Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Squares, Geeks and Nerds, Oh My!

Over on Von's blog there is an ongoing theme that is an attempt at attacking the commonly expressed criticism of black women’s choices in dating. The criticism is directed at what many view as the strong tendency for black women to be attracted to a certain type of male who is commonly referred to as “the bad boy” or “the alpha male”. This type of male is often broken down into, among others, the categories of “thugs” and “players”.

The criticism usually expresses the common repercussions of such a trend. “Bad boys” tend to be less committed to children and relationships, live more risky lifestyles, are less focused and stable, etc. But women often find such guys to be exciting and will defend such choices based on the acceptable idea that “man (or woman) does not live on bread alone” and on the natural evolutionary bases of this attraction.

I believe that most men understand that on top of good character, a man must have some appeal beyond just being a good guy. We understand that the inclination of women to be attracted to dominant, aggressive and even violent males is rooted in nature, but if this is to be understood, then should we not similarly be understanding of the fact that the male tendency toward multiple sex partners is similarly rooted in natural evolution? Yet, male polygamous based infidelity is treated with far more scorn than female hypergamy and the subsequent hypergamous based infidelity that commonly results. Should we not similarly reference the need to move away from base desires for the benefit of developing stable civilized societies?

Beyond this, Von and others attempt to defend alpha male/bad boy love by tossing ad hominem attacks at its critics. Her most noted one is implying that such critical men are those who are social misfits and/or are visually unappealing. The idea is that they are resentful of being routinely passed over by the more desirable women and that their criticisms are based on such resentment. With this notion being put forth, I decided to investigate, beginning with an example of an individual who expressed the viewpoint that much of the behavior of men is shaped by the mating choices of women and women should refrain from dating the more thuggish types. This particular young man grew up middle class in a loving two parent home and attended Morehouse College. Here is his quote:

"American women have issues. Black women are the backbone of our families. If every Black woman got together and said, "We're not gonna date guys unless they have PhDs. We're not gonna date guys unless they have a Master’s [degree].”
Guess what? In due time, n****s will stop selling dope and they'll start going to college. It's that simple."

"Just like if I want to have all the hoes on the block and be a pimp, I got to get all the women's backing first. Then I can get all the dudes to come to any party I want them to come to. Look at strip clubs. You take all the women out of strip clubs and see how popular the strip club becomes. You tell women to stop dating dope dealers and you’ll see how cool dealing dope becomes."

These quotes are some of the controversial statements made by Polow Da Dom in interviews. Now let's take a look at this "nerd":





Now I'm no real expert on what women find appealing about men, but I will take an educated guess and say that Polow would generally be considered a good looking guy. He quite apparently spends some time in the gym and he seems to me to be what many would call a "pretty boy". I wonder what kind of social life he leads.




Well, it appears that this "geek" does interact with rather pretty women. Maybe this is a fluke shot. Let's look again:





Hmmm. This "square" managed another photo with a very pretty celebrity at some high class event. Has he taken more?:





Well, this is odd. I thought that the opinion that Polow expressed was strong evidence that he is ugly, a loser, a geek, a social misfit and a nerd. But the truth is that he is a well know rapper, singer, songwriter and millionaire super producer. As a matter of fact, Billboard labeled him as the number one Hip Hop producer of 2010. This is the same man who purchased a Porche Panamera worth over $100,000.00 as a gift to his cousin Monica to congratulate her on her new album.
Even looking at the Black Men Vent episodes on Youtube, I don't see nerds and geeks. None of them are ugly. I don't see social awkwardness. They seem to interact rather comfortably with the ladies they are debating. Some of them have children from previous relationships. What I see are regular guys who put a lot of thought into a particular issue and are very vocal with their opinions.

Now lets take a look at a nother view of "nerds". Here is an article from the The Spearhead discussing the reaction to his criticism of a video game service which charges men to play video games with women:
"The transition of video games from a niche hobby to a mainstream pastime that occurred in the past decade has wallpapered over many of the more sordid realities of the gaming community. It’s not a stretch to say that most
hardcore gamers are nerds, and while not all manginas are nerds, almost all nerds are manginas.
Remember the brouhaha over Pro-Male/Anti-Feminist Tech’s science fiction article back in October? The hordes of sniveling dweeboids who screamed bloody murder over his piece on blogs, forums, and The Spearhead’s own comment section were doing what
they do best – kissing the tails of the less-fair sex in vain hope of a little tail being tossed their way. Your average gamer is a servile sack of snot who will roll over and beg for a woman who so much as brushes him in the
hallway."

Here is another article deeply critical of nerds:

"Nerds are manginas. Keeping in theme with the previous paragraph, a man whose ideal woman is basically a dude with breasts and a vagina is a man who will likely allow women in general to walk all over him. Afraid of confrontation and used to bowing and scraping, nerds place themselves at the mercy of women in the vain hope of getting laid. Also, male feminists are overwhelmingly nerds – see pansies like Hugo Schwyzer and Barry “Ampersand” Deutsch."
Here is a comment from someone reading an article related to this topic:

"I can’t remember if there was any sort of formal statistical study done, but I do remember reading a story awhile back discussing how nerdy men often end up marrying attractive women (my husband — a rather nerdy but lovable engineer —
got quite a kick out the article). Part of the reasoning behind such paring is that these ‘nerds’ tend to be nicer and more respectful to these women than their more hunky counterparts. Of course there was mention of greater success, stability, personality and the like as well."

"It would be interesting to see how the woman’s education level matches up with the man’s in these cases. Do these women tend to be higher educated as well, so they have greater preference for men who are on par intellectually, regardless of looks? Or do you get more of the dense trophy wife effect?"— Casey


Now while I don't agree with "nerd hate" (there is nothing wrong with being a nerd), it does make sense that nerds would tend to be more pro-feminist and be more defending of women. Nerds tend to be your classic "nice guys" in the sense that to compensate for their lack of things like swagger, charm, assertiveness, style, etc., they tend to be extra nice to women. They are quick to jump to a woman's beck and call and will defend feminist ideals. They may envy the popular guys who get the pretty girls, but it is typically outside of their nature to be resentful and misogynistic. So in all likelihood, guys who are critical and hard on women are the furthest from being nerds. How often do we see nerdy wife batterers?

It would be difficult for people like Von and her cohorts to acknowledge that it is quite possible than those men who are vocally critical of black women's choices do so due to honest observation and being socially aware of how black women's dating choices and other behaviors contribute among other things to the destruction of the black family. Such an acknowledgement would require an open mind.