Ever since SBG wrote about “How I Met Your Mother” recently, I’ve been thinking about this character I see on screen everywhere. He’s mean to women. The women know they’re being mistreated. And yet they can’t get enough of being used and abused by him.
He doesn’t exist.
Let’s just dispel that myth right away. As presented in TV and film, he doesn’t correlate to anyone in reality. He’s actually a fantasy concocted most likely by male screenwriters who have issues with women.
You know you want him, oh, yes.
Here’s how it probably works: a heterosexual male screenwriter finds he cannot just go out to bars and “pick up chicks.” He notices other guys can. He is jealous of those guys. He needs to rationalize in his head how the women really should be putting out for him and not the other guy. He concocts (unconsciously, perhaps) the delusion that he is a super nice guy, and the guy who can get women into bed is a jerk, and there’s something wrong with those women that they prefer a jerk to a nice guy. Bitches! I know – I’ll write this into my screenplays and teach ‘em good.
That’s probably how it started. Now it’s been handed down from hack to hack for so long, even female writers don’t realize it’s based on a male fantasy. Now people really believe there are women out there who realize “I am being treated like garbage” and decide “I like it – I want me some more of that, oh, yes.”
Those women don’t exist either.
In reality, women sometimes go to bed casually with men they find attractive or entertaining. Women do not like being treated like crap, but they will even sleep with a sexist pig if they haven’t known him long enough to know he’s a sexist pig or don’t care at the moment. They may even ignore some icky traits in order to have a sexual adventure. The main points here are:
- Most of the men who “score” at bars are at least as kind and decent as the guys who don’t. In addition to being decent, they’re also attractive in some way – good-looking, funny, interesting, etc.
- Those men who are jerks but can “score” at bars are hiding their jerk nature in order to appeal to women. Jerks, like people who rob liquor stores and kids who bully other kids, know how to hide their true nature from people who would deprive them of something if they knew better. That’s why whenever a serial killer is caught, all his neighbors are all like, “Wow, he was always so nice, went to church, smelled good.”
- If a woman sees that a man is a jerk but decides to go to bed with him anyway because he’s just so cute or she’s just that bored or whatever, this is a case of her deciding how she wants to spend her time, not of him tricking the naive flower (who couldn’t possibly want casual sex, being female).
The thing about this writing trope is that it puts the men exclusively in the position of power. It depicts women as helpless things that need the constancy of relationships but sometimes get tricked into casual sex. It assumes women who have their own reasons for having casual sex are damaged goods. It assumes men are by nature sex seekers and women are by nature sex awarders, thereby stripping women of any power in the scenario… other than the power to award sex to the dull and/or obnoxious who are being framed as the “right” choice.
There’s another interesting shade to the evolution of the Sexist Jerk Who Scores character: he serves as a punishment and warning to all those great-looking girls who turn down dull, boring and ugly guys in favor of attractive guys. It warns women that sexy men are wolves in sheep’s clothing, so women should settle for the sheep right off the bat. It reminds women that men are allowed to be incredibly shallow about women’s looks and personality traits, but if we start to think like that, we’ll be punished.
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Too many typos. I apologise.
Saiyne(Quote) (Reply)
Saiyne, I didn’t realize you were talking gaming, LOL! I get it now.
I probably still wouldn’t enjoy roleplaying a misogynistic male because I spent the first 20+ years of my life being quite the reverse sexist pig. Growing up in the South, white men were a subspecies, as far as I could tell. They were all weak, whiny, but obsessed with making everyone think they were butch. And I loathed women who dated them because how could you respect something that would date a little fool who fell apart at the first hint of adversity and defined “getting my shit together” as beating the crap out of the nearest woman, queer person or black person?
Then, as soon as humanly possible, I moved out of the South and found… well, white men in places like L.A. aren’t a whole lot better. But I began to understand that the way the culture privileges them, they don’t generally get challenges to overcome that I can respect. Oh, they think climbing to the top of the corporate heap is something I ought to respect, but I saw them start off from a position 10 rungs above me on the ladder, so I’m not that impressed. And so on.
At which point I became happily misanthropic to all!
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
My misogynistic males are always on the “evil side” anyway. And they eventually have something really bad happen to them, like DEATH!!! XD Hehe.
Saiyne(Quote) (Reply)
The “Nice Guy” is all too frequently a passive aggressive jerk with no social skills who spits out “B*tch!” as soon as he’s rejected.
You will also note that the only women he approaches most frequently are the tropes in BC’s earlier post that possess 75+ percent of the traits on her fembot list.
Straight hair is, among American men, currently preferable. So is blonde hair.
Other women don’t really even exist in his world as female. The “Nice Guy” will walk right by them — sometimes walking right into them — without seeing them.
I do believe the tropes have gotten worse recently because the current Administration’s attitude, in all things, has filtered from the top down into the general majority culture, in terms of what racist and sexist sensibilities are permitted public expression without censure .
(Anyone remember the Blackwater assaults?)
It’s also been exacerbated by economic pressure (“them wimminz/them immigrantz/them culluds are takin MY JOBZ! They must be put back in their place!”).
When a fish begins to stink, it usually starts at the head.
littlem(Quote) (Reply)
The argument from HBI that once a man (or anyone I presume) hits 16, their personality is fixed … No.
Interesting post, BetaCandy
Fraser(Quote) (Reply)
Considering that the human brain still isn’t fully developed at 16, I second that no.
I’ve been running into various Nice Guy things recently and I’ve noticed that earlier comments regarding their definition of “women” are very true. When the Nice Guy talks about women, what he means are “women that I want to have sex with.” Anyone else is even less of a nonentity.
Patrick(Quote) (Reply)
You know, I think they’re confused. I believe what psychiatrists call “personality” IS indeed fixed by around 16, but that’s not what we mean when we talk generally about personality. Psychiatrists are talking about really core developmental stuff, really basic identity – the sort of stuff most of us aren’t even aware of having, but people with serious psychiatric disorders lack (which causes them to behave as they do).
I can see that the core of who I am has never changed since 16, maybe earlier, but the outer Me – how I live, what I do, the opinions and beliefs I hold – that’s all changed in ways I never imagined. You know what I mean? There’s something fundamental that gets set in stone, but only for people with serious psychiatric issues is change not possible. So to say, for example, someone who can rape or stalk or hit people at 30 might not be able to change… yeah, that’s true, and it’s something people need to be informed about. But to say someone who wastes time on video games at 30 might not be spending his time very differently at 40 would be wrong.
Hope that makes sense.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
In my studies of developmental psychology they state that it isn’t until a person is about 30 that our personality really becomes fixed. As for 16 as a marker of personality development, depending on the person, it may be fixed at that age but it might also take years later for a person to really develop their core beliefs or the elements that make up personality. Many teenagers and young adults are still in a developmental stage where they are forming their own opinions and beliefs which is not necessarily personality, but may influence it. The interesting thing about development of the brain is that it is different for everyone, but they can pinpoint certain markers that most people will hit at some point in their lives.
Daomadan(Quote) (Reply)
I think we may still be talking about two different things. I’ll be more specific.
My father has Narcissistic Personality Disorder. His diagnosing psychiatrist explained that such disorders can’t be treated. They can be prevented (somewhat) if a patient is reached before the age of 20, when the disordered part of the personality is still a bit flexible. After that, they can’t be reached deeply enough to fix a problem of that magnitude because the rigidity of the disordered personality is part of its defense mechanism. It can’t tolerate intrusions from reality like the rest of us – what it can’t handle, it ignores. What it can’t ignore, it destroys. This makes perfect sense to it, and it can’t understand why you’re not happy when it does its best to destroy you – you were, after all, defective in trying to make it see reason. And so on.
Therefore, if a woman is learning about an emotionally abusive man in her life, she may come across information that says he was set in stone long before she met him. This is a good message for women and kids of men like that – it lets you know you can stop wasting time and energy trying to help your abuser stop abusing you and get on with your life. It lets you know he’s not like other rude or selfish people she’s met who changed when they realized the error of his ways; he is incapable of realizing error because his sense of self is so fragile.
I’m speculating that HBI has come across that info and extrapolated it to normal personality development, hence the confusion. A man who can rip people apart without guilt in his 20s is not likely to grow a conscience about it later. But a man who wastes time at 25 may be a super-busy dynamo at 50. Because there’s nothing substantially different between a personality that wastes time and one that doesn’t – could simply be a lack of motivation. But there is something substantially different about someone who can destroy lives without a second thought.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
There’s also the fact that misogyny isn’t like a fascination with sports, say (I refuse to accept that “tennis” is a more worthwhile occupation, intrinsically, than “videogames”) and the attitude that Woman qua Woman is ontologically inferior to, and by the order of things in the natural world, subject to and properly so to the male of the species, now and forever, is one that is inculcated in many boys by each other on the playground, and by their fathers both overtly and as demonstrated by their speech about and actions towards womn, by the time they’re six and seven.
Unless their parents make a conscious effort to raise them against the prevailing culture, and to talk about it and explain why it’s important to reject the othering , demeaning, and objectification of women, that’s the way they end up, feeling entitled to it the way they’re entitled to breathe the air, or buy a dog and treat it however they wish – and thus entitled to troll and harrass and threaten women who even dare to object to being objectified, othered, and demeaned. Or beat them up, or worse, if they object in person (or even if they don’t object, but just aren’t able to conform to their impossible expectations for the other half of the human race.
–I don’t say it’s impossible for sexist men to redeem themselves, because there are a number of posters who claim to have been former Kotaku types who have seen the light and rejected the phallic Idol of Brittle Masculinity – but it’s darn hard, and if you meet a guy who is a sexist jerk at 16, odds are good that he will be one still at 30 – though he may have learned how to put a smoother surface of Nice Guy(TM) on in public, at least.
bellatrys(Quote) (Reply)
Further thoughts, given my annoyance at the coding of “video games” and by extension all other fannish things as inherently male, as well as trivial, though I was only a casual gamer, partly because I wasn’t so good at it, which was partly because I had to give the majority of computer time to my brothers or take care of the rest of the family, being The Big Sister and I *should* be spending all my free time doing housework and being cheerful and noble about it, or else I was a defective unwomanly selfish wretch.
The problem isn’t Video Games, or even time spent playing them: one of the longest-together couples I know are hardcore WoW players, and this is how they maintained contact daily when work kept them hundreds of miles apart. “The family that slays together, stays together” I joked to them, once.
The problem is the common masculine attitude that “Whatever I am doing is more important than anything any woman might be doing” , not “video games” per se. In my own family, it was usually whatever books or scholarly journals my father might be reading, vs whatever “trivial” interests my mother or us children wanted to do or talk about, frex. But also his right to the computer game playing time trumped ours, his right to the TV trumped ours, whatever he wanted to do (or not do) trumped everyone else’s desires, always, because “I am the man and I bought all this stuff and you live here at my sufferance, peons” – and then he wonders why we moved out as quick as we could and hate coming home even for holidays…but this is part of the whole Male Entitlement Syndrome, the patriarchal attitude that I am The Man, I Make The Money, So I Own You (and gods forbid you go out and get a job, woman, that’s against Nature and will shame me before my fellow human beings, ie the men I work with.)
The excluding of “trivial” female (equated with family/childish) interests for such lofty goals as staying late at work, reading serious academic matter, and schmoozing with one’s male colleagues in the coffee shop are *every bit* as pernicious as “OMG loser playing video games!” – being married to a guy who’d rather be married to his work and spend fun time with the old boys’ club on or off the job, doing serious manly things like working on his golf score or talking about office gossip around the water cooler is *not* an improvement over being with someone who thinks his right to the joystick trumps yours because he has the phallus and you don’t.
If a guy has this attitude impressed into his mind by the time he’s in high school, as so many do – then it’s going to be very hard to shake it out thereafter. Where, after all, do all these “Nice Guys” and Kotaku hordes – many of whom ARE up-and-coming professionals, like the law school creeps who hassled Jill at Feministe – keep coming from?
No amount of added age (growing like a tree) is going to fix this, without strong external correctives leading to a rejection of fundamental attitudes and the dominant culture. But they are bound and determined to NOT be enlightened of this privileged mindset at any cost, but to shout down anyone who tries to remove it, and then to whine endlessly about how come they can’t get laid…’cause all those heartless bitches out there don’t appreciate their wonderfulness, of course!
bellatrys(Quote) (Reply)
It occurs to me, rereading this, that there may be one other reason we see this kind of character so much: The writing sucks.
Not in the sense that the Misogynist Who Gets Girls is a bad character, but that writers may–at least in some cases–think they’re creating a charming rogue and they’re wrong (or the actor can’t play a rogue, I’ve seen that too).
In Olivia Goldsmith’s novel Bad Boys, for instance, I think the heroine’s boyfriend is intended to be irresponsible-but-sexy-and-charming which is why she stays in a lousy relationship. The way it’s written, he’s a good looking jerk. So maybe she was doing the misogynist route, but maybe Goldsmith wasn’t a good enough writer to make him charming enough.
I’ve seen the same thing in nonsexual contexts, characters who are so incredibly charismatic and charming that doors magically open for them, rules are waived–but whatever the author had in their head, the character is a dull stick of wood on the page.
Fraser(Quote) (Reply)
I’ve been watching Tripping the Rift (I have bad taste in TV) and have been thinking about this a lot. In case you haven’t seen the show, the premise is that Chode is a “lovable jerk” who captains a crew of misfits. Six is his sexbot, and is often the main voice of reason in the show. She also looks profoundly unhappy every time Chode acts like a jerk, and it’s REALLY DEPRESSING, since I think you’re supposed to interpret her sadness as resignation/love instead of depression.
Maria V.(Quote) (Reply)
I’ve actually lost all faith in the conventional idea of what makes an attractive man. It makes no sense how, while you always hear men talking about how they don’t know what women want, we’re simulataneously being told what we want by men. Images of the ideal man all around us are created by and for men. Things that would impress a woman also have to be things that would impress a man (power, courage, personality, etc.). Even penis size, supposed to be something valued by women, is just a way of proving your virility, not a sexually attractive trait. I don’t know any women among my social circle who are overly concerned about the size of a man’s penis.
I’ve met women who seem to have no idea of the ideal man in mind beyond what men think is ideal for themselves. It’s only natural that good looks and anything that could possibly lead to objectification would be absent from these ideals. Although women who’ve internalized male insecurities call “pretty” men wimps and clowns, I believe a lot of women quite like seeing men pretty and made up, or seeing them vulnerable, or even engaging in flamboyant (an thus impractical) behaviour. An eroticized man is made a target of the female gaze, and doesn’t hold interest for the straight man, a double minus as far as straight men are concerned, so he just doesn’t exist in our media (except as comic relief or a pathetic villain). I’ve finally come to realize why I was so frustrated when I was a kid that all these men on TV with women swooning all over them, who were supposed to get us girls all hot and bothered, just had no erotic appeal. It’s sad to think women who aren’t in touch with their desires can only know this “ideal” man.
Sorry, it might have gone a bit off-topic.
Karakuri(Quote) (Reply)
By good looks, I mean something that goes beyond just rugged handsomeness, which is safe as it takes no effort and doesn’t make a man more “vulnerable”.
Karakuri(Quote) (Reply)
Sorry for spamming the thread, but I’d like to clarify: it’s a triple minus, because such a man is also being impractical, a sin for any walking the path of “manhood”.
Karakuri(Quote) (Reply)
I dated a “nice guy” once. He turned out to be an awful, abusive man.
But, this is why I’m writing:
Sylvie(Quote) (Reply)
Hi Sylvie!
As far as I know, that’s not something that comes up a lot in Hathor posts. I try to include kink blogs dealing with feminism in our Links of Great Interest (here’s an example of a recent one: http://thehathorlegacy.com/links-of-great-interest-1110/). I also talk a little about some of the attitudes in Gor here: http://thehathorlegacy.com/witness-of-gor-john-norman/.
I personally wouldn’t judge a sub for submitting… but if s/he tried to front that there is something radical about a female body submitting to a male body, or that there’s an essentially feminine quality to submitting, or whatever, I’d have a problem. I’d also have a problem with a kinkster blaming DV laws or feminists for ruining sex/kinkdom, or dismissing feminists as all being anti-sex prudes.
Sorry to derail your post Jen! :p
Maria(Quote) (Reply)
Karakuri says:
October 9, 2009 at 1:52 am
“Images of the ideal man all around us are created by and for men. Things that would impress a woman also have to be things that would impress a man”
Sean Connery is a perfect embodiment of this. Aside from the actresses in his movies, who are paid very handsomely to act like they dig him, I’ve never heard any woman IRL express any sort of sexual attraction to Sean Connery. Ever. Not even older women. The closest I’ve seen is women reiterating the CW that women dig Sean Connery, but that they personally can take him or leave him and that they don’t actually know any women who are all that into him.
I have heard lots and lots of guys say that women are totally hot for Sean Connery, like it’s an unassailable fact.
Also, the knight in shining armor or prince on a white steed, galloping through a meadow or along a beach. Total male fantasy. Has nothing to do with actual women’s actual sexuality.
It just goes to show most men – and really society at large – get their ideas about women from other men. It’s a big part of why we continue to baffle them. “You’re still mad at me? But I bought you jewelry!”
snobographer(Quote) (Reply)
My mother digs him. (And I’ve heard other Bond fans of her generation swoon over him.)
I, on the other hand, am a Pierce Brosnan girl.
I’ve heard some interesting things about how Connery treats women, and I’ve observed (from my shameful readings of Hello! and other equally vapid media) the lovely way Pierce treats his wife Kelly.
I think there’s something significant in that, even if I can’t quite put the finger on it.
littlem(Quote) (Reply)
I don’t know at all about the way Connery or Brosnan treats women, so I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not in the “lovely” department. (I never seem to find articles on them in the trash mags I read…either that, or I’m just not paying enough attention!
)
Casey(Quote) (Reply)
From Wikipedia’s entry on Connery:
So, you know, even if he didn’t hit Cilento, his thinking on the topic reeks. Unless he went on to state that women are also entitled to hit their male partners if the male partners are getting on their nerves with their silly male opinions and habits and such, and the publications edited that part out. Somehow, I doubt.
There have never been allegations of mistreatment by Pierce Brosnan of either of his wives. In fact, by all accounts (including film people I knew who worked with him directly), he was deeply devoted to his first wife throughout their marriage. She eventually died of ovarian cancer, and apparently he rearranged his whole life around supporting her through her illness. When she died, he struggled with his grieving process, as you’d expect from someone deeply in love.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Hi, Casey –
I got this message three times in email but it wasn’t showing up here.
As for Brosnan, I wasn’t being sarcastic. He treats his wife, also mom of both his kids IINM, with loving solicitation. There’s a lot of fan sniping because she does things like appear in a bikini in public even though she’s not size 0, so you get all this woman-on-woman hate about how James Bond “should” be with someone “more attractive” … and the two of them just blithely ignore it, which has always pleased me.
In contrast, a sharp one, I think, to some of the things JK has dug up for you on Mr. Connery.
littlem(Quote) (Reply)
Oh, I think I remember some Best/Worst Bikini Bods show on E! where they were talking all kinds of shit about Brosnan’s wife being “fat” or something.
Casey(Quote) (Reply)
That thing about Sean Connery…WOW.
It’s a surprising contrast between these two James Bonds, though.
And what the fuck does “bloody-minded” mean? That she’s on the rag?
Casey(Quote) (Reply)
It’s British slang for stubborn or just generally difficult to get along with.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Good to know. I always thought it meant having violent inclinations.
Attackfish(Quote) (Reply)
I have seen Sean Connery when he was younger and he was handsome. Sad to find out he is a gross beater…
I think the men who are portrayed as being the mysoginists who pick up chicks are often kind of pretty blond men (like Barney from How I met your Mother or Joffrey Lannister from AGOT when Sansa liked him). Now Barney and whichever actor plays Joffrey (James Gleeson I think) would be pretty girls and no doubt appealing to men if they were women. But that pretty blond look is a big sexual zero for me.
Men who are incredibly sexy include, most Bollywood stars, Rory McCann, the guy who plays Wolverine, Daniel Craig, maybe George Clooney… Personally I think having a wonderfully muscled body like that would be incredibly high maintanence, far more high maintanence then being a pretty little blond like Barney or Orlando Bloom (who isn’t blond but still fragile looking), which merely requires dieting than actual weight-lighting and running. So I kind of assumed that men were projecting: they know they find fragile blond elf girls attractive, so they assume that women find fragile blond elf boys attractive, and whilst that sort of look was attractive to me before I was 12 (remember girlhood crushes) it changed at 12 and the beginning of adolescence. So they have this terribly pretty men with horrid personalities, getting laid.
As if in real life.
voodooqueen126(Quote) (Reply)
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