lurking 18 – the internet is a pee stain on the wall
Another Angry Woman writes an interesting post about Nice Guys:
Nice Guys are men who consider their lack of dating success to be down to the fact that they’re “too nice”, often bemoaning the fact that they end up in the dreaded “friendzone”, wherein women want to be their friend but nothing more.
She doesn’t mince her words in the post and has a straight-forward response:
Being nice isn’t the cheat code to a woman’s knickers, and it’s not OK to be resentful about this fact. Nobody is entitled to sex. Absolutely nobody. If you are a genuinely decent human being, you need to be prepared to hear the word “no”. And you need to be prepared to deal with that “no”, and accept that.
I have to say I agree with her. But I particularly love almost everything about one of the comments she gets, from Phil Hartup:
You’re right, but I think a tad unsympathetic. It’s important to consider just how much society lies to young men as they grow up. Our culture bombards us with mixed messages about what women want while at the same time continually telling us that they are this alien species that are not like us and don’t think like we do. We live in a culture that frowns on promiscuity and tells us that somebody out there will be perfect and that when they come along we’ll know it and we’ll be immediately and irrevocably joined. Few areas of life are this closely examined by our art and media yet at the same time few are so grossly misrepresented.
Most guys realise this is not how it works right from the off. But a lot of guys don’t learn this right away, bad lessons get learned and before you know it you’re not only behind the curve when dealing with relationships but you’ve got a head full of wrongthink that you need to unlearn before you can even start to catch up. Of course instead of complaining to a best mate or a random bartender men now take their incoherent musing to the internet, where rather than being forgotten in the morning it remains like a pee stain on a wall.
The funny thing is that this isn’t a new problem. Hell without whiny men getting upset because the women they fancy can’t see that they are brilliant about ninety percent of poetry would never have been written.
What’s the point here?
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Just that I like it all, interesting thoughts. Especially the bit about the pee stain. I feel like I leave lots of pee stains.
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On walls? Who pisses on a wall?
Good to see you back.
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Oh, it’s a northern hemisphere thing, you wouldn’t understand. Good to see your hat.
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Keeps the Zika out 😉
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Tsk tsk tsk.
Always borrowing inspiration from scripture.
1 Kings 16 in the excellent language of the kjv: ‘pisseth against a wall.’
Now enjoy the conversation wherever it may lead………… 😉
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People borrow inspiration from fiction all the time.
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Yeah notes, and while the Wright bros. were thought to be deranged, you now enjoy flying on the wings of their stupidity.
You will wear out your tongue, and every argument will fall short, before you can find fault with God or scripture.
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If you got something constructive to add to this subject, then do so, otherwise go piss on the internet somewhere else.
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It is a rather lovely metonymy, is it not? Other translations say piss or urinate; or man, or man or boy for “anyone who pisses against a wall”- as if that were his most salient characteristic. So it seems the metonymy is in the Hebrew. It is a great way of expressing contempt.
And I love the comment, the idea of blog posts or forum comments or indeed whole forums as pee stains on a wall, far better as an unrecorded drunken whine than a permanent thing. A site called Kiwifarms preserves people’s piss stains, so that they may be laughed at later.
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Finding faults with YHWH and Christian scriptures? We already did that – you missed it.
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No ratamacue, your ‘complaints’ against both God and scripture do not qualify as ‘faults.’
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news for ya. God is faultless, but ‘we’ the people? eh, you might want to rethink that.
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Excellent points made by AAW and Phil Hartup.
Welcome back Violet.
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Thanks Victoria, good to see someone else appreciates them too. I guess it’s a lazy followup on some of the points made in discussions about manosphere. I think they both make really pertinent points. But the pee stain comment is my fave bit. 🙂
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Phil Hartup: “But a lot of guys don’t learn this right away, bad lessons get learned and before you know it you’re not only behind the curve when dealing with relationships but you’ve got a head full of wrongthink that you need to unlearn before you can even start to catch up.
Violet, not sure if you’ve seen this latest study about the brain, which just goes to show you how much culture produces stereotypes. Especially if they are being indoctrinated by conservative religions and reading garbage like Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.
“If men are from Mars and women are from Venus, no one told the organ that matters most. There is no sharp division between male and female brains, according to researchers who found that we are all a mixture instead.”
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/nov/30/brain-sex-men-from-mars-women-venus-not-so-says-new-study
Btw, John Gray, who wrote “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus”, got his PhD from a diploma mill. Gray claims to be a leading authority in communication and relationships between men and women. He’s also been quoted as saying that the reason why there’s so much divorce is that feminism promotes independence in women.”
I guess he missed the 2 studies showing the highest divorce rate was among evangelicals.
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Little known fact:
The first (and much better, more accurate) title of Gray’s groundbreaking work was Men are from Mars,Women are from Malleus Maleficarum.
They changed it, unfortunately, because American audience is put off by foreign words. (Mars and Venus were questionable enough.)
True story.
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Emma, just when I couldn’t be any more shocked by misogynist behavior, this revelation literally made me sick to my stomach. I remember several years back running into that book title on a gendercide watch website. Here’s an excerpt.
—————–
“The classic evocation of this deranged misogyny is the Malleus maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches), published by Catholic inquisition authorities in 1485-86. “All wickedness,” write the authors, “is but little to the wickedness of a woman. … What else is woman but a foe to friendship, an unescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, domestic danger, a delectable detriment, an evil nature, painted with fair colours. … Women are by nature instruments of Satan — they are by nature carnal, a structural defect rooted in the original creation.”
(Quoted in Katz, The Holocaust in Historical Context, Vol. I, pp. 438-39.) “The importance of the Malleus cannot be overstated,” argues Ben-Yehuda:
It was to become the most influential and widely used handbook on witchcraft. … Its enormous influence was practically guaranteed, owing not only to its authoritative appearance but also to its extremely wide distribution. It was one of the first books to be printed on the recently invented printing press and appeared in no fewer than 20 editions. … The moral backing had been provided for a horrible, endless march of suffering, torture, and human disgrace inflicted on thousands of women. (Ben-Yehuda, “The European Witch Craze,” p. 11.)”
http://www.faculty.umb.edu/gary_zabel/Courses/Phil%20281b/Philosophy%20of%20Magic/Arcana/Witchcraft%20and%20Grimoires/case_witchhunts.html
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What else is woman but a foe to friendship, an unescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, domestic danger, a delectable detriment, an evil nature, painted with fair colours. … Women are by nature instruments of Satan — they are by nature carnal, a structural defect rooted in the original creation.
Take that, insert it in any manospherian site, especially a Christian-flavored one, and you get a steady stream of upvotes.
There was a tiny little experiment way way back when, on a blog in a galaxy far, far away, where quotes from MM were juxtaposed with quotes from manospherian sites and readers were asked to tell which were witch (see what I did there?). People failed to tell the difference.
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Very interesting. I read that so many years ago I can’t remember any detail at all. But I do seem to remember being impressed by at least some of it. Deary me.
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Me too, Violet, when I was involved in evangelical Christianity.
BTW, here is an excellent analysis of the book, chapter by chapter, when you have the time. You might need a barf bag when you get to:
“How to be the perfect John Gray Stepford Wife.”
https://therebuttalfromuranus.wordpress.com/
If you don’t have the time to read the whole post, the last two paragraphs summarize it well.
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Wow, was it really that bad? I’m going to see if I can find it and flick through it.
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It’s interesting. I like the pee stain analogy as well. And he’s right. The patriarchal bs messes boys/men up, too. We’ve all learned that the dance is supposed to go a certain way. We’re supposed to keep time with the music and follow the same steps over and over again. Men are to lead, women are to follow. When someone does the wrong thing, goes the wrong way, doesn’t follow the music, the entire world gets toppled like a house of cards.
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Oh, and welcome back!
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I think I never learned that growing up, not sure why. I see it all around me though. Something to do with expectations for ourselves and others, and fear we won’t live up to them, won’t fit in, won’t be normal. Life’s scary and unpredictable, it’s easier to follow what look like set paths. Now it’s cooler not to be ‘normal’, I think that’s a positive change.
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Very interesting commentary here, everyone (and hello again, NN!)
To add to the “Nice Guy” phenomenon (I mean, bullshit), I’d take it one step further. There’s a saying in my world that the Victim (notice the capital V) is often the perpetrator. To me, people can behave nicely but there is no such thing as a “Nice Guy” or a “Nice Woman” at all – especially when people use it to label themselves. As a self-label its only purpose can be to manipulate and control.
The test? Ask “So what?” (and keep asking “So what?” to someone who declares themselves a “Nice Person”, whether they be male or female. The ultimate answer every time will be that they use it to justify either what they want, what they have, or what they get from other people.
Typically, the “Nice Girl” wants spoiling and the “Nice Guy” wants servitude, and both use the label to mask what is a very Machiavellian and not-so-nice view of themselves and the world.
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Apologies this comment got neglected. I’m not sure I fully understand/agree with you here. (I suspect I won’t agree with you much but looking forward to your posts) These Nice Girl/Guy labels are usually given by other people, aren’t they? It’s someone who’s just, well, nice but not really attractive to the opposite sex.
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As I understand it, they are not. Someone claims to be a “nice guy” as his dating strategy is to appear nice, then moans that he does not get sex. http://www.the-niceguy.com/
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