Men are thought to be the rational sex, and women the intuitional. Hard facts are the man’s dominion while soft feelings are the woman’s. But I wonder if other, non-cerebral factors on the man’s part made them able to “think” out this arrangement and establish it as “fact.” I only ask because there is strong evidence against it. For instance, the male mind’s cavalier attitude to language.
Take the word “slut,” which for the male covers a wide range of female behavior with different shades of approval. A woman may be commended as a slut if there is evidence of a high “body count” or that she is intimately “adventurous.” She may also be condemned as a slut for nothing more than a bad attitude, whether in preferring one film over another or in dining alone at California Pizza Kitchen in her college sweats. These disparate uses are consistent only as products of male ambivalence towards female assertiveness. Without the privilege of ambivalence, a woman must be careful with her words. She may use “slut” without moderation but at least the meaning is clear and grounded. She is a “slut” whose desire for male validation outweighs her commitment to female solidarity.
Why bring up something you already know? It is helpful in order to elucidate upon the slut’s male counterpart for our own purposes.
The exact terminology for the “male slut” is always changing. In the time that I write this, the term most often applied is “simp.” It makes sense. It has the same Germanic ugliness of our slur and the same monosyllabic bluntness that sticks onto its receiver like blood-laced bubblegum. And its use among men is probably in equal proportion to the use of “slut” among women. But I prefer a term that’s fallen out of use. It conveys the exact same condition while accentuating the sinister undercurrents men bring to it.
The “nice guy” is not new to female folklore, and any overlap with the slut may not be apparent. Men and women may appreciate them in the abstract but typically men have more real-life fondness for the slut than women do the nice guy. This mentality makes sense in the context we seek to overturn. Yet the one we put in its place will not only make the overlap more apparent, but will be more useful to us than a slut could ever be to a man.
Let us resist our latent male impulses and dissect the nice guy for profit rather than for fun. He is most distinctive as a man possessed of a nature highly attuned to sensitivity. Meaning more simply that he is sensitive to sensitivity. That is chivalry in a nutshell, isn’t it? He is a service-provider, coming up to you, though you don’t remember asking him to, toolkit in-hand, containing his many helpful appliances—attentiveness, patience, generosity—and speaking of each one as if they were tea flavors. Where the slut offers her appliances with no realistic hope of equal exchange, the nice guy is a compensation-driven creature. Reciprocation is a bargain item, though it is never demanded as a creditor would demand it, and he always thinks reciprocation is paid fairly and in good faith.
The nice guy is one of those types of men who are not made deplorable by any one action so much as by his theme, which is characterized by unreliable understanding if not outright deception. He is in league with the self-declared male ally and the softboy; but he outpaces them in his survival instinct. He is the perfect symbol of the amoral age we are trying to destroy and incredibly difficult to neutralize through straightforward means. But he is also, for that very reason, an asset.
The nice guy comes most of all with an outsized reverence for women. The woman is not person but a walking drug, and responds to her with heightened intensity he confers on no one else. We now have our man’s slutty subservience; yet it also stretches to greater extremes than the female counterpart might wish to go. Momentary gratification is just enough for her, even as it is lopsided against her interests. The nice guy’s reverence on the other hand is the slave mentality embodied. Given what we know of it, we can count on it presenting itself when we most need it. With so much to accomplish in the gynopocene, a subservient male might be just the thing required.
If it is not to fail out of the gate, the post-feminist state needs to reconcile itself with some level of compulsory labor. The gynopocene age it shall ring in is one in which we would do well not to fixate on the rights-based conventions entertained by the women of the previous society. Had they been more skeptical at the outset maybe we wouldn’t be at this point. But that is a regret we must live with; pioneering is now our own compulsory condition.
To navigate that most successfully requires us to return to the more classical understanding of allyship. It is in our best interest to be nice to the nice guy. This is made easier by remembering that niceness is a tone, not a sentiment. Much painful but needed progress has been made simply by asking nicely for people to make it. This is what will happen here, but fortunately for us, asking nicely brings fabulous prizes. The nice guy’s true gift, at least in this context, is his tenacity. Very little will stop him from getting what he wants or, in this case, fulfilling what we tell him we want fulfilled. His moral sense being so dull and his resourcefulness being so boundless, you begin to wonder if there is anything that he won’t do. I’m sure you could have a nice guy toss a kitten into a trash compactor, or place a pillow over his grandmother. Why you would want either of those things, I don’t know and neither does he, but he’ll comply like you’re asking him to pass the salt.
It stands to reason that far less excessive demands could easily be made through this arrangement. Because the niceness of the nice guy rarely extends to his own gender, he is a capable enforcer and custodian of the more recalcitrant males. It is a certainty that he will take much greater pleasure in dealing out the most urgent disciplinary measures upon them. The nice guy is at heart the most genuine kind of misanthrope, being so ignorant of his character and of his depravity. It is a cruel but fitting irony that his ultimate apocalypse would coincide with that of his sex.
Some of you will disagree that this can be as cut-and-dry as I lay it out. Or more to the point, you simply don’t want to accept this as a plausible version of our future reality. It’s humbling to hear, and ironic in its own way. How are the nice guys supposed to accomplish what we need of them if their worshipful imperative is dampened by our lack of resolve? It’s not a new thing for us to have outsized expectations foisted upon us. But maybe in this case that’s just … having power? And like all powerful people, we need our servants as much as they need us, and to teach us to rule them without their knowing. It might be the ultimate utopia: everyone is a slut for everyone else.