The sort of comments you never see here

OK….I’m a guy….and I have to add that in this looks/celebrity obsessed world we now live in…both women AND men suffer.

True. We’ve discussed this many times. Not that he noticed.

Men are objectified as much as women.

Oh, boy. You know, the Suffering Olympics are bad enough when they pit two disadvantaged classes against each other. But to claim the most privileged class* suffers more than the less privileged ones is an old tired argument. (*I realize “men” includes the male portions of some classes that really have been objectified and still are – African-American men, for example, prized for their performance abilities on astroturf and concert stages, as long as they’re managed by old white men. I think, however, our commenter means “men” in the narrow “White, heterosexual men of means” definition that he’s been spoonfed by his own privilege.)

And in everyday life…men have it much worse IMHO. Women are much pickier about male beauty than men are about women. Seriously. Men get a bad rap.

Uh-huh. This is a common myth. You see, men imagine themselves less picky about looks because they don’t even see the women they reject. Trust me. I’ve gone out to bars looking hot and gotten hit on. I’ve gone out to the same bars looking frumpy and had guys knock me down to get to the hotties – they don’t think of themselves as having “rejected” me because they’re too busy running over me while in pursuit mode. Something to think about, guys: as long as we have this stratified system in which men generally pursue and women generally reject or accept, a man’s refusal to pursue a given woman is equal to a woman saying “No” when asked on a date.

Quite an eye-opener, isn’t it?

Sure men are visual creatures. But on a superficial/visual level they are much more widely accepting of most women as “beautiful”….were as women(who have the power and select the mate) are far more picky. Ask any anthropologist. Men have an infinite amount of sperm and are less choosey. Women have a finite amount of eggs and are biologically much pickier. And in todays looks obsessed world…women can be cruel.

This is gender essentialism, and I wouldn’t let his “anthropologists” comment on it either. It’s just too problematic an argument to get into here, and will remain so until one of the alleged “scientists” behind it raises a sample of boys and girls in a vacuum where they don’t meet any other humans or animals or any aspect of culture until they’re grown up, at which point we can really assess how biology directs people to behave, absent of culture.

Men will look upon MOST women as “hot” or attractive simply because they are women. I know women don’t like to be “objectified”, but when you think about it, men are much more appreciative of women then they get credit for.

See above argument for the first sentence. As for the second sentence… oh, my god. Men should be given credit for appreciating how hot we are (when we’re rendered visible by hotness, that is). Where have I heard that one before?

On the other hand, women will generally find only men with model like faces “HOT”.

I… is he living on Earth? Ladies – those of you who like men – should we start listing all the balding, big-nosed, beady-eyed, glasses-wearing, weak-chinned, male celebs we find crazy hot? Or should we just refer him to this post? (ETA: oh, dear god, that was the post to which he was responding.)

Think about that. Men can work out all they want in the gym…but it’ll do them little good. If they don’t have model faces…they aren’t considered “HOT”.

Bullshit. No one can seriously think this is true, unless there’s a whole lot more wrong with him than his non-modelesque face. Here in L.A., I constantly see flabby, balding, physically unappealing men dating women who look like they could be (or just missed qualifying to be) on magazine covers. This is because women are heavily socialized to look beyond men’s looks, and men are heavily socialized to think they have every right to expect women should look a certain way. (I’m perfectly happy to see physically unappealing people hooked up with hotties, I just think roughly 50% of the time, the un-hot one ought to be the woman, and we need to dump the belief that men can’t help expecting beauty in a mate and the corresponding myth that women are more concerned about security. And the other myth – that we’re not visual. The hell we’re not!)

But take an average looking woman who takes care of her body…and she will be considered HOT by most men.

Again: just not true. Any fit, trim woman who commits the grievous aesthetic sin of merely having small breasts can tell you this is not true. Tons of men reject bodies – however well cared-for – that come with small breasts, big noses, too “manly” a build, acne, “bad” hair, etc.

It’s interesting too that in his defense of men, he’s inadvertently revealing that he thinks attraction is based purely on the physical, that heterosexual men never get around to noticing women’s other traits. Like I said above, I find most humans are pretty damn shallow, but on the whole I meet roughly equal numbers of men and women who are capable of looking beyond the physical to figure out whether someone appeals to them or not.

Men get a bad rap for being superficial, when if you really were honest, its women who are. Men dont care if a woman has money. Or if she is famous. But women not only want HOT guys, they want rich guys, famous guys, powerful guys. Men have to jump thru many more hoops to get a woman’s attention.

We’ll need a shit shovel to get through this one. Classifying any group as superficial is inflammatory. If I allowed this comment in, a thread would likely get derailed by people ripping him a new orifice. Never, ever label a whole group with one trait. There’s a world of difference between talking about how “superficial men” might behave versus saying “men will behave this way because they’re superficial.”

As for the rest, the reason men are less likely to care if women have money or power is because women were, until last century, not allowed to earn any. And if women are more concerned with money and power than you think they ought to be, that is also because they’re still limited in their ability to earn it for themselves and girls are still being raised to think success for a female means hitching herself to a successful man.

Plus all this pressure put on women to have big boobs or to look like a supermodel….IS NOT BECAUSE OF MEN! Men don’t care. That kind of pressure is put on women….by OTHER WOMEN!

A lot of people think this, but it’s a short-sighted, superficial view. Women have historically pressured each other to work on their looks, but because it was the only way for a woman to secure a mate and be financially secure. If you loved your daughter or friend and didn’t want her to end up married to the local deadbeat, you helped her look pretty so she could score a nice, stable (if obviously shallow) man. So why did women exert this pressure? Because of the very rules of patriarchy, set up by… wait for it… MEN! Yes, sexist white straight men! The very ones!

But who does he blame for this conspiracy? Not just women. Oh, no.

The fashion industry is run by gay men and women. Not straight men.

Yeah… um, quick, name all the lesbians in fashion? I don’t mean to make light – this is an inflammatory slur on gays and lesbians, insinuating that they are the source of the misogyny that pushes women to waste time on clothes and makeup when we could’ve been taking over the world – but it’s so ludicrous. It doesn’t even stand up to itself.

Women competing against each other and conforming to gay men’s ideals who WISH they were women.

Again with the homophobic crap. For anyone who’s curious, the comment about gay men wishing they were women is bogus. Gay men have the whole range of feelings about and reactions to their gender that everyone else does because, like everyone else, they are human beings.

I am so sick of men being blamed for this “lookism”. When in reality, it is the average male who is the victim of lookism.

Wait, he just blamed “gay men” but he’s sick of “men” being blamed… oh, right! Gays aren’t people. I forget! Remember when I said I wasn’t going to rip into him as hard as I could? I’m really not. Believe me – I’m playing nice here. Which is why I’m not even going to touch the second, self-pitying, self-obsessed, masturbatory sentence.

If women only realized that THEY have all the power sexually and take responsibility for that instead of blaming it on me….they wouldn’t be so bitter.

Oh, for cryin’ out loud – the pussy power argument again. I’m linking the Happy Feminist for a response. Oh, what the hell – here’s a link to Spice Girls feminism, too. (ETA – see this comment for more on how inflammatory this part of his comment is.)

If women only realized that they don’t have to TRY to get a man’s attention. Men are easy.

I think I’ve addressed this enough above. Reality check, kiddies: every adult (and most every kid) has to work to get people’s attention. That’s how life works. And no, men are not as easy as they imagine themselves to be while crying into their beer about hotties rejecting them while non-hotties stand around in the background, unnoticed.

Maybe they do realize this. And these women you see on tv…exploit that instead of developing a real personality. Until one day they wake up, and they realize they’ve hit a wall and are no longer young. Instead of turning around and blaming men…they should look inside. And perhaps towards those average “nice” guys who treated them well all those years ago…put were ignored or passed over for the rich good looking guy…whose now dumped them for a younger model.

Okay, for the first half of that, who is he talking about? Fictional characters who are written mostly by men? If so, he’s ironically making the argument we usually make except he seems to think fictional characters behave of their own volition, and should be counted as real women. If he means the female actors… I have no idea where he’s coming from. You’re not seeing anyone’s true personality on TV – not even (necessarily) in interviews. So, that’s a big chunk of whatthefuckery there.

As for the last half, it’s the Nice Guys argument. I pretty well covered that here, but to sum up: men who get rejected by hot women like to believe it’s because they’re So Nice and the women prefer men who are superficial or nasty. They don’t want to consider the possibility it’s that they’re aiming too high on the hotness meter (like I said, humans are largely superficial, and if you’re looking for Mr./Ms. Right in bars, you’re not likely to hook up with someone who’s much better looking than you are, no matter your gender), or that they have creepy personalities, or that they’re dull, or any of the 3,000 legitimate reasons both men and women will reject potential partners. It’s so much more comforting to think you’re this noble, put-upon, unfairly treated unfortunate than to realize that maybe you’ve just not so wonderful.