Hugo Schwyzer is teaching a course on men and masculinity and brings up the “Nice Guy” syndrome (which is sometimes snarkily shortened to NiceGuy™.)
I found myself thinking about the much discussed “Nice Guy” phenomenon. “Nice Guys” often cloak their misogyny behind a facade of sensitivity. “Nice Guys” often talk garrulously about gender issues, and often establish their bona fides by bemoaning the way in which “other guys” treat women. About every ten minutes, a Nice Guy will drop an “But I’m not like other men!” into the conversation. The Nice Guy becomes less nice when he realizes that despite all he obviously has to offer, women are remarkably uninterested in dating or sleeping with him. Nice Guys often lose their temper when rejected, launching into embittered, “slut-bashing” diatribes about how foolish women are for choosing “bad boys” (or traditional men). Most Nice Guys alternate between stunningly low self-esteem and staggering hubris, secretly believing that their “sensitivity” makes them the answer to every maiden’s prayer. A great many feminist women have their share of “Nice Guy” stories, and if you spend much time in the feminist blogosphere, you’ll read your share of ‘em.
The emphasis in the quote is Schwyzer’s and not mine but I would have emphasized it as well because the same thing has been bugging me. I’ve been wrestling with an idea that the disconnect between what others see as entitlement and men see as worthiness, where “worthiness” is something men must earn, with the added fallacy that what is earned is therefore deserved. With the added, added absurdity that we then get royally ticked off and call women “gatekeepers” when they don’t agree with our non-negotiated-with-them-anyway self-assessments.
For instance if I were to slay a dragon it might make me feel pretty good, and might even gratify the damsel enormously, but doing so in no way “earns” me a kiss or anything else. However we sort of indoctrinate ourselves to set such terms of our quest for worthiness and then ask women to judge and reward our worthiness under those terms. The problem being that outside of very specific student/teacher, athlete/coach, and maybe employee/employer relationships worthiness and judgment aren’t relevant and are probably as inappropriate in a romantic relationship as attempting romance between student and teacher. (For this reason, by the way, slaying a dragon doesn’t even earn me a kiss if she agrees to kiss me in advance! It’s still a transaction, an exchange of totally different things: in this case some sort of favor for some sort of sex.)
It’s early days yet, and maybe it won’t pan out, but I’m pretty sure that “worthiness” is to men as the beauty myth is to women  dangled as the key to acceptance but past a very low threshold not really relevant on the other party’s part. (Would another makeover really get you the man of one’s dreams? If you don’t click is it really because you’re not physically beautiful enough? And is lack of a house or a fancier income really why one can’t ask a woman out yet. If she says no is it really because I need a newer BMW? No, no, no, and no.)
Anyway while I’m still digesting I’m pretty sure “worthiness” is ultimately inauthentic and therefore our efforts to seek or, for that matter, judge worthiness are a soul-sapping distraction that we as men would need to overcome even if it didn’t cause horrific resentment/entitlement issues between men and women.
Tags:
Submitted by 1688 (not verified) on Fri, 2007-10-19 16:34.
Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when one or both parties run out of goods...But, for the time being, here we all are, back in the moderate Aristotelian city of darning and the Eight-Fifteen, where Euclid's geometry and Newton's mechanics would account for our experience, and the kitchen table exists because I scrub it.(Auden)
[In strictly gender terms it's not so much that we practice mutual exploitation but that we practice it for different things: I'll exploit your mania for worthiness if you'll exploit mine for beauty is sort of like the old one foot in ice, one foot in the stove, on average you're *supposed* to be comfortable problems. But, manifestly, we're not. :-) Thanks, kermit. --fl]
Submitted by 1688 (not verified) on Sat, 2007-10-20 13:00.
Hi -- my fiancee linked me to your blog and as a "Nice Guy" who has also thought about this stuff a lot I wanted to put in my two cents.
Frankly, I don't see "worthiness" as being so directly about "earning" sex from women. I think of it as more indirect: in our culture men are taught that our value is based on what we have accomplished and can accomplish. Accomplishments themselves can raise our "value" in the eyes of some women, but the more powerful effect is that it (usually) raises our own self-esteem and self-confidence, making us more attractive. In this way society does reward people who follow it as the key to acceptance. However, these traditional routes to "value" are not a necessary part of being attractive if you have (or can fake) a lot of self-confidence anyway. And that's still only the start; as you pointed out, there's a lot more than "worthiness" factoring in to whether a relationship takes off once you've caught somebody's interest.
In some sense the situation is the same for women, except that women are taught that what gives them value is their physical appearance, their reputation, etc.
[I know what you mean, and you're not the only one who's brought up the point that "worthiness" isn't *all* about sex. But I'd just point out that when you said "In some sense the situation is the same for women..." you were saying the same thing I'm trying to say about that. It's not that uncommon for a man to tell his partner "gosh you look especially sexy in that..." whatever he feels she looks sexy in and she'll reply "oh don't mess up my..." makeup or hair or clothes or whatever it is her partner feels is especially sexy. Inside the system the "beauty myth" says all beauty effort is to attract a partner but outside the system statements to a partner like "don't muss that" suggests there's more to it than being appealing to one's partner. *Bound* to a belief about attractiveness yes, but obviously *beyond* its utility well. Ok, so same thing for men and "worthiness!" In the very specific (but pervasive) sense I mean, worthiness is *bound* to a belief about desirability but it obviously *beyond* its utility as well. Anyway I appreciate your dropping by, Gambit. I can't make sense of it without a lot of help and feedback. So thanks. --fl]
Submitted by 1688 (not verified) on Sat, 2007-10-20 15:59.
I'm not sure that the "worthiness myth" directly maps onto the "beauty myth" as such, because there clearly are beauty standards that are applied to men, just as there are to women. But I think that for men, those beauty standards are in a way a part of the "worthiness" equation, as though picking up enough "saver points" will allow a man to access the woman he wants (the whole "out of my league" thing - "I haven't got enough points to buy her yet).
I was going to make an observation along the lines of Gambit's, about the wider social position. It seems clear to me that the Patriarchal system's "script" for men is one of (duty)-effort-reward. "I do what is expected of me (perform my duty) therefore I deserve my reward". In wider social situations, the rewards come in various forms.
In opposite-sex relationships, though, there really is only one form of reward: "Getting the Girl" (and therefore, eventually, getting to fuck her). The Nice Guy (and the "New Man" thing that was around when I was growing up) is built around projecting an image of "I'm sensitive and caring", doing and saying the right things but still with the mind essentially on the end result - getting laid.
Other tactics are to become rich and successful, or to project a sense of strength (and therefore security), or to make oneself conform to the male beauty standard. There is also the "talented/clever man" tactic, which is I guess the complementary aspect to the "rich and successful" in completing Gambit's "accomplishment" model. But the ultimate goal in terms of opposite-sex relationships is still the same.
(in essence it could be argued that the "Nice Guy" is attempting to conform to a psychological "beauty standard" that is metaphorically only skin-deep)
[A couple of points. First, it's true that there are beauty standards for men and, of course, worthiness standards for women. I'd argue, though, that a lot of the crossover represents a breakdown or bleedover of the standard acceptability myths. But notice, to pick just two counterexamples, the outrage Kevin Federline seems to generate for "getting" Britney Spears despite otherwise having no visible means of worthiness other than possibly attractiveness. Similarly consider the outrage leveled against against Paris Hilton who, aside from fairly conventional attractiveness, is famous mainly for behavior that would go largely un-credited in a "worthiness-seeking" young men.
One other point: I'm not sure how to say it pursuasively but there really is more than one end-point of opposite-sex interaction. It's just not very visible inside the beauty/worthiness-industrial complex (a.k.a. patriarchy!) :-) Like I say I'm not sure how to get there yet but I think the key is to remember that coming out of a Victorian context Freud wasn't bad to say sex is always the ultimate goal, but he *was* wrong. We *make* it a goal, sure, but the only real obligation we have for sex (as Freud himself pointed out) is replacement-level reproduction, which could be handled approximately 2.2 times per human and, especially today, and especially as we approach economic and social gender parity, the parents theoretically don't even have to know each other! It's important to *patriarchy* that sex be the goal, but outside of patriarchy we'd still have it and probably at roughly the same rates we do now, but probably more as a social than a status-ranking activity. Thanks, SDE. --fl]
Submitted by 1688 (not verified) on Fri, 2007-10-19 19:14.
"I’m pretty sure that “worthiness†is to men as the beauty myth is to women..."
That's a very interesting equation.
"I’m pretty sure "worthiness" is ultimately inauthentic and therefore our efforts to seek or, for that matter, judge worthiness are a soul-sapping distraction..."
So for women, seeking beauty would be a soul-sapping distraction...
Perhaps both sexes need to realize that they already have what they're seeking? Beauty and worthiness, respectively...?
[It's totally ok to have beauty or worthiness. What's not so ok is to set yourself up (or to have society set it up for you) where *someone else* is supposed to be the judge but *you* won't believe them unless they agree with you. Thus you see guys not even bothering to ask out someone they think is "out of their league," and women expressing bewilderment when men don't notice they've lost that "last five pounds" ... or gained it back. I... what I'm trying to say though isn't that we don't *notice* these things in each other, it's that by and large we *don't care* enough to justify the effort. Thanks, Selena. --fl]