The “Nice Guy” Doesn’t Exist
Tags: Women, Rape Culture, Nice Guy Syndrome, Feminism, Movies

My boyfriend’s a nice guy.

Seriously, he’s one of the good ones. Well…for the most part.

Some ugly truths we had buried came floating to the surface when we went to see Promising Young Woman together, a movie about the rape of Nina, best friend of the protagonist Cassie, played by Carey Mulligan.

Walking beneath the large neon cinema lights my heart was light and my step bouncy. I was out with my boyfriend to see a movie, something I hadn’t been able to do in ages. I knew the material was going to be heavy, but my boyfriend was one of the good guys so I had nothing to worry about…right?

Wrong.

The movie was uncomfortable, disturbing, and raw. It masterfully picked apart our carefully crafted facades and buttresses built on notions we tell ourselves, that we’re “not like those people” and showed us that we are.

When the movie was over we walked out, a heavy silence between us. The jaws of the Cinema’s entrance leered and grinned at us as we shuffled out. Once we were inside my boyfriend sat and attempted to clumsily patch up the walls the movie had sent crumbling down.

“I just felt that the movie was saying all men are assholes. Even the nice guy turned out to be a jerk.” I could tell he was sifting through his memories, scanning for any evidence that he had unintentionally hurt a girl in the past. “I mean she was drunk but she came onto me and I rejected her.”

I sat with this the way I usually do when something bothers me but I can’t put my finger on it. A day later while I was folding laundry it bubbled to the surface like a blackhead.

“First off, I feel the fact that you’re more concerned with how you perceive yourself and how society perceives you, as a ‘nice guy’ than with the fact that women deal with this is the problem the movie is pointing out.”

“You’re right,” he said, sighing.

“If you know you’re not one of those guys you have nothing to worry about, right?”

Silence.

I know my boyfriend hasn’t even come close to committing the atrocities in the movie, but something wasn’t right. He was acting guilty, something had lodged itself within the comfort blanket of being a “nice guy” and eaten through the fabric.

“Well, it just makes me think of the picture of that girl in my friend’s group chat.”

Bingo.

The memory surfaced and with it the same anger, fresh as a daisy on a summer’s day.

You see, my boyfriend is a nice guy. But some of his friends aren’t. Some of his friends are the type to post the naked picture of a girl who had clearly sent the nude in confidence in the group chat with their buddies. I remember seeing it and expressing my extreme discomfort and anger to my boyfriend and asking him to speak up about it.

“I didn’t say anything.”

I suddenly saw a piece of Dr. Ryan Cooper in my boyfriend. The pediatrician played by Bo Burnham who takes care of kids and sweeps into Cassie’s coffee shop, all charm. The one who very nearly convinces Cassie that good guys do exist until she finds a video of the night her best friend Nina was raped and hears his voice, egging the abuse on.

Obviously, the situation I’m dealing with is on a much smaller scale. My boyfriend would never egg on the rape of an incapacitated girl. On our second date, I got drunk. We went back to his house, watched a movie, and fell asleep. Nothing happened.

But here I was, the girlfriend who had swept it under the rug, and there he was, the boyfriend who said nothing when his buddies decided to pass around the photo of a naked girl so they could use her body for fodder, and toss her around like meat to feel big.

I felt guilty too. I should have been more insistent. I should have demanded.

Nice guys don’t exist. The nice guys follow the rules so they can throw their hands up and say “hey don’t look at me.” But so often they are the ones enabling abuse and violence by standing by and staying quiet while they watch their buddies hurt an innocent girl. In this way, they are experiencing this abuse vicariously while walking around and batting their eyelashes, crowing about how unique they are, how much they respect women.

My boyfriend is a nice guy but he’s guilty of this. As small as the circumstance may seem, it’s not. He was more concerned with how his friends would look at him, more concerned with being rejected than with speaking up. In my mind, I wouldn’t want to be friends with guys who do that, or care what they think. I also know that it’s small situations like this that set the stage for abuse and rape.

I can’t help but feel all of my old rage and resentment rising to the surface, shattering the comfort and trust months of dating a “nice guy” has built. Why is there this brotherhood between men where you look the other way when your buddy does something terrible to an innocent girl? Why do men feel the need to abuse women in order to feel big and mighty?

And why do they cling so tightly to this delusion of niceness? The only purpose it serves is to preserve the fragile male ego while excusing the “nice guys” from culpability. It’s a get out of jail free card.

If you really are a nice guy you shouldn’t feel the need to broadcast it to women. You should show it, especially around your male buddies. But I feel most of the time men use it to defend themselves against the conversations surrounding violence against women and inequality, to get into a girl’s pants, or bolster their ego.

Women need men to speak up and let their buddies know that this behavior is intolerable. Men are looking to their friends for a pass, and they’re given that when the assholes egg them on and the nice guys keep their mouths shut.

Most men really don’t respect women. If a man is hitting on me, I always tell him I’m taken because nothing else works. They don’t listen to your wishes or respect your stance. The only thing they acknowledge is another male. The same goes for the conversation surrounding passing around the naked photo of an ex. I can talk until I’m blue in the face but men will dismiss me, and often they keep their circle of buddies tight so this information doesn’t reach women. They keep their toxic behavior under wraps. We need men present in the situation to step up.

After our conversation, my boyfriend was clearly deflated. He looked very low, and I reminded him of how well he treats me and what a good boyfriend he is, but the damage had been done. I took heart that he had taken what I said seriously. He wasn’t fighting it or brushing it off. His ability to respect and listen to me, to be honest with me and with himself, and to take responsibility is what makes him, not a nice guy, but a man.