The Nice Guy

When it comes to shagging ‘nice guys’? They NEVER finish last.

If someone came up to you in a bar and told you “I’ve never murdered anyone”, you’d be a bit suspicious, right? Like, maybe I didn’t think that you were a murderer before, but now I’m definitely thinking, where’s the body. And whilst it’s pretty statistically unlikely that some dude in a bar has murdered someone, pulling from my own dating history, I’d say it’s pretty likely that they’re a massive sexist, or maybe cheats on all their girlfriends, or like, occasionally punches through drywall when we’re having arguments. So when a guy tells me he’s “a nice guy”, it sets off the world’s biggest alarms and sirens behind my eyes, because for real, there is NO easier way to convince me that you’re trash. The semi-attractive fuckboy doth protest too much, methinks.

I’ve met lots of self-professed ‘nice guys’ in my time and I am here to tell you that:

“I’m a nice guy” is literally never the entire sentence.

“I’m a nice guy” is never code for “so I’m about to go out of my way to be kind, helpful or generous to you and everyone else, expecting nothing in return, as a legitimately nice person would do”.

“I’m a nice guy” usually also means “I am not self-aware enough to recognise that lots of my behaviours are in fact, misogynistic. I probably habitually ignore women who point my awful character traits out to me, and gaslight them by hiding behind my own self-perception of myself as ‘nice’”. “I’m a nice guy” is the men who self-identify as unproblematic, allowing movements like #notallmen to flourish in the aftermath of violent crimes against women.

“Nice guys” not only miss the point – that their niceness will not save women from harm. Whether it’s performatively feminist men gaining access to women’s safe spaces, friendship groups, and trust prior to performing abuse, or it’s wishy washy quiet boys who let their mate’s toxic behaviour go unchecked, there is no correlation between which men are dangerous, and which are superficially nice. “Nice guys” are the guys who see statistics about women feeling pressured into sex, women who are harassed, assaulted, raped, and murdered, and assume that their friends and crucially, that they themselves, could not be part of the problem. “He’s such a nice guy” is what women who report their abuse get gaslit with, that a man who is such a good father, friend, teacher, colleague, boyfriend, could not also be an abuser. But he can. But he can.

Nice Guys Finish Last

When a guy deadass tells me he is a nice guy, in those words he’s usually trying to convince me that I should sleep with him. The chat usually goes something like, “why do girls only go for toxic fuckboys? Why don’t they go for nice guys like meeeeeeee?” SPOILER ALERT: men who think women who owe them sex aren’t “nice”, Brad. You and your whiny balls are not my responsibility.

But if we’re not allowed to sleep with the nice guys, who are we allowed to sleep with? To know? I hear you ask.

And it’s a good point, well made. Whilst it’s honestly almost getting to the point where I would sooner trust a self-proclaimed fuckboy than a ‘nice guy’, because deadass the only difference between the two is that fuckboys know that they’re fuckboys and fuckboys admit to being fuckboys, whereas ‘nice guys’ are basically fuckboys in a wig and glasses whinging that no one wants to shag them, I hear that this isn’t a great option. 

But ‘nice guys’ aren’t nice. Any man who believes that you owe them sex if he behaves a certain way is dangerous. Incels (the unhappy little mash-up of ‘involuntary’ and ‘celibate’) AKA a ‘nice guy’ on steroids have been responsible not only for countless numbers of misogynistic crimes against women, including rape, sexual assault, harassment and doxxing, but also for at least six mass murders, resulting in a total of 44 deaths, since 2014. A ‘nice guy’ is only nice as long as you act a certain way, which isn’t nice at all.

And “I’m a nice guy” isn’t even a good flex. ‘Nice’ is literally the most flaccid and bland adjective in the entire world. ‘Nice’ is about as exciting as ‘good’. ‘Nice guys’ aren’t even claiming to be excellent or even remotely fuckable, and are still mad that you won’t sleep with them. The only people who would cling to desperately to the adjective ‘nice’ must be really, really down on good things to say about themselves. And even if they are nice, I’m not here to congratulate you for meeting the lowest bar possible for basic human decency. I’m tired, man.

Here’s the thing. Legitimately nice men do exist (or so I’m told), but they’re definitely not out here telling you how nice they are, because legitimately nice men understand that consensual sex doesn’t happen as part of a metric, where if they bring you roses X amount of times and open Y amount of doors then they can make it add up so that you’ll put their oh-so-nice willy in your mouth.

Legitimately nice men look at a woman, recognise that she is a multifaceted autonomous being (woah), who is allowed to have preferences that extend beyond ‘nice’, and accept that there is a pretty good chance that they won’t end up in her bed. And legitimately nice guys have made their peace with that.

Legitimately nice guys are the ones who constantly interrogate their own behaviour, who look for the traces of the patriarchy in it. Who proactively check that the women around them feel safe, regardless of whether or not they are sexually attracted to them, or emotionally attached to them. Not just the girlfriends, sisters and mothers of the world, but all women. Legitimately nice guys not only check that their friends and strangers are treating women well, but who check that they themselves are treating women well. Legitimately nice guys recognise that this is the least that they can do.

So shag who you want to, don’t shag anyone you don’t. If a guy tells you that you HAVE to sleep with him for any reason (whether it’s because he was nice to you, because he paid for the date, or because his balls have been struck by a rare, fictional disease), run a mile.

Because finally, when it comes to shagging ‘nice guys’? They NEVER finish last.

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