I originally wrote this essay for an academic feminist audience.
Empirical Investigation of Female Preferences in Men: The “nice guys finish last” question
In Casino Royale, the 2006 movie version of Ian Fleming’s book of the same name, the character Solange wonders why she is attracted to men who are “bad.” During a moment of passion with James Bond, she asks him, “Why can’t nice guys be more like you?” With his characteristic suaveness, Bond replies: “Then… they’d be bad” (Fuchs, 2006).
“Nice guys finish last.” Or so the stereotype insists. The “nice guys finish last” view is that there is a discrepancy between heterosexual women’s stated preferences and their actual choices in men: in other words, women supposedly say that they want “nice guys,” but really go for men who are “jerks”, or “bad boys” in the end. Urbaniak and Killman (2003) write that, “although women often portray themselves as wanting to date kind, sensitive, and emotionally expressive men, the nice guy stereotype contends that, when actually presented with a choice between such a ‘nice guy’ and an unkind, insensitive, emotionally-closed, ‘macho man’ or ‘jerk,’ they invariably reject the nice guy in favor of his more macho competitor.”
An opposing view is that women do want “nice guys,” at least when they are looking for romantic relationships. Desrochers (1995) suggests that, “it still seems popular to believe that women in contemporary America prefer men who are ‘sensitive,’ or have feminine personality traits.” Women have differing opinions about whether “nice guys finish last” sexually or not. Herold and Millhausen (1999) found that 56% of 165 university women agreed with the statement: “You may have heard the expression, ‘Nice guys finish last.’ In terms of dating, and sex, do you think women are less likely to have sex with men who are ‘nice’ than men who are ‘not nice’?” A third view is that while “nice guys” may not be as successful at attracting women sexually, they may be sought after by women looking for long-term romantic relationships. Herold and Millhausen (1999) claim that, “while nice guys may not be competitive in terms of numbers of sexual partners, they tend to be more successful with respect to longer-term, committed relationships.”
Do “nice guys finish last?” Yes and no. Really, this question is unanswerable, because what exactly the question is asking is ambiguous. This paper discusses some empirical research on heterosexual attraction that may shed light on the subject, yet the answers that this research provides depend on how the question is asked. I will employ popular culture, psychological research, feminist debates over experience, and random internet rants, in order to explore some of the discourse on this question to demonstrate why it is important, analyze attempts to answer it, and suggest a program of research to ask it in a more fruitful manner.
The importance of female preferences
Women’s preferences in men are important both for the interests of men and for the interests of women, for at least the following reasons: (1) female preferences may be implicated in their complicity with gender oppression, (2) some men harm themselves and/or harm women in response to rejection by women, or widely disseminate misogynistic attitudes, (3) female preferences influence male behavior on both implicit and conscious levels, and (4) cultural discourse over female preferences influences the behavior of both men and women, specifically through constructions of masculinity that can become harmful to both men and women.
Female preferences influence female behavior. To the extent that this influence occurs, female preferences have an impact on the interests of women. Various radical feminists have suggested that female sexual desires can lead women to be more accepting of their own oppression. Dworkin (1987) claims that in male-dominant gender hierarchies, women learn to “eroticize powerlessness and self-annihilation.” Similarly, MacKinnon (1987, p. 7) writes that for women, “subordination is sexualized.” Bartky (1984) suggests that, “surely women’s acceptance of domination by men cannot be entirely independent of the fact that for many women, dominance in men is exciting.”
Female preferences influence men. Female choices in men influence which men have sex and relationships with women and which men do not. Men who are unsuccessful with women can respond by harming women or by harming themselves. In an analysis of school shootings by boys, Klein (2005) found that many of them had targeted girls who had rejected them, or were generally frustrated in their interactions with women. Prior to their rampage at Columbine High School, Dylan Klebold was reportedly so shy with girls that his parents had to pay him money to attend the Columbine prom, while Eric Harris was rejected by three girls he had invited (Belluck & Wilgoren, 1999, as cited in Klein, 2005). In England, a teenager named Joe Burns couldn’t lose his virginity and took his frustration out not on girls, but on himself, by committing suicide (Evans, 2006).
Furthermore, rejection by women can impact male attitudes towards women, often in the direction of misogyny. Urbaniak and Killman (2003) found many websites of men complaining that “nice guys finish last.” It’s easy to find these websites on the internet. For example, on the website “The NiceGuy’s Women / Ameriskanks (mostly) Suck Web Page,” a man who calls himself NiceGuy describes how he once listened to what women told him they wanted in men, and only met with rejection when he tried to behave in the way he thought they wanted (NiceGuy, 2005). He reports that, “I once RESPECTED American women very much. I want to treat women in general as equal partners, and I think women are just great.” Yet he came to conclude that romantically, he was “invisible” because he was “nice,” and asks, “Why the hell should any guy like me treat any woman decently—ever? You always end-up feeling cheated in the end and passed-over as a love interest!” He says that “nice guys” are viewed as “just friends” by women, or as “wimps” (i.e. inadequately masculine). He also views his resentment of women as following from his negative experiences with them: “Misogynists aren’t born—they’re made. Be informed: as far as you American chicks are concerned, you have killed-off the nice guy inside me.” NiceGuy’s rant demonstrates the consequences that can occur when men feel they have been deceived about what women are attracted to: they can feel lied to and used by women, which meshes with misogynistic stereotypes about female deceptiveness and manipulativeness.
Female choices provide men with incentives that can influence their behavior. These incentives are important, because they can motivate men to behave in ways that are harmful to women, and/or to themselves. For example, Bargh et al. (1995) found that some men exhibit an implicit association between power and sex, which they hypothesize as a motivator for sexually harassing behavior. Bargh et al. suggest that, “even if only some women are attracted to a man by virtue of his holding a position of power, the association between power and sex could be formed,” an association that could lead a male who implicitly associates power and sex “to interpret the ambiguously flirtatious behavior of other women as sexual, when in fact it is just friendly and deferential because of his power over her.” Psychological theories of reinforcement and learning offer proximate explanations for how female choices could influence male behavior.
In addition to influencing men’s behavior on an implicit level, female choices in men can also influence male behavior on a conscious level. Desrochers (1995) claims that many “sensitive” men do not believe that women want “nice guys” due to their personal experiences. Men’s beliefs about women’s preferences are a factor in how men behave around women, and those beliefs are shaped by men’s experiences with women. (Of course, experience only influences beliefs through a framework for interpreting those experiences. More on that later.)
Not only do actual female preferences influence both male and female behavior, but so does the cultural discourse around female preferences. This discourse is hardly unified. While the general cultural perception may be that women want “nice guys,” as Desrochers argues above, there are also conflicting narratives, like the scene from the James Bond movie quoted at the beginning of this paper.
Cultural discourse about female preferences may influence both female preferences themselves, and male perceptions of female preferences. Katz (2002) argues that one reason the rapper Eminem’s popularity is a “disaster for women” is because “girls are encouraged to be attracted to boys and men who don’t respect women.” He claims that “magazines with predominantly young female readership, like Cosmogirl and Teen People, now regularly feature ‘Em’ on their covers, posed as a sex symbol, as an object of heterosexual female desire.” In Katz’s view, not only does Eminem’s popularity encourage women to be attracted to “bad boys,” but it also normalizes misogyny or abuse from men. If Katz is correct, then the media plays a role in what women are attracted to in men. Katz asserts that another problem with Eminem’s popularity is that his popularity with girls sends a dangerous message to men. According to Katz, “Boys and young men have long expressed frustration with the fact that girls and young women say they’re attracted to nice guys, but that the most popular girls often end up with the disdainful tough guys who treat them like dirt.” He wonders what message men hear about how women want to be treated when they admire Eminem; whether men will hear “that girls want to be treated with dignity and respect? Or that the quickest route to popularity with them is to be verbally and emotionally cruel, that ‘bad boy’ posturing is a winning strategy to impress naïve (and self-loathing) girls?”
Another avenue where cultural discourse influences male beliefs and male behavior is through dating advice. According to McDaniel (2005), there is a strain of popular culture and dating advice arguing “that women claim they want a ‘nice guy’ because they believe that that is what is expected of them when, in reality, they want the so-called ‘challenge’ that comes with dating a not-so-nice guy.” She discovers that “countless self-help books, magazine articles, bulletin boards/chat rooms, and websites have been dedicated to helping the nice guy become more successful at attracting women.” For example, the “Ladder Theory” (Lynn, 2002) purports to break down what women are attracted to in men: Money/Power is 50%, Attraction is 40% (which includes Physical Attraction, Competition, and Novelty), and Things Women Say They Care About But Don’t is 10% (which includes intelligence, sense of humor, honesty, sensitivity etc.).
Another example of advice for men are the internet forums, websites, teachers, and workshops designed to teach men how to “pickup” or “seduce” women. Strauss (2005) documents this phenomenon in The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists, and eventually became part it. He uncovered a whole underground community of men who view themselves as shy or inept with women, and who consider mainstream dating advice to be inadequate. These would-be “pickup artists” spend hours a day reading internet materials on how to be more attractive to women, or practicing talking to women. According to Strauss, “seduction gurus” and coaches can charge hundreds or thousands for workshops and media teaching “seduction techniques” to men. Pickup artists believe that women are attracted to men who are dominant, self-confident, and socially-skilled. They claim that most men are “average frustrated chumps,” who fail at this ideal of masculinity. An “average frustrated chump” is “a stereotypical nice guy who has no pickup skills or understanding of what attracts women; a man who tends to engage in supplicative and wimpy patterns of behavior around women he has not yet slept with” (Strauss, 2005, p. 440). “Supplication” means, “”to put oneself in a servile or inferior position in order to please a woman, such as buying her a drink or changing an opinion in order to agree with her” (p. 447). Professional pickup artists like Erik von Markovik (who goes by the pseudonym “Mystery”) instead teach that the men who are most attractive to women are the “alpha males,” an idea inspired by evolutionary psychology (p. 21). Strauss writes that books on evolution are required reading for pickup artists: “You read them, and you understand why women tend to like jerks, why men want so many sexual partners, and why so many people cheat on their spouses” (p. 294).
Yet the study of “pickup” and “seduction” can have damaging effects, both for men and for women. Strauss recounts how as his success with women improved, he went through a period where every woman he met seemed “disposable and replaceable” (Strauss, 2005, p. 161). In an interview with Playboy magazine, a “seduction guru” named BadBoy is quoted saying, “Women do not want to be respected,” including “the ones who seem emancipated” (Playboy, 2006). Like the Ladder Theory, pickup artists, in varying degrees, advocate some form of what Connell & Messerschmidt (2005) call “hegemonic masculinity.” Considering that many forms of male abuse or victimization of women involve a lack of empathy and respect, it is a problem for women when males come to believe that those qualities are, as the Ladder Theory puts it, “Thing Women Say They Want But Don’t.” It is also a problem for men if they have to—or even just believe that they have to—suppress their own empathy and vulnerability to be desirable to women. Strauss also describes the stresses on men of studying seduction. He noticed many men becoming obsessed with learning to “pickup” women, even to the point of abandoning school or work (p. 194). Many of these men had severe shyness or self-esteem issues, and looked on the seduction gurus as role models or surrogate fathers. The pickup guru Mystery himself had spurts of depression and went in and out of mental facilities in between running workshops for thousands of dollars per man. Strauss also documents the competition and in-fighting among pickup artists, most of whom apparently wanted to be the “alpha male.”
In short, concern for both women and men should motivate us to examine women’s preferences in men, and pay attention to what is being said about these preferences. (Of course, we should also observe men’s preferences in women, for different but overlapping reasons, but men’s preferences are beyond the scope of this paper.) These examples (like school shootings) and views (like NiceGuy’s) are not representative of males and their responses to female desires: it’s not as if every young man who gets rejected by a woman goes out and storms his school, shoots her, hangs himself, creates a misogynistic website, or vows to become a pickup artist. Still, they demonstrate the extremes of male responses to their perceptions of female preferences and behavior.
Do “nice guys finish last?”
This is a question that won’t go away. As McDaniel (2005) points out, there are countless websites and forums for debating it. If we approached the “nice guy” question naively, we might think that finding out the answer is easy: all we have to do is ask women if they want “nice guys,” or we can go find some “nice guys” and ask if they “finish last.” There seems to be precedence for such an approach in Smith (1974), who advocates a sociology that begins “from the world as we actually experience it” (Smith, 1974). For Smith, experience must serve as an “unconditional datum” to call into question systems of what is taken to be knowledge. She is on the right track, because the nature of female preferences in men is an empirical question. Yet while any investigation of the “nice guy” question will have to start with experience, it cannot end there. Scott (1991) correctly identifies the difficulty of appealing “to experience as uncontestable evidence and as an originary point of explanation—as a foundation on which analysis is based” (Scott, 1991). In Scott’s view, the use of experience as evidence is problematic because it ignores the “the constructed nature of experience” by historical and discursive forces. When people report conflicting experiences, like they do over the “nice guy” question, examining their experiences and their interpretations of those experiences is necessary to resolve the conflict. Otherwise, we are left with women who say that they go for “nice guys,” (who feel affronted when disgruntled “nice guys” question that), and disgruntled “nice guys” who say that women don’t go for them (and who feel affronted when their experience is questioned).
This paper attempts a synthesis of, or at least a compromise between, the approaches of Smith and Scott. For me, experience is contestable evidence. I accept experience neither as an unquestionable foundation, nor as a site of myopic analysis over its “construction.” Instead, I view experience as a rich source of hypotheses. In the case of the “nice guy” question, we must ask men and women about their experiences, but we must also pay attention to how they interpret those experiences, and how we frame our questions and interpret the answers we get. There are at least several problems with the “nice guy” question that make it difficult to interpret people’s reported experience: (a) semantic ambiguity, (b) a confusion of correlation and causation, (c) the problematic nature of “nice guy” as an identity, (d) the social desirability bias, and (e) the theory-ladenness of observation.
One of the main difficulties in asking whether “nice guys finish last” with women is that the very question is ambiguous. I will dissect it to show why:
“Nice guy.” This term means different things to different people. Many traits, both positive and negative are associated with “nice guys,” which sometimes are conflicting or contradictory. In their qualitative analysis, Herold & Millhausen (1999) found that women associate different qualities with the “nice guy” label: “some women offered flattering interpretations of the nice guy, characterizing him as committed, caring, and respectful of women. Others, however, emphasized more negative aspects, considering the nice guy to be boring, lacking confidence, and unattractive.” The “bad boys” were also divided into two categories, and described “as either confident, attractive, sexy, and exciting or as manipulative, unfaithful, disrespectful of women, and interested only in sex.” Researchers have operationalized the “nice guy” and “jerk” constructs in different ways (McDaniel 2005).
“Finish last.” Again, this term is ambiguous. It is unclear whether it refers to being unsuccessful in short-term, sexual relationships, or in long-term, romantic relationships, or in both. The conceptualization of “finish last” may influence the answer to the question, because Urbaniak & Killman (2003) found that for purely sexual relationships, “niceness appeared relatively less influential than physical attractiveness.” Finishing last may be relative to specific male goals. Furthermore, this framing, like the question of “what do women want,” fails to distinguish between women’s preferences (what women desire) and their choices (what women select). (Of course, in some social contexts, women’s choices over sexual or marriage partners are limited or nonexistent, which limits this analysis to contexts where women do have choices.) Some women may not choose the males they sexually desire, because they believe that interactions with those males would not be positive in other ways. For example, Bartky’s (1984) analysis provides political reasons why feminist women could want to avoid relations of sexual submission and masochism, no matter how arousing they are. Social desirability or economic stability could also be a reason for choosing some males over others regardless of preferences. Another difference between preferences and choices is that what women prefer in men may not always be available for them to choose. For instance, some women may find a trait like shyness attractive in men, but since they are naturally less likely to meet shy men or have conversations with them, women are consequently less likely to select them as mates. Women cannot order what isn’t on the menu.
“Women.” Even assuming the stability of the concept of women, exactly which women are we talking about? We should try to find out in which dimension women are similar in their preferences, and in which dimensions they differ. Unfortunately, so far, a large amount of the research on female preferences in men has been on white, middle-class, undergraduate college women. This will not do. Women’s preferences may vary across races, socioeconomic classes, and age. Another way that women’s preferences vary is at different times during their menstrual cycles (Gangestad et al. 2004).
As hinted at above, “nice guy” discussions may confuse correlation with causation. If “nice guys finish last,” is this because they are “nice,” or for some other reasons? If males with certain personality traits or behavioral traits are indeed unsuccessful with women, is their lack of success caused by those traits? Or is some underlying factor causing both their behavior and their lack of success with women? For example, Bogaert and Fisher (1995) studied the relationships between the personalities of university men and their amount of sexual partners. The study found a correlation between a man’s number of sexual partners, and the traits of sensation-seeking, hypermasculinity, physical attractiveness, and testosterone levels. They also discovered a correlation between maximum monthly number of partners, and the traits of dominance and psychoticism. Yet this correlational study cannot tell us much about causation. We don’t know whether sensation-seeking, hypermasculine men have more sex because women desire them more, or because those men simply want more sex and pursue it more.
One difficulty with interpreting the reported experience of men who call themselves “nice guys” who “finish last” is the constructed nature of “nice guy who finishes last” as an identity. As Scott (1991) comments, one problem with accepting experience as “uncontestable evidence” is the tendency to “take as self-evident the identities of those whose experience is being documented.” Although men who call themselves “nice” may see their “niceness” as part of their identity, women may not necessarily perceive them that way. For example, in another internet rant, this time from a woman, Mithrandir (2006) describes her impression of men who base their identities around being rejected for being “nice guys:” that the views of “Nice Guys are almost identical to those of their ‘asshole rivals,’ and that they think of women the same way as well: basically, as potential ‘rewards’ for all their hard work pretending to be a decent person.” She says she has a hard time believing that being “genuinely nice” was the reason these men were romantically unsuccessful with women. Hence, some skepticism should be directed at men who claim that they are unsuccessful with women because they are “nice guys.” If women don’t actually find them to be “nice” (and see them, like Mithrandir, as just “pretending”), then they cannot base their sense of self on being rejected on the grounds of being too “nice.”
One difficulty with interpreting the reported experience of women is that social norms can bias their responses and the way they interpret their experiences. When this is the case, then as Scott (1991) argues, the evidence of experience simply “reproduces” cultural norms. In Urbaniak and Killman’s (2003) study that found that women preferred the “nice guy” script they constructed over a neutral script and a “jerk” script, they note that the social desirability bias could have influenced their results in favor of the “nice guy.” If, consistent with Desrochers claims above, the cultural norm is that women should want “nice guys,” then women’s responses may be biased towards reporting a preference for “nice guys.” Not only would women be biased in reporting, but they would also be biased in how they interpreted their experiences with men. Since the terms “nice guy” and “jerk” are so ambiguous, a woman could convince herself that just about any guy is a “nice guy,” or a “jerk,” depending on which aspects of his behavior she chooses to emphasize. If a woman feels like she is supposed to want “nice guys,” then she can reframe all men the men she was attracted to as “nice guys,” and the social desirability bias could provide her a motive to do so.
The question of how “vision is structured” (Scott, 1991), what philosophers of science call the “theory-ladenness of observation,” is at the core of the difficulty of interpreting men’s and women’s reported experiences. As Desrocher observes above, many men claim that they have come to believe that “nice guys finish last” based on their own experiences. Yet experiences only stand as evidence for a hypothesis within a certain framework that they are interpreted in. This framework is influenced by cultural ideas about what women are attracted to, including the stereotypes that women do or don’t want “nice guys.” When theory-ladenness is combined with semantic ambiguity, it is easy for both men and women to use their experiences to either confirm or disconfirm the hypothesis that “nice guys finish last.”
Future research
After viewing some of the many possible problems with asking the question of whether “nice guys finish last,” are there any recommendations we can make? My recommendations for a future research program are that we (a) reject the question, (b) decide on the real questions we want to ask, (c) be careful how we define and measure our concepts, and (d) use behavioral studies to try to avoid the social desirability bias.
It seems clear that a cultural answer cannot be provided to the “nice guy” question, because our culture cannot decide what the question is. If we cannot get society to agree on what this question means, then we should reject it. Due to ambiguity of the question, the same empirical results will be taken as either confirmation or disconfirmation of the idea that “nice guys finish last.” For example, in two studies Jensen-Campbell et al. (1995) operationalized “niceness” as prosocial behavior, which included agreeableness and altruism. They found that female attraction was a result of an interaction of both dominance and prosocial tendency. Yet does this mean that women want “nice guys,” or not? If you understand “nice” to mean “agreeable,” then you may take this study as confirmation that women want “nice guys.” If, on the other hand, you understand “nice guys” to be both agreeable and non-dominant, then you may take the study as confirmation that “nice guys” aren’t as attractive to women as “alpha males.” Hopefully, we can eventually reject the “nice guy/jerk” dichotomy as a simplistic lens to view male personalities and behavior through.
Instead, we should try to find out what people mean when asking whether “nice guys finish last” or not. The real questions may be whether altruistic behavior can get anyone ahead in life, or whether or not women are attracted to masculine men. Of course, we can never discover what people “really” mean, if they mean anything, and any answers we get will also suffer from ambiguity (such as the term “masculinity”). Yet at least we can start by escaping from the mile-wide ambiguity of “nice guys finish last.”
Future researchers should be careful in how they define their concepts and in how they are measured (researchers call this process “operationalization”). For example, “dominance” is another ambiguous term that can be conceptualized in different ways. Another methodological recommendation is that studies try to get around the social desirability bias. Herold and Millhausen (1999) report that “research findings to date proclaiming the popularity of kind, sensitive men have overemphasized women’s partner preferences obtained through checklists while neglecting to study their actual relationship choices,” and found in their study that “although the women in our study reported preferring dating partners with limited sexual experience, more than one third reported having dated someone who had had more sexual partners than they would have liked.” Like Herold and Millhausen, I advocate the virtue of studying both women’s stated preferences and actual behaviors.
Will better research actually help reduce polarization between heterosexual men and women? Maybe, maybe not. Those who are convinced of naïve notions like “women want nice guys” or “women want bad boys/jerks/alpha males” may be impervious to empirical evidence. Yet at least, it seems that understanding each other’s preferences is a necessary—although not sufficient—condition for reducing romantic alienation between men and women. If it turns out that women don’t desire masculine men, or that only a minority of them do, then perhaps the “nice guys finish last” stereotype could be laid to rest. If women do systematically desire masculine men in ways that could give men sexual incentives to act oppressively towards women, then there may be moral reasons for our culture to try to direct women’s preferences away from hegemonic masculinity (to the extent that this is possible). For a start, white middle-class culture could stop actively encouraging female attraction to hegemonic masculinity, and stop erecting misogynists like Eminem as idols for young women.
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This comment thread is the “No Hostility” thread. Please read this and this for the ground rules. The “Regular Parallel” thread can be found here.
This was an interesting article.
I read as a “sensitive guy” and really connected with some of what is said. In my book “Sensitivity 101 for the Heterosexual Male” I make the same type of points, only in a non-narrative memoir. By taking actual peices of my life and weaving them into an enjoyable story, I come up with the same conclusion.
I found out that although women, or teenage girls, say they want someone who is sensitive and caring, some really do in fact want the “bad boy” or at least the “bad boy” image…
I don’t think I ever finished last in life, but it did take some time for me to really understand what the average lady and more importantly what I , wanted from life.
Great article…
Philip Nork
author of
Sensitivty 101 for the
Heterosexual Male
Is it possible that what both men and women are looking for is someone who is “nice” to you?
No-one wants to take full responsibility for navigating the minefield of making money and not being taken advantage of. So we all want someone who is fully capable of being a type-A domineering fuck-wad if necessary.
Confidence and conviction are universally attractive traits. Wasn’t there some book lately about why “Men Love Bitches”?
Obviously, anyone who wants to always be “taken care of” is going to run into issues of being mistaken for a doormat. A person who can take the helm when you’re just not up to it is, obviously, the more attractive partner.
I’m not convinced this is gendered.
See … for me, the problem starts and ends at any assertion that “women” all want the same thing. That just drives me crazy.
As a reverse example: the day I convinced myself that all men don’t want the same thing was the day I stopped having so many body image issues, although I still get flashes of them sometimes. For example, I am fairly secure in my conception of myself as a sexy woman despite my unshaven legs, and being as I am a sex writer and a kinkster and everything, I’ve had a lot of really awesome sex and great relationships; and yet just the other day I was talking to a fraternity brother who told me that unshaven legs is on his list of “dealbreakers”. Another male friend backed him up, and that was enough to make me feel a flash of anxiety despite all my supposed immunity to the idea that “all men want the same thing”.
So I guess the point I’m trying to make is that I see why stereotypical conceptions of what women want still have power over men — since the stereotypical conception of what men want (supposedly, shaven legs) can still sometimes have power over me. But the answer is to encourage people to know their own desires and seek people who are compatible with them, not to encourage people to be attractive to the maximum number of their chosen gender.
For someone who is not up to it, like say me.
For my boyfriend, a partner who takes charge and dominates is definitely not attractive to him, because he is at least semi-dominant, and it would be seen as competition. Similarly, I would see a girl in a threesome as competition, whereas a guy I wouldn’t. The girl is competing for the same thing, a guy already lacks much of what would attract my boyfriend.
Even outside of sexual situations, I will most likely see girls as competitors and boys as not. The only context I’ll see boys and girls on equal footing as competitors is videogame, if I’m interested in competing (like when I was videogame testing).
Schala,
I can see a dynamic where one person is ill suited to taking care of one part of a partnership that needs taking care of, but adept at another.
Unfortunately, what I generally see is that the the nurturing, domestic, and “traditionally” feminine side is undervalued. Worse yet, whether the female presenting partner is taking care of the traditionally male responsibilities, they are still expected to provide the traditionally female part as well.
It is my impression that the traditionally female part is seen as almost effortless due to social conditioning. Otherwise, why in the world would people think that’s not too much to ask?
As long as both parts are actually taken care of, and valued appropriately, a stratified relationship seems totally feasible.
If it’s seen as feminine, boys have to avoid it as much as possible to still have a midge of credibility with their peers. If they’re strong enough to not care about being seen as unmasculine, gay, and what not, AND their partner also doesn’t mind, THEN they can do what is considered feminine work, like dishes, and babysitting or changing diapers.
Up and until masculinity is seen, by males and females alikes, as possibly encompassing traditionally domestic pursuits, it will be a net minus (in social standing, which may jeopardy their job) for males to get involved in it.
As an example: My brothers avoid make-up at all costs, even invisible concealing make-up, because they could be seen as too feminine. It might be used for any purpose, including concealing or minimizing acne, but it doesn’t matter, make-up itself is considered taboo for boys, hence why they don’t touch it.
Brand names like cover girl do nothing to help this.
PS: It doesn’t matter if they’re a mountain of muscles who takes nothing from anybody without breaking their jaw, like my brother who’s slightly younger (25) – they would lose too much.
But Shala,
If men must, at all costs, avoid being seen as “feminine,” does that not negate the running theme of “what the hell are these feminists on about anyway?” argument that being a chick is the most exhalted position available in Western society?
What could a dude possibly stand to lose by identifying with our all powerful bitchitude?
I’m mystified. And tired.
Good night!
z
Zo:
If men must, at all costs, avoid being seen as “feminine,” does that not negate the running theme of “what the hell are these feminists on about anyway?” argument that being a chick is the most exhalted position available in Western society?
About the same amount of sense as the running theme that MRAs that talk about men wanting to be in their children’s lives are really just out to oppress women that runs along side the constant blaming of the destruction of the family on men who are “deadbeats that run out on their children”.
Somehow men wanting to be in their chidren’s lives oppresses women and destroys the family.
It runs alongside the theme that says that only “genuine” (ie non trans or intersex) women are allowed to be feminine. Feminity in itself is fine…as long as you got girl bits, then it’s almost an aphrodisiac for some to be feminine…but as soon as they learn you don’t or didn’t have girl bits at birth, you’re suddenly not worthy of their lust, or their attraction.
Oh and men aren’t the only one to maintain a barrier over womanhood, TERPs (a fraction of radical feminists, mainly lesbian separatists) are well known to do this by maintaining that trans women are men and can’t ever be anything else (which strangely enough, agrees with conservative women and men). Then any attempt for trans women to be anything (masculine or feminine) is seen as anti-women, either doing a parody of womanhood (by being obviously masculine) or replacing women by being feminine.
ZoBabe said:
Yes. Both men and women show preferences for Agreeableness. Since a bunch of studies have shown some sort of Agreeableness, which invalidates the cruder “women like jerks” theories.
Women on average exhibit a preference for dominant behavior in men, though different study methodologies have different results for women’s preferences for dominance:
(a) at least, they prefer dominance to submissiveness
(b) women may prefer status based on prestige more than status based on dominance
(c) at least, women are into men who are dominant towards other men and in athletic competitions, even if they aren’t into men who direct the dominance toward them
However, men are not into dominant women. Briefly: some of the studies cited in this post looked at men’s preferences in women, and none of them showed that men on average are into women with dominant personalities.
But there is an interesting wrinkle when we look at sexual fantasies, rather than personality preferences: one study found that men had a rate of submissive fantasies that was similar to their rate of dominant fantasies (though women unsurprisingly had a higher rate of submissive fantasies than men did).
So far, there isn’t any evidence that confidence is especially attractive to men on a sexual level. See the result of the Berry & Miller study I’ve mentioned in one of my research posts:
The Extraversion construct contains components that relate to social assertiveness and dominance, so it’s going to be a good proxy for confidence. Women are into extraverted men, but men don’t really care.
Men need to be confident to appeal to the opposite sex (and dominant, at least in certain ways to appeal to many members of the opposite sex); women don’t. (Which doesn’t mean that confidence isn’t important for women in relationships, or that insecurity is attractive to men.)
Phillip, thanks for your kind words and making us aware of what you have been working on.
I think what you say about image is a good point. Once I got over my shyness, I figured out something that actually works with a lot of women: dressing like a bad boy while treating them in an egalitarian manner. The more badass I dress, the less badass I have to act because I start out with some masculine cred in her eyes, or something like that.
Possibly the intangible stuff like sense of dignity that is retained by not becoming a volks-whatever?
Jeez, tried twice already to post long involved answers to the interesting posts above, but since that ain’t gonna happen:
Shala, I think you’re right on the money. Transgendered issues need center stage, ’cause if we’re not allowed to trans, we’re jailed by biology…
Let’s see if this one gets through.
(amazing, it did… the other points were, thanks hugh for the informative comments, and BASTA, what in the world is
“volks-whatever”?
ZoBabe:
Depends how you look at it. For simplicity’s sake, if you have two groups, and two sets of behaviours, and one set of behaviours can be indulged by both groups, while the other set of behaviours is restricted to one group, with the other group being aggressively discouraged from engaging in them, we might say that the more restricted behaviours are the higher-status ones – the higher status group are free to “slum it” with the lower status group’s behaviours, but the lower status group may not presume to lay claim to the higher status group’s exclusive behaviours. This is enforced as much by the lower status group (on the “bucket of crabs” principle) as much as the higher. You can see it, for example, in middle class white kids appropriating urban black fashions, while black kids are disparaging about “acting white”.
- duplicate comment deleted -
> and BASTA, what in the world is “volks-whatever”?
Rewritten for ZoBabe:
Possibly the intangible stuff like sense of dignity retained by not being a lousy opportunistic traitor who sells his own soul and assumes the identity of the privileged?
Patrick: You can see it, for example, in middle class white kids appropriating urban black fashions, while black kids are disparaging about “acting white”.
Also, consider the black kids who get disparaged about “acting white” for getting good grades in school. There is a certain kind of defensiveness built-in to wanting to maintain a positive group identity.
I trust no one here has read the book “Learning to Labor” by Paul Willis? It’s a classic sociological study of working class boys in an English city. To sum it up: boys in school are told to sit quiet, watch their language, read poetry, etc. It all feels “girly”, so they drop-out and get jobs in manual labor, which are definitely not high-status or privileged, though they may seem more “manly” to the boys involved. The idea that these boys may want to create a positive self-identity is certainly not the sinister power-play that some women might think that it is.
In Mexico there is a saying: “The wine may be bad, but it is OUR wine.”
I shall not contribute to this site anymore. Things I have said here have been taken very much out of context and used to mean the opposite of what I have said. There is so much immaturity in the world, that even listening to a perspective that one does not, oneself, entertain, can be counted against one. It seems that, to prove one does not vacillate, in one’s own perspective, one must cut off others’ opinions. Otherwise, one is seen to be entertaining them as realistic.
Jennifer Armstrong,
Um… when did you contribute?
More than a year ago, unless under another identity.
I am as puzzled as you are at Jennifer’s remark.
@TB and Daran…
Possibly Jennifer Cascadia?
Jennifer Armstrong elsewhere over a year ago…
The failure to communicate an idea doesn’t necessarily come about as a consequence of the listener or reader’s misunderstanding. If I present something that is clearly not understood by the listener I will reframe my presentation. This is critical in my professional life where accurately informing my clients is necessary by law. Unfortunately much feminist thinking is shallow and sloganised, narrow or just plain illogical. It is often based on very shaky foundations. It doesn’t lend itself to reframing in the interests of clarity. It often requires a conformity of thought that renders other perspectives void regardless of merit. Indeed that reframing in feminist terms tends to add further contradictions, and complexities, rather than enhancing understanding.
*snip verbiage*
Did she just call us stupid?
IMHO, being able to reduce complex ideas to more easily understood principles requires intelligence; pontificating in convoluted academish mostly requires a thesaurus.
I’m sorry, but what exactly has Jennifer contributed? Her opinions?
Is it the usual feminist barrage or something else? I’m curious.
No offense. It’s just that I’ve never heard of her before.
I wonder if she just cross-posted here by mistake. Clicking on her name above takes you to a site that has nothing to do with anything this blog has to do with. No harm, no foul.
I used to hold to this philosophy, that nice guys finish last … when I was in high school. I was (and remain) a nerd and a big introvert (I remember taking one of those Meyers-Briggs personality tests or whatever and Introversion was the only thing I scored “100%” on), so it was really hard for me to get dates. I did get dates … I just ignored that fact when I was busy pining over cheerleaders. And even assuming I could have somehow “seduced” or tricked some cheerleader into dating me, she would have bolted the second I tried to rope her into a game of Magic: The Gathering (oh yeah … I was one of those nerds).
Humans are very aware of their place in the social hierarchy. It’s telling that people (well, at least I) rarely fantasize about the lower members of that hierarchy. Talking a little more about high school, I usually fantasized about the attractive popular girls–the girls that were high in the social hierarchy. I don’t know about their fantasies, but they usually dated the attractive jocks and the attractive rich boys–the boys that were high in the social hierarchy. That I perceived those guys to be assholes (not least because they “had” something I wanted) is secondary to the matter.
But I have to agree with Mithrandir’s rant (in the essay). When Nice Guys complain that they don’t get first pick of sexual partners because of how wonderfully they treat women, they call into question their Nice Guy title. Women aren’t prizes for moral behavior. That’s not how morality works.
But my favorite section of the essay was the second-to-last one–interrogating the terms. What the hell do people even mean when they say “Nice guys finish last?” Nothing scientific, that’s for damn sure. I think of it as one of those folk sayings that’s so vague it can be applied to most cases, regardless of context, so people learn to think of it as intuitively true.
Ha ha ha … agreed, typhonblue. Agreed.
Didn’t work that way for me. No dates whatsoever, and wether high or low in the hierarchy, I attracted no one. I didn’t have to ignore the lower ones hitting on me, there wasn’t any.
I was considered nerd, with a small effeminate body, voice, a non-popular haircut, was shy and had very low social skills.
Once I transitioned, I did have to reject offers, since I was after something serious, not dating.
I think the logic is more ‘women should be attracted to moral behavior in men.’
However that assumes that women are more innately moral then men; which is a false premise.
Chris:
What the hell do people even mean when they say “Nice guys finish last?” Nothing scientific, that’s for damn sure.
Perhaps trying to say that despite women often saying they want a nice guy are attracted to those who exhibit behaviors contrary to that desire? And if so then I think that is a bit of a valid observation.
Behavior that wins a woman’s approval is not necessarily the same behavior that attracts her sexually.
My comments about the social hierarchy of high school was more to illustrate that people tend to want others who are the same level of or more prestigious and powerful than they are. Who did you want to date?
I dunno … I still think the reasoning takes a step in the direction of moral men being entitled to their pick of mate. But even if I’m wrong, the logic still depends on the premise that moral behavior is necessary and sufficient for physical attraction, which is way too simplistic for reality.
Perhaps … but I also think it creates a false dichotomy wherein Nice Guys only and always act nice, and Assholes only and always act … assholish. And, again, that rests on the assumption that morality is sufficient for attraction. Desire’s weird, and it’s hard to isolate all the factors that contribute to a person’s attraction to another. “Nice guys finish last” is just way too simple and easy for me.
In fact, who we ultimately find attractive might not even be much a conscious choice–or at least, less conscious than we’d like to think. There’s an article called “Scents and Sensibility” at Psychology Today’s website that talks about recent research suggesting we pick up on a person’s smell and whether or not we are attracted to that smell is based on how genetically compatible our immune systems are (based on the gene pool of our potential offspring). Definitely not something we consciously think about when dating, but something that affects our choices nonetheless.
I mean, who can say with confidence, “Yeah, I chose to be attracted to my partner.” I certainly can’t.
Let’s say everyone was higher in the hierarchy as long as I was considered male. Now, even as a trans female, I’m much higher on the hierarchy, though far from the top – being trans is not really seen as desirable for heterosexual men, but I’m way more attractive as female than as male, and ironically this still puts me way higher on the hierarchy.
As male, I was considered a 2-3 on 10. As female I’m a 7, and if I had bigger breasts, a 8 or 9.
I wanted to date a girl back then, whom I considered a good friend and considered me one as well. I didn’t approach her in the same way the dozens of guys she dated (one every 2 weeks) while I knew her did. I acted nice, we did stuff together, including eating out, going to movies, but as friends. I got in the friend box and got locked there forever.
I don’t think that’s much different then what I said. By being attracted to morality in men, women would give moral men their pick of mates.
Indeed. It’s too bad we don’t wear our morality on the outside.
Ah the “friend box.” I was no stranger to that….
Well, yes. But women would also pick the moral men and not just prance around waiting to be picked.
I’m agreeing with you! I’m agreeing with you!
Chris,
Most men in the U.S. today (can’t speak for elsewhere) spend their lives surrounded by a great deal of idealized nonsense about what is most likely to make a man attractive to women. Many of them buy into it, and when they crash into reality they’re shocked and bewildered because, according to what they’ve been told all their lives, what is happening makes no sense.
Thus, I think the thought process is generally not “I’m nice, so I deserve to be considered attractive by women, and yet I’m not.” Rather, it’s “I’m nice, and I’ve been led to believe that this would make me attractive to women, and yet I’m not.” What’s been violated is not the Nice Guy’s sense of moral desert, but his beliefs about how the world works.
Incidentally women see a form of the same kind of behavior in men. Ther eis a saying “Crazy in the head, crazy in the bed.” There really are guys who are attracted to out-there wild women.
It may feed off this whole socialization that makes “getting laid” into such an ordeal and mark of success, like some kind of qualification badge, enough that Shaming Tactic sneers like “I bet you never get laid” generally work in silencing male commenters.
This must drive sensible women bats. Ooops, don’t like the way that came out.
Jim said:
I don’t think female bats are really driven by human affairs, especially not the sensible ones.
re Jennifer
I really don’t understand this “nice guys finish last” idea. All of the women I know are with “nice guys” and are happy about that. Very happy.
And, all of the women I know (including myself) who have a “bad guy” in their past only wound up with him temorarily b/c they *thought* he was a nice guy until he revealed himself to be a bad guy – and then he was LEFT. For good.
Denise
Astute… very astute. And also completely conflateable.
Denise, all people can be nice, given the right circumstances. All people can be total fuck-wads too, given the right circumstances.
If you’d bother to marry a dude, it figures he’s “nice.”
Maybe I wasn’t clear. Women I know, including myself, are *not* even attracted to the “bad boys” – if we’ve wound up with them, it was bc we didn’t KNOW they were bad until they did something bad and then we left them. for good.
and found nice guys who deserved us and who we deserved.
Denise: “I really don’t understand this “nice guys finish last” idea. All of the women I know are with “nice guys” and are happy about that. Very happy. ”
Sorry, Denise, but in my experience, this wasn’t a reality. Not only that, it’s left a scar on my person in the past.
I had a crush on a girl in my high school computer class. Helped her out with assignments and we began meeting on the same wavelength. It didn’t matter that she had a boyfriend. Our relationship was good enough as it is.
Then she started playing the “Show me your underwear” game with the others, asking me to participate in it. I refused. She goaded me on, grabbing at my pants. Now remember, at this point, I had issues with teenagers ideas of sex, how they treated it so nonchalante. My reaction was to try to get away but I couldn’t. She relented, smirking at me with everyone else laughing like I was total freak.
Our friendship was over then and I was distraught. One day, while walking the halls, I was yanked up by my shirt color and slammed against a lcoker door. This guy stared me down and said “If you ever talk with my girl again, I’ll fucking kick your ass.” I found out this was her boyfriend because she was standing alongside him.
Apparently, she must’ve told him about what happened in that class or something and the friendship we developed. She stood there, grinning.
So, that was the thanks a “Nice Guy” like me got for my efforts: threats of physical violence from a guy in love with a girl I thought was a friend. Turns out she was a mindless sheep like all the other barberic bastards who saw fit to bully me.
I certainly hope you’re right and she has left him. But, according to that expression she showed while her boyfriend held me against my will, I doubt she’s learned ANYTHING from that experience.
Look, I don’t want to you to think I’m being insensitive to you, but you’re describing adolescent behavior. You’re talking about a group of people whose brains weren’t even finished developing.
I’m talking about healthy adults.
I don’t know how old you are or how long ago that was. I will say this – I also don’t see your story as pointing to “nice guys finish last”. There are a number of possible explanations for what happened.
I don’t think you should assume that that girl was someone you’d want to be with anyway given how she goaded you to play a game you didn’t want to play. I don’t know that you should assume that she told her bf and that is why he reacted that way. It was high school – where there is even more rumor and lying than in the stock market.
So, if she was a mindless sheep – she was not a fully developed human being. And, we don’t know that the end result was due to you being a nice guy. And, even if she hasn’t left him, she might not be a healthy adult woman who believes she deserves to be treated with respect. She may come from an abusive home wherein abusive behavior is all she believes she deserves and that would make her a victim of abuse, not necessarily a mindless sheep.
Have you had any other experiences with women who seemed to reject you because you were a nice guy? And, if so, are you sure *that* is why they rejected you?
I met a very nice guy in my very large apt bldg today. I never saw him before, but he said he moved in around October. I’m not looking for a boyfriend or anything, but there was a nervousness about him and he introduced himself to me while I was waiting for the elevator and he was recycling something in the recycle bin (next to the elevator).
I could tell he was nervous and self-conscious. And I thought to myself, “he is really very sweet and if I *was* looking for a bf, I’d be into him”.
I should also add that I’m not claiming to speak for all women and I may be more of an outlier than I believe I am, but I prefer a sincere man to a player any day. I think nervousness – if it’s real and genuine – can be endearing and even attractive.
d
Denise: “So, if she was a mindless sheep – she was not a fully developed human being. And, we don’t know that the end result was due to you being a nice guy. And, even if she hasn’t left him, she might not be a healthy adult woman who believes she deserves to be treated with respect. She may come from an abusive home wherein abusive behavior is all she believes she deserves and that would make her a victim of abuse, not necessarily a mindless sheep.”
That’s no excuse for what she did, Denise. For standing there and grinning. Tells she was fully aware of what transpired and could’ve cared less.
Regardless of whether she’s beaten senseless at home, or whatever, doesn’t mean she had the right to betray me like that.
Helping her out with assignments, having a shoulder to cry on. I’d say that’s pretty much me being the caring guy, wouldn’t you say?
Denise: “Have you had any other experiences with women who seemed to reject you because you were a nice guy?”
Not that I know of, lately. Though I’ve had girls in high school call me a “Weirdo”, “Retard” and a host of other names while mocking me along with the boys.
Denise: “I should also add that I’m not claiming to speak for all women and I may be more of an outlier than I believe I am, but I prefer a sincere man to a player any day. I think nervousness – if it’s real and genuine – can be endearing and even attractive.”
That’s me to a tee, though I’m a little better at managing my nervousness. But, Denise, nervousness attracts the bullies and it makes you a target for ridicule. It’s not just a virtue.
Anyway, you’re a rare thing: Going for sincere men. I appreciate women like you exist.
Though let me ask you, Denise. If it were a man, would you be quick to try to find out the causes of their behavior? Because there exists a double standard where women/girls who bully are looked on as cases to be examine while boys/men are “Typical men”.
On rereading this post, I have a big problem with this:
Alan could harm Alan, Alan could harm Bob, or Alan could harm Catherine. Did you mean to include the second possibility under the rubric of “some men harm themselves”.
If you did, then you borgified men. If you didn’t, then by failing to exhaust the possibilities, you erased male victims.
To go back and answer the title of the post the short answer is depending on the circumstances and the people involved yes it quite possible for nice guys to finish last.
Whether said guy is being Nice or nice if his niceness or Niceness is taken advantage of to detrimental levels then yes I would say they finished last.
[...] between feminists and men when discussing women’s preferences. The vagueness of terms like “nice guy”, “jerk,” and “alpha male” make it difficult for feminists and men to [...]
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[for Druk
This Hugh Ristik post from a couple of years ago is definitely worth revisiting in light of recent events. —ballgame]
[Irony of ironies: my comment got pulled as spam!
—ballgame]