More SL misandry... justified?

They do seem to be coming out of the woodwork at the moment - obnoxious males!  Since the "hello whores" guy a couple of days ago, I've run into two more who made him look almost charming by comparison (one earned an eject from Oxbridge, the other a full-on AR, and no I am not going into details about what they said and did!).  And my friend Lindal Kidd has done an interesting and insightful post here about the effect this has on the demographics of the grid....

Now, I will bend over backwards not to be a knee-jerk man-hater, despite my own preferences... but some of these guys are not making it easy for me!  And the question in my mind, of course, is why should this be the case?  After all, I have many male friends, both in RL and SL, and they are all perfectly nice people, and only one or two of them are idiots who persuade me to let myself be called "Glorf"....

I'm inclined to think, frankly, it's down to gender roles.... There are, in my opinion, roughly as many dumb-and-unpleasant women as there are men - believe me, I have known many people whose two X chromosomes didn't stop them being massive dicks!  But, dumb-and-unpleasant often goes with dumb-and-unimaginative, and that means dumb-and-unpleasant people tend less to think for themselves, and more to conform to existing stereotypes about gender behaviour.  And, well, those stereotypes tend to require men to be more pushy, more macho, more aggressive than women.  You do meet the dumb-and-unpleasant women, and they have their own dumb-and-unpleasant ways - they are the spoiled whiny princess types, the ones who say everything is "lame" and demand to be flattered and entertained.  They are toxic in their own special way, but they stand out less than the males.  You have to talk to them before they show you how awful they are.  The awful men, unfortunately, let you know right from the start....

Lindal's suggestion, that this state of affairs drives lots of nice men into female avis... is an interesting one, and I wouldn't be the one to say she was wrong!  (Should I be angry at those men for representing themselves as something they're not?  Well, no, I don't think so, because we all do that, to a greater or lesser extent - trust me, I don't look anything like my typist, and the way I look in SL does make a difference, because it influences the way other people act towards me, and that in turn feeds back and affects the way I act towards them.)

In the final analysis, I suppose, the toxic minority make life unpleasant for everyone, each in their own way.  Perhaps we should even be glad that the dumb-and-unpleasant males are up front about it!  But there's no denying they make SL hard for the smart-and-pleasant males... and, in a world where you can be who or what you want to be, is it right to blame them for turning into smart-and-pleasant females instead?

All too typical

A young charmer turned up at Oxbridge last night, wandered up to where Tali and I were standing, and introduced himself with a "hi whore".  When suitably rebuked (suitably for Oxbridge, where death rays are not allowed), he made small talk in a hesitant but nearly polite way for a few minutes, only to wander off to someone else - specifically, Oxbridge's esteemed Dean Martini Discovolante - with a merry cry of "fuk"....

What is it with these guys, I have to wonder?  Am I supposed to be impressed at their unconventionality, their daring, their free speaking?  All of us can say "fuk"; most of us can go one better and spell it.  We don't say it often, though, because we have more interesting things to say.

Is it an attempt to overawe us with his sheer raw alpha-maleness?  There is, in fact, a difference between an alpha male and an arsehole.  More people should be aware of this, especially people trying to be alpha males....

Or is this the phenomenon known as "negging", where members of what's called the "pick-up artist community" disparage women until their self-esteem is eroded until they will sleep with, well, pick-up artists?  Here's the thing, guys: women will want to be with you if you are actually fun to be with.  Most of your pick-up artists are going to die virgins, and even the ones who don't will only score with women who are damaged and/or stupid enough to fall for that tactic... women, in short, who aren't worth being with themselves.

Or is it just that awful sense of deficiency you seem to see so often these days, of someone who is acting destructively or unpleasantly because they have no idea how to do anything else?  Or no idea even of the rewards of doing anything else?  Someone who has been told, or told themselves, that good manners are for dorks and losers, and then wonders why nobody wants to be around them?

Whatever.  It's another case, I fear, where someone has come into a social medium - and "social" is one of the two key things about SL - and decided it's a good place to be antisocial.  I guess all the rest of us can do is sigh and move on....