Amanda picks up on the “chivalry” fallacy that A Pang wrote about last week.
She quotes a commenter:
The problem that gives feminism a bad name is that while a feminist may say “Feminism does not think you are a bad person if you find yourself wanting to fuck a woman. Feminism does not condemn you for having a sexual appetite.”, feminism spends an awful lot of energy decrying men who are sexually attracted to a subset of the range of female body types; that a feminist may say “Feminism does not assert that men cannot respect women or treat them as equals unless they abandon their sexual desire.”, but feminists get enacted laws and argue for court decisions which say exactly the opposite; a feminist may say “A woman doesn’t have the right to ask him not to want (in the privacy of his own thoughts)”, but plenty of feminists (and non-feminst women) get rather offended if the wrong men verbally express those wants towards them, even in a non-threatening context.
At the risk of presuming upon the beliefs of feminists, permit me: It is okay to be sexually attracted to women. Even if you’re a man. The problem is when you expect these women to care whether or not you’re interested in them–in other words, when you feel entitled to impose your desires on them, or when you seem as though you don’t particularly care what they want. That’s what objectification is: not dealing with someone on sexual terms, but assuming that they have no existence beyond a receptacle for your needs. “Hi! You seem nice. Can I buy you a cup of coffee, perhaps?” is not misogynist. “Whatever, you ugly [slur]. You aren’t that hot anyway,” is. So is, “Hey, [slur]! Nice [obscenity]! I’d like to [obscenity] that [obscenity]! Where ya goin,’ [slur]? You just need a good hard [obscenity]!”
Unfortunately, male sexuality has customarily been based on this kind of entitlement, either overt or implicit. It persists; I’m not sure you could find a woman who has never been treated to [obscenity]. That’s what feminists have a problem with, and that’s what they spend so much time excoriating: a pervasive disparity that creates a hostile environment. Female sexuality–and female internal life, period–has also been burdened with this tradition. Women are encouraged to think of their sexuality as the passive counterpart, and to base their self-worth as women on whether or not the media says that men want to sleep with their bodies. (That’s where the “subset” thing comes from, incidentally.) Pick up a Cosmo sometime. See how many articles there are on how to badger your man into giving you really fantastic head, and then compare that number to the number of articles on juicing up the blowjob still some more again (“Make your honey’s member into a naughty cosmopolitan…”).
The “Nice Guy” is an extension of this mindset. Nice Guys believe that the default is getting some. If they aren’t horrible people, the reasoning goes, they should be getting laid all the time. What’s the matter? Don’t they know I’m a catch? Then they look over at the bad guys who are getting some, assume that this situation is stable, assume that all women want bad guys, assume that all women who have sex with bad guys at some point will be with bad guys forever, assume that feminists are equally represented among Women Who Love Too Much, and conclude that there is therefore no point in being nice to women.
Well, gee, maybe women have higher standards even under patriarchy.
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I’m thinking of a Nice Guy(TM) who justs likes women whom I met at a college mixer. Mr. Nice Guy was trolling ’round the party, cornering any reasonably attractive woman he could find, and then having long suggestive conversations with them. I distinctly remember (being at that point just out of a long term semi-abusive relationship, and very nervous), gradually crabbing sideways across the couch, then up onto the arm, and on to the chair next to it, trying to get some physical space as he tried to hit on me, in what he thought was a subtle, clever way. There was no way he could have missed my discomfort unless he was completely blind to anything but his own desire to get laid.
This is a man who is thoroughly disgusted that women don’t like Nice Guys(TM). He probably thinks I married an asshole – who is blunt and doesn’t go in for clever and coy, but who noticed my discomfort within two or three minutes of starting to talk to me, and completely backed off any sexual intent – and then continued to talk about other things.
Is there something wrong with me for wanting to get that printed on a T-shirt?
I wish that people would get past moral condemnation of this, and into compassion. The “Nice Guy” who suffers from this experience is just as much a victim of patriarchy as the women he unwittingly offends, because the cultural attitudes that he has absorbed are causing him to be unable to satisfy what is, after all, a basic human need for romantic attachment.
Is it wrong to believe that the default is getting some? Morally, I mean. Is it anti-feminist to believe that, unless one is doing something actively wrong, one is entitled to have a romantic life? (Whatever gender the “one” happens to be.)
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