That's "Nice"

Jezebel takes on the Nice Guy, a phenomenon I was reminded of recently after seeing "Anna Karenina." Levin - in the movie, and as much as I recall, in the book - is very much that type (setting aside the labor angle, which is kind of irrelevant to this issue). But I'm not sure Erin Gloria Ryan's description should be the official encyclopedia entry.

The basic idea is in her post - a Nice Guy is one who believes that if he behaves properly (anything from holding open doors for a laydee to claiming to espouse feminist principles), he is owed either women generally or a particular woman he's after. Male entitlement, in other words, but of a more nuanced variety. I'd only add - and this does seem key - that a Nice Guy absolutely straight-up does not think that if a Girl is Nice, she's owed anything from him. He's of course allowed to choose women on the basis of physical attraction, because without that, what on earth would a man be doing with a woman in the first place. It's about his niceness winning her beauty.

Where I part ways with Ryan (Gloria Ryan? I'm not even entirely sure how to do this with my own name) is, it's not always so easy to convey which sorts of male attention are creepy, and which are perfectly acceptable. For example: being asked out on a date can be creepy, or not, depending on various factors, such as if the man in question is your boss, your uncle, etc. But it is not inherently creepy a) for a man to ask a woman to go do something, or b) for him to want to take the relationship to a new emotional or physical level. Creepy is not taking no for an answer. Asking in the first place: not creepy.* So while some of the examples Ryan gives do seem nice-guy-ish, others not so much.

And the thing where guys on the street ask girls/young women to smile, this is plenty obnoxious, but seems of another category entirely. Oh, and while resenting others who get more dates than you do is an unattractive quality, it only seeps over into Nice Guy if it's expressed. As in, maybe dude feels it's unfair that guys who are better-looking and more successful than he is get more dates. (The adult world indeed isn't big on football players, but there are adult equivalents.) But unless he's bothering the grown-up football player's girlfriend about it, it's really a problem only within his mind.

Anyway, what makes this a tough conversation is, there's on the one hand creepiness, and on the other, a desire on the part of many women not to feel like Aura in "Tiny Furniture," i.e. sexually repellent. It's not always clear when a conversation is about stalking/harassment in the serious sense (and this stuff's plenty real!) and when it's about affirming that one does indeed leave an impression, turn heads. I mean, it's not actually so tough to sort out in individual situations - either an experience is/was frightening or it is/was flattering. But there are some women - thankfully no one I've interacted with in years - who use the "creepy" terminology to discuss things like how dreadful it is that so many entirely appropriate guys ask them out in not-at-all-lewd ways. And Ryan's chart itself is a bit ambiguous on that front.

*To return to the question of "partner" terminology for a moment, it probably is creepy for a man to ask out a woman who's married, engaged, or mentions a "partner" but not necessarily a woman known to have a boyfriend, given that this term is also used to refer to casual, two-month-type relationships in which both parties would be better off with other people, and in which nothing particular is lost if a break-up occurs. But no doubt Dan "Monogamish" Savage would have a different take.