A note for the nice guys

I'm going to do for you what no one ever did for George Sondini, not the women who said he was "nice, but...." and not the PUA that he went to to find out how to pick up young women. I'm going to tell it straight up and hopefully you'll get a clue. If you pay attention, you'll be happier, and maybe one less misogynistic asswipe will think it's his duty to kill bitches and hoes.

1) When we say "you're such a nice guy" we are trying to let you down easy. Sometimes it's because we actually care, but usually it's because we think you might be a bit of a sociopathic nutbag and we don't want to push you over the edge.

2) Stop thinking that "nice guy" equals nice. It doesn't. It means we can sense the desperation coupled with woman-hate coming off you. You reek of it, like a sick animal. Try being a good guy instead. Good guys are polite, sweet, thoughtful, well groomed, etc, AND don't think they deserve to get laid simply because they don't beat women. Good guys are the kind of guys you can trust never to turn into stalkers or date rapists. They can handle rejection. They don't hate all women just because a cheerleader in high school never gave them the time of day.

3) Because it's sooooo important- lemme reiterate: Good guys can handle rejection. They don't spend weeks mooning over some woman who they are too scared to actually ask out. They don't build women up in their minds as the end all be all of their existence because they lack the courage to ask a simple question "do you wanna go out sometime?". They can take a "no", or a "I've got a boyfriend", or a "I'm not really dating right now" and roll with it. Rejection hurts and at some point everyone gets rejected, but they move on and find someone who does want to go out with them. If you don't have the mental stability to handle a "no" or twelve, then you have no business dating anyone. Get to a shrink's couch before you hurt someone.

4) No one deserves sex. You won't die without it. But if think you deserve sex, if you treat sex as an entitlement rather than as a way for 2 people to make themselves and each other feel good, then you are way less likely to ever have sex. Sex is not a hard won prize found at the bottom of a cereal box. You don't get sex just because you wore the right shoes or went to the gym or didn't force yourself on someone or said the magic words that secretly unlock a girl's panties. There are no secret words like that.

5)Pick up artists are a sham. Save your money. Their tricks are tired, cliched, and any woman who isn't pass-out-drunk sees through their crap. You wanna try handing out a "neg", then you better be prepared for a woman to roll her eyes at you and then gossip with her friends about the "douchebag who thinks Mystery is the shit". There is really only one recipe for sex- take 2 people, who are both attracted to each other AND want to have sex with each other, add condoms and privacy. That's it. It's pretty simple.

6) There isn't someone for everyone, but there are more people out there that have potential than you think. Are you a middle aged man? Are you trying to date 20 somethings? Are you either George Clooney or Bill Gates? No. Then those 20 somethings are going to steer clear of you. Take a good, objective look at yourself. Are you short? Fat? Skinny? Bald? Poor? Old? These are not insurmountable problems. But just like you want the hotties to give you a chance despite your imperfections, you maybe wanna give more women a chance than just the cheerleader types who ignored you in high school. Besides, men who find a broader spectrum of women attractive have more sex, not less. And don't you want to have more sex?

7) Just because one (or 12 or 20) women treated you badly does not mean all women are money grubbing whores. Remember how I said we can smell the woman-hate coming off you. That's where it comes from. Look, I've had some dudes do some criminally horrible shit to me, like life threateningly awful. But I don't hate all men. I give each dude the chance to show me who he is, and I've never made the same mistake twice when it comes to dating. You need to do the same with women. If you find that the same thing keeps happening to you with different women, then the problem is you and not all women. You are attracted to the kind of women who will treat you badly, and you need to figure out why.

8) No one is attracted to a door mat, but this doesn't mean that you should be an asshole instead. If you like a woman, ask her out. Send an email or call her. ONCE. Not 17 times just to make sure she got your other messages. If she's into you, she'll reply. If she's not, she'll give you some kind of "thanks but no thanks" or she won't reply at all. If she was on the fence and you just showed some crazy stalking behavior with the 17 messages, you've just blown it. Confidence means being able to take the risk that you'll be rejected, and being able to be rejected with grace. Assholes are just the flip side of the nice guy- they are what happens when nice guys get rejected. And they don't get laid either.

9)Stop complaining that "women only like assholes". Perhaps all the women you like only date assholes (which says something about who you are attracted too) or perhaps your definition of asshole is wrong. Those guys you think are assholes are probably confident, non-stalkers with some charm and a decided lack of woman-hate.

10) Be interesting just because interesting is fun. Men who turn themselves inside out trying to make themselves attractive to women are boring and creepy, just like women who are completely focused on finding a husband are boring and creepy. Read a book, travel, find music you love or play in nature if that's your thing. Do things that you find enjoyable. Be passionate about something other than getting laid and learn to talk about it. Talking is wayyyyyyyyyy more important than what kind of car you drive or how big your paycheck is or whether or not you have a full head of hair.

And if you are not sure if you are a nice guy, I'd suggest checking this out.

So much better than dealing with rape apologists

There is a Fraggle Rock movie in the works and I am so happy about it I just might pee myself from joy.


So to get my mind off douchebags who think rape is genetic- I'm gonna have to sing along to this happy little video

Men's worst fear

is that women will laugh at them.

Women's worst fear is that men will kill them.

Think about that while the stories about murderous douchebag George Sodini (Sorry OD- links to Jezebel) come out. Three women are dead because he couldn't get laid. And the MRA wankers want to though him a fucking parade. (Not a link to Jezebel).

Let's get one thing straight- no one deserves sex. No one. Not even George Clooney deserves to get laid. Sex is not a shiny prize you win at the end of a battle. It's not a reward for good behavior. It's not something women owe to men who have enough human decency not to rape them or beat them.

But if there is one thing that Sodini did, it's that he proved that Nice Guys(TM) really aren't nice. Women stay away from them because they can sense the asshole hiding right under the surface. And every single women I know has had a problem with a guy like Sodini at some point. It's one of the things that the internet has made both better and worse. Now at least we can deal with the asswipes from a distance, long before they get our phone numbers or addresses. But we still end up with an inbox full of downward spiraling crazy rants.

Sodini is just the end product of rape culture. He was a man who thought that sex was owed to him, but wasn't willing to cross the line to actual rapist to get it. Instead he choose murder. In a post feminist society, Sodini might have been able to recognize that his desperate need and douchebaggery were the reasons he wasn't getting laid, as quite a few former Nice Guys have. But instead he blamed the problem on us bitches.

And that got women killed. That is why our worst fear is that you'll kill us. That's why catcalls are frightening and not flattering. That is why it's hard to give a guy we don't know well a flat out "no". We never know when our saying no will get us hurt.

Puts that whole fear of rejection/ being laughed at thing in perspective, doesn't it.

Ughhhhh

New roommate likes to play whiny white boy rock VERY loudly in his room.

I have a feeling this is not going to end well.

Your bipartisan government in (in)action

lolsob

Question?

Imagine you are reading a novel. The novel is pretty good, you're into it, and before you know it you're at page 152.

Only to discover that there are 35 pages missing.

But the novel is good enough that you decide to press on and see if you are confused or lost by skipping ahead to page 187.

By page 190 you are caught up on everything you might have missed.

Does the fact that 35 pages are missing in the middle of a good book mean that even good books are stuffed with too much filler? And is this why I can't even finish writing a short story? I hate filler. I hate reading filler. Putting sentences into a piece just to fill it out pisses me off.

And I like reading, so it's not a problem of intellectual laziness. It does seem that a lot of writers (most even) spend excessive amounts of time crafting perfect, intricate, and eye-glossingly long descriptions of things just to fill in a page, when one well crafted sentence would work just as well to give the reader the image they are seeking.

Middle class values don't solve poverty

There's this failed liberal idea in this country that the reason poor people are poor is because they don't possess the same values as everyone else (especially poor people of color). If I had a dollar for every time someone told me that they got where they are by studying while their black schoolmates were off playing basketball, I could buy a round of drinks. If I had a buck for every time I've heard "work smarter- not harder" as a justification for keeping the minimum wage low, I could put a down payment on a house.

The Kid just finished a pretty decent summer program at a very swanky local private school. This program is for poor, mostly minority inner city kids. The Kid loved it. He learned crew and went camping and it seems to have done his self esteem some good. But this private school has a history of not letting in many poor minority kids into their regular school program, and there's been issues with them treating their regular minority students in a not great way. (The summer program is somehow immune to this, I think because it is the school's way of making themselves feel less liberal guilt). As I watched the graduation ceremony tonight, I was impressed with the kids and the counselors and the teachers. But I was also thinking that every one of these kids deserves the same kind of education during the regular school year, but will never get because of who they were born to.

But back to values, which is one of the things that sticks in my craw. Part of the problem with Seattle Public schools is that they subscribe to the teach the poor how to act middle class and they won't be poor anymore dogma. The figure that if they throw the "gifted" kids into the worst inner city schools then the smarts will wear off. The swanky private school does kinda the same thing (throw them into a swanky environment) at least during summers. The private school actually succeeds in spite of this because they have very small class sizes (18 students, 1 teacher and two assistants) so the students get a lot of attention and their teachers really get to know them. But both the public and private school still ghetto-ize these kids. In the public school the "gifted" kids are kept separate (but equal-snark) from the riff raff of the poor with different classes and schedules. The private school does it by running it's program when none of the regular students are there.

Then there's the whole Section 8 voucher program (which I used to be a part of until I got too tired of fighting with Seattle Housing Authority and lost my voucher during the whole epic home loss of last summer). The idea behind vouchers is that it gives poor people the ability to compete for market rate housing they otherwise could not afford. The reality is that the voucher amounts don't really match up to the market and the utility costs are killer (you all remember the electricity being cut off in January, and March, and June). But the voucher program is yet another where the idea is to get poor people near wealthier people so that some of those middle class values of work, and community, and blah blah blah rub off.

And then there's the whole Work First bullshit. Get poor welfare moms to spend 40 hours a week sitting in the welfare office learning how to write a resume in order to qualify for TANF money (for those keeping count- in WA state that equals about $2.55 per hour for a family of 2). Teaching REAL middle class values would include allowing higher education (not just job training) to count for those 40 hours a week. Instead we get the rejects from social worker school forcing us to take stupid "what job suits you best" tests and long lectures about appropriate work attire. What we don't get is appropriate work attire or the education to actually work in one of the jobs that suit us best.

Are you getting the theme yet?

All of these programs have the same thing in common.

They spend a lot of time using the idea of teaching values in order to minimize the actual resources they have to spend. Public schools can point to the high test scores of their AP students while corralling poor kids into problem classes. The swanky school spends the resources, but only for 6 weeks out of the summer and not during the school year. Section 8 touts lower crime rates while creating more hunger and sacrifice. And Welfare gets people to work, eventually, but only in minimum wage jobs that aren't enough to raise a family on.

Here's the thing. Us poor people, we know the value of work and education and safe housing. We know how important school is, but we can't be there with our kids to make sure they are actually being taught (and try being a poor black single mother and fighting a public school- do you know how fast they will call child protective services to have your kid taken from you? The only reason I get away with it is cause I speak with educated (read white-middle class) diction and I'm white). Section 8 is supposed to work by making sure poor people pay no more than 30% of their income for total housing costs, but they routinely get around that rule (through utilities) so that people pay 70 percent.

What solves poverty is simple. Money. Money makes you not poor. Even Richard Nixon got that, and any economist worth their salt will tell you the best solution to poverty is to give people money. We don't need to be lectured to. We don't need to be taught the basics like work good, lazy bad. We got that. We need resources. We need housing and food and jobs that pay a living wage and healthcare and real educations for our kids and for ourselves. We are not afraid of hard work. Shit, most of us have worked horribly hard physical labor whether it's in agriculture or food service or manufacturing. We know our kids need to read and write and do math, but for most low income parents not having a real education means they can't help their kids get one either.

Value training for the poor is basically abstinence education. It's a whole lot of time spent dodging reality rather than spending the cash to solve the actual problem.

Not to mention it's also condescending, often racist, and with the whole feminization of poverty problem- decidedly sexist.