Neurath's Boat

False advertising

I have just returned from a May Day Ball, which promised to celebrate Spring, paganism, communism, and dancing.  Obviously, it was not actually May Day, and in Rhode Island it was a gray, dreary day, not at all a Spring day worth celebrating.  The paganism was rather perfunctory; there was a may pole, but no may queen was sacrificed, and it was obvious that the may pole dancers didn't know what they were doing.  I'm sure no gods at all were successfully propitiated, so I now know who to blame if the crops don't grow this year.  Finally, there was really no communism at all.

Admittedly, I did dance with a number of beautiful, charming women, so I suppose I shouldn't be churlish.  Surely that was the most important part, and my reason for posting this under love advice.  I think it was very foolish of me not to have learned ballroom dancing a long time ago, and I heartily recommend it to all.

I still wish there had actually been some communism, though.

Power in relationships

Machiavelli said it was better to be feared than loved, because fear was a stronger motivator; people who love you will still sell you out to people they fear.  However, he taught a further lesson some of his modern admirers forget.  He said that it was important not to be hated, for even if you're feared, those who hate you may find a way to overcome their fear and strike at you anyway.

Amanda has long suggested that patriarchally inclined men apply Machiavelli's advice to romance (though they seem as forgetful about the hatred part as most of Machiavelli's shallow readers).  I do not know if Machievelli provided the best advice for princes; perhaps he did, perhaps he did not.  I have my doubts that his advice is as applicable to international relations in the modern world as it was to international relations in his time.  In the field of romance, though, I find it hard to see as anything other than idiotic.

On a purely practical level, those who fear you will seek to lessen their connection with you.  If you're a prince and they're your subjects, this may be very difficult, and all ways of doing so may be more fearful.  In the realm of dating, though, you are likely to have many rivals, and simply doing without romance is a more tenable option than simply doing without government.  No doubt this is why the patriarchal sorts Amanda rants about try to restrict the options women have, but they would have to be absurdly restricted in order to eliminate this disanalogy (banning abortion isn't enough; you would need to bring in the Taliban).

More importantly, of course, those who love you will seek to increase their connection with you, actively seeking ways to increase the levels of mutual support you provide to one another.  This is likely more trouble than it's worth to a prince; a prince has many subjects, and subjects getting to feel that close to the prince just produces more demands on his time and increases the risk of things falling apart when he can't satisfy everyone.  But in a romantic relationship, at least in the idealized form encouraged in our culture, nothing like that issue would appear to arise.  Having enough time for just one other person should be entirely possible.

Thus, even if we confine ourselves to the pragmatic and selfish goal of getting a partner who does what you want, I suggest that there is good reason for men to think Machiavelli's advice should not be applied to romance.  Of course, one might have thought to begin with that love should be a matter of, well, love, and not a matter of fear.

Nice Guys

Amanda is off on another rant about the self-styled nice guys who complain that all the women go for jerks instead of jumping the sensitive, feminist guys who would treat them well.

While certainly Amanda makes valid points, as usual, articles like that touch off a nerve in some of us.  I no longer think of myself as in any way a nice guy, I'm too depressed, bitter, and cynical in my old age (and besides, I'm getting a decent amount of sex, though that probably has more to do with being experienced and getting to the gym these days than with depression, bitterness, and cynicism being attractive features), but I used to be somewhere on the nice guy spectrum, and I know there are some youngsters, including some of Amanda's readers, that feel more strongly what I feel in sympathy for the young me.

So, I'm going to do two things.  First, I'm going to identify the phenomenon in question as a continuum.  At one end is the Nice Guy, the character Amanda is talking about who feels entitled to the pussy of every woman he treats with any respect whatever.  At the other end is the Shy Feminist Man, who likes women, has lots of women as good friends, has all the right political views, but is frustrated with what he views as an unrelated problem, namely that he isn't getting laid.

The extremes are, of course, rare.  Probably nearly pure examples of the NG exist, but likely most are not drawn to the NG strategy unless they have at least a sliver of genuine feminist sympathies.  Still, a sliver doesn't cut it; guys over on the NG end of the spectrum deserve everything Amanda lays on them.

Pure examples of the SFM are probably even rarer; frustration with one's love life is a major source of bitterness, which can of course lead to negative feelings about those by whom one feels rejected and lead one who started as a good SFM toward NGness.  But there are certainly guys who are more SFMs than NGs.  One sign you might be on this side of the spectrum is if you have a lot of women as friends, and they give you Amanda-type rants about nice guys, but they always insist (sincerely) that they don't mean you when they're talking about the nice guys they hate.  Of course, if you're one of those SFMs, that won't entirely reassure you, as you'll probably note that of all of these women who say you're really OK, that you're not an NG, none are showing any signs of being romantically interested in you.

Now, being a feminist is not a dating strategy, so the point of my advice isn't to say guys should become feminists or stay feminists because they'll get laid a lot if they do it right.  The reason to be a feminist is that women deserve to be treated as people.  Nothing more to it than that.  But, again, I have sympathy for all the poor SFMs out there, so I thought I'd give them some dating advice based on my experience.

So, guys, the biggest key is that the reason SFMs don't get laid has a lot more to do with the S than with the F.  You're not likely to get into a sexual relationship with a woman if you don't make it clear that you're sexually interested in her.  Jerks generally don't have a problem with making that clear, and it is that, rather than their being jerks, which leads to them having more success than you do.  Now, you don't have to be crass and disrespectful in making clear your sexual intentions; friendly and flirty is likely to work better, in fact.  But you do need to express your sexual intentions, and be clear about them.

Of course, that isn't easy.  Clearly expressing your attraction means the potential for clearly being rejected, which is very painful.  And that's where the F can really work against you, but only if you're engaged in rationalization.  You want to find excuses to avoid rejection.  Taking the view that any kind of sexual advance is disrespectful, objectifying, insert your favorite feminist buzzword here, is a convenient excuse for not making any kind of sexual advances and so not having to deal with them being rejected.  But feminism certainly doesn't say that; if you're using it as an excuse to avoid making any advances, rather than as a reason to try to be polite and decent about them, then you need to realize that this is only an excuse.

Then you need to get past that excuse, and stop expecting women to do all the work for you.  By using that excuse, you're not doing them any kind of favor, not even a small one, and they don't owe you anything, however small, in return.  Certainly they don't owe it to you to throw themselves at your feet, taking all the risk of rejection that you can't face.