The cultural backlash and (dating) internet semantics regarding so-called Nice Guys and Not Like Other Girls has always bothered me. Even though, I do think cultural animosity towards these groups of people have died there, it still comes to the surface every now and then.

I always felt the need to challenge perception about Nice Guys and Not Like Other Girls because not only were people treating the same talking points as gospel, but the talking points were also themselves were deeply problematic. It almost as if people were actually thinking critically about what they were saying and just wanting an excuse to "fake" Nice Guys and sexist Not Like Other Girls.

For people who don't know the internet semantics of Nice Guys and Not Like Other Girls here is a brief description of both of these terms.

a) Nice Guy- a passive aggressive male (who is typically socially awkward) who complains about the friendzone and feels entitled to female bodies for simply being nice.

b) Not Like Other Girls- an eccentric female who prides herself for being different than other girls and suffer from serious case of internalized misogyny where she throws other women under the bus for being stereotypically feminine.

The description of both of these types of people makes them sound pretty terrible. However, even though I don't deny that these types of people exist, when these terms are weaponized and over-generalized on the internet it reveals the true motives behind the words. One of the true motives is the gender policing that is applied to these words.

For instance, both feminists and anti-feminists have contempt for so-called Nice Guys, however despite coming from different perspectives their arguments against Nice Guys are rather similar. Their argument is essentially revolving around Nice Guys inability to be "upfront" about their desires and it was their "own fault" for being friend zoned. Here we already ran into problems first, unless people think everyone should relate the people the same way, there are a lot of valid reasons why someone wouldn't be "upfront" about their romantic feelings. Men are just as uncomfortable asking a stranger out on a date as a woman being approached by stranger for a date. Why would he immediately be upfront about his feelings when he could get to know her as a person and friend beforehand.

Some people call this "manipulation" but how is perspective takes away anyone nuance from relationships and dating, and makes it seem one-note. It is simply unrealistic to think everyone should approach courtship the same way, especially in cultural climate of what is okay and not okay is constantly changing and evolving.

Another problem with the Nice Guy backlash is the implication that it's his fault he was friendzone as it implies that he can control the choices that women make. If you truly believe that women have their own agency, then claiming that it was his fault for a choice that she made takes away any agency.

This leads me to the contradicting (and problematic) advice Nice Guys are given. They are told that nice guys shouldn't expect to "earn" someone's love and affection and that these things are given freely (which is true). But then these same people would give them a seminar on how they can earn the affection of the woman of their dreams. So, which is it? Can love and affection be earned and can they not be earned. What these people basically saying is that love and affection can be earned but that nice guys are doing it the "wrong way", which is usually based on money, status, questionable dating tactics.

The cultural animosity towards Not Like Other Girls is arguable worse as it is compounded by (if we are being honest) misogyny. Not Like Other Girls are constantly vilified for taking pride for being different from other girls while completely missing the point as to why these girls are rejecting their fellow women. Feminine stereotype is imposed on girls from a very young age, which leads to girl having very complicated and contentious relationship with femininity.

When you have a culture that constantly tells you that girls and women need to be certain way to not only assimilate to society but to have value you can't be surprised when some girls and women would want to reject it. Not Like Other Girls have most likely been mocked for not confirming to feminine and sexist stereotypes but as soon they become comfortable with who they are they are then told they are betraying womankind for daring to be different from her fellow sisters.

If Not Like Other Girls have contempt of other women it is probably a result of culture that reduce women to their looks and bodies, and the women who exploit that. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with being stereotypically feminine, but women who are stereotypically feminine are very much the status quo. And the more women are bullied for being Not Like Othe Girls the more it seems they are vilified for not conforming to the status quo and what society wants from them, especially by other women.

The one thing I realized is that both Nice Guys and Not Like Other Girls have to endure a lot of gender policing. The constant criticism that Nice Guys face is that they're not masculine enough and they have too much feminine characteristics to get women to be attracted to them. While Not Like Other Girls are gender policed for not being feminine enough. The idea that men and women need to confirm to gender stereotypes in order to attract the opposite sex is an outdated notion but is kept alive even by people who like to think of themselves as progressive. Instead of a culture that allows these men and women to be genuine, it puts them in rigid boxes and moralize their behavior by how well their conform to that box.

There is so much more I want to say about this, but I will end this by saying that backlash against Nice Guys and Not Like Other Girls reflects a larger cultural problem that is way more insidious than any Nice Guy or Not Like Other Girl.