Lynn Gassiz-Sax of Noli Irritare Leones has the definitive takedown of the “women want bad boys” conceit.

If we women really crave, above all else, guys who are nothing but trouble for us, shouldn’t John Hinckley have totally nailed Jodie Foster? Aren’t scary violent guys with guns exactly the kind of jerks that, according to the Nice Guy™ narrative, we should be falling over ourselves to sleep with? Or could it, just possible, be that the reason lonely murderers weren’t getting laid to begin with was that they already had that violent streak in them, and when women met them, they encountered things that made the hair on the back of their neck stand on end.

She said it here.

And while a seeming counterfactual would be the numerous fan mail, including marriage offers, tendered to Ted Bundy after he confessed to being a serial killer, the fact that his admirers numbered at best in the low hundreds in a nation of hundreds of millions says only that for every Whacko Jacko there’s a Whacko Jill.

Lynn continues (emphasis mine)

In fact, though we’ve all had the experience of rejecting guys who were genuinely nice enough, but not for us (the guy, say, who totally disagrees with you about whether he wants kids, or who’s the most amiable fundie you could ever meet, but you’re Unitarian, or who otherwise just isn’t on the same page as you regarding something on which you really need to be on the same page), we’ve also all rejected guys who made the hair on the back of our neck stand on end. The guy who carries a knife, and one of his first questions is whether you’re connected with any guy bigger than him, who could beat him up. The drunk who volunteers, right off the bat, that he’s going to beat up any guy who pays you any attention. The guy who tells you a long story about how God sent messages to him in traffic lights to go and find his ex-girl friend, and then says, by the way, you look a lot like her, and you look rather romantic, right now, against that post. Oh, we may sometimes fall for the smooth talking guy with great pecs who will cheat on us in the end (just as men fall for the female equivalent), but we also have a basic sense of self-preservation that, when we listen to our gut, leads us to avoid the most scary dangerous men who want to go to bed with us.

That line about bigger boyfriends who could beat him up is classic by the way. And classic projection too. I’m not sure you could completely parse the notion in a thousand pages but some of the high points include:

• Internalizing the worthiness trap that says men must be “higher status” to “earn” or deserve “higher status” women. (When, in fact, women, being human beings just like everyone else, tend not to imagine themselves as prizes granted.)
• Tacitly acknowledging their acceptance of a particularly primitive patriarchal system wherein female partners are effectively spoils of war instead of, well, partners.

• Weirdest of all, an abiding insecure certainty that their place in the system is uncertain and, especially, that they’re unlikely to succeed in it. (This is similar to the assumption I think drives a lot of men’s preference for virginity or inexperience which is that they won’t compare favorably to any of the woman’s previous partners.)

But the big thing that’s implied is that the NiceGuy™ strategy is really a secondary strategy in an “alpha male” paradigm… that if the NiceGuy™ was only bigger, only able to beat up other men, and maybe better with a knife (a knife?!?!) then instead of all the smarmy “Pickup Artist” tactics he could just grab you by the hair and drag you out and nobody better try and stop him.

There’s also the… interesting assumption that all women want big, rich, violent partners. There’s also the assumption that all women’s attraction is transactional — that if you don’t “lock her in” some how she’ll kite off with anyone bigger, richer and/or more violent than her current partner.

There’s also the equally interesting tangle of assumptions that — assuming women are autonomous anyway — their attractiveness quotient is linked to their attraction to big, rich, and violent men such that the more beautiful the woman the bigger, richer, and more violent her partner is likely to be. Or, assuming women aren’t autonomous, that the more physically attractive they are they’ll automatically fall prey to end up in relationships with those selfsame bigger, richer, or more violent men.

What’s most disturbing, of course, is that none of this seems to be particularly true about women. Yes, some women sent Ted Bundy love letters just like some men are Ted Bundys or John Hinkley Juniors. But just as it would be… rash to assume all men are or want to be closet Ted Bundys or John Hinkley Juniors, so it would be rash to assume all women have or would like to send them love letters.