No: Yes in Disguise…
… IF YOU ARE A RAPIST
If you haven’t yet seen Nice Guys of OkCupid’s tumbler, I recommend it highly. It’s a curated gallery of pictures and profile quotes from men who are looking for love and feel entitled to get it.
Because, duh, they’re nice.
The funny thing is, a) these guys are predominantly NOT nice and show it through misogynist language and expectations and b) what do they expect to happen?
I guess they expect it to go something like this:
Man: “Hello. I am nice.”
Woman: “A rote expression of basic civility! Time to have some sex!”
…At least, that’s how it goes for ME.
Now, before we all get our panties in a knot about being SO VERY MEAN to these POOR INNOCENT NINCOMPOOPS, let’s take a big step back and a deep breath and just RELAX, ok?
Surprising no one and bringing joy to the multitudes, Jezebel’s own Hugo Schwyzer, in the aptly titled No One is Entitled to Sex: Why We Should Mock the Nice Guys of OkCupid, has already provided us with a well-worded deconstruction of this tumblr and it’s implications.
The jist?
“Besides the near-universal sense that they’ve been unjustly defrauded, the great commonality among these Nice Guys is their contempt for women’s non-sexual friendship. They rage about being “friendzoned,” and complain about the hours spent listening to women without being given so much as a hand job in return for their investment. Niceness, they make clear over and over again, is a mere tactic, a tool that they were promised would work to give them access to women’s bodies. Their anger, in other words, is that their own deception didn’t work as they had hoped. It’s a monumental overask to expect women to be gentle with the egos of men who only feigned friendship in order to get laid.”
BAM. Talk about a zinger. I just want to frame that or bronze it or something.
The biggest noodle-scratcher of the day, however, was one of the comments on this article. It asks women how they can be so unaware of their own privilege in the situation, because, “how can you guys be so comfortable maligning men for feeling “entitled” to something that you’ve have in abundance ever since you went through adolescence?!!!”
I’ll give everyone a moment to let that sink in.
Are you ready to go on? Ok.
Now, acknowledging the possibility that this was a troll, what is wrong with this statement?
OH YEAH THAT’S RIGHT I FORGOT. Rape. The ‘something’ I and every other woman has had ‘in abundance’ since going through adolescence is dudes wanting to have sexual access to my body. Not access to me, as a person. Just my body. Just sexually. And when men feel ENTITLED to my body, that means they want access to it WHETHER I WANT THEM TO OR NOT.
THAT is what Nice Guys of OkCupid is about, when you get right down to it.
