It's both the feminists AND the whiny, petulant self-identified "nice guys" that are wrong about this debate. Supposedly, a "nice guy" is just some boring, ugly guy who tries to win women over by doing nice things for them - i.e. manipulating them and guilt-tripping them into having sex - whereas an actual nice guy is supposed to be somebody who is genuinely nice and does not expect anything in return. But even this is misses the whole point, and I'm going to show why.
A high status man's appeal is neither in the suit nor the face
Many men on this site are annoyed about their lack of success in dating. The majority of women sleep with a selective pool of males, giving the rest of men the limited options of downgrading, involuntary celibacy, or having to pay for sex. This was first examined by Bateman in 1948 who reported a stronger relationship between mating and reproductive success in male fruit flies compared with females.
Unsuccessful men are so keen to vent their frustrations but even this they cannot do effectively, because of the very nature of female selectiveness. It is so discreet that it is extremely hard for most men to identify what exact qualities it is that women find attractive in men and even women aren't entirely sure.
It is also very difficult for a man to call a woman shallow because the internal attributes she tends to be attracted to are not by literal definition 'preoccupied purely with what's on the surface'. By contrast, those rare inner qualities that truly make a man a man and tend to trigger female attraction are the opposite of 'shallow': at least if we consult the literal dictionary definition, that is.
I'm going to pull apart 'status' more thoroughly; I'm going to show how genuine, authentic niceness means virtually nothing when it comes to attraction and I'm going to demonstrate that it's actually feminist women who keep on bringing up the same old god damn nice guy topic, more so than the misogynist men.
#1 STATUS
Status refers to a man's relative social or professional position. Confidence is one component of a high status male but there are many other attributes that such a man might possess. These include:
Paternalism
Paternalism: the policy or practice on the part of people in authority of restricting the freedom and responsibilities of those subordinate to or otherwise dependent on them in their supposed interest.
I am going to offer an alternative perspective on paternalism. Paternalism is the conservative side of status. The paternalist is not the ideal leader who promotes liberal compassion but he is not necessarily a bad man either. Paternalists tend to be pro-free market and in favour of traditional values, like morality, same sex marriage and parental discipline. In the dating world, we can see how this traditionalism bridges over into the paternalists relationship with women. Paternalists will lavish their women with expensive gifts, pay for dates and participate in acts of chivalry. But it is not the mere acts of chivalry that differentiate the paternalist from the egalitarian. It is the values and demeanour that is sub-communicated. An egalitarian might begrudgingly pay for the date, but you can see that it is not really his thing. The paternalist on the other hand, genuinely thinks that this is the way it is meant to be between a man and a woman, and you can see in his face and his smile that he is happy with a quintessentially conservative arrangement between the two genders. He's the same guy that will in later life expect his wife to fulfill a domestic role while he is the breadwinner and what's more is: this is probably what's going to happen.
Hugh Hefner, pictured above, is obviously not the stereotypical caricature of the paternalist but I wanted to show how he embodies those values deep down, if not superficially. While he has the conservative and pro-capitalist tendencies he is anything but a traditionalist and you can see this in his life style: he sleeps with multiple women, lives in luxury and has done nothing to raise a stable, family with good morale. But he is a paternalist because of how he interacts with women: not just in the fact he is willing to spend lavish sums of money on them and the way he commercialises women, essentially as sexualised commodities rather than cut-throat equals with the same status as men. He might have effectively bought these women, but I would wager that plenty of women would want to be with Hugh Hefner because of his wealth, celebrity status and patriarchal attitudes alone. They want the sugar daddy - not just because he pays for the things they want - but because they want to be made to feel feminine. The actions of these same women demonstrates quite clearly that they definitely do not believe in feminism or equality of the sexes even if they say they do.
- Intelligence and Machiavellianism
Machiavellianism - the employment of cunning and duplicity in statecraft or in general conduct.
The ability to intelligently undercut other people can take a man from rags to riches is . Sometimes, even the egalitarian needs to do this if he is to get into a position of power where he can fully help others. However, the egotist can do this as well, with no other agenda than to serve himself. Walter White from Breaking Bad is a man who becomes just like this. Although his ultimate desire is to bring to his family the finances they need, his pride and vanity often get's in the way and later in the TV series, he carries on accumulating more wealth and status as a meth kingpin, even though it is extremely risky for him to do so.
In dating, machiavellianism is crucial. Machiavellianism can get a man the attractive qualities which are attractive to many women: it will acquire you popularity, enable you with career prospects, make you seem powerful, confident and charismatic and give you the ability you to seduce a woman, even if it is effectively through lies and deceit.
- Wealth (it's not what you think!)
Wealth - an abundance of valuable possessions or money.
There are definitely gold diggers out there and a woman who dates, sleeps with and marries men for their money alone are not actually attracted to the man. They're attracted to the money. That's why I do not count "wealth", in this narrow context alone as an attractive quality.
However, there is something else attractive about the wealthy man: his ambition, his success and his charisma. Gold diggers that are looking for something a little bit extra than just a nice wad of cash can find it in the kind of man who can nourish both their materialistic desires AND their desire for a high status, confident man.
- Charisma
Charisma - compelling attractiveness or charm that can inspire devotion in others.
Martin Luther King was a man with a cause, and a man who inspired many, many other people to act on that cause with emotional rhetoric: he had charisma. Not only does charisma convey the attractive qualities of power and determination, but charisma will enable a man to obtain many other attributes so well admired by women: wealth, social status and popularity. Charisma is very similar to coolness (described below) in so far as it wins the influence of people but is subtly different because the charismatic individual wins people's hearts by appealing to their desires and making those people like them.
- Coolness
Coolness - a subjective aesthetic of attitude, behavior, comportment, appearance and style which is generally admired.
Barrack Obama's delivery, his rhetoric and his body language not only conveys power and status but also demonstrates an underlying aloofness and lack of attachment but not overdone as to appear out of touch with the people. He won two elections with this hybrid of deadpan delivery, presence of charisma and what can only be described as a "cool vibe". You might not think Obama is that cool but as far as politicians go, I can't think of many men that are on the same calibre of coolness as Obama.
Coolness is very similar to charisma because it is just as useful in winning people's influence, but typically the cool person places respect at a higher calibre than being "liked" and often wins this by appearing somewhat unattached rather than making people feel how wonderful they think they are. The cool guy has to be careful though because if he never shows any appreciation whatsoever, people will start to lose respect and admiration. Luckily the appreciation cool guys show is more highly valued because it is that little bit more rare than what charismatic people tend to dish out.
- Popularity
Popularity - the state or condition of being liked, admired, or supported by many people.
George Clooney is a high profile man of celebrity status, and as you can see from this picture above, everybody wants to know and be friends with George Clooney. Now popularity is useful for attracting women for three reasons:
- If you know more people, then you know more viable women.
- If you are well-liked by lots of people, then you are seen as somebody that is highly influential and well-respected, which is attractive to women.
- If you are very popular, then women will want to jump onto that bandwagon of popularity and an extremely effective way of doing this is by being your partner.
It is not always the nicest of people that climb the social hierarchy and accumulate success, status and popularity, however. Machiavellianism is a trait that is extremely useful for this and charisma and coolness are attributes that can be shared by good men and bad men alike. Hitler was charismatic, as was Stalin. The Lost Prophet's singer, Iain Watkins is a notorious child molester who used his wealth and status to manipulate women and rape underage kids, some of them babies. During his trial, he even tweeted that he did it for the "lolz" and everybody should just chill out, or something. How did he climb the ranks? He was a cool guy, and he was the lead singer of a cool rock band. And yes, women would crawl a field of sharp glass and pointy nails to sleep with him: some of them even let this sicko rape their kids.
Now women are always the first to jump down a man's throat for being looks oriented, but let's be honest, is there much difference in dating a guy just because of his social status? Obviously not.
- Physicality (again - not what you think!)
Physicality - the physical features of someone, or an intense focus on the physical body or the needs of the body
In the context of male physicality, this refers to the following: tall and muscular builds (especially the slender/toned variety of men - "the swimmer's physique"); low bodyfat %; facial symmetry and masculine facial features: angular bone structure (chiselled jawline, etc.), thick eye brows, deep-set eyes and good facial hair.
Hugh Jackman, pictured deadlifting above is the ultimate blend of masculine status in my view. He is a high ranking celebrity, he portrays masculine and heroic characters like Marvel's Wolverine, and he has a muscular physique that is not quite the swimmer's physique I refer to but not the overblown bodybuilders physique either. Men everywhere should aspire to be like Hugh Jackman.
Another prime example would be Buakaw Banchamek: arguably the best muay thai fighter in the world. As we can see with Banchamek, physicality has more than just an aesthetic appeal: it is a survival trait that will enable a male to protect his partner and offspring from hostile attacks and can also be passed along genetically to the offspring.
#2 What the Nice Guy Lacks - It Isn't Looks, and it Isn't Fakeness or Lack of Authenticity!
Niceness: the quality of being pleasing; agreeable; delightful, etc.
Kit Harrington (pictured above) plays a masculine role in Game of Thrones as a fledgling that works up the ranks to become Lord Commander of the Night's Watch: an army of castaways and convicts sent to protect the kingdom of westeros from its enemies. Nonetheless, he is a bastard, so this affects his social status, and he begins the series highly insecure about this fact. He does not lose his virginity until late in life and as an older man than his rival brother, Robb Stark. Regardless of his high ranking masculine status as a celebrity and the role he plays as Jon Snow, here is a view of the actor's personality and boyish good looks in a more effeminate light.
We can probably agree that it is neither looks nor a lack of authenticity that Jon Snow lacks. It is the absence of quintessentially male, conservative personality traits that stunts his success as a young man: traditionalist and patriarchal attributes. He was reluctant to sleep with a prostitute as were many of the late in life virgins and male celibates on this website even though he is an honourable man in so many ways. He is willing to give the wildlings shelter later in the series, with good pragmatic justification for doing so (he does not want to add numbers to the army of the dead).
Naturally, women would be attracted to a man like this because of his high status. But what about your typical nice guy, who has many of the same qualities as Jon Snow: looks, moral conviction, courage and liberally minded compassion? This guy is in theory everything that a woman wants, or should want: even biologically, we are talking about a man with solid reproductive capacity. A man that knows how to nurture his partner and offspring, and a man that knows how to fight the battle with nature and come out on top. Well, none of these necessarily mean anything if a man does not have social status, and by social status I don't just mean a war commander, high ranking business leader or politician.
Somebody with high social status could be that guy who used to sit on the back of the bus at school, and now he has 10,000 facebook friends and gets invited to parties every week. It could be somebody who knows someone who knows someone that's famous, or it could be somebody that has a cool job - like a DJ, a club promoter or muay thai fighter. Social connections is something women crave and it has nothing to do with "niceness". In fact, often it's aggressive and machiavellian traits that help you climb the social ladder in the first place.
Remember that girls: when self-identified "nice guys" come on here complaining that women only date arseholes, they don't necessarily mean that literally. What they mean is that a guy can have all the attractive qualities a woman is theoretically *supposed* to prefer, but it means absolutely nothing without social status. And sociopathic traits are often a very useful advantage for guys that want to accumulate social status. You don't have to act nasty either: sociopaths are very adept at hiding their true intentions. Do I think women should only date "nice guys"? No not necessarily. I'm saying the full package deal is the best: a man with attractive qualities, empathy, intelligence and so forth.
Why ignore him the kind of good, honourable and attractive man like Jon Snow when he's a young man and wait until he's Lord Commander? That's bad reproductive strategy because some other sharp sighted woman like Ygritte might be snatching up all the best quality men that you're blind to, because you're too busy paying attention to first impressions and what other people think. Sadly, a lot of western women really do make this exact mistake.
#3 Women Don't Believe in Feminism and their Dating Choices Prove It!
'Feminism' is the advocacy of women's rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes.
So what does this have to do with feminism? Well, It's impossible to avoid talking about feminism in any discussion about the nice guy: feminists believe that the self-proclaimed "nice guys" are misogynistic and that they must renounce their arguments to defend women. Sadly, they go about it in completely the wrong way: they focus on the so-called "nice guys" who are totally ungenuine and argue that the reason their not successful is because they have nothing else going for them (ah! the boring, ugly, fake nice guy stereotype!).
I know what you're thinking: "But...that's not feminism! Feminism just means equality of the sexes!"
Well actually, no. Equalitarianism is equality of the sexes. Historically, we have only needed movements like feminism or black rights, when a particular group was SEVERELY disadvantaged. That's not the case nowadays. Women have just as many rights as men, if not more so. In some areas, like child custody, divorce and being protected from working shitty, dangerous blue collar labour jobs like men do, women are actually advantaged. Don't even get me started on the dating inequalities and traditionalist mindset that benefits women rather than men. If we lived in the 1900s and women did not have the right to vote ... well ok, maybe then we would need a movement called FEMInism. However, ideologically, the emphasis needs to shift to EQUALitarianism. And yes, all third wave feminists are feminazis. I will excuse the second wave as well as the third wave, because it was necessary to have equal pay and grant women the same sexual freedoms as men. But again: WE DON'T LIVE IN THAT ERA. Equalitarianism is the future, not feminism.
Regardless of how you define equality, feminists are attacking the "nice guy" stereotype, because they understand the threat he poses to the perceived authenticity of female attraction. They KNOW that women do not always have the greatest selective strategy and therefore, rather than try and remedy this issue of hypergamy that breeds all kinds of social ills, misogyny and neglective parenthood, they would rather pretend that the problem is with that "nice guy" scapegoat. Well, I'm sorry feminists, but there's an increasing number of men that DON'T BUY IT, and you are having the adverse effect to what's desired because those men are becoming increasingly misogynistic and hateful. You are to blame for reactionary and sexist attitudes among men and the guys that think institutionalised monogamy is the solution.
#4 Conclusion
Feminists: please, please, please THINK about it next time you write a mytake about nice guys. It's not enough to write a disclaimer and say, "I'm not talking about genuinely nice guys". There's so many nuanced variables that you have not even BEGUN to consider. You don't understand the male perspective. You don't understand what the "nice guy's" beef is. Don't pretend like you have the solution. The problem is female hypergamy and I have no idea how to eradicate that, And to the traditionalists on here, no, monogamy is not the answer either. That's because hypergamy is the issue, not promiscuity.
Self-proclaimed "nice" guys. Stop pointing out how some nice guys are genuinely nice, because we all know that. Besides, that's not the problem here: the problem is that there's guys being overlooked who have genuinely attractive qualities and the potential to reach great heights, with charisma, egalitarianism, liberal compassion and other attributes already mentioned. The problem with feminists perpetuating "nice guy" myths is that they make all kinds of assumptions about why some guys get women and some guys don't. Usually these are false and they are designed to portray women in the best possible light, i.e. justify the reasons that women ignore low social status men with attractive qualities and virtuous morality but give all the attention in the world to high social status men with no morality and maybe even no physical or intellectual attractiveness.
I would leave this article with "no more nice guy takes!!!!" but that's unlikely to happen. Still, if people would kindly link this article into future "nice guy" takes, it might help alleviate the problem a little, as people begin to slowly digest it's content and truly understand it. *End shameless plug*.
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