It's Okay to be White

[Flagg]

A lot of this ties back to what I said in the post on the relatively recent New Atheism thread in SLAM (the one that was locked). It comes down to different people using different definitions of the word white. There is white in the sense that someone is a person with light skin with predominantly European ancestry, and there's white in the sense that someone makes their light skin and European ancestry the central pillar that forms the core of their identity. It's okay to be white in the former sense, but it's not okay to be white in the latter sense.

This is especially true when you consider that there really isn't a white culture that exists except as a racist construct. At least in the US, non-racist white culture, when ethnic roots are even acknowledged, is more often than not sorted into some sub-category based on some kind of regional or national affiliation. It's not viewed as white, but as Southern, Midwestern, American, German, Irish, Italian, etc. There was no campaign to erase those tribal and ethnic roots, like what happened to black Americans, so those roots were able to be maintained instead of mostly defaulting to a generic umbrella race-based culture.

Yeah. It's why all of those anscestry sites that I think baffle alot of non-Americans are so popular.

[Flagg]

Basically, if you create a situation where people ARE, in point of fact, feeling like being a member of the dominant group is getting them verbally abused, even if only on the Internet by random strangers...

And if the only place those people can go to feel good about themselves is the radical community of bigots devoted to promoting the interests of the dominant group...

Sooner or later, those bigots are going to be gaining a LOOOOT of recruits.

You can radicalize people if you get zealous enough about shutting down their ability to express relatively mild pro-themselves sentiments.

This is something that we should watch out for going forward. We might be able to do a lot to block or neutralize this weird rise of pro-white-nationalist sentiment...

If only we can find a way to clearly and openly express the meme "being a white person is fine and nobody is trying to take that away from you, just because of some things that some whites do that are dickish and need to stop right now."

Looking back, there were several things that should have probably been done better to get the word out. There is certainly a problem even still in some circles where nuance tends to ... slip, like water on a hydrophobic surface, such as in making extremely broad statements. "it's not just toxic masculinity ALL MASCULINITY IS BAD" self-styled activists are dropping in number by the year thankfully.

With that said though, there are two things that can't really be helped no matter what happens. The first, using Anita Sarkeesian as an example, is people just taking whatever they can in whatever contexts they wish, and twisting them so grotesquely as to be eldritch horrors of their former selves. Then these people--usually with huge platforms--spread their misinformation to more people with huge platforms, who then spread their misinformation, and ... it becomes a depressing game of mass telephone. Many people would just listen to these second- and third-hand interpretations, and never bother to check the sources.

Now, that isn't to say there aren't issues with some of Sarkeesian's statements. Her attitude toward sex work has been widely criticized, for example. But these people who intentionally destroy her words for public consumption poison the dialogue so badly that even feminists have difficulty discussing her among each other, to say nothing about discussing her with total strangers. So, people naturally get utterly frustrated and throw their hands up in response.

The second is people making extremely strong statements, trying to illustrate a point. In an ideal world, I'd LOVE there to be civil, casual dialogue among the majority of people, but humans rarely operate on logic alone. These statements are meant to evoke emotion, and they can be ... inartful, oftentimes. But at the same time, trying to make a statement without strong emotion can just result in the statement slipping by people's attentions without much if any notice.

Heck, people make MLK seem like his activism was the model of clean protest now, but in his day his words were strong to the white people listening to him. He had much hate mail addressing his so-called "disrespectful" attitude. Standards have changed much, and the marginalized try to find stronger and stronger ways to let themselves be known. Sometimes finding great success, sometimes just running into new roadblocks.

I don't even disagree with you, but ..... I just don't know what else can be done under these circumstances. Be nice, and people will either ignore you or take advantage of you. Be "mean", and people will find ways to discredit you. Try to find a middleground, and you can end up running into an extreme very easily on either end.

I just have no idea.

The thing is, if you are a white male complaining on the internet and you get told those things and it's enough for you to fall into the loving arms of a hate group, it's probably true. That's not to say there aren't shithead "ists" that will misinterpret and/or misrepresent something and attack you for it. It's happened to me a few times even here. But again, if that's enough to push you into a fucking hate group then you probably had a foot in the door already.

I mean I've held odious ideas and beliefs, been confronted about it and I had to take a good hard look at myself objectively and change accordingly. I'll point to my language (and opinions) concerning the mentally disabled as a good example of that.

Another good example is the use of "gay" and "f*g/f****t" as equal to "lame" and other various insults. It's pretty remarkable that as late as last decade it was common to hear that (from me as well, I'm a late adopter, apparently) terminology, but for the most part it's no longer acceptable in polite society.

I think this rise of hate is the normal backlash to progress made in improving the lot of oppressed groups. You see it over and over again. It's just that we have a vile cancer supposedly running the US who is supported by and supportive of these groups and their ideals despite society at large being very done with them. And the last thing we need to do is to excuse those ideas and ideals.

[Simon_Jester]

The thing is, if you are a white male complaining on the internet and you get told those things and it's enough for you to fall into the loving arms of a hate group, it's probably true. That's not to say there aren't shithead "ists" that will misinterpret and/or misrepresent something and attack you for it. It's happened to me a few times even here. But again, if that's enough to push you into a fucking hate group then you probably had a foot in the door already.

If it's happening once, sure. If "a black guy yelled at me in traffic" is enough to cause a man to start shitposting racism, then he already had racist shit going on.

I'm talking about people who've experienced a pattern of things over a long period of time, or who just plain feel isolated and driven out of an unfriendly social community.

Also, there's a continuum between "hate group" and "minority advocacy group," and it is possible to slip partway along the continuum without slipping all the way. The guy who gets tired of being yelled at for insufficient feminism is unlikely to jump all the way over to the darkest corners of the "men's rights" movement... but he's going to slide some distance along the scale.

...

I guess my point is that if we want the left to be a sustainable social community with a viable model for how people can get along with one another, we DO need the ability to open our mouths without alienating everyone to the right of ourselves.

I think this rise of hate is the normal backlash to progress made in improving the lot of oppressed groups. You see it over and over again. It's just that we have a vile cancer supposedly running the US who is supported by and supportive of these groups and their ideals despite society at large being very done with them. And the last thing we need to do is to excuse those ideas and ideals.

Yes. I want to starve and destroy those ideas and ideals. And to starve a thing you must deprive it of easy sustenance, which means not dangling ripe, low-hanging fruit right over the beast's mouth.

[Flagg]

The thing is, if you are a white male complaining on the internet and you get told those things and it's enough for you to fall into the loving arms of a hate group, it's probably true. That's not to say there aren't shithead "ists" that will misinterpret and/or misrepresent something and attack you for it. It's happened to me a few times even here. But again, if that's enough to push you into a fucking hate group then you probably had a foot in the door already.

If it's happening once, sure. If "a black guy yelled at me in traffic" is enough to cause a man to start shitposting racism, then he already had racist shit going on.

I'm talking about people who've experienced a pattern of things over a long period of time, or who just plain feel isolated and driven out of an unfriendly social community.

Also, there's a continuum between "hate group" and "minority advocacy group," and it is possible to slip partway along the continuum without slipping all the way. The guy who gets tired of being yelled at for insufficient feminism is unlikely to jump all the way over to the darkest corners of the "men's rights" movement... but he's going to slide some distance along the scale.

...

I guess my point is that if we want the left to be a sustainable social community with a viable model for how people can get along with one another, we DO need the ability to open our mouths without alienating everyone to the right of ourselves.

I don’t disagree with this, I do think there needs to be a “and this is what you can do to change that...” if you are going to condemn someone as a “Nice Guy”, etc. I think there is too much dismissal without any attempt to teach.

I think this rise of hate is the normal backlash to progress made in improving the lot of oppressed groups. You see it over and over again. It's just that we have a vile cancer supposedly running the US who is supported by and supportive of these groups and their ideals despite society at large being very done with them. And the last thing we need to do is to excuse those ideas and ideals.

Yes. I want to starve and destroy those ideas and ideals. And to starve a thing you must deprive it of easy sustenance, which means not dangling ripe, low-hanging fruit right over the beast's mouth.

True, but I also don’t think we should fall into the trap of navel gazing over what we might be doing wrong. Introspection is good, but only to a point.

[Wild Zontargs]

Basically, if you create a situation where people ARE, in point of fact, feeling like being a member of the dominant group is getting them verbally abused, even if only on the Internet by random strangers...

And if the only place those people can go to feel good about themselves is the radical community of bigots devoted to promoting the interests of the dominant group...

Sooner or later, those bigots are going to be gaining a LOOOOT of recruits.

You can radicalize people if you get zealous enough about shutting down their ability to express relatively mild pro-themselves sentiments.

This is something that we should watch out for going forward. We might be able to do a lot to block or neutralize this weird rise of pro-white-nationalist sentiment...

If only we can find a way to clearly and openly express the meme "being a white person is fine and nobody is trying to take that away from you, just because of some things that some whites do that are dickish and need to stop right now."

RADICALIZING THE ROMANCELESS
POSTED ON AUGUST 31, 2014 BY SCOTT ALEXANDER

Chen Sheng was an officer serving the Qin Dynasty, famous for their draconian punishments. He was supposed to lead his army to a rendezvous point, but he got delayed by heavy rains and it became clear he was going to arrive late. The way I always hear the story told is this:

Chen turns to his friend Wu Guang and asks “What’s the penalty for being late?”

“Death,” says Wu.

“And what’s the penalty for rebellion?”

“Death,” says Wu.

“Well then…” says Chen Sheng.

And thus began the famous Dazexiang Uprising, which caused thousands of deaths and helped usher in a period of instability and chaos that resulted in the fall of the Qin Dynasty three years later.

The moral of the story is that if you are maximally mean to innocent people, then eventually bad things will happen to you. First, because you have no room to punish people any more for actually hurting you. Second, because people will figure if they’re doomed anyway, they can at least get the consolation of feeling like they’re doing you some damage on their way down.

This seems to me to be the position that lonely men are in online. People will tell them they’re evil misogynist rapists – as the articles above did – no matter what. In what is apparently shocking news to a lot of people, this makes them hurt and angry. As someone currently working on learning psychotherapy, I can confidently say that receiving a constant stream of hatred and put-downs throughout your most formative years can really screw you up. And so these people try to lash out at the people who are doing it to them, secure in the knowledge that there’s no room left for people to hate them even more.

[Ziggy Stardust]

This seems to me to be the position that lonely men are in online. People will tell them they’re evil misogynist rapists – as the articles above did – no matter what. In what is apparently shocking news to a lot of people, this makes them hurt and angry.

The problem that I see with this line of argument is that, for the most part, these men are NOT being told that they're evil misogynist rapists. I'm not saying that there isn't an avenue towards radicalization by people who perceive themselves as being victimized, but there's the related issue that 9 times out of 10 these people are just wrong. Almost every time an article or argument is portrayed as calling all men "evil misogynist rapists", this isn't actually the case. Most of the time, the argument being proposed is something along the lines of, "Some men are evil misogynist rapists, but prevailing cultural attitudes have the effect of tacitly encouraging the behavior of those men" which is then spun by MRA snowflakes as being tantamount to calling all men evil misogynist rapists. There's a more complicated issue afoot than the overly simplistic one proposed here. In fact, this argument is essentially just a subtle way of trying to discredit the arguments being made by women or minorities (i.e., they groups that are ACTUALLY marginalized). It's little different from victim blaming in sexual assault cases; it's an attempt to shift the moral onus onto groups other than the ones actually responsible.

So, yes, there is a phenomenon where individuals are being radicalized due to their perceived social isolation. But at what point do you consider their perceptions to be valid, when they are often based on deliberate distortion and misinterpretation of what the "other side" is saying in the first place? Because there is a potential slippery slope involved with this line of thinking, that essentially boils down (hyperbolically) to "You can't criticize white men for anything because you might accidentally turn them into evil misogynist racists just by being too mean to them".

[Wild Zontargs]

This seems to me to be the position that lonely men are in online. People will tell them they’re evil misogynist rapists – as the articles above did – no matter what. In what is apparently shocking news to a lot of people, this makes them hurt and angry.

The problem that I see with this line of argument is that, for the most part, these men are NOT being told that they're evil misogynist rapists. I'm not saying that there isn't an avenue towards radicalization by people who perceive themselves as being victimized, but there's the related issue that 9 times out of 10 these people are just wrong. Almost every time an article or argument is portrayed as calling all men "evil misogynist rapists", this isn't actually the case. Most of the time, the argument being proposed is something along the lines of, "Some men are evil misogynist rapists, but prevailing cultural attitudes have the effect of tacitly encouraging the behavior of those men" which is then spun by MRA snowflakes as being tantamount to calling all men evil misogynist rapists. There's a more complicated issue afoot than the overly simplistic one proposed here. In fact, this argument is essentially just a subtle way of trying to discredit the arguments being made by women or minorities (i.e., they groups that are ACTUALLY marginalized). It's little different from victim blaming in sexual assault cases; it's an attempt to shift the moral onus onto groups other than the ones actually responsible.

Scott actually addresses this very issue in the article linked above:

We will now perform an ancient and traditional Slate Star Codex ritual, where I point out something I don’t like about feminism, then everyone tells me in the comments that no feminist would ever do that and it’s a dirty rotten straw man. And then I link to two thousand five hundred examples of feminists doing exactly that, and then everyone in the comments No-True-Scotsmans me by saying that that doesn’t count and those people aren’t representative of feminists. And then I find two thousand five hundred more examples of the most prominent and well-respected feminists around saying exactly the same thing, and then my commenters tell me that they don’t count either and the only true feminist lives in the Platonic Realm and expresses herself through patterns of dewdrops on the leaves in autumn and everything she says is unspeakably kind and beautiful and any time I try to make a point about feminism using examples from anyone other than her I am a dirty rotten motivated-arguer trying to weak-man the movement for my personal gain.

Ahem.

[representative sample of articles with links and quotes]

[Formless]

He then proceeds to quote a bunch of blogs out of context without remembering that any asshole online can say any stupid shit they want, one of which is a broken link, another is Jezebell which has never been above criticism, and not one of his quotes are from actual feminist activists. In fact, clicking the links, I find the guy guilty of deliberate quote mining. Here is the full text, with emphasis added to those paragraphs he mined:

I see that piny beat me to the punch on commenting on Amanda’s post encompassing “Nice Guys,” Hugo’s advice to a young man in his class who was disappointed that feminism wasn’t getting him laid, and McBoing’s post excoriating Hugo for the advice, and a bunch of comments batting about the whole “Nice Guy” phenomenon.

Some truisms: Feminism isn’t a dating service.

If a guy refers to himself as a “Nice Guy,” chances are he isn’t.

If a self-styled “Nice Guy” complains that the reason he can’t get laid is that women only like “jerks” who treat them badly, chances are he’s got a sense of entitlement on him the size of the Unisphere.

The advice given to “Nice Guys” on how to get women tends to be of the “there’s something wrong with women, so you’re justified in treating them badly because that’s what they really want” type. The advice given to “nice girls” who are having trouble attracting men tends to be of the “there’s something wrong with YOU, so put on some makeup, lose some weight, fix your hair and submerge your real personality because men are justified in overlooking you” type.

Guys who consider themselves “Nice Guys” tend to see women as an undifferentiated mass rather than as individuals. They also tend to see possession of a woman as a prize or a right.

I think that Heartless Bitches International has pretty much the definitive rundown on the “Nice Guy” phenomenon.

You may notice I’m putting “Nice Guy” in scare quotes. That’s because, like I said, they tend not to be nice at all — they just have an outsized sense of entitlement and are frustrated that they don’t have the looks or the confidence to get women despite their shortcomings in the personality department.

That, and I don’t know how to make the trademark sign.

They’re also a far different animal than the Good Guy, the Decent Guy, the Salt of the Earth, or, my personal favorite, the Good Man. Because I am old enough that I’m not really looking for a “guy” anymore. From Say Anything:

D.C.: Lloyd, why do you have to be like this?
Lloyd Dobler: ‘Cause I’m a guy. I have pride.
Corey Flood: You’re not a guy.
Lloyd Dobler: I am.
Corey Flood: No. The world is full of guys. Be a man. Don’t be a guy.

As discussions like this happen, inevitably someone gets defensive about the idea that “Nice Guys” are really assholes in disguise, because there are plenty of guys (and girls) who are actually very decent and respectful, just perhaps too shy to make the first move, and so on, and that they may appear to be “Nice Guys” even when they’re not. I think Foolish Owl’s comment over at Pandagon really summed up why that kind of argument, which had been going on for some time there, was futile, and provided a field guide for spotting the “Nice Guy” in the wild:

For the two hundredth time, when we’re talking about “nice guys,” we’re not talking about guys who are actually nice but suffer from shyness. That’s why the scare quotes. Try Nice Guys™ instead, if you prefer.

A shy, but decent and caring man is quite likely to complain that he doesn’t get as much attention from women as he’d like. A Nice Guy™ will complain that women don’t pay him the attention he deserves. The essence of the distinction is that the Nice Guy™ feels women are obligated to him, and the Nice Guy™ doesn’t actually respect or even like women. The clearest indication of which of the two you’re dealing with is whether the person is interested in the possibility that he’s doing something wrong. A Nice Guy™ will insist that he’s doing everything perfectly right, and that women won’t subordinate themselves to him properly because he’s “Too Nice™,” meaning that he believes women deserve cruel treatment and he would like to be the one executing the cruelty.

I dated a “Nice Guy” for a while. It was suffocating. I never felt like I could relax and just be myself around him, because he had constructed some kind of idealized version of me, and that was who he was dating. He was also damned hard to get rid of.

I’m looking for a Good Man right now, a Decent Sort. That doesn’t mean he can’t have a wicked sense of humor or that he has to be dull. But it does mean he has to respect me and value me as an individual. And, God, no pedestals.

You will note that one of the statements he attributes to this author are not there at all! The fact is, the original author is talking about a type of person who misrepresents themselves and is NOT the kind of fence-sitter Ziggy Stardust is talking about. The writer also makes it quite clear that these people get their bad romantic advice from others like themselves, which seems like a far more parsimonious rout for someone to be radicalized. But the concern troll you link to makes it sound like she is talking about people who are actually that naive.

Stop reading concern trolls.

[Formless]

I know this is only tangentially related to the race discussion, but it helps to deconstruct straw man arguments as they come up. To further prove Scott Alexander is guilty of quote mining, I also took a look at one of the links in the above article (sorry, they aren't preserved in my full quote, so go ahead and look at the original, maybe read the arguments in the comments section, you know, if you like that kind of thing).

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]!”

Thus showing the author's opinions on sexuality and what kind of person she is critical of.

By the way, the article I quoted from first that got quote mined is also written by a guy who actually teaches women's studies in college, and deals with an interaction he had with a student, so lets look at that too:

Why shouldn't I wait to be a pro-feminist man until I'm older, when women will appreciate it? Why shouldn't I be a player now, and have my fun?

I laughed gently, and reminded Pete of Augustine's famous plea: "Give me continence, Lord, but not yet!" Pete got it, and chuckled too.

Of course, I did tell Pete that the purpose of becoming a pro-feminist man is not to please women or to "get" women into bed. Indeed, doing so only reinforces the worst stereotypes about male feminists! I know countless folks who suspect that pro-feminist men are simply "wolves in sheep's clothing", looking for a new and effective strategy for seducing women. Indeed, when pro-feminist men aren't being told that we're gay, or filled with self-hatred, we're frequently accused of being predatory frauds. I reminded Pete that I hadn't tried to sell pro-feminism as a "tool" for using and exploiting women.

What I did suggest to Pete was that he consider the possibility that what was really attractive to women wasn't necessarily the "bad boy", but the confident man. One of the worst stereotypes of pro-feminist men -- one that may have a small grain of truth -- is that many pro-feminist guys are timid. My cousin Dinah put it beautifully years ago: "I really hate it when nice guys are always trying to take my emotional temperature! It's like, stop asking me what I want all the time and be an equal partner in decision making!"

Thus showing how a feminist in the real world handles these situations, in contradiction to Scott Alexander's narrative, its with a more gentle touch and genuinely helpful advice on how to re-frame their own approach to sexuality in order to accomplish their goals.

The problem, of course, is knowing what the person's true goals are. Hence the discussion of "Nice Guys" that followed this post. Which then got taken out of context by Scott Alex.

Unfortunately, some of her own links are now broken, too, because they are over ten years old. That's right. These blog posts are all from 2006. Scott Alexander's is from 2014. Quite a bit about internet culture can change in eight years. In 2006 we still had Bush as POTUS. Youtube hadn't taken off. Gamer Gate hadn't happened, which is a huge event as far as discussions of Feminism online goes. A lot of people who would qualify as "Nice Guys" suddenly had a big echo chamber created for them to enter and become radicalized, and it only takes spouting a few of those memes today to get people angry and assume that you are a GG douchebag-- because honestly, there are just shit-tons of them around. That seems to be to be a much more likely source of radicalization than people getting unreasonably angry at young men who don't know how to talk to women. And, to tie this back to the main thrust of the thread, it seems more parsimonious to assume a similar rout of radicalization with white nationalists as well. Someone has to be the one to plant the idea that "white" is an identity into their heads before they are going to start feeling butthurt about things like BLM, for instance, and I see no evidence that its minority activists and their supporters who are the ones doing that.


(Edit: also, a correction to my previous post: the stuff I said wasn't in the original blog post was there, but in quotes. Meaning, it wasn't written by Feministe, but Scott Alex makes it appear as if it is her words. Which is flagrantly dishonest.)

[Formless]

Apologies for triple posting, but it takes a while to read over a whole blog post to see how accurately a given concern troll is representing it, but despite my crack at Jezebel its pretty clear he does them a disservice as well:

Nice Guys of OkCupid is a "dispiriting catalogue of desperation and misogynist entitlement," writes Laurie Penny for the New Statesman. Pathetic and infuriating in turns, the profiles selected for inclusion elicit gasps and giggles – and they raise questions as well. Is it right to mock these aggrieved and clueless young men, particularly the ones who seem less enraged than sad and bewildered at their utter lack of sexual success?

"This is the ugly bullying of those who already feel like losers," says Ally Fogg, a columnist for the Guardian who writes frequently about masculinity. "It's immoral to place them in the 21st Century equivalent of the medieval stocks to be mocked, abused and humiliated." In an email, Fogg suggested that NGOKC could be "potentially dangerous," driving those who are at a "low ebb emotionally" over an edge.

Without entirely dismissing Fogg's concern that some young men's rage or despair could be worsened as a result of NGOKC, there's a lot more to the site than mockery. What's on offer isn't just an opportunity to snort derisively at the socially awkward; it's a chance to talk about the very real problem of male sexual entitlement. The great unifying theme of the curated profiles is indignation. These are young men who were told that if they were nice, then, as Laurie Penny puts it, they feel that women "must be obliged to have sex with them." The subtext of virtually all of their profiles, the mournful and the bilious alike, is that these young men feel cheated. Raised to believe in a perverse social/sexual contract that promised access to women's bodies in exchange for rote expressions of kindness, these boys have at least begun to learn that there is no Magic Sex Fairy. And while they're still hopeful enough to put up a dating profile in the first place, the Nice Guys sabotage their chances of ever getting laid with their inability to conceal their own aggrieved self-righteousness.

Note that if you go to Alex's blog post, he alters this passage until it is completely unrecognizable, par for the course for a quote mining piece of shit. He omits the middle paragraph completely because it shows that Jez is aware of his concerns, and the concerns of others. He also skips the first sentence of the last paragraph to make it look like a natural continuation of the thought process started in the first paragraph, even though the missing middle puts a completely different spin on the argument. His third paragraph is pulled from much later in the article without so much as a [...] symbol to indicate to his reader that he has done so; again, because he wants to destroy any semblance of the original context to make it look like Jezebel is wholeheartedly endorsing bullying without even acknowledging that others might have a problem with this.

Jez acknowledges his the very concerns about the (now defunct) tumbler blog that he uses to poison the well against them, but then makes its argument that there is more to the issue that clearly Alex doesn't want his readership to think about. It also reinforces that the "Nice Guy" isn't the kind of person that Feminist think of as fence-sitters, but as people who are already closet misogynists that may or may not be lost causes depending on how aware they are about what they want. And the article goes on to acknowledge sex as a basic human need, but distinguishes it from a human right, a good point but not one Alex informs his readers of. Another excerpt:

Ally Fogg and others suggest that it's "immoral" to make fun of young men whose greatest crime seems to be that they're stuck at the sad intersection of Not Hot and Dimwit. The plea to replace mockery with understanding is a familiar one; it's what lies behind the calls to stop using the word "creep," because men find it shaming. But in the case of Nice Guys of OkCupid, disdain isn't rooted in meanness as much as it is in self-preservation. While only a small percentage of these guys may be prone to imminent violence, virtually all of them insist, in one way or another, that women owe them. Mockery, in this instance, isn't so much about being cruel as it is about publicly rejecting the Nice Guys' sense of entitlement to both sex and sympathy.

This comes two paragraphs before the one Alex ends his quotation on. In other words, they have an argument to make here that mockery isn't for the benefit of the closet misogynist or, to extend the argument, for the white nationalist, but to benefit literally everyone else, especially those who would be victims of these attitudes.

And this is what surrounds that final statement that he takes out of context:

Besides the near-universal sense that they've been unjustly defrauded, the great commonality among these Nice Guys is their contempt for women's non-sexual friendship. They rage about being "friendzoned," and complain about the hours spent listening to women without being given so much as a hand job in return for their investment. Niceness, they make clear over and over again, is a mere tactic, a tool that they were promised would work to give them access to women's bodies. Their anger, in other words, is that their own deception didn't work as they had hoped. It's a monumental overask to expect women to be gentle with the egos of men who only feigned friendship in order to get laid.

So how should we respond, when, as Penny writes, "sexist dickwaddery puts photos on the internet and asks to be loved?" The short answer is that a lonely dickwad is still a dickwad; the fact that these guys are in genuine pain makes them more rather than less likely to mistreat the women they encounter. A rage rooted in anguish is no less dangerous because it comes from the Great Big Sad Place. For that reason alone, we shouldn't make men's pain into women's problem to solve.


Do these men need dating profile makeovers? Yes, obviously; making an effort to have both good grooming and good grammar is seldom a waste. What the Nice Guys of OkCupid need far more than fresh shaves and new shirts, however, are two essential reminders. No one is owed love. And no one who uses friendship as a strategy for sex has the right to complain if he ends up with neither.

So again, its about more than just mockery, but making a valid point about why these men aren't getting laid. They can't comprehend why women want to be friends first, fuck-buddies second. So they act dishonestly, and that doesn't work. So they act honestly, and by this point it definitely doesn't work because they've essentially radicalized themselves through the power of self-fulfilling-prophesy. Their own attitudes and NOT the mockery of others is what causes problems according to the Jezebel article. And at the point where they start getting mocked is the point where people have already lost faith in their ability to change their attitudes. Or their basic hygiene.

I would say that overall, any evidence this Jason Alex guy posts should be viewed with suspicion, as he flagrantly misrepresents and quote mines his sources. Try again, Zontarg, and this time put more effort into your argument than citing wholesale things other people have written. I would like to see you prove your point without making an ass of yourself. I'm betting you wrongly assumed this person to be a valid authority figure because he has a degree in psychology or something (assuming he's even being honest about his own credentials). Racism and sexism, however, are just as much a sociological and anthropological issue, fraught with closeted opinions and people who might not be the fence-sitters they appear to be on first inspection.

[ray245]

How many people would even spent any of their time checking the sources nowadays?

Also, if most of these "fench sitters" aren't really sitting on the fench, does that mean it will be impossible to deradicalise them?

[Simon_Jester]

Formless, some of the very points you made are specifically addressed and contradicted in the Alexander post that you're reacting to. I cannot specifically address what you've said for several hours due to time constraints; I'm typing this AFTER I typed the stuff below.

The problem that I see with this line of argument is that, for the most part, these men are NOT being told that they're evil misogynist rapists. I'm not saying that there isn't an avenue towards radicalization by people who perceive themselves as being victimized, but there's the related issue that 9 times out of 10 these people are just wrong. Almost every time an article or argument is portrayed as calling all men "evil misogynist rapists", this isn't actually the case. Most of the time, the argument being proposed is something along the lines of, "Some men are evil misogynist rapists, but prevailing cultural attitudes have the effect of tacitly encouraging the behavior of those men"

When a group of people are all, collectively, being persistently misunderstood, it is usually BOTH because some of their detractors are distorting what they say AND because they are communicating poorly.

This cuts both ways. There are people who do not get a fair deal from the way Internet feminism presents their worldview; there are people who do not get a fair deal from the way enemies of Internet feminism present their worldview. Conversely, there are people who have genuine problems caused by poor choices and behaviors on the part of specific Internet feminists, who communicate their problems poorly, in ways that trigger misunderstandings. And there are Internet feminists who communicate their worldview poorly, in ways that trigger misunderstandings.

There's a more complicated issue afoot than the overly simplistic one proposed here. In fact, this argument is essentially just a subtle way of trying to discredit the arguments being made by women or minorities (i.e., they groups that are ACTUALLY marginalized). It's little different from victim blaming in sexual assault cases; it's an attempt to shift the moral onus onto groups other than the ones actually responsible.

See, the analogy kind of breaks down here.

When Pat blames the victim in a sexual assault case, Pat is trying to transfer responsibility for a specific, singular action. We can reasonably agree that this is a bad idea 99.9% of the time or whatever, and therefore should never be done simply because it is overwhelmingly likely to cause more problems than it could ever, ever solves.

When we say "there exist some Internet feminists can be extremely mean-spirited and hostile, both to allies of their own movement and to 'neutrals' who neither oppose nor support it, and this can alienate people from the movement," we are doing a very different thing. This is not about a singular action, it is about group dynamics. Any group contains people who will unfairly harass designated acceptable targets, people who will indulge in witch hunts, and so on. It's a part of human nature. Good groups that function well tend to have internal mechanisms to limit the harm done by these bad actors... But all groups have at least some of them. And any given group's ability to avoid having them dominate the tone of the discussion? That is related to that group's ability to acknowledge that the bad actors are present.

If Internet feminism doesn't contain at least a small admixture of mean-spirited bullies, that would be a very surprising result. Nearly all groups have people who take advantage of a strong social position to "punch down" at people who wander into their sights. If it has none, Internet feminism is utterly unique in this regard among all subcultures and social circles that I am aware of.

...

Of course, Zontargs, being a troll, is of course picking the bits of the article that are most easily cherrypicked as "contra feminism," with less than satisfactory context for the argument being made. I will endeavour to provide some more of the context.

[editing; since I cannot provide the argument I was going to provide in the time available, I've deleted the opening part to prevent it being taken out of context or misinterpreted before I have time to write its conclusion]

[Simon_Jester]

Let me just quote an additional part of the article, the opening:

I recently had a patient, a black guy from the worst part of Detroit, let’s call him Dan, who was telling me of his woes. He came from a really crappy family with a lot of problems, but he was trying really hard to make good. He was working two full-time minimum wage jobs, living off cheap noodles so he could save some money in the bank, trying to scrape a little bit of cash together. Unfortunately, he’d had a breakdown (see: him being in a psychiatric hospital), he was probably going to lose his jobs, and everything was coming tumbling down around him.

And he was getting a little philosophical about it, and he asked – I’m paraphrasing here – why haven’t things worked out for me? I’m hard-working, I’ve never missed a day of work until now, I’ve always given a hundred and ten percent. And meanwhile, I see all these rich white guys (“no offense, doctor,” he added, clearly overestimating the salary of a medical resident) who kind of coast through school, coast into college, end up with 9 – 4 desk jobs working for a friend of their father’s with excellent salaries and benefits, and if they need to miss a couple of days of work, whether it’s for a hospitalization or just to go on a cruise, nobody questions it one way or the other. I’m a harder worker than they are, he said – and I believed him – so how is that fair?

And of course, like most of the people I deal with at my job, there’s no good answer except maybe restructuring society from the ground up, so I gave him some platitudes about how it’s not his fault, told him about all the social services available to him, and gave him a pill to treat a biochemical condition almost completely orthogonal to his real problem.

And I’m still not sure what a good response to his question would have been. But later that night I was browsing the Internet and I was reminded of what the worse response humanly possible. It would go something like:

You keep whining about how “unfair” it is that you can’t get a good job. “But I’m such a hard worker.” No, actual hard workers don’t feel like they’re entitled to other people’s money just because they ask nicely.

“Why do rich white kids who got legacy admissions to Yale receive cushy sinecures, but I have to work two grueling minimum wage jobs just to keep a roof over my head?” By even asking that question, you prove that you think of bosses as giant bags of money, rather than as individual human beings who are allowed to make their own choices. No one “owes” you money just because you say you “work hard”, and by complaining about this you’re proving you’re not really a hard worker at all. I’ve seen a lot of Hard Workers (TM) like you, and scratch their entitled surface and you find someone who thinks just because they punched a time card once everyone needs to bow down and worship them.

If you complain about “rich white kids who get legacy admissions to Yale,” you’re raising a huge red flag that you’re the kind of person who steals from their employer, and companies are exactly right to give you a wide berth.

---

Now, bits of sarcasm aside, can we agree that in the case of the minimum wage guy, such a response would be terrible? I mean, it's not hard to differentiate between a minimum wage guy who says "I really do work harder than some of the people out there who are more financially successful than me, it seems kind of unfair" and a minimum wage guy who says "the world owes me all the money I want and I should be entitled to steal it if I feel like it."

We can even differentiate between a minimum wage guy who says something unsympathetic like "I want money so I can spend it on booze and hookers" and someone who says something like "I want money because I'd like to be able to support children, and I can't afford that as long as I'm trapped on the underside of this economy."

Can we agree on this much? Because the case of the minimum wage guy seems pretty solid to me.

[Flagg]

How many people would even spent any of their time checking the sources nowadays?

Also, if most of these "fench sitters" aren't really sitting on the fench, does that mean it will be impossible to deradicalise them?

Fence.

And some “fence-sitters” truly are just undecided on an issue, or in some cases just undecided about what action to take to deal with an issue.

But there are those seemingly chronic fence-sitters who always seem to pop up when certain issues arise to say “well, you know...” and these are basically people who either harbor some support for whatever odious shit they weakly condemn but urge no action on or are just apathetic to the reality in the face of whatever ideology is being defended by them. You will often see them, for instance, equating things like Nazi’s marching in the streets and American football players kneeling during the national anthem. Despite one being a massive unruly group wearing body armor and carrying weapons with little or no law enforcement there to keep them in check as they call for the outright murder of everyone not them and the other being in a very controlled environment by at max a couple dozen inviduals simply not standing for about 90 seconds because they are tired of the spate of law enforcement killing unarmed minorities with zero repercussions.

But I wouldn’t say they are radicalized because they don’t actually believe in the shit the Nazis are saying.

[Flagg]

Let me just quote an additional part of the article, the opening:

I recently had a patient, a black guy from the worst part of Detroit, let’s call him Dan, who was telling me of his woes. He came from a really crappy family with a lot of problems, but he was trying really hard to make good. He was working two full-time minimum wage jobs, living off cheap noodles so he could save some money in the bank, trying to scrape a little bit of cash together. Unfortunately, he’d had a breakdown (see: him being in a psychiatric hospital), he was probably going to lose his jobs, and everything was coming tumbling down around him.

And he was getting a little philosophical about it, and he asked – I’m paraphrasing here – why haven’t things worked out for me? I’m hard-working, I’ve never missed a day of work until now, I’ve always given a hundred and ten percent. And meanwhile, I see all these rich white guys (“no offense, doctor,” he added, clearly overestimating the salary of a medical resident) who kind of coast through school, coast into college, end up with 9 – 4 desk jobs working for a friend of their father’s with excellent salaries and benefits, and if they need to miss a couple of days of work, whether it’s for a hospitalization or just to go on a cruise, nobody questions it one way or the other. I’m a harder worker than they are, he said – and I believed him – so how is that fair?

And of course, like most of the people I deal with at my job, there’s no good answer except maybe restructuring society from the ground up, so I gave him some platitudes about how it’s not his fault, told him about all the social services available to him, and gave him a pill to treat a biochemical condition almost completely orthogonal to his real problem.

And I’m still not sure what a good response to his question would have been. But later that night I was browsing the Internet and I was reminded of what the worse response humanly possible. It would go something like:

You keep whining about how “unfair” it is that you can’t get a good job. “But I’m such a hard worker.” No, actual hard workers don’t feel like they’re entitled to other people’s money just because they ask nicely.

“Why do rich white kids who got legacy admissions to Yale receive cushy sinecures, but I have to work two grueling minimum wage jobs just to keep a roof over my head?” By even asking that question, you prove that you think of bosses as giant bags of money, rather than as individual human beings who are allowed to make their own choices. No one “owes” you money just because you say you “work hard”, and by complaining about this you’re proving you’re not really a hard worker at all. I’ve seen a lot of Hard Workers (TM) like you, and scratch their entitled surface and you find someone who thinks just because they punched a time card once everyone needs to bow down and worship them.

If you complain about “rich white kids who get legacy admissions to Yale,” you’re raising a huge red flag that you’re the kind of person who steals from their employer, and companies are exactly right to give you a wide berth.

---

Now, bits of sarcasm aside, can we agree that in the case of the minimum wage guy, such a response would be terrible? I mean, it's not hard to differentiate between a minimum wage guy who says "I really do work harder than some of the people out there who are more financially successful than me, it seems kind of unfair" and a minimum wage guy who says "the world owes me all the money I want and I should be entitled to steal it if I feel like it."

We can even differentiate between a minimum wage guy who says something unsympathetic like "I want money so I can spend it on booze and hookers" and someone who says something like "I want money because I'd like to be able to support children, and I can't afford that as long as I'm trapped on the underside of this economy."

Can we agree on this much? Because the case of the minimum wage guy seems pretty solid to me.

Yes, but the minimum wage guy isn’t saying anyone owes him anything, he’s just tired of working so hard for so little and sees others, most notably privileged people, essentially skating by in comparison. He’s got a valid point because the way things are supposed to work in this country, what we are told our entire lives, the lie that underpins our whole society is “if you work hard you will succeed.” He’s not saying that he’s owed something because he exists. And if given the same breaks as the privileged people he’s talking about (and the doctor he’s talking to, who himself is incredibly fortunate) he would likely do just as well, or if he’s that hard a worker probably better. He wants the same opportunity to succeed not a fucking free pass.

But the “nice guy” who goes in expecting sex from women (in fact by his very attitude and actions views women as “things to provide him with sex” instead of “people with vaginas”) and complains bitterly when women don’t find him sexually attractive has every opportunity to form healthy relationships with women. The problem is him. And as someone who has had about as much luck with women as with anything (don’t stand near me in a thunderstorm is what I’m saying ), on that score it’s pretty much all me. I don’t get angry at women for it because I’m not interested in having sex with a misshapen overweight 36 year old with no teeth, either.

[Simon_Jester]

Yes, but the minimum wage guy isn’t saying anyone owes him anything, he’s just tired of working so hard for so little and sees others, most notably privileged people, essentially skating by in comparison. He’s got a valid point because the way things are supposed to work in this country, what we are told our entire lives, the lie that underpins our whole society is “if you work hard you will succeed.” He’s not saying that he’s owed something because he exists. And if given the same breaks as the privileged people he’s talking about (and the doctor he’s talking to, who himself is incredibly fortunate) he would likely do just as well, or if he’s that hard a worker probably better. He wants the same opportunity to succeed not a fucking free pass.

But the “nice guy” who goes in expecting sex from women (in fact by his very attitude and actions views women as “things to provide him with sex” instead of “people with vaginas”) and complains bitterly when women don’t find him sexually attractive has every opportunity to form healthy relationships with women. The problem is him. And as someone who has had about as much luck with women as with anything (don’t stand near me in a thunderstorm is what I’m saying ), on that score it’s pretty much all me. I don’t get angry at women for it because I’m not interested in having sex with a misshapen overweight 36 year old with no teeth, either.

See, that's the thing I'm talking about. We've got this stock character, the "nice guy," all lined up and ready to go, to the point where the stereotype can potentially be unleashed on anyone, whether they deserve it or not.

Like, somewhere out there is a male who is in fact a decent sort at heart, that is to say a 'nice guy' in the literal, older sense of the phrase prior to 2000 or so. And yet, this person has zero luck with women. Maybe they have some weird personality quirk. Maybe they have trouble keeping up with social cues. Maybe they just have a cosmic "Kick Me" sign pasted to their butt; some people seem to.

This particular male may be rather isolated and sad. They may or may not be upset because of sexual frustration; there are other reasons to be unhappy over persistent romantic rejection. The point is, they're unhappy.

And if this male speaks up about it, he may receive a sympathetic hearing. Or... he may not. He may be singled out for bullying. Potentially, he is one out-of-context quotation from being told "Oh, you're one of those entitled "Nice Guy (TM)" shitlords who thinks women exist to provide him with sex. Go die in a fire."

The stereotype can unfold that any dorky nice guy (in the literal sense of the word) who expresses discontent about a lack of romantic success is ACTUALLY a Nice Guy (TM) whose lack of success is purely due to being an entitled misogynistic creep. And at some point, the distinction between genuinely socially awkward people who are suffering, and the entitled creeps that have firmly occupied everyone's headspace, gets lost.

At which point the socially awkward people flee the movement in self-defense.

...

And I guess what I'm saying is, this kind of thing is deeply counterproductive from the point of view of a movement that wants broad consensus in favor of a reasonable list of progressive social priorities.

There comes a point at which your movement has enough political leverage to punch people hard enough to hurt. Once it can do that, people are going to notice whether it punches up, sideways, or down.

If they see you punching down, they're going to start pulling away from the movement, especially if they're worried they might be next under the fist.

If they see you punching in all directions wildly, they will, again, pull back to a safe distance from which they can not get beaten up.

If they see that complaining about being unfairly punched just nets a massive storm of infinity plus one punches, they will invest in a pair of boxing gloves and start punching back.

[ray245]

How many people would even spent any of their time checking the sources nowadays?

Also, if most of these "fench sitters" aren't really sitting on the fench, does that mean it will be impossible to deradicalise them?

Fence.

And some “fence-sitters” truly are just undecided on an issue, or in some cases just undecided about what action to take to deal with an issue.

But there are those seemingly chronic fence-sitters who always seem to pop up when certain issues arise to say “well, you know...” and these are basically people who either harbor some support for whatever odious shit they weakly condemn but urge no action on or are just apathetic to the reality in the face of whatever ideology is being defended by them. You will often see them, for instance, equating things like Nazi’s marching in the streets and American football players kneeling during the national anthem. Despite one being a massive unruly group wearing body armor and carrying weapons with little or no law enforcement there to keep them in check as they call for the outright murder of everyone not them and the other being in a very controlled environment by at max a couple dozen inviduals simply not standing for about 90 seconds because they are tired of the spate of law enforcement killing unarmed minorities with zero repercussions.

But I wouldn’t say they are radicalized because they don’t actually believe in the shit the Nazis are saying.

My mind has been spacing out on me. The problem is still the same, if you are saying there is a significant amount of people that are closeted racists, or far right, then that also suggests any effort to convince them to look at things differently is effectively pointless.

[Flagg]

Yeah, but I know so fucking many of those guys and has already been pointed out it’s not like these people make one comment then are labeled the vast majority of the time. They ask for advice, get it, fail, and then eventually reveal that they are in fact a pretty good fit for that designation.

The problem IMO is the people looking for excuses as to why they act like they do despite being given advice over and over on how to not be “that guy”. Yes, there are people on “our side” who all too often come off too harshly when they think they are seeing that behavior and it can turn people off. But they often become that way because they have done it all before and are sick of them. Christ, Tucker still has a shockingly horrid attitude towards women that has not changed despite me and many others trying to work on it with him for over a fucking decade. I’m not saying labels are great or always appropriate, but sometimes they are and I’m not going to condemn someone for losing patience with a racist, misogynist, or any other person spewing vile rhetoric about a part of the population for existing and wanting their existence to suck less.

[ray245]

Yeah, but I know so fucking many of those guys and has already been pointed out it’s not like these people make one comment then are labeled the vast majority of the time. They ask for advice, get it, fail, and then eventually reveal that they are in fact a pretty good fit for that designation.

The problem IMO is the people looking for excuses as to why they act like they do despite being given advice over and over on how to not be “that guy”. Yes, there are people on “our side” who all too often come off too harshly when they think they are seeing that behavior and it can turn people off. But they often become that way because they have done it all before and are sick of them. Christ, Tucker still has a shockingly horrid attitude towards women that has not changed despite me and many others trying to work on it with him for over a fucking decade. I’m not saying labels are great or always appropriate, but sometimes they are and I’m not going to condemn someone for losing patience with a racist, misogynist, or any other person spewing vile rhetoric about a part of the population for existing and wanting their existence to suck less.

On the other hand, losing patience does help their confirmation bias. Certain mindsets can be more easily reinforced than deconstructed.

[Formless]

Formless, some of the very points you made are specifically addressed and contradicted in the Alexander post that you're reacting to. I cannot specifically address what you've said for several hours due to time constraints; I'm typing this AFTER I typed the stuff below.

You know what isn't okay, Simon? Defending dishonesty. Because it is inherently dishonest as well.

First of all, his defense of his overall thesis against the very criticism that Ziggy Stardust makes is "here are a bunch of examples of what I am talking about." HOWEVER, that defense only works if you present a representative sample. Whatever criticisms you then make of the sources are only valid as long as:

a) you represented their argument honestly

b) it is actually a representative sample

And if you fail the first test, nobody in their right mind has reason to trust that you succeeded in passing the second. It does not matter what he then says about the arguments about "Nice Guys" if he didn't give a good faith representation of the argument, because it says we can't trust that these are even representative of what the majority of Feminists have to say on the issue. Far more likely he cherry picked examples from a Google search on the words "Nice Guy" and "Feminism" together. And we all know that Google has been filtering searches on an individual basis for years now. In other words, no matter how valid his criticisms of a given article, its still just so much anecdotal evidence of a trend that isn't there.

And lest we forget that he is a dishonest piece of shit, I plan on taking apart yet another one of his quote mining later in another post. But first, lets get something straight: with exception of the Jezebel article, all of the articles which are still up on the web (read: its safe to assume that the one with the broken link is probably misrepresented as well) are dedicated not to proving the existence of the "Nice Guy" phenomenon, but to defining it. His argument amounts to little more than dismissing the category out of hand! This is further emphasized by the article by Feministe that he didn't cite, but is linked to in the one he did, explaining the distinction clearly and succinctly. But instead of accepting that these blogs are defining their terms, he just assumes that the phenomenon doesn't exist because it would be mighty inconvenient for him if it did. It is also mighty inconvenient for his argument if counter-examples can be found to his thesis that true fence-sitters are treated harshly by Feminists as a matter of course, and oh, that's right, the Feministe article links to such a counter-example.

Now lets deal with the Jezebel article. The whole point of it is to talk about a tumbler blog dedicated to giving evidence for the validity of the "Nice Guy" phenomenon. And while Jez admits (unlike him) that the sample probably represents a small portion of OkCupid users, its more valid than his approach because they are only trying to show their existence (and only on OkCupid at that). But instead of concede the validity of the evidence, he instead opts to poison the well against the blog with the following characterization:

[on a site that searches OKCupid profiles for ones that express sadness at past lack of romantic relationships, then posts them publicly for mockery]

All this does is insert his own charitable interpretation of statements of what are clearly ANGER:

There are also expressions of sheer rage and misogynistic threats of violence: "all I want you to is bleed like I have."

Oh, and get this: that isn't Jezebel's only post about "The Nice Guys of OkCupid". Since the tumbler blog is now deleted, this second article by Jezebel shows even more of what is being omitted:

Someone brilliant made a Tumblr called "Nice Guys" of OkCupid that is basically a roster of self-proclaimed "nice guys" who are actually total dicks. (Obviously; rule number one of being a real nice guy is that you never, ever refer to yourself as a "nice guy.") The site's moderator culls quotes from their online dating profiles such as "I'm so tired of those fake ass girls complaining that men are assholes and jerks and how they just want a nice guy who treats them right. Well that nice guy has been under your God damned nose this entire fucking time holding your hand" and "Being nice has never really helped me in life and has led to disappointment" and pastes them over their photos. Genius.

And in the photos preserved by Jezebel, we see this taken off someone's profile:

Do you feel there are any circumstances in which a person is obligated to have sex with you?

[by the person quoted in Jezebel's article]: Yes

Which goes to show that Jezebel and the rest are not wrong to say that some men falsely believe they are entitled to have sex, despite what the law and society tell them. But nope! According to Scott Alex, such people are a priori nonexistent, irrelevant, or unworthy of discussion for the sake of protecting women. You know, despite the demonstrable prevalence of rape in this society. And the many surveys taken by various social scientists demonstrating that this attitude isn't that uncommon. Scott just glosses right over these points. Seriously, read the damn blog post. Its never addressed.

The rest of his post (and I did read the unpleasant bile) reads as merit-less apologia for the worst excesses of Men's Rights Activists based on the moronic fallacy "but Feminists do it too!!!" Except, of course, they don't, and to equivocate their behavior with that claptrap is to forget the problem of privilege and the inequity of power between Feminists and men in this society. He also continuously misapplies the Rogerian Therapy concept of Unconditional Positive Regard by constantly bringing the article back to the specific example of his client (while also unironically throwing Ad Hominems at another blogger whom he says his commenters should not insult on the threat of being banned). Of course, while useful in some therapeutic contexts, it does not apply to all of them, especially when dealing with personality disorders and criminals. Unconditional Positive Regard is well known to be counter-productive in those contexts, because it reinforces bad behavior the therapist wants to get rid of (for other people's safety). Moreover, it should be obvious that this approach has never been considered useful outside of therapy, which is why I say that Scott Alex is not a valid authority in this context. A better authority would be a social psychologist, sociologist or an anthropologist, because this is a sociological issue. On the topic of mockery, remember that shame is such a powerful emotion that many cultures base their social control mechanisms on engaging it.

But oh, it gets so much worse than that:

First: “Nice guys don’t want love! They just want sex!”

One line disproof: if they wanted sex, they’d give a prostitute a couple bucks instead of spiralling into a giant depression.

What the fuck? NO! That's an absolutely retarded point. First of all, how does he know that they don't take advantage of sex workers? Someone is keeping the sex trade a lucrative business, and its a fact that Feminists often talk about. Like all businesses, the availability of sex slaves, prostitution and other sex work is a matter of supply-and-demand. If the demand goes away, the supply would plummet as well. Secondly, there are many reasons why "Nice Guys" might avoid prostitutes regardless: using his own logic against him, they could be too depressed from previous rejections to feel motivated to seek out the help of a sex worker (or for that matter, a therapist specializing in relationship problems and sexual hangups-- I took classes from one, I know they exist); they could be deterred by either the law or the prostitute's own self-protection methods (for instance, call girls network in part to spread word about clients who are abusive or don't pay up); they could use porn and masturbation as their preferred method of sexual release; it might be that because "Nice Guys" are defined by their entitlement complex, they feel they shouldn't have to pay anyone anything to get laid, and thus demonstrate predatory behaviors instead; and many more possible reasons besides that.

But what if he was correct about the reason they avoid sex workers, if they avoid them at all? Does his interpretation hold up? Again, no, because the science of attraction is more complicated than that. Love can be broken up into three components, known as the triangular theory of love: there is passion component which is all about the thrill of being with the other person, an intimacy component which is about friendship and trust (sharing secrets would be an obvious example of this aspect), and a commitment component which sort of speaks for itself (this is the component you will hear most about when people talk about marriage). An important thing to note is that people don't have to have all three cognitive components activated to feel subjective "love." But we do think that people feel most fulfilled when all three components are there. Also, all three interact with sexuality, but the passion component is the most directly tied to it (obviously, why else do you think they call it passion?). The problem with the Nice Guy according to these articles isn't that they lack a desire for love, but that they mistakenly think love is solely about sex and the passion component: if the girl will fuck me, then she must love me! If she doesn't, she must reject me! Hence the feeling that being friend-zoned is equivalent to total rejection. Intimacy is irrelevant to these people, even though they have a superficial understanding of it. Unfortunately for them, while some women will have sex just for fun, many women tie intimacy directly into their desire for sex. Unlike men, women don't immediately notice when they are sexually aroused, which means they can more easily divorce their body's responses to their sexual desire than men can. Of course, that does not mean men always desire sex when we get boners, but the physicality of sex is more directly tied to our understanding of sexual desire because the physical responses are impossible to ignore.

Moreover, the Nice Guy phenomenon is often linked to societal messages that men are promised sex found in pop-culture and beyond. Which is frustrating for these guys, because that promise is a lie. No one can promise you will ever get laid; courtship is a skill. Of course sometimes they do manage to convince a woman for a short time, only for the relationship to eventually degrade as the woman slowly realizes that they aren't getting everything they want out of the relationship, or are even feeling used or abused. That's when rejection happens, and yeah, rejection hurts. Sometimes physically. But it doesn't just hurt for the guy. There is no easy fix to this problem, but one thing that is most certainly true is that it isn't the woman's fault or the fault of Feminists that these shallow beliefs about love persist. Indeed, a big part of why Feminists criticize these kinds of cultural memes and myths and media tropes about sex is that they harm more than just women. To a lesser degree they also harm men by perpetuating ignorance.

But Scott doesn't realize this fact. In fact, he doesn't understand the articles he cites, when he says ignorant shit like this:

Second: “You can’t compare this to, like, poor people who complain about being poor. Food and stuff are basic biological human needs! Sex isn’t essential for life! It’s an extra, like having a yacht, or a pet tiger!”

I know that feminists are not always the biggest fans of evolutionary psychology. But I feel like it takes a special level of unfamiliarity with the discipline to ask “Sure, evolution gave us an innate desire for material goods, but why would it give us an deep innate desire for pair-bonding and reproduction??!”

This is why I accuse him of misrepresentation, because this is directly dealt with by Jezebel:

Sex with other people may be a basic human need, but unlike other needs, it can't be a basic human right.

And you can't argue with that. You can't jump from "sex is a need" to "sex is a right" without endorsing or excusing rape. Its just that simple. That's why feminists hate Evo Psych, because its theories (besides being pure speculation in most cases) are so often taken out of context to have moral content that just isn't there. Like so many MRAs before him, he is likewise putting moral content into theories that are uncontroversial, but do not claim to say what we ought to do to satisfy people's needs. Nice Guys don't get a free pass for being abusive when they have demonstrable control over their behavior. And besides, sex is a need insofar as its a basic human desire, but it isn't like our other needs in that virginity won't kill you. So getting people laid is pretty low on our ethical priorities.

Finally the seventh part is a lengthy Ad Hominim attack on another blogger blaming the targets hangups both sexual and otherwise on his Feminist beliefs, with some statistics thrown in so that he can tie it in to some genuinely harmful stereotypes about virgins vs sexually promiscuous people using the power of bullshit interpretation. None of that deals with the argument Ziggy Stardust made, nor the arguments his sources made, nor has anything to do with the idea that Nice Guys are closet sexists who aren't being mocked for their own good, but the good of the women they prey upon.

Fuck that. That article by Scott Alexander only serves to demonstrate why psychologists cannot be treated as good people just because they are motivated to help others. Some of them are moronic piles of shit who couldn't compose a proper argument if it killed them.

[Formless]

So because I said I would do it, and because I believe in being thorough, here's the last article he cites as evidence, and I want you to notice some patterns. As usual, the parts he quotes are in bold so that we can see just how bad the quote-mining is:

Two things that immediately set off my klaxons: men describing themselves as “good guys” or “nice guys.” Now, I would argue that there are some important distinctions between these two terms and how men (and others) use them, but they both, as Jessica Wakeman puts it, set my nose to wrinkling.

Now, maybe I am just a weirdo, but it sketches me out when someone has to tell me what a great guy he is.

Especially since, almost always, men who describe themselves that way are actually total jerks. It’s like they think that if they brand themselves as nice or good, we’ll magically overlook the fact that they are shitheads. Or they genuinely believe that their behavior is in fact totally legit, and the problem is with the world, not them.

So first off, this opening part is omitted, but it is important in that it shows the author is speaking from personal experience. Now sure, personal experience isn't strong evidence, but its interesting to know that, because if numerous women all testify to the same phenomenon, that makes a much stronger case.

THE GOOD GUYS

Let’s tackle those good guys. You know, the aw shucks kind who say it’s just so hard getting a date or staying in a relationship, and they can’t imagine why they are single when they are, after all, such catches. They’re sensitive, you know. They totally care about the people around them, would absolutely rescue a drowning puppy if they saw one, and they “know” women and what they want.

Why is it that so many “good guys” act like adult babies, and not in a fetish sense? They expect everyone else to pick up their slack, they’re inveterately lazy, and they seem genuinely shocked and surprised when people are unimpressed with their shenanigans. Their very heteronormativity betrays a shockingly narrow view of the world; ultimately, everything boils down to them and their needs, by which I mean their penises.

The “good guys” are the ones who are terrible communicators but seem confused and startled when things go awry, and they’re the ones who don’t seem to understand why they’re trapped in a cycle of serial short-term monogamy. As they chase after women, they’re always flirting with the next possibility, and they get offended when their girlfriends aren’t so into that. And, of course, they perpetually whine about being friendzoned.

Here, we see the structure of the article, and its again a different structure than Alex portrays. That last paragraph, talking about what precisely makes a "good guy" different from a "nice guy" and gives us a new insight into the nature of the problem: poor communication skills. Certainly a problem that can be fixed, but not through Rogerian therapy methods.

As soon as things get tough, most self-described good guys are gone, whether they’re friends or lovers. There’s no interest in building or maintaining relationships or supporting people when they go through rough experiences. Got a cancer diagnosis? Don’t call your “good guy” friend, because he won’t pick up. Want to have a talk with your “good guy” boyfriend about some stuff that’s worrying you? Might as well just break up with him, before he does it to you first.

Going even deeper, there is the complaint that the "good guy" is self centered and lacks commitment. But notice that this is also phrased as a warning to other women. It isn't about mocking anyone, its about establishing a set of experiences which the author's readers can relate to, and learn from.

THE NICE GUYS

The nice guy, to me, is like the “good guy” leveled up. They share many of the same characteristics, but there tends to be a sharper, caustic, more bitter edge, as documented in Nice Guys of OK Cupid. Which made for a rather chilling read while it existed, but also a stark insight into the kinds of people who freely identified themselves as “nice guys.”

These are the kinds of people who say that other people just don’t understand them, and the lack of love in their lives is due to other people being shitty. Then they proceed to parade hateful statements, many of which are deeply misogynist, to explain how everyone else is to blame for their failures in life. A woman who has had 14 sexual partners is a slut. They’re good at falling into the friend zone, but not the bone zone. They think men have a right to sex. The list goes on.

Every time someone identifies himself to me as a “nice guy,” my hackles go up. If I may, for a moment, go all psych 101 on you, there’s a phenomenon called actor-observer asymmetry, which comes up a lot in situations where people are asked to come up with explanations for behavior.

Put simply, when we’re asked to explain the behavior of other people, we attribute it to their personality, but when we evaluate ourselves, we’re more likely to bring up situational factors. Nice guys provide a pretty much textbook demonstration: "All women are bitches, I’m a nice guy.”

This cognitive bias plays a huge role in how everyone interacts with the world, but it can get reinforced among some more than others, and nice guys are kind of primed to develop a sense of wounded entitlement. These are the same people, for example, who believe that men are entitled to sex on tap, which means that for many of them, “rape” isn’t a concept they’re familiar with.

These are also the same guys who do things like going into a gym, or a school, or another space heavily populated by women, and opening fire. Because from that simmering sense of innate entitlement comes a feeling of being wronged when he doesn’t get what he wants, and he lives in a society where men are “supposed” to get what they want, and that simmer can boil over.

And the line between a so-called nice guy and a men's rights activist can be very, very thin.

Here is where things get really fucked up. The first thing you will notice if you go to Scott Alex's quote is that he both omits things and merges statements from multiple paragraphs into just one, skipping multiple paragraphs to make it look like a continuous stream of thought. He avoids quoting the part about "The Nice Guys of OkCupid" presumably because its also dealt with by Jezebel, but he also omits the part where the writer draws parallels between the "good guy" and the "nice guy," because the observations about the lesser of the two categories would be admitting the writer had nuances to her points. He omits the statement that "nice guys" feel entitled to sex, a common complaint to all of the article's we've seen so far, and something I think he avoids because he doesn't want to admit that this might be a harmful attitude in a way other entitlements aren't.

Troublingly, he avoids mention of the psychological phenomenon underlying the "Nice guy" attitude that this author proposes, which is interesting considering his education as a psychologist. See, since he seems to be coming from a Rogerian Therapeutic approach, it is inconvenient to allow discussion of Cognitive Psychology concepts in this context. Its a different therapy mode, and it says that this kind of mental bias or distorted thought process can only be addressed through direct methods. You have to point out the fallacious reasoning to the client in order for them to overcome it. A Rogerian approach doesn't really work here, because the Rogerian therapist assumes that (in part because you came to therapy willingly) you can realize these cognitive distortions on your own with the right prodding. But the author is right to point out that this particular bias is universal, which means the only way of addressing it is the direct, confrontational way that Rogers disliked! This is why applying therapeutic concepts outside of the therapist's office is sometimes a bad idea, because if these "nice guys" could realize the problem on their own, they would be in therapy. Given the relationship problems ascribed to them, why is this so rarely the case? Frankly, the average person isn't a therapist to begin with, but they still need useful communication skills.

And communication patterns that work in therapy don't always apply outside of that environment.

BOUNDARIES, WILL ROBINSON

Now, obviously, not all people who self-identify as good guys or nice guys are awful people who are planning to rape you or go on a mass shooting rampage. But these terms are like little warning bells, signs of underlying attitudes that make me deeply nervous. The genuinely good and nice men in my life have never needed to prove it to me or tell me about it; they’ve demonstrated it with their actions.

I’ve noted, too, that this kind of self-labeling comes up a lot in men engaging in grooming behavior. As part of their work to cultivate potential victims, they remind their victims on the regular that they’re “good guys” and the only ones who “truly” understand them.

Along with that grooming comes an assurance that the good guy will always be there for the victim, reinforced by the occasional pretense of backup or support to get a woman to let down her guard and turn into a supporter for self-same “good guy.”

Which means, of course, that when other women question whether he’s really all that great, his victims are all set to defend him.

“He’s a good guy, really,” they say, surrounding him with a defensive armor of women who aren’t aware of his insidious tactics. Once taken in, it can take a long time for victims to extricate themselves, and it can be painful to watch from the outside.

Identifying warning signs can be an important part of learning and enforcing your boundaries, especially for those of us who are taught from an early age that we have no boundaries. I have no problem with judging dudes who call themselves “good guys” or “nice guys” and taking logical precautions to protect myself from them.

What about you?

Note that taken on its own, the bolded stuff that he does quote doesn't have the same content as the whole passage that it comes from. The author admits the existence of truly nice men she has met, but also states that the thing which sets them apart is their behavior. That is, that it was unnecessary for the truly nice men she met to say "I'm a nice guy." Its almost as if that phrase wasn't invented by Feminists, but used by them because hearing it is a common experience for many women? The overall message again isn't an attack on anyone specific, but a description of a pattern to watch out for which expands upon the previous parts of the article. The message again is a warning for other women so that they can avoid not only being abused, but being abused in such a way they feel like they can't escape.

Like I said before, patterns: note again that this article isn't attempting to prove the existence of the phenomenon, because while the author cites personal experience she can always fall back on the same evidence as Jezebel. Just as Scott Alex avoided the use of mockery and shame as a way of protecting the victims (because that is outside the scope of his training as a therapist), here we see that this article isn't aimed at all towards a male reader; although many of the same warning signs could be watched for by gay men. The purpose of the blog post isn't to convince or persuade emotionally fragile men of anything, just to warn and protect other women. Because a lot of Feminist discussion is about that, helping empower women to protect themselves from exploitation and victimization. And of course, if the intended audience isn't male readers to begin with, then it isn't even a good example for Alex to cite! It is entirely unrelated to his thesis, but contains some statements quite convenient for quote-mining.

[The Romulan Republic]

This seems to me to be the position that lonely men are in online. People will tell them they’re evil misogynist rapists – as the articles above did – no matter what. In what is apparently shocking news to a lot of people, this makes them hurt and angry.

The problem that I see with this line of argument is that, for the most part, these men are NOT being told that they're evil misogynist rapists. I'm not saying that there isn't an avenue towards radicalization by people who perceive themselves as being victimized, but there's the related issue that 9 times out of 10 these people are just wrong. Almost every time an article or argument is portrayed as calling all men "evil misogynist rapists", this isn't actually the case. Most of the time, the argument being proposed is something along the lines of, "Some men are evil misogynist rapists, but prevailing cultural attitudes have the effect of tacitly encouraging the behavior of those men" which is then spun by MRA snowflakes as being tantamount to calling all men evil misogynist rapists. There's a more complicated issue afoot than the overly simplistic one proposed here. In fact, this argument is essentially just a subtle way of trying to discredit the arguments being made by women or minorities (i.e., they groups that are ACTUALLY marginalized). It's little different from victim blaming in sexual assault cases; it's an attempt to shift the moral onus onto groups other than the ones actually responsible.

Yup.

In other words, its standard Alt. Reich propaganda bullshit. "White men are the REAL victims of the evil SJW/feminazi/'Cultural Marxism" conspiracy". Which is then used to excuse and deflect from the bigotry the Alt. Reich-ists themselves espouse.

So, yes, there is a phenomenon where individuals are being radicalized due to their perceived social isolation. But at what point do you consider their perceptions to be valid, when they are often based on deliberate distortion and misinterpretation of what the "other side" is saying in the first place? Because there is a potential slippery slope involved with this line of thinking, that essentially boils down (hyperbolically) to "You can't criticize white men for anything because you might accidentally turn them into evil misogynist racists just by being too mean to them".

And if criticism from a few crackpots is all it takes to turn someone into a misogynist racist, they weren't a very good person to begin with, so... kudos for proving that their critics were right about them.

[ray245]

And if criticism from a few crackpots is all it takes to turn someone into a misogynist racist, they weren't a very good person to begin with, so... kudos for proving that their critics were right about them.

I don't think it's mere criticism that suddenly turns them into a misogynistic racist. These communities tend to exist by and large in a bubble, on web forums where there is a constant reinforcement of such ideas.

Get someone who is shy and socially awkward in real life, then expose him( tends to be males) to an internet forum culture which constantly reinforces such views for years. All of a sudden there seems to be some explanation given as to why they have so many difficulties in getting they think they are entitled to. It's an explanation that can actually make them feel good about themselves.

I don't think this is a good behavior to have, but calling them a good or bad person is defeating any meaningful solution to the problem. Like it or not, the internet has enabled such group to rise and create a bubble among themselves. And we've found out that such groups do have a certain degree of political influence, whether we like it or not.

How are you going to limit the influence and growth of such echo chamber? How do you avoid making other young males from being constantly exposed and being basically stuck in such an environment? Calling them bad people is hardly going to have any impact on them, nor would it actually stop them from exporting such views elsewhere.

Look, if we believe we can deradicalise those who ended up being influenced by religious extremists, then we should make some effort into breaking such bubble/echo-chamber. Labelling them as bad people and pretending we can somehow keep them away is quite an idealistic thinking. Those people have already been socially marginalised. Marginalising them further is hardly going to make them change their minds, stop spreading such ideas, nor prevent those that are younger from buying into such ideas.

[ray245]

Also, I will like to point out the whole "nice guys" exist because they see themselves as being an alternative model of attraction from the "usual hyper-masculine stereotype". The basis of its existence lies in part to the self-identification as a "nice shy nerd" in opposition to the "charismatic, but a bully jock". This dichotomy is still perpetuated in large part by popular media. So anyone being Mr. popular, charismatic is almost by default a "bad guy".

[Flagg]

Yeah, but I know so fucking many of those guys and has already been pointed out it’s not like these people make one comment then are labeled the vast majority of the time. They ask for advice, get it, fail, and then eventually reveal that they are in fact a pretty good fit for that designation.

The problem IMO is the people looking for excuses as to why they act like they do despite being given advice over and over on how to not be “that guy”. Yes, there are people on “our side” who all too often come off too harshly when they think they are seeing that behavior and it can turn people off. But they often become that way because they have done it all before and are sick of them. Christ, Tucker still has a shockingly horrid attitude towards women that has not changed despite me and many others trying to work on it with him for over a fucking decade. I’m not saying labels are great or always appropriate, but sometimes they are and I’m not going to condemn someone for losing patience with a racist, misogynist, or any other person spewing vile rhetoric about a part of the population for existing and wanting their existence to suck less.

On the other hand, losing patience does help their confirmation bias. Certain mindsets can be more easily reinforced than deconstructed.

I’m not a saint, don’t pretend to be, and am, like everyone else, not willing to put up with someone who spews misogyny and/or racism for a decade all while acting as if they are trying to change their fucking ways. If you are, have fun with that but don’t inflict that mental illness on the rest of us.