This is a repost I felt was worth posting here.

With this post, I'm hoping to do two things.

1: find a better way for us to talk about (and to) the kind of frustrated, lonely young men that we instead usually just mock(nice guys and etc)

2: discuss the impediments that generally keep us from having this honest discussion and talk about how to avoid them in the future

The things young women complain about when it comes to love and sex and dating are much different from the things young men complain about, and that has always been interesting to me. Check my post history - it’s a lot of me trying, at a high level, to understand young-male-oriented complaints about relationships.

What young men complain about (“friendzoning”, being a “nice guy” but still feeling invisible, lack of sexual attention, never being approached) is so much different from what young women complain about (catcalling, overly-aggressive men, receiving too much attention, being consistently sexualized).

Seriously, nerdy dudes: care less about creeping women out. I mean, don’t deliberately do things you suspect may creep a woman out, but making mistakes is a natural part of learning. Being creeped out by one random dude is not The Worst Pain People Can Ever Experience and it’s certainly not worth dooming you to an eternal life of loneliness over. She’ll live.

In my experience, this is not generally advice you'll get from the average young woman online. You'll get soft platitudes and you'll get some (sorry!) very bad advice.

Nice Guys: Finish First Without Pickup Gimmickry

Be generous about women’s motivations.

Believe that sex is not a battle.

Make a list of traits you’re looking for in a woman.

Dating tips for the feminist man

learn to recognize your own emotions.

Just as we teach high schoolers that ‘if you're not ready for the possible outcomes of babies and diseases, you're not ready for sex,’ the same is true of emotions

All The Dating Advice, Again (note: gender of writer is not mentioned)

Read books & blogs, watch films, look at art, and listen to music made by women.

Seek out new activities and build on the interests and passions that you already have in a way that brings you into contact with more people

When you have the time and energy for it, try out online dating sites to practice dating.

Be really nice to yourself and take good care of yourself.

As anyone who’s ever dated as a man will tell you, most of this advice is godawful nonsense. The real advice the average young man needs to hear - talk to a lot of women and ask a lot of them on dates - is not represented here at all.

Again, though: WHY?

Well, let’s back up.

Being young sucks. Dating while young especially sucks. No one really knows what they want or need, no one’s planning for any kind of future with anyone else, everyone really wants to have some orgasms, and everyone is incredibly judgmental.

Women complain that they are judged for their lack of femininity. That means: big tits, small waist, big ass. Demure, but DTF, but also not too DTF. Can’t be assertive, assertive women are manly. Not a complete idiot, but can’t be too smart. We work to empathize with women’s struggle here, because we want women who aren’t any of those things to be valued, too!

To me, it's clear that the obverse of that coin is young men being judged for their lack of masculinity. Young men are expected to be

  • confident
  • tall
  • successful, or at least employed enough to buy dinner
  • tall, seriously
  • broad-shouldered
  • active, never passive
  • muscular
  • not showing too much emotion

In my experience, these are all the norms that young men complain about young women enforcing. I can think of this being the case in my life, and I think reading this list makes sense. It's just that the solution - we as a society should tell young men that they need to act more masculine towards women if they want to be more successful in dating and love and sex! - is not something that we generally want to teach to young men. “Be more masculine” is right up there with “wear cargo shorts more often” on the list of Bad And Wrong Things To Say To Young Men.

But if we’re being honest, it’s true. It’s an honest, tough-love, and correct piece of advice. Why can’t we be honest about it?

Because traditionally masculine men make advances towards women that they often dislike. Often make them feel unsafe! The guys that follow Ye Olde Dating Advice - be aggressive! B-E aggressive! - are the guys who put their hand on the small of her back a little too casually, who stand a little too close and ask a few too many times if she wants to go back to his place. When women - especially young, white, even-modestly-attractive feminist women - hear “we as a society should tell young men that they need to act more masculine towards women if they want to be more successful in dating and love and sex”, they hear, “oh my god, we’re going to train them to be the exact kind of guy who creeps me out”.

Women also don’t really understand at a core level the minefield men navigate when they try to date, just as the converse is true for men. When young women give “advice” like just put yourself out there and write things like the real problem with short men is how bitter they are, not their height!, they - again, just like young men - are drawing from their well of experience. They’ve never been a short, broke, young dude trying to date. They’ve never watched Creepy Chad grope a woman, then take another home half an hour later because Chad oozes confidence.

Their experience with dating is based on trying to force the square peg of their authentic selves with the round hole of femininity, which is a parsec away from what men have to do. Instead, the line of the day is "being a nice guy is just expected, not attractive!" without any discussion about how the things that are attractive to women overlap with traditionally masculinity.

That's bad, and that's why we need to be honest about the level of policing they face by young women on the dating market.