Hey, girls! Don't you know that when a guy provides you with emotional intimacy, it is your obligation to be "reciprocating, in kind, with physical intimacy"?

No? Well, that's why you can't find a Nice Guy to date, obviously. Because don't you know, having an emotional connection with someone is only and ever important to a dude for the sake of getting at the poontang.

Yeah, it's more "Women are shallow bitches! I only treat you well because I expect sex in return! ... Women must not like me because I'm too nice, right?" ranting from another socially backward privilege-boy drowning in his own sense of entitlement. The letter itself is pretty painful to read, with the amount of "That? I deserve that because I have a penis" going on.

Luckily, Mightgodking's response makes it all worthwhile. And Ragnell has a more productive and slightly less snarky breakdown of The Nice Guy here.

I admit that The Nice Guy is kind of a sore spot for me, because I had plenty of personal experience with the phenomenon back in high school. And then, interestingly enough, my relationship with ratzeo started out with some of the same structure that Nice Guys attempt to exploit - he was my best friend who also helped me through some dating woes. But then (shockingly!) he did not expect me to fall over myself with gratitude at the fact that he was a decent person, nor to express that gratitude with sexual favors. In fact, when we started dating a long time later, we entered into a mutually respectful relationship that wasn't predicated on him fostering a false sense of guilt-ridden indebtedness in me. And, wonder of wonders, that made me a lot happier. Who knew.

So, yeah - as someone who has been inflicted with The Nice Guy, as someone whose partner could have been a Nice Guy but wasn't, and as someone who herself was socially awkward and could have become a Nice Girl - I have no sympathy. Guys like this neither need, nor deserve, anything beyond a bit of social education and their own right hands.

x-posted to IJ

Neat things that you should see:

-Ragnell's post on why X-3 sucked. Well, it doesn't explain all of it. But this was something I had overlooked.

-From blue_bel, trivia about the movie. I've already heard some of these, and I don't know if they're all true, but they're interesting. Summer Glau auditioned for Kitty? (So glad she wasn't cast. I love her, and she would have been great for the stunts, but she just wouldn't be a good Kitty.) Also, apparently Brett Ratner (the director) studied John Cassaday's version of the Fastball Special from Astonishing X-Men. LIES.

-Tekanji's post (which links to another related post) on the woes of dating while being a heterosexual feminist.

The Happy Feminist explains why Mr. Darcy is not only a popular romantic hero, but a feminist romantic hero. A spot-on explanation of why being respectful doesn't mean being weak or emasculated. Sure, Mr. Darcy is neither gentle nor particularly sensitive, but that's a separate issue from respect.

This post over at Pandagon has further discussion on the topic, including other people's favorite (feminist) romances. They've already included most of my favorites: Wash and Zoe, Eowyn and Faramir, Edward Rochester and Jane Eyre (19th century literature still pwns me). I would also add Jesse and Tulip, from Preacher, for the sheer fact that they aren't perfect - and Garth Ennis knows that, and has them try anyway, all the while making it clear that they're going to keep screwing up and loving each other and learning, a little bit at a time. Also, if I can ship real people - Pablo Neruda and Matilde. :D

Of course, everyone knows that the perfect couple, a model of both realism and feminism, is Lucie and Charles from A Tale of Two Cities. (HA HA KIDDING don't hurt me)

Also see Happy's post on Jane Austen for the proto-feminist qualities of Austen's writing.

ETA: How could I forget? Phedre and Joscelin (Kushiel's Legacy series) and Jin and Sun (LOST)!

Oh, the stupid. It burns.

I found an article (once again, through feminist) from a Penn State campus paper entitled "Feminist society would dissatisfy many women." Yeah, I know, I should have stopped right there. But the one useful thing I might glean from this is that it encompasses many of the standard person-on-the-street arguments against feminism, which focus on the "benefits" that women enjoy in the current society.

Among other things, these arguments display a basic misunderstanding of what feminism actually is, and what feminists want to do.

( I do not think that word means what you think it means )

In other news, it has been remarkably sunny today. I certainly hope that we get some more of this respite before being sucked into the soggy grayness of winter, because I really enjoyed the bit of sunshine. It put me in a good mood despite the asshattery. :P