how ‘nice guy’ narratives can lead to male entitlement and violence against women

Being labelled a “nice guy” was once considered a form of flattery. Today, however, anyone privy to the world of dating and romance will know this isn’t necessarily a compliment.

The term has been unofficially reappropriated by women to describe a certain kind of man – one who presents as being “nice”, but feels entitled to some kind of attention from a woman in exchange for this niceness.

We need to take this attitude seriously, since the more it is normalised, the more likely it is to put women at risk.

When flowers become stalking

Plenty of women have shared their experience of being sent abusive texts after they rejected or ignored a man while online dating. The Instagram account @ByeFelipe, which has more than 400,000 followers, frequently features posts of “nice men” weaponizing their niceness on dating apps.

In one example, a woman tells a man she doesn’t want to have sex with him on their first meeting, and he responds by calling her “trash”, “ugly”, “old” and a “bitch”.

In my ongoing research on violence against women I have talked to hundreds of women who’ve been stalked by a man. In Australia, one in five women will be stalked. And women are eight times more likely to be stalked by a man than by another woman.

Often, the stalking is preceded by certain performances, such as the man repeatedly leaving flowers by the woman’s door. As one woman told me:

We are so used to being told that ‘bad guys’ are men who are physically abusive. When a guy is ‘nice’, it’s hard to believe he’s dangerous. It’s easier for women to ignore the signals of danger, because they are told that he has to be a good guy because he’s doing all these things. He even used feminist buzzwords. He’d say, ‘I believe in equality. I’m a feminist myself’.

Another described how a man kept telling her, “I’m in touch with my emotions. I wear my heart on my sleeve” – but that she had to escape the relationship after he threatened her.

Blaming women for feelings of inadequacy

The “nice guy” trope can create a narrative in which men feel victimised by women. As sociologist Michael Kimmel explains, this can lead to a sense of aggrieved entitlement, and men blaming women for their own feelings of inadequacy.

I’ve witnessed this while working with male inmates in a private capacity. Working in prisons in Sweden, I spoke to dozens of men who were convicted sex offenders and/or who had killed their wives or ex-partners.

All of them told me they reacted with violence when women rejected them romantically. None of the men I spoke to took responsibility for killing the woman. Instead, they justified their crimes and/or blamed the women.

The ‘nice guy’ in pop culture

Pop culture and media both have played a role in normalising the “nice guy” trope, which has now taken on different meanings in different groups – from misogynistic men in incel communities to women calling out men on dating apps.

Traditionally, the romance movie genre has portrayed highly persistent men as charming, or even admirable. In films such as There’s Something About Mary (1998) and Groundhog Day (1993), the “nice guy” obsessively pursues the woman while ignoring her wish to be left alone.

In these stories, obsessive behaviour is rewarded because the “nice guy” eventually gets the girl. In real life, the same behaviours can cross the line into harassment and stalking.

A more realistic depiction comes from the 1993 film I Can Make You Love Me, also known as Stalking Laura. This film is based on the true story of mass murderer Richard Farley.

Farley became obsessed with his coworker Laura Black in the 1980s. He love-bombed her, left her gifts such as letters and baked goods, called her every few hours, and even showed up to her apartment and her aerobics class. When he asked her out, Laura politely declined.

Farley would go on to shoot Laura in the shoulder in a killing spree that left her and three others injured, and seven more people dead. This event prompted California to pass the first anti-stalking laws in the United States.

Real-world consequences

Another horrifying example of an entitled “nice guy” was Elliot Rodger. In 2014, the then 22-year-old used knives, guns and his car to murder six people and injure 13 near the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Rodger described himself as a “supreme gentleman” and couldn’t understand why women wouldn’t have sex with him. In a chilling video posted before the attack, he said:

I will slaughter every spoiled, stuck-up, blond slut I see inside there. All those girls I’ve desired so much, they would have all rejected me and looked down upon me as an inferior man if I ever made a sexual advance towards them while they throw themselves at these obnoxious brutes.

More than ten years later, there’s no shortage of men who share Rodger’s victim mentality and violent sentiments. Yet there is a lack of research into how such attitudes can contribute to real-world harm.

As masculinity studies theorists argue, these attitudes are not the product of individual pathology, but are a much larger problem linked to societal ideas about masculinity. They are created by sexist ideology in culture, and are spread through socialisation.

Robert Farley and Elliot Rodger weren’t the first men, nor the last, to think they had entitlements over women just because they followed a social script of acting “nice”. If we can understand how this attitude grows and festers among men, we might be able to stop it at its start.