why are feminist obsessed with Nice guys(TM)

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I was done with this thread until I read this. LOL. Oh, the irony...

Two words: wife beaters.

Oh, the stupidity...

Seventeen words: You cannot tell which men are violent towards women behind closed doors simply by looking at them.

ETA: A man becomes a "wife beater" by physically attacking his wife or girlfriend. There is nothing prior to that to mark him out as such.

I dunno, though…I mean, seriously, MP does make what I think is a good point here. When men make poor choices in dating women, we're idiots for trying to date outside our league. It's our fault for not reading the signs. But it is also true that women experience revictimization, that for whatever reason they will go back to an abusive partner after leaving him or end up in a succession of abusive relationships. My hypothesis on this one is that some women won't recognize traits immediately because they are too distracted by other traits they find attractive. If, say for instance, a woman is only attracted to men with one freckle exactly 3 cm below his right eye, and she has been involved with 5 of them and they all beat her, what might that say about men with freckles exactly 3 cm below the right eye? She didn't compel those guys to beat her. However, it may be time to reassess her criteria for a suitable partner to specifically avoid men with freckles exactly 3cm below the right eye.

Again, it's not saying that the victim chooses to be abused, or that men choose to be abused by superficial women, or whatever. But it IS apparent that choices are made that produce higher-risk situations. Change the behavior and you lower the risk. I didn't say eliminate the risk, I said lower the risk. But I do have to wonder why it's ok to blame the victim if the victim is a man but not ok to even broach the topic when it happens to be a woman victim. After all, gold-digging and manipulation ARE forms of financial and mental abuse. Women by no means have a monopoly on victim-hood.

another two words: bad boys

s**t film.

I don't think it's ok to blame the victim if they're a man or otherwise. Nor do I think women have a monopoly on victim-hood.

My point was that starvingartist observation there's a particular type of materialistic person who is easy to spot is not in any way analogous to "wife beaters".

i named some pretty obvious evidence for spotting a materialistic woman (her choice of clothing, accessories, makeup, etc). [i just realised i should edit this to make it fair--this is a way to spot ANY materialistic person, male or female. i would make the same assumptions if i saw a guy dripping in gucci and wearing a ridiculous amount of hair gel.]

please list visible traits of a wife beater.

the only one i can think of off the top of my head that's obvious is "has a wife".

A wife beater usually isn't averse to going after girlfriends, too.

Visually, it may be difficult to tell who is, and who is not, going to be an abusive partner, but there are behavioral red flags that betray some of them: trying to isolate someone from their friends and family, for example, and having extremely traditional and self-serving views of gender roles (man to woman: 'it's your role in life to serve my every whim.' Woman to man: 'it's your role in life to provide for my every want.')
Someone who is extremely abusive, disrespectful, or dismissive towards other people is likely to turn that lack of regard on their partner someday as well.

There's also a 'cycle of abuse' that starts with a honeymoon period, where the abuser is extremely solicitous and puts the victim on a pedestal; this is what sucks a lot of victims in. It feels like the abuser 'really loves them.'

All of this is actually pretty well-documented stuff; the problem is that too many people aren't taught to recognize the red flags and get caught by the initially well-behaved abuser. If I had my way, this sort of thing would be taught in health class alongside comprehensive sex ed. It's not someone's fault for getting caught if they were never taught to recognize the red flags in the first place, or were raised in a caring and sheltered environment without red flags.

The thing with "bad boys" or "jerks" or "alphas" is that they possess personality traits that women find attractive. It really is that simple. Just because you make up your mind to be a "bad boy" doesn't mean a woman is going to find you attractive. If your personality sucks, nobody is going to care how bad or good you are. If you're a nice guy AND you have a "magnetic" personality, you've got superficial features that are initially attractive to women AND you treat women with respect and decency. It's a winning combo. The question a guy should ask is not whether one should act like a bad boy or a jerk, in other words be abusive towards women, but rather what the initial attraction is. It usually has little to do with what a guy is really like in private.

You can be a nice guy and get a gf. But if you lack the BIG personality traits on a superficial level to attract a girl, you're going to have to figure out other ways of attracting interest. I'm a musician and I'm good at it. That invariably gives me a window. If I don't jump on that window in 30 seconds or less after the initial point of contact and get a phone number and a tentative meeting for coffee/beer some time next week, I've lost that girl, and I can't get that back. If you're Mr. Personality, you have the ability to buy time beyond the first 30 seconds. I can't do that. The only way I've ever been successful is to look busy but interested, follow up on meetings, and not give all of myself away in the first few dates. Let the girl do all the talking, and only ask questions/change the direction of the conversation as needed to avoid awkward "dead air." My point is, there are strategies for being a decent person if you lack certain attractive features. There's no point in thinking you have to be some kind of jerk or "bad boy" to get/keep the girl.

The one time I've dated a 'jerk,' he was actually very respectful towards me (he cursed a lot, but not more towards me than towards anyone else and not with any negative feeling behind the words) and towards women in general. I don't mean pulling out chairs or holding doors - he didn't do any of that - but listening to what I had to say, considering my opinions, responding intelligently, challenging me when he disagreed and agreeing when he agreed. He treated me, in other words, like a human being - the same way that he treated any other human being. He was brutally honest with everyone he ever dealt with.

Doesn't sound like such a bad guy to me.

Personally, I just don't see what all the fuss is about. Some people might even come across as nasty people and they're actually great once you get to know them. Superficial personality doesn't match inner character. It's who a person is in private in the long-term that really matters.

I'm not a big fan of first impressions, partly because I suck at them myself. I don't think you really get to know a person well after the first meeting. I no longer date, but I do form new business relationships all the time. While I prefer getting to know people to see if things are going to work out best long-term, it can sometimes become pretty obvious when I'm dealing with someone that I'm not going to have a good working relationship with. A client of mine wanted me to teach her 3-year old daughter to play piano. The mom insisted that this was a smart little girl who was really mature for 3. Red flag. I think we MIGHT have had 3 lessons, and I got the mother on the phone and let her know perhaps this really isn't the best thing right now. That was about two years ago and they never came back. I've had potential students yell at me over the phone just because I returned the call. Yeah, I don't get it, either. And for some reason, there is a certain very common last name in my area that for some bizarre reason, every single one has turned out disastrous. So every time someone with that particular last name calls, I'll wait a whole month before calling them back. Bizarre…but true. No idea where they come from, but that family has serious issues that I want no part of.

I'm not a good first impression person. I rather let my work speak for me and let other people make up their minds about me from there. If I were dating, I'd be no different. I'm getting better. I'm learning to more often keep my mouth shut in person. Now if I can learn to do that here...

I've never had a boyfriend, but I've had plenty of male friends.

Most of them are gym rats with big muscles, are enamored with sports, and are extremely extroverted. In other words, they are the stereotypical "alpha."

I admit they might've been "jerks" towards other men, but they were never/are never "jerks" towards me. Just because a male doesn't get along with other rival men doesn't mean he's a "jerk" towards women; therefore, the "women only date jerks" thing is ridiculous. I've found most men I know are extremely poor judges as to which other men are actually "jerks."

Nice guys see it as women only being attracted to mean who treat women like dirt. They aren't looking at it from the woman's perspective, i.e. women see something about men, any man, that they find attractive only for the men to turn out to be the kinds of guys who mistreat them. To another man looking in from the outside, it APPEARS that women are only attracted to bad boys, alphas, jerks, etc. Bad boys and alphas aren't ugly to women by default, but rather have a charismatic, extroverted personality that most people in general find attractive. A womanizing jerk, in my view, is just any guy who uses women for one thing and will do/say anything to score.

Personally, I really think that whole "bad boy" thing is just another myth, an excuse for someone else's passivity.

But they often have unreal ideas of what 'treating a woman well' means. It doesn't mean s**t if you pull her chair out and lavish her with gifts, if you're still badmouthing her to your friends behind her back.

I knew a girl who was a popular local singer, and (back then) both of us had an easier time with opposite-sex friendships - not because we got along so well with the other gender, but because intra-gender competition was soooo bad. What I saw most was jealousy, but that's just personal experience.

Ugh…who DOES that???

Well…nm…I play in a band in which I'm the only guy who has never been through a divorce. When we first got together, there was a whole lot of that going on. I had the temptation to do that myself when it occurred to me…wait…I actually love my wife and we get along extremely well. So I just quit talking whenever the subject came up. Strangely enough, so did they.

I just simply won't do it. I didn't do it in previous relationships even when I felt it would have been justified. We keep the negative stuff private. Something we try to do every week is a "family meeting," which is just a checkup on the budget, syncing calendars, revising the honey-do list, etc. I make a point of reviewing high points and low points of the week, and I always end by asking "are WE ok?" If we're going to come to blows on anything, that's when it's going to happen. But the important thing is we keep the ugly stuff between US and we have a structured way of dealing with it so that the remainder of the week passes stress-free. We don't feel a need to vent or otherwise invite friends into private matters.

I've always heard "macho" guys crack jokes about women or blame significant others for their own problems. But it's always this sort of "well, that's just women for ya" kind of attitude and that's as far as it goes. I've noticed women don't stop there. They often do not tend to support each other repairing relational rough patches but instead jump straight to breaking up or dropping the "d-word." It's, like, "Oh, honey, he did WHAT??? Didn't bother to put the seat up when he had to go pee in the middle of the night that one time? That disgusting pig! You need to divorce him!" As though lawyering up somehow magically erases all the issues either party has that led up to separation.