sexist power structure and ideology, and nobody in society can help being fundamentally affected by its influence. That’s extremely different from accusing somebody of having direct ties to organized crime.
Yes, patriarchal societies weight the dice in favor of high-status men, via the persistent cultural expectation that alliance with a high-status man is a woman’s natural (or even only) route to attaining status. That’s a pervasive fact of patriarchal society that a couple hundred years of fluctuating feminist progress have not yet come close to completely eradicating.
But that doesn’t make individual high-status men automatically “evil”, any more than it makes the individual women who are attracted to their high status automatically “evil”. The lingering effects of patriarchy are just part of the sociocultural water we all swim in.
Refusing to acknowledge persistent long-term effects of patriarchy in modern life, just because we personally don’t want to be associated in any way with patriarchy because “patriarchy bad”, is nothing but fragile snowflakery. It’s like US conservatives demanding that schools mustn’t teach the 1619 Project history materials, because we don’t want to acknowledge the extent to which our country’s history has been shaped by slavery, because “slavery bad”.
Grown-ups should be able to discuss ways in which social evils originating in the past still affect people’s lives today, without jumping to the conclusion that it means we’re calling the people of today evil.
No; it’s the equivalent of saying that all men are part of organized crime. The entire point is to create a worldview where it’s impossible for men to be anything but “evil” - and thus deserving of condemnation.
Not gonna bother reviewing the posts: did anyone but you use that “owes … “ wording? I don’t recall so.
Am I evil?
I clearly have benefited from the patriarchy. From early childhood on. My father, wonderful man in many ways, was quite sexist in his WW2 era masculinity. None of my three older sisters got the encouragement to succeed that I got. Society has many advantages built in for me as a white cis hetero male. None of those benefits take away from the fact that I have also applied myself and worked damn hard. But someone without the advantages I had, without the same opportunities, same intellect, same hard work, would very likely not have seen the exact same outcomes. I personally owe some of my success to the patriarchy, looking no farther than family of origin, that benefited little kid me over my older sisters, let alone in many others ways likely day in and out that I am clueless about.
I recognize all that. Am I then calling myself evil? I didn’t ask for it. I wasn’t aware of it until well into adulthood. But despite my hard work invested as well I reaped benefits.
?? These arguments are rapidly devolving from bewildering to absurd nonsense to outright gibberish. No, saying that the long history of patriarchy still fundamentally influences a lot of sociocultural expectations, among men and women alike, is not in any way the same thing as trying to smear a group of people by accusing them of ties to organized crime.
I mean, I don’t even see how you can persuade yourself of such a resolutely counterfactual view. Would you say the same thing about the persistent sociocultural influence of the long historical dominance of white supremacism in white-majority societies, for instance? Do you think that acknowledging that the legacy of slavery and racism has created persistent status advantages for white Americans vis-a-vis black Americans is “the equivalent of saying” that all white Americans “are part of organized crime”?
Like I said, that just seems to me like cartoon-caricature levels of fragile snowflakery. I mean, the alternative is for us simply to all close our eyes and agree to pretend that our societies and cultures are not still fundamentally influenced by the legacies of patriarchy, white supremacism, Christian nationalism, etc., etc., etc. Which makes a mockery of realistic analysis.
If we can’t honestly acknowledge those societal influences without being interpreted as trying to accuse huge swaths of people of being personally “evil” and “deserving of condemnation”, then rational discussion becomes an impossibility.
“History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”
James Joyce, Ulysses
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,”
Shakespeare, Hamlet
Yeah, not trying to date anyone here. I’d not bring up the topic at all with a potential partner! But techinically, I am an incel and a nice guy (nice guy, obviously YMMV, but I aspire to niceness and beyond)
I’m not your “honey”, sweetie.
I’m just related a common narrative I come across with the toxic man set. The reality is men and women leave each other for all sorts of reasons. Do most or even a lot of women leave their man because they meet a wealthier man who puts on a bigger show? I don’t know as I don’t have any actual stats.
Although stats do show that financial issues can be a leading cause of relationship challenges.
Most of the literature I’ve read seem to indicate people tend to marry within their socioeconomic class. Long gone are the days of the doctor marrying his nurse or the lawyer marrying his receptionist.
I do think a lot of men feel like they are unfairly maligned with overly woke “white men are the source of all problems” narratives.
Take the “nice guy” narrative that has been predictably raised in this thread. It usually goes something like “‘nice guys’ are really entitled creepers who use being ‘"nice’ as a form of virtue signaling while masking their underlying creepy intentions.”
Now maybe some of that is true. But I also think there are a lot of “nice guys” who are just regular normal guys who are just looking to find a romantic partner and have a normal romantic relationship with them without a lot of drama. And I think a lot of these men get frustrated because they meet a woman and she seems more interested in the “unfeeling, selfish, cruel, manipulative, or self-absorbed” jerks who seem to have an extravagant lifestyle and put on a good show. And then often those nice guys become jerks too.
Anecdotally speaking, I have been acquainted with several women over my lifetime who were that shallow. They didn’t marry nasty men, just wealthy men. They were looking for someone to support them with money, period. They were women who put a lot of effort into the way they looked. They gave me the creeps and although we knew each other through shared interests, I veered away from them as soon as ever I could. I suppose there are other women like that out there, but they rarely travel in my circles. I’ve led a sheltered life, or another way to put it is that I have always avoided shallow selfish people, and that’s the kind of people they are.
IMO this is a major reason for the difference in attitudes between old and young men. You can say you clearly benefited from the patriarchy. For young men, things are far more complicated: fathers of young adults today did not have WW2 era masculinity; they’re mostly Gen X. The majority of parents probably at least tried to treat their kids equally. Young men went to schools where girls were outdoing them, teaching styles were geared more towards girls, and traditional boy behaviour like rough-housing was not tolerated. They grew up into a difficult job market where they have no clear advantage over anyone else, while women sometimes do benefit from affirmative action. And then they are told they still have these advantages that are no longer much in evidence, and if they can’t succeed, it must be their own fault because they are privileged.
I think there are still some benefits to being male, but they’re pretty subtle compared to what you recall. It’s a whole different world, and messages based on how things were in previous eras frequently fail to land.