LJ_Reloaded
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- Joined
- Apr 3, 2010
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You know how the story goes. When a man loves a woman he does what any love-struck person does: he goes the extra mile in order to court her. If he is honest right away with his intent, she rejects him for being too aggressive. If he hides his intentions then he is a creep - worse so if he feels bad about being rejected when she finds out later. For the man, he loses no matter what.
Various men and women have been going back and forth about this for decades but the real problem is something much more fundamental.
First, in courtship, women almost always (with some notable exceptions) hold the advantage. One rarely ever hears about a woman pursuing a guy, and even rarer is the tale of her being brutally rejected and otherwise humiliated. This is because while it does happen, it is in fact rare. Throughout human history 80 percent of women have had children, while only 40 percent of men have sired children. The odds of reproductive (if not romantic) success overwhelmingly favor women, by a ratio of 2 to 1.
There is a reason for this.
Courtship is, for the most part, similar to the relationship between a door to door salesman and the resident on the other side of that door. Women are generally the gatekeepers to relationships. The worst case estimate for women’s problems with finding men is that 20 percent of women ever fail to find a man. 20 percent at most. For men? Their failure rate is a jaw-dropping 60 percent.
Anyone who has ever done door to door sales understands how difficult it is to even get the resident to open their door. Unlike courtship, in some cases houses and businesses have the courtesy of a “no solicitation” sign that lets the salesman avoid wasting their time on that location. Do Not Call lists help salesmen whittle down phone numbers that are absolutely unreceptive to their pitches. But more often the salesman comes up to a house that doesn’t want solicitors, or that doesn’t want their product in particular, but doesn’t have a sign broadcasting this. If they’re lucky they get told “not interested”, if they’re not lucky they get verbally executed on the front doorstep. Quite often, though, a salesman may spend hours, many phone calls, and trips to the potential client’s house, only for all this effort to end in a no-sale; because the customer lost interest, a competitor wooed them away, or they are simply fickle.
Sound familiar?
Nice Guys, like all men, have the gender-assigned role as a salesman. In sales, the aggressive guy is the one that gets the sale. Sometimes, of course, he gets run off the front door with a pitchfork. But the nice guy rarely ever makes a sale. And he also rarely ever achieves reproductive success. But then again, men in general rarely ever achieve this. Statistically, historically, it is uncommon for a male to achieve reproductive success. Almost all women, on the other hand, enjoy this privilege. Only the very worst or unluckiest of women fail to reproduce.
Of course unsuccessful people usually are unhappy and glum or even bitter about it… consider salesmen who can’t put food on the table because they can’t make enough sales. Angry Nice Guys are no different - considering the biological imperative for romantic relationships and all that. Women who have poor success with men also tend to be equally as angry, but being the privileged gatekeepers, they usually garner sympathy rather than scorn. (Usually, but not always.) Men are, after all, tasked with being the intruders, the aggressors, in that they make the first move to come to the woman and step into her space, not vice-versa. The salesman is the same way, they make the first move and come onto the resident’s space - their front door, or calling them on their phone, for instance. The problem with Nice Guys is they haven’t learned how to be properly aggressive. That is, they don’t know how to be assertive without being offensive; so they usually choose not to be assertive at all.
But is this actually a problem with Nice Guys, or is it a problem with something more fundamental? Again, this points to the rigid gender roles that have been forced upon men since long before any Patriarchal societies ever came into existence. Ultimately the problem isn’t the Nice Guy. It’s the fact that he is bound to rigid gender-assigned rules of aggression that only men are held to. Unlike women, few men ever reproduced by taking a passive role in courtship. Few men, in fact, have ever reproduced. Women have more freedom than men in courtship, especially in the modern age - they can be passive or aggressive, with little fear of scorn.
Passivity in courtship has always been a reproductive dead-end trait for men throughout history. Yet in the modern age, both passivity and aggression are an acceptable and even extremely (though not invariably) successful trait for women.
This is the big picture behind the Nice Guy dilemma: as a male, he is forced to be the sexual door to door salesman with all the negative connotations that this implies, and as a nice guy, he is not skilled at it. Plus the Nice Guy also won't accept the rules - made entirely by women - which say he should suffer in silence.
Various men and women have been going back and forth about this for decades but the real problem is something much more fundamental.
First, in courtship, women almost always (with some notable exceptions) hold the advantage. One rarely ever hears about a woman pursuing a guy, and even rarer is the tale of her being brutally rejected and otherwise humiliated. This is because while it does happen, it is in fact rare. Throughout human history 80 percent of women have had children, while only 40 percent of men have sired children. The odds of reproductive (if not romantic) success overwhelmingly favor women, by a ratio of 2 to 1.
There is a reason for this.
Courtship is, for the most part, similar to the relationship between a door to door salesman and the resident on the other side of that door. Women are generally the gatekeepers to relationships. The worst case estimate for women’s problems with finding men is that 20 percent of women ever fail to find a man. 20 percent at most. For men? Their failure rate is a jaw-dropping 60 percent.
Anyone who has ever done door to door sales understands how difficult it is to even get the resident to open their door. Unlike courtship, in some cases houses and businesses have the courtesy of a “no solicitation” sign that lets the salesman avoid wasting their time on that location. Do Not Call lists help salesmen whittle down phone numbers that are absolutely unreceptive to their pitches. But more often the salesman comes up to a house that doesn’t want solicitors, or that doesn’t want their product in particular, but doesn’t have a sign broadcasting this. If they’re lucky they get told “not interested”, if they’re not lucky they get verbally executed on the front doorstep. Quite often, though, a salesman may spend hours, many phone calls, and trips to the potential client’s house, only for all this effort to end in a no-sale; because the customer lost interest, a competitor wooed them away, or they are simply fickle.
Sound familiar?
Nice Guys, like all men, have the gender-assigned role as a salesman. In sales, the aggressive guy is the one that gets the sale. Sometimes, of course, he gets run off the front door with a pitchfork. But the nice guy rarely ever makes a sale. And he also rarely ever achieves reproductive success. But then again, men in general rarely ever achieve this. Statistically, historically, it is uncommon for a male to achieve reproductive success. Almost all women, on the other hand, enjoy this privilege. Only the very worst or unluckiest of women fail to reproduce.
Of course unsuccessful people usually are unhappy and glum or even bitter about it… consider salesmen who can’t put food on the table because they can’t make enough sales. Angry Nice Guys are no different - considering the biological imperative for romantic relationships and all that. Women who have poor success with men also tend to be equally as angry, but being the privileged gatekeepers, they usually garner sympathy rather than scorn. (Usually, but not always.) Men are, after all, tasked with being the intruders, the aggressors, in that they make the first move to come to the woman and step into her space, not vice-versa. The salesman is the same way, they make the first move and come onto the resident’s space - their front door, or calling them on their phone, for instance. The problem with Nice Guys is they haven’t learned how to be properly aggressive. That is, they don’t know how to be assertive without being offensive; so they usually choose not to be assertive at all.
But is this actually a problem with Nice Guys, or is it a problem with something more fundamental? Again, this points to the rigid gender roles that have been forced upon men since long before any Patriarchal societies ever came into existence. Ultimately the problem isn’t the Nice Guy. It’s the fact that he is bound to rigid gender-assigned rules of aggression that only men are held to. Unlike women, few men ever reproduced by taking a passive role in courtship. Few men, in fact, have ever reproduced. Women have more freedom than men in courtship, especially in the modern age - they can be passive or aggressive, with little fear of scorn.
Passivity in courtship has always been a reproductive dead-end trait for men throughout history. Yet in the modern age, both passivity and aggression are an acceptable and even extremely (though not invariably) successful trait for women.
This is the big picture behind the Nice Guy dilemma: as a male, he is forced to be the sexual door to door salesman with all the negative connotations that this implies, and as a nice guy, he is not skilled at it. Plus the Nice Guy also won't accept the rules - made entirely by women - which say he should suffer in silence.
