Nice Guys Finish Last...

...But the really good ones finish at the same time as her.

This article, and mind you I have not read the book, seems strikingly similar to the arguments made by many a self-proclaimed "nice guy" that couldn't get a date. The article paints Dowd as a woman bitter by the fact that her intelligence and power seems to preclude her from the dating scene, and pretty much has given up on men as a whole, and from what I have read by and about Dowd before this, I'm inclined to pretty much agree with this sentiment. The problem I have with this is that this phenomena is totally marred by the self-diagnostic attitude that is growing out of this.

For example, as I may or may not have held this view of myself in the early years of high school, the term "Nice guys finish last" has always killed me. Why? Because I am a nice guy. I am a very nice guy. And I used to finish last, and it was very relieving to me to blame this stupid mantra as the cause. The problem, of course, was not that I was a nice guy and that meant girls didn't like me: the problem was girls didn't like me because I confused being nice with being a doormat. And just about every time that I hear a guy say that a girl dumped him or shot him down because "he was too nice", I want to retch. No, she didn't like you because you were spineless shell of a man who tried too hard to hold the woman up on a pedestal that was higher than yourself and that either turned her off or, worse yet, you convinced her that you were right and that she did in fact have no business being with a mopey turd like you. Of course, thanks to a little psychological phenomena known as the confirmation bias, these episodes just reinforced your belief that every woman hates a nice guy, even if that isn't true.

This would be like TO saying keeps getting into trouble because everyone on the 49ers and the Eagles didn't like him because he had too much talent, and not because he is a cock-gargling sociopath.

And the article seems to come across the same way for intelligent and powerful women. But it seems to me (at least on what I gleaned from the article), that there are probably a lot of intelligent and powerful women out there who base their identity on that power and intelligence. Hell, a lot of men do that too. In fact, most people who make it to those levels of success need to do so as a way to get there, male or female. The problem is not that men don't like you because you are intelligent and powerful, but because you think of yourselves that way which makes you constanly have to assert yourselves as such, which is a terrible and pretty much insufferable quality to have in general, but especially early on in the courting process. Of course, when things don't work out, it isn't that your Type A personality is a particularly high maintenance attribute that is likely going to put most potential mates off (especially those that have the same ones, just like everyone else that exists in your social sphere), it's because men fear your power. Yeah, that makes sense: hundreds of men have all run screaming from you and would rather wash their nuts in battery acid than speak to you again because they fear your intelligence, not because you are a self-centered and overly-driven asshole.

But hey, if you really do want a man that attends to your every needs and will never run screaming from you no matter how much abuse you dole out, I've got a bunch of "nice guys" sitting around that would be perfect for you.