Nice Guys™

While I have known the sentiment “nice guys won’t save us” to be true, I was recently reminded of why it is.

As I listened to this conversation happening around me, I remembered the Marilyn Frye quote:

“To say that straight men are heterosexual is only to say that they engage in sex (fucking exclusively with the other sex, i.e., women). All or almost all of that which pertains to love, most straight men reserve exclusively for other men. The people whom they admire, respect, adore, revere, honor, whom they imitate, idolize, and form profound attachments to, whom they are willing to teach and from whom they are willing to learn, and whose respect, admiration, recognition, honor, reverence and love they desire… those are, overwhelmingly, other men. In their relations with women, what passes for respect is kindness, generosity or paternalism; what passes for honor is removal to the pedestal. From women they want devotion, service and sex. Heterosexual male culture is homoerotic; it is man-loving.”

Marilyn Frye, The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory

Yes, I have read the entire essay and I think it is very relevant to what I am talking about.

In the same essay she (Marilyn Frye) talks about male solidarity in women-hating as it sets women apart and below men. And if you think about it and as was happening in this conversation, men will not call their misogynistic and rape-y friends out because they want to maintain that solidarity with their fellow men. Do men like women outside of the utility they get from them?

And since maleness and masculinity as depicted in the world is something that men believe they grant to other men (and therefore can snatch it at any given time) – the so called nice guys tow the line. This is why you’ll hear them say “he is that way” or “don’t mind him he talks like that” and other phrases that puts burden of action on women. There is that approval men seek from other men that goes to show the rest of us that there is really no point in that lauding of nice guys ™️. Like, what is the point? I don’t get it.

I often think about something I read about the fact that it doesn’t benefit nice guys to contradict misogynistic men even though they do not agree with them or share the same values. And why is that? Is it because they also as well don’t see anyone else as human except men?

Anyway, these videos are interesting.