The Twisted Desire to Date a Nazi

As I continue down the rabbit hole of misogyny on the web (the start of my journey is discussed here) there is one particular scenario that seems to make misogynists really really angry. The scenario is that of a hot girl being with a jerk. No other scenario angers a 'nice guy' quite like seeing a super hot babe with a guy he perceives as a bad person.

A post at the excellent blog Man Boobz outlines such a scenario here. In it, David Futrelle, does an excellent job of explaining how the original poster (someone who goes by 'Scarecrow') is anything but a nice guy. He is in fact a festering pile of hate and resentment. This is a standard response to the 'nice guy' complaining about the hot chick dating the 'jerk'. You don't have to peel back very many layers to often reveal the alleged nice guy as an entirely self centered individual, who lacks basic respect for other human beings, especially women.

However, Scarecrow's story reveals another simple response to the nice guy complaint, and even a potential answer to the question Scarecrow himself poses to the world he views as so cruel and unfair. From his original post:

When I went to the pre-trial, I saw two young men (say late teens or early twenties). One of them had a swastika on his left shoulder. The other had arms covered with various tattoos. They were both skin-heads - real winners (sarcasm). They were obviously into drugs (I KNOW that the "we stole this car" was merely a rouse for them to deny possession of drugs and illegal firearms).

The thing that pissed me off:

They had their girlfriends with them: Two super-mega-hot women, a brunette and a blond. Both were busty, thin, and extraordinarily pretty in the face. They had no tattoos or piercings. They both looked quite ordinary, except for their well-above-average aesthetic appearance.

I wondered: Why do such losers get totally hot women, and men who are better off and "square" do not get the time of day from such women?

Read it in it's entirety here, if you dare.

So I'm going to propose one possible answer for him: because they are jerks. You see, when men view women only as object, and not real people, they completely fail to prescribe any personality to individual women. A females social worth is based upon her physical appearance, as all woman have the same basic programming, in the mind of the 'nice guy' misogynist.

Astoundingly it never occurs to the poster that these women, who were dating Nazi, Skinhead, drug users, might themselves be Nazis, or drug users.

Of course, not all women who date bad guys are themselves bad. But it astounds me that the poster doesn't even begin to consider this possibility. At the exact same moment he is criticizing these women for being with their terrible boyfriend, the poster is desiring to be with these women. Women who likely meet the same criteria that cause the poster to describe a man as a 'loser,' not deserving of hotness.

When I see a really hot girl with a guy I know to be a bad person, my first thought is not that she should be dating me. Honestly, my first thought is to question her character. If I know the guy is selfish, dismissive and rude, then I'm going to think that maybe she has some of these characteristics as well, at least in large enough amounts to not care if they exist in a mate. If I see a hot girl who is dating a nazi meth user, my first thought is not "dang, she should be dating *me.*" I don't want to date a nazi meth user, and the odds that she is one just went up by a lot.

I think there's some projecting going on here. The poster obviously would happily date these girls he saw in court, in order to have sex with someone he thinks is hot. He apparently wouldn't need to undergo much investigation into her personality, drug use or potential hatred of racial minorities. Obviously, rather than deal with this character flaw, he has projected onto all women and assumed they are just as shallow as he is. This makes him burn with the anger and judgment that only extreme self delusion can allow.

A Dating Pool We Care About

If a girl's number of sexual partners is too high she will be less desirable as a girlfriend/wife. That statement embodies a certain cultural awareness. It also reflect a certain cultural reality. I think most people would admit that it is a true statement. Even if a person considers it ridiculous to adjust your desire to date someone based upon their number, they will probably acknowledge that some people do.

It's a simple matter of mathematics. Some people care about their partner's 'number' and some people don't. The majority of people who care about the number presumably would prefer it to be low, although I'm sure the slut-shamers of the world would be shocked to find that some might prefer the number to be higher. So in the in the end, if you have a high number, there are less people who consider you girlfriend/wife material. Individuals who participate in cultural slut shaming will use this simple math to push the responsibility onto others. You see, *they* aren't the ones judging other people based on numbers, instead they are communicating a simple reality about the world in which we live. They advise women not to sleep around too much because it will make it harder to find a boyfriend. You see, it's the shallow men of the world who care, they are just the helpful messenger.

But this math is deceptive. When it comes to dating pools we don't care about every heterosexual person of the opposite gender. However, it feels a little to easy to simply say "you don't want to date a guy who cares about your number, anyway." While that's certainly true, it suggests a certain moral judgment of that guy. Whether or not such a judgment is accurate, it isn't necessary to judge such men as 'unworthy,' it's enough to label those men as 'incompatible.'

All of our choices shape our potential dating pool under the above math. We limit the number of people who will choose us as mates. Voting for Obama limits the number of people who want us as significant others. But, we don't generally care. Anyone who doesn't want to date me because I voted for Obama isn't someone I want to date. Eliminating them from my potential dating pool is helpful, not harmful. Likewise for a self assured slut. If a girl has made decisions that she is ok with in her own life, then she is far less likely to be compatible with someone who refuses to date her because of those decisions. Eliminating those guys from the dating pool has no effect on finding a boyfriend or husband at all. The only people eliminated were never real candidates.

This requires several assumptions. First, it requires that women have a certain agency in their dating. In that they actually have preferences to find someone with whom they are compatible. The typical slut-shamers of the world seem insistent that a single woman should want nothing more than a male body. That she should bend her personality to his demands.

More importantly this requires healthy sexual agency among the women in the culture. As much as I don't think a sexual number is at all important to someone's date-ability, it is almost certainly important that that person be comfortable with their number. This means being comfortable with past sexual decisions. The best way to do this is to be comfortable with your sexual agency as you are making sexual decisions. This is where the disingenuous nature of those who would slut shame really comes out. If they cared about dating compatibility they would encourage knowledgeable and empowered sexual choices, instead of shoving sex into the dark.

Ultimately it's true that being a slut will limit your dating pool. But much like voting for Obama, any limitation is probably a benefit to finding a truly compatible life partner.

Rape by deception

This story is interesting from a lot of angles: http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2010/07/21/trust-but-verify

At first I really didn't like the idea of rape by deception. It seems like a dangerous slippery slope. I decided that a solid legal standard would be if the perpetrator tells a lie that s/he knows or should know will be a critical factor in the granting of consent. That's a fairly high standard, but we're talking about criminal law, if anything it felt potentially too low. We laugh at characters like Barney on How I Met Your Mother, when he lies his way into a girl's bedroom. Do we want to send him to jail?

Upon further consideration I've realized this is an odd social programming. There is a crime called 'larceny by trick.' If I lie to you in order to convince you to give me your stuff, I've committed a crime. If I lie to you to get you to consent to sexual activity, no crime. Shouldn't our sexually repressed culture be more concerned about chastity than things? I think I'll have to reconsider what is a fairly patriarchal view that boys lying and tricking their way to sex is just boys being boys.