How to flirt like you're not an asshole

[sev]

(I posted this as a comment in a thread at ABW and figured I'd repost it here.)

Today I had a streetside flirtation that worked wonderfully, because the guy flirting with me carefully demonstrated that how much he’d give me was up to *me*. It was wonderful. He didn’t smile until I made eye contact, didn’t say anything until I smiled back, and when I broke eye contact and went back to what I’d been doing, he stopped.

If my dance card wasn’t totally full, I might have asked him for his phone number. Because unlike all the street harassment I’ve received — much on that very same downtown street — he wasn’t interested in demonstrating his power-over at me.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Hi Cheryl! It’s good to see a feminist gamer, and I’m sympathetic to the aggressive-flirting problem, but I feel obliged to point out an ugly truth. What this post says, in summation, is “I flirted with a great guy today, who did everything right, but I had a reason to blow him off.”

“Nice guys finish last,” in other words. Which pains me to write, because I’m a nice guy. I was raised by a feminist and on those rare occasions when I turn my flirt on (I’m still looking for the switch), I stop when a woman makes it clear she’s not interested. But your post has me thinking back on those women who I never got a number from; were they genuinely uninterested or unavailable, or did they just have some temporary excuse to blow me off?

This, I think, is why so many men are aggressive. Because even if they’re forward and maybe a bit rude, they get numbers and first dates, and more of an overall chance with women. (Of course I’m not talking about real assholes who you’d punch as soon as talk to, but about guys that persist a bit longer than the first subtle blow-off.)

[sev]

Hello, whoever you are, who I'm guessing got here via either enworld or the WotC boards. Thanks for dropping by & saying hello.

"I already have two significant long-term relationships and I have a 3-year-old and I don't have enough time to get enough sleep, much less go on a date" is not a reason that's going to go away if somebody is a little more aggressive. "Blow him off" suggests that he's entitled to something for being nice, other than me being nice back to him.

As for the rest, I'm not really up for unpacking the "Nice Guy" thing but others have done it already, so I'll point you there:

http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2007/12/explainer-what-is-nice-guy.html

http://www.heartless-bitches.com/rants/niceguys/ng.shtml

http://hoydenabouttown.com/20071116.1139/friday-feminism-on-the-run-nice-guys-tm-redux-and-what-makes-an-ideal-husband-and-father/

http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/2007/06/14/frequently-whimpered-whines-the-nice-guy-tm-theme-song/

(Edited to add: The first and last links are my favorites, if you don't want to read all four.)

[(Anonymous)]

Wow, there’s a lot of emotion in these blogs. I think my idea of a nice guy is quite a bit different from the bitter/manipulative/whiny/asshole nice guy that I’m reading about. I didn’t realize that there’s so much baggage attached to the term.

Anyway, I’m Tequila Sunrise of the ‘Do You Blog?’ thread on ENworld. (And of the WotC forum, and a few others.) I’m not often interested in non-gaming posts, but I assumed ‘dance card’ was some kind of temporary club/party roster, and so I got interested. But now it seems that your ‘dance card’ is a long-term thing, which makes a lot more sense in context.

[sev]

Hi, Tequila Sunrise, nice to see you here. :)

"Wow, there's a lot of emotion in these blogs."

It's a fraught subject. It's full of men who are upset by not getting the dates they think they're entitled to, and women who've suffered through decades of being faced with men who act like not-being-an-asshole somehow entitles them to nookie. Either situation would get even the calmest person riled up.

Your summary -- “I flirted with a great guy today, who did everything right, but I had a reason to blow him off” -- that sounded like the stuff that comes from Whiny "Nice(tm)" Guys, especially when combined with a justification of aggression. It's a Whiny Nice Guy kind of statement because of the implication that "doing everything right" would entitle a guy to anything. And because "blow him off" is a dismissive way to describe a person's right to make their own decisions about their love life. All "doing everything right" means was that he didn't behave like an asshole. Nobody gets a gold star just for avoiding being a jerk.

Anyway, I'm glad that clarifying "dance card" helped make some sense of what I was saying, there. I didn't realize it wasn't a readily-accessible metaphor.