“Feminism made women too picky”: more on male rage, sexual entitlement, and backlash

[seabeyond]

We recently debated the “problem” of men “never feeling hot.” Commenters of all sexes shared painful stories of feeling unattractive and unwanted. No question, it’s hard to live with the sense that one is physically undesirable, particularly in our beauty-obsessed culture. The psychic toll that sense takes on men and women alike is real and undeniable. But where it gets really ugly (intended word) is when we see flashes of male entitlement, part of what is often called the “Nice Guy” syndrome. That entitlement manifests as the angry, indignant claim certain men make that women “should” see past their physical shortcomings and their social ineptness: Why can’t they see what a nice guy I am? Why are women such superficial bitches? Many women have been on the receiving end of hostile, sometimes whiny tirades such as these. Whatever sympathy might be possible for the unlovely and the awkward vanishes utterly in the face of such astounding entitlement.

wrote last fall against the tired old “male responsibility requires female vulnerability” thesis peddled by an array of social conservatives from Brad Wilcox to Kay Hymowitz. The thesis is that men “need to be needed”, and in the absence of feeling needed (by women) they will behave badly. Therefore, women need to make themselves vulnerable and dependent, forcing men (or giving them the opportunity) to take charge, to play the role of the knight-in-shining-armor, to feel indispensable. To listen to the right-wingers tell it, once men are given the sense that they are indispensable, they will shape up and fly right, illegitimacy and crime will vanish, the rise of the oceans will cease, and all God’s children will say “Amen.” Or something like that. Of course, in order for men to feel indispensable, women will need to surrender, become docile and nurturing rather than independent and ambitious. We’ve heard this hooey a million times before, but like supply-side economics, this belief in the “responsibility for vulnerability” transaction remains a difficult bogeyman to slay.

Here’s the connection to our Nice Guys(tm): feminism has empowered women economically, educationally, and socially. An increasing number of women can afford to live on their own, and can find happiness and fulfillment outside of a heterosexual relationship. This means that increasingly, sexual relationships with men are a choice rather than a necessity. And when we don’t need something, and can afford to act out of desire alone, we can be much more selective. Thus a great many men whose physical, social, intellectual, and emotional attributes add up to a less than stellar sum will go “unselected” by the women they long for. Dimly aware of an “earlier time” when “women knew their place” (the bygone days of the vulnerability for responsibility exchange), these men direct their rage not only at the women who reject them but at the social movement that empowered women to be more “choosy” about those with whom they mated. If it weren’t for feminism, these lads figure, women would need them for financial survival — and as a consequence of that need, would be more willing to overlook their various defects.

Hence the appeal of younger, more economically vulnerable women; hence the appeal of mail-order brides. Hence the misogynistic attacks on independent women and the institutions (the academy, the marketplace, the political system) that seeks to encourage that independence. No wonder so many of these angry men are clustered on the political right, even when the GOP takes stances at odds with their own economic interests! In their minds, the Democratic party and the liberal left has created opportunity after opportunity for women — and, as a direct consequence, made men’s access to dependent girlfriends and wives that much more difficult. No wonder the rage boils up.

http://www.hugoschwyzer.net/2009/05/27/feminism-made-women-too-picky-more-on-male-rage-sexual-entitlement-and-backlash/

[no_hypocrisy]

1. The term, "men need to be needed” translates to

some men can't get hot unless they are controlling, dominant, and bullying over their women, one criteria of domestic violence. Feminism woke up women from their slumber in many cases where they said "No more!"

[hlthe2b]

2. I fear that until we have another generation or two of "feminist-raised" men...

or at least the product of those not so lacking in self-esteem, this will continue to be the case. Even among some men on the "left" remnants of this remain.

[seabeyond]

3. the 80's we were heading in the right direction. 90's i saw something manifesting.

over the last couple years i have been trying to identify. i think this man hit a big part of it. we have always been told we need to coddle may ego. i have always laughed at that. women are suppose to have no ego. yet, we are told to coddle mans. it seems like the years of women being independent, we are being told more and more that they must feel needed to feel loved. it seems to have come back with a force. it seems our girls are adopting this.

[Warpy]

4. Ah yes, that wonderful male entitlement to an unpaid house servant

who mopped the floor in heels and pearls and never said a cross word and would let him use her body in any way he chose because she literally had nowhere else to go and no other way to survive.

Why any human being would want that is beyond me, but slavery was popular for millennia and doormat wives are the last vestige of it, although getting rid of one in favor of a new, young, racy model is more problematic than just putting her on an auction block. One must hire lawyers and pay bribes to get her out in favor of the younger one with the tight ass and perky tits unruined by childbirth.

Why a certain type of male needs to be that tyrannical to get it up is beyond me, but I learned how to recognize the type early in life and have managed to avoid them like the plague they are.

However, the "nice guy" phenomenon is something completely different, he's the joker with subpar looks and little personality who goes on whining tirades because the supermodels aren't particularly interested. He thinks he's a nice guy but he isn't, he's just another one who thinks women are worth something solely based on looks and can't understand that a five minute conversation is likely to put 99% of women off for life because he's such a whiny narcissist with absolutely nothing to be narcissistic about.

Both are likely to be in that angry male category that the Republicans have been so great at courting. Since both are utterly clueless because women aren't quite human to either, this is why Republicans are doing some hand wringing because women don't seem to want to be slaves any more and are leaving that party in droves.

How odd. Who could have foreseen that economic dependency and sharing powerlessness with their children was unappealing to adult women? Don't they know what's best for them?

[seabeyond]

5. lol

[tularetom]

6. A successful relationship is a partnership of equals

And I'm not sure that "need" enters into it on the part of either party. If I realistically sat down and analyzed why my wife "needs" me, the only thing I could probably come up with was to open the pickle jar.

But I'd like to think that we are together because each of us enhances the existence of the other, that somehow the sum is greater than the parts, that our lives are improved because we are together. Admittedly there have been times, in a 50 year marriage when one or the other of us has questioned whether or not that was really the case, but overall I believe the relationship has been mutually beneficial.

And among our circle of family and friends I'd have to say I can pick out three or four couples whose relationships are based on the concept of a partnership, but there are many more where the woman has subordinated her own human potential to massage her partner's male ego, sometimes to the financial detriment of both parties.

Every human being likes to feel needed. Perhaps even needs to feel needed in a way. But nobody should need to feel like they must control another person.

[seabeyond]

7. my wife "needs" me, the only thing I could probably come up with was to open the pickle jar.

they have these little rubber things that we can use now, that makes it much easier. lol.

i like your post. FIFTY years? wow. that is some time. but this is a good post.

i couldnt be with a man that "needed" that need. nor the other way around. appreciated. valued. loved. enjoy. ya. but need? i dont know how to do that.

thanks for the post.

[tularetom]

12. Actually 49 years & 8 months - 50 years this August

She probably could have done better. I'm not sure I could have.

[Scout]

13. congrats! my parents on going on their 68th anniversary in September!

they married right out of high school, and have been together ever since.

[CrispyQ]

8. An excellent commentary.

It explains some of the hatred some men have for women.

snip...

"The thesis is that men “need to be needed”, and in the absence of feeling needed (by women) they will behave badly. . . . Of course, in order for men to feel indispensable, women will need to surrender, become docile and nurturing rather than independent and ambitious. We’ve heard this hooey a million times before, but like supply-side economics, this belief in the “responsibility for vulnerability” transaction remains a difficult bogeyman to slay."

Like Warpy asks above, what human being wants to be in a relationship based on this? A broken one, obviously.

Our culture is a cesspool & we just keep cranking out more & more broken human beings who get in broken relationships & create more broken human beings.

[seabeyond]

9. Our culture is a cesspool & we just keep cranking out more & more broken human beings who get in

broken relationships & create more broken human beings.

true.

but i think so many are being so harshly conditioned there is mass confusion now on what is our true authentic self. i think we are so far away from being empowered and grounded and healthy

always good to see you

[Scout]

10. i would always rather be in a relationship where we both WANT each other....

and not one where one of us NEEDS the other and has to put up with a (potentially) less than desirable relationship.

[One_Life_To_Give]

11. True nice guys are only entitled to self doubt.

Any guy who thinks he is entitled to a girlfriend/wife/lover etc. by definition isn't a nice guy. IMO nice guys represent qualities the brain thinks it want's but are missing what the heart needs. It takes some mental gymnastics for guys who represent neither what the female brain desires nor heart needs to convince themselves they are nice guys.

[iverglas]

14. I'm glad it mentioned mail-order brides

because I was going to.

This is a form of trafficking, and the sad for the men thing is that often backfires. The women who take the initiative of seeking out men in richer countries to gain access to those countries are often not the shy, retiring, subservient little women the men are looking for. These relationships are a recipe for conflict, and for abuse, because of the women's vulnerable position (dependent on the men for long periods before gaining legal residence).

And "these men direct their rage not only at the women who reject them" -- or occupy places they believe are rightfully theirs -- can also mean actual violence. Marc Lépine gunned down the "feminists" at the engineering school in Montreal that had rejected his application, and that guy who murdered several women at a fitness club in the US had written extensively about being unable to obtain the kind of woman/relationship he was surely entitled to.

I do have to add some sympathy for men who still get mixed messages though (and we discussed this elsewhere a few weeks ago). Men are still taught to open doors, hold chairs, pay for meals, etc. etc., and generally to be "chivalrous" (even admonitions against hitting women are framed that way). It's somewhat understandable that when they behave the way they are virtually universally told, from birth, that they are supposed to -- and they are still subject to almost universal social opprobrium if they don't -- they expect women to hold up their end of that bargain too: to "know their place".

Women ourselves have got to abandon this double standard. We have to stop expecting to be given preferential treatment by individual men but equal treatment in the workplace and other public spaces. And that actually means we have to stop rewarding men for being "gentlemen" and in fact actively disapprove of those stereotyped and stereotyping behaviours.

These rigid roles and rules perpetuate men's expectations that women will give them their due if the men follow the code. Women really have to stop demanding that men adhere to the code when it's to the women's benefit and still rejecting men who follow it because they don't measure up to a different and contradictory code that women prefer to apply when it suits them in other ways.


On what Scout said about wanting -- I put this to someone in an online flirtation about, oh, nearly 20 years ago. He was a former poetry professor, a jazz musician with an antique wooden yacht, and also obviously a bad boy, who rode his motorcycle without a helmet and kept a gun in his car (yeah, heh). Who the hell could resist?? I said didn't men just want to be wanted (because desire is the best stimulus for desire I know of). He said yeah, that was every man's dream, the perpetually available woman. I realized we were speaking those old different languages, and he apparently didn't have a clue what I was saying.

[Scout]

15. thank you for an excellent post.

really, the whole door opening thing is just not on my radar at all. i'll open my own doors, thanks. if someone (man or woman) does hold a door for me, i say thanks. i hold the door for the person behind me whether they are man or woman. i get some pretty strange looks from some of the men, but i don't care. it's just politeness, courtesy, no matter who is the hold-er and who is the hold-ee. and i just hate it when, talking about feminism, someone (usually a woman) brings up the door thing "i can't be a feminist, i LIKE it when men open doors for me." ugh.

when i talk about wanting someone, i don't mean it in a strictly sexual sense. not that i DON'T want my husband sexually, of course i do or i wouldn't have stayed with him for years before we married, and now we've been married for 10 years. sexual desire waxes and wanes somewhat over time anyway, so i think you damn well better have more to your relationship than sex (or financial dependency) if you want to be happy in life. my parents and his parents have been married for more than 60 years (mine) and more than 50 years (his) ... it's amazing to me that they've both stayed together, and stayed happy and content, for such a long time. do they disagree sometimes? of course. do they have their bad days/weeks? of course. but they work it out and keep going!

i know at least one time, before i was in the current relationship/marriage, i told one of my fuck-buddies "you know this is JUST sex, right? we're not dating or anything." the look on his face was priceless! he didn't know how to respond to what is usually the line delivered by the man i just wanted to make sure he knew there were no strings attached, and he better not expect me to start baby sitting his kid, or cleaning up his apartment!

[seabeyond]

16. Exploiting Beauty in the Workplace

Hakim argues that while we have no problem exploiting our other advantages — money (economic capital), intelligence and education (human capital), and contacts (social capital), women especially still shirk from using erotic capital. Why should that be? Women, she says, are more charming, more graceful in social interaction, and have more social intelligence than men, but they don't exploit those advantages. Men, on the other hand, have no compunction about using every asset to get ahead in their careers and have no embarrassment about reaping the benefits. Hakim says women feel shy, embarrassed, and ambivalent about admitting that they trade on their looks, and for good reason given the prevailing attitudes: "Women who parade their beauty or sexuality," Ms Hakim writes, "are belittled as stupid, lacking in intellect, and other 'meaningful' social attributes."

*

"Meritocracies are supposed to champion intelligence, qualifications, and experience. But physical and social attractiveness deliver substantial benefits in all social interaction — making a person more persuasive, able to secure the co-operation of colleagues, attract customers and sell products," she writes in a column for a London newspaper. Controversially, Hakim argues that the financial returns of attractiveness now equal the returns of qualifications, with many young women now believing that beauty is just as important as education. And while she offers up Christine Lagarde, managing director of the IMF as an exemplar of a woman who exploits her intelligence, qualifications, and erotic capital, she also champions Katie Price, a British media personality and former model who has built a successful career on her looks, an aspirational figure.

*

In my experience, there is a more complex picture at play than Hakim presents. I have worked on newspapers where women have played the "sex card" to spectacularly successful effect in their careers, but I have also worked in other offices where flaunting sex appeal would have meant instant career death. I have come across male managers who have been shamelessly charming and sexually obvious, while others have been branded as pathetic "himbos." And I have watched as women have consciously downgraded their looks and appearances, while their male have consulted image experts or have undergone facelifts and hair transplants.

My view is that the beauty premium is quite culturally specific: what works in one country, company, or culture doesn't always transfer to another. But I think the basic premise is right: if people can invest in education, training, qualifications and work experience, why can they also not invest in themselves? In Europe, especially France, Italy and Spain, it is accepted for men and women to pay attention to their that attractiveness, self-presentation, and grooming, and this is highly valued. One of the most delightful companies I have ever worked for was a luxury goods group where everyone, without exception, was well-groomed, charming and flirtatious.

http://blogs.hbr.org/corkindale/2011/09/exploiting_beauty_in_the_workp.html
_______________________________

yes, i think men, women and societal conditioning as a whole get to take responsibility for this one. for me, we have our guys so mixed up in so many ways. but, i think our women are, too.

[redqueen]

17. You're the sex class and will always be the sex class,

so why fight it, right? Capitulate and just try to make the most of it?

This is the advice from a female sociology professor?

[seabeyond]

18. This is the advice from a female sociology professor? yup

sumthin, huh. sigh

[iverglas]

19. and that European stuff ...

In Europe, especially France, Italy and Spain, it is accepted for men and women to pay attention to their that attractiveness, self-presentation, and grooming, and this is highly valued. One of the most delightful companies I have ever worked for was a luxury goods group where everyone, without exception, was well-groomed, charming and flirtatious.

Who the hell cares, really?

And really, a "luxury goods group"? Somehow, I think the people who worked there were chosen for their grooming, charm and sexiness. What the hell is that telling us?? Maybe that people who have better things to think about and spend their time on than their hair aren't hired? I don't think those adjectives actually mean "clean, neat, pressed and pleasant"; they mean dyed, made up, personal-trainered, surgically altered where necessary, balanced on dangerous and painful devices, spending a lot of money on it all, and adhering to heterosexual stereotypes in their workplace relationships. And pretty obviously, we're not talking about a majority of Europeans, by a long chalk. Class comes into this rather a lot, I would think.

And I'm still very sure that the range permitted men within those qualifiers -- age, body type, personality, expected corrective measures -- is just a lot broader than for women. If a woman looked like Nicholas Sarkozy ...

[redqueen]

20. re: that European stuff

Two words:

Berlusconi & DSK


Anyone shopping that sophisticated Euro sex culture bullshit can shove it. Hard.

[seabeyond]

22. Berlusconi & DSK ....

exactly. the french women thrilled dsk was called out and the itlaian women fed up with the naked young, very young women on tv all the time with the middle aged, ugly man being dominate over, ridiculing, humiliating these women all in entertainment.

[redqueen]

23. Yep.

The propaganda is constant but the effect is wearing off.

[seabeyond]

21. take it a step further in all their sophistication. women lie about being married to not be sexually

harassed in the work force and rape is really all about boys just being boys. so i am hardly thrilled with their even more extreme patriarchal sophistication.