Hugo Schwyzer has a post entitled, “No One is Entitled to Sex: Why We Should Mock the Nice Guys of OkCupid.”* Believe it or not, I actually agree with
this. I think we all should mock anyone
who has an attitude of entitlement.
I say we start by mocking every person who thinks they’re entitled
to food stamps and WIC and Head Start and public school and government bailouts
when they mismanage their business. I
say we mock those who think their entitled to avoid prosecution for the crimes
they’ve committed. I say we mock those
who think that they’re entitled to any portion of their husband’s income after
the divorce because he wasn’t as fun to bang as the pool boy. I say we mock those who think that they are
entitled to taxpayer money because they’re doing science or art. I say we mock anyone who thinks they’re entitled
to someone else’s labor, capital, time, or money. I say we mock everyone who thinks they’re
entitled to anything, period.
* If you actually read the post, it’s quite clear that the
editors at Jezebel selected the title since Schwyzer never actually affirms
that it is right to mock nice guys. In
fact, the closest he gets to saying this is:
Is it right to mock these aggrieved and clueless young men, particularly the ones who seem less enraged than sad and bewildered at their utter lack of sexual success?
"This is the ugly bullying of those who already feel like losers," says Ally Fogg, a columnist for the Guardian who writes frequently about masculinity. "It's immoral to place them in the 21st Century equivalent of the medieval stocks to be mocked, abused and humiliated." In an email, Fogg suggested that NGOKC could be "potentially dangerous," driving those who are at a "low ebb emotionally" over an edge.
Without entirely dismissing Fogg's concern that some young men's rage or despair could be worsened as a result of NGOKC, there's a lot more to the site than mockery. What's on offer isn't just an opportunity to snort derisively at the socially awkward; it's a chance to talk about the very real problem of male sexual entitlement.
For those who suffer from poor reading comprehension,
Schwyzer is agreeing with Fogg that it is wrong to mock men for their lack of
sexual success, and is further asserting that, as painful as NGOKC is, it does
offer an opportunity for men to consider the matter of male sexual
entitlement. (Of course, attacking Hugo
Schwyzer is a whole lot easier than examining yourself, and so it’s easy to see
why the manosphere has leaped on this article the way it has. I shall deal with this is later posts.) Thus, Schwyzer ends up disagreeing with the
title of his own post, which is how you know that the title was an editor’s
decision.
