Maliciousness and being nice
Events: From the 16th to the 24th
Monday 16-01-05
Thoughts: Maliciousness
Just recently I’ve been increasingly troubled by just how outright malicious some people can be for pleasure, makes me quite uncomfortable sometimes. I’m still human, I know how it is to want to lash out at people occasionally, and that sort of very bitter satisfaction, but beyond the fact that such things are very hollow pleasures, they’re special cases.
I’m not thinking of maliciousness to those that haven’t actually done any harm to anyone, and this can be about anything, online it’s often about aesthetic matters, and it’s present in most places. Whether it’s some MSN board, Vampirefreaks, or various livejournal communities I seem to see a lot of it, the desire of people to tear others down in order to gain some grim satisfaction.
The fashion boards on Vampirefreaks are often full of people making very derogatory remarks at each other and as much slagging off fashions as discussing fashion. Meanwhile there are entire livejournal communities dedicated to slagging people off and mocking people’s pictures, although at least it’s behind doors and not presented to the people themselves (which I suppose is a good thing…) I just get very uncomfortable when I read something where someone is linking to some place where someone has put pictures of themselves up just to be malevolent about the way it looks.
That doesn’t mean I don’t always share the aesthetic judgement though. It’s true that I am quite happy to acknowledge that different people have different tastes in fashion and aesthetics, and that some people might like styles that I really don’t like, and I’m happy with that. However, even outside that it’s the purposes that bother me here. If I saw a picture of someone that I felt could do with a couple of fashion tips the thing I would want people to be doing is really sharing their advice rather than attacking them, I’m just not sure what purpose the latter works for.
There are times when I look at pictures of people and think they’ve just not made themselves look good. Whilst there’s lots of room for different tastes, there are some things which seem just aesthetically unappealing in a very general sense. Particularly with make-up a lot of people could probably do with some advise, not everyone is an expert with the stuff, most people aren’t in fact (myself included). Some people don’t seem to be aiming to look good though, some are trying to be shocking. I’ve seen numerous profiles, some linked to by people I know, of people that are applying make-up in ways that couldn’t really be said to be making them more attractive, usually they are people that fall outside of the mainstream aesthetic, tending to not be very slim et cetera, and probably have low self-esteem. I can quite imagine, and in some cases this seems blatantly true, that many such girls have such low self-esteem that they use make-up to hide under, or to make themselves look shocking et cetera as a way of rejecting beauty standards. I think that’s largely a shame because a lot of them would look perfectly fine if they didn’t do this, but in any case my reaction is sympathy and I don’t really have any desire to mock or try to humiliate them.
Which leaves me to wonder why others do. Is it simply that I carry certain moral values that makes me uneasy? Is that the whole story? Is it natural for people to want to tear down others to make themselves feel better? I’m not sure that can be the whole story, there’s no rational gain to victimising others. Perhaps it’s just some barbaric legacy of days where hurting anyone around you helped you mark out your dominance and show you to be superior. Or perhaps, and I suspect this might be more true, people that do this are just the sort that are suffering from low self-esteem themselves and need to mock others to make them feel better.
Presumably then there’s room for sympathy there as well. It does all seem very sad on all accounts though. The viciousness of this kind of attitude being not uncommon is most unsettling. For those that are the direct victims it’s no doubt very uncomfortable, but I should imagine it puts a lot of people on edge as well, it creates a need to try to impress everyone, and for many people it no doubt transfers the importance of making yourself look better to be less an enjoyable good and more a necessity to avoid abuse. The whole thing seems so much like a child’s play ground. And for the idea that the people doing it are really doing it for feeling sad, which is worse because it undoubtedly doesn’t really solve the problem because it could only be a temporary fix, it really just suggests no one benefits from people being malicious in this way.
Presumably people just never stop to consider why they are doing these things or what good comes from it?
Thoughts: On being nice
On a tangentially related idea is this idea of being ‘nice’ and how it relates to sexual attractiveness. Now, most people have heard the complain that ‘girls don’t like nice boys’, and I’ve heard it in a million places again and again, with some boys feeling that a man ought to start treating people badly in order to get girls, a picture that is not only unpleasant but seems entirely untrue.
Now, I’m not perfect, but I’m nice. I also know other nice guys, and they don’t suffer from this either, yet this myth still exists. I suspect it’s got a lot to do with the misuse of the term ‘nice’.
The problem is that people that are ‘nice’ in this way usually aren’t in a strict sense of the term, they’re just weak. I’ve known girls that are weak in this way and that try to please in numerous ways to try and gain affection, and they get walked over. The problem here isn’t being nice; it’s that weakness of character and lack of self-worth. For a start, I know I don’t want a girl to be trying desperately for my affections, that just seems demeaning to them, I want to be treated as an equal and I want her to respect herself as much as she respects me, hence I prefer girls that can call me on my mistakes, criticise me, joke at my expense, without trying to hard. Secondly, the affection of those with low self-esteem is worth less, not feeling themselves worthy of anyone they will be affectionate to anyone that will be interested, and hence it means less.
Some guys actually like this, it makes assuming the dominant role much easier and it makes them more comfortable. I’ve often seen older guys that like particularly young girls to often fall into this pattern. I’ve seen plenty of relationships of an older guy that’s not really anyone special try and search out young impressionable girls that are easier to impress because no one on their level will be impressed.
However, the genders switched and the culture changes. Whilst many guys are socialised into having personalities that like being in charge like that et cetera, and are comfortable with that situation, many girls like guys they can respect, and hence the issue of being ‘nice’ (read weak) is more important.
Anyway, my main point is that it’s important for these guys to realise that they’re problem is not being nice, nice is a good thing and people like it, and it’s not good enough to blame women for picking the wrong guys because they didn’t pick you and you’re nicer to these women (most likely because you’re sycophantic and feel the need to desperately try and impress them), it’s to realise that the problem is you lack self-respect and need to better yourself.
I picked up a few interesting things on this topic on some forums, the latest of which was one on the more general topic of whether it is possible to be ‘too nice’
The Man With No Spine - A parable for "Nice Guys"
By John Russell
There once was a man without a spine.
He was a very likable guy. The advantage of not having a spine was that he could fit himself to anyone, and he frequently did. He could flex this way and that.
But he couldn't stand up ...
...and being kinda mushy and flat most of the time, people often walked on him without realizing he was there.
So he got sad, having this dreadful absence of a spine, and he was resentful too. He wondered why other people couldn't fit themselves to him the way he fit himself to others, but that was silly because he never felt he had the right to ask anyone directly to fit themselves to him. He was formless, what was there to fit to anyway? In cyberspace he talked tough as if he had a spine, but people could clearly see by his rage and resentment that he didn't have one in real life, and he perished in the flame wars he provoked and only came out feeling more ashamed and ineffectual.
He wished he could be with a woman, to help him the way a spine would. If he clung to a woman with a spine, he could stand up, but women didn't like it when he did that. He often called them "bitches" for the women with spines coldly asked him to let go of them, or unceremoniously shrugged him and his issues off onto the ground telling him to get his own spine.
If he fancied a spineless woman, on the other hand, he couldn't get her interest because they were looking for men with spines that they could cling to. But the spineless women would hang around with him for sympathy, and he'd be their platonic male friend and play "therapist" though he was as sick as they were. He'd often call himself a "feminist" and lecture these spineless women how to stand on their own when he had no idea of how to stand for himself.
With all the bending and flopping around he did, a spine never could get a chance to grow.
Then one day he had a brainstorm, he decided he'd make himself a spine.
He took a long stick.... and he put it far up his ass.
It was an improvement, though uncomfortable. It was the first time in his life he could walk tall, if not a bit stiff. He found he could have opinions at odds with others, and stand for them. He found out that he didn't have to be liked, that the world didn't end if he pissed someone off. He didn't want to fit easily with other people anymore, in fact he became inflexible.
People commented on the change, some people didn't particularly like him with the stick up his ass but they did notice him more. Some people felt that at least they could respect him, even if they didn't always like him because he did less whining. At least nobody stepped on him by accident.
However relationships still didn't come easy, it was hard for a woman with a spine to love him with the stick up his ass. He was stiff, cold, brutally opinionated, condescending, and self-righteously hostile. But eventually he did attract a very pretty woman without a spine who saw him as a tower of strength to cling to.
At first he loved this woman, he thought the stick up his ass was the answer to his dating problems. He was finally being loved the way he once loved others. At first it was great, and then it was good, and then it was ok, and then it was uncomfortable, and by the end of a year it was infuriatingly suffocating. The spineless woman clung like a straightjacket. The horror!!! The horror!!!
But the stick up his ass made him so inflexible he didn't know how to get the spineless woman off of him, If only he could bend. He was trapped, upright in his "obligations", "duty to her", "guilt", "pride in his commitment", he spent months with his arms helplessly flapping about trying to get her off of him and trying not to look like he was doing that.
He was hoping that she would leave by hinting her indirectly, he used sarcastic tones, said mean things that were "just a joke", neglect, "constructive" criticism intended to insult. He only made the spineless woman feel more insecure, so she clung HARDER.
Spineless men envied him, called him a jerk for the way he was treating her, just the way he remembered how he used to envy other men before he had the stick up his ass (when he'd play consoler to their teary-eyed spineless girlfriends). If only they knew what it was like to be on the receiving end of a spineless person's embrace they'd understand. He wished she'd leave him for one of the spineless men who envied him. He felt ashamed for the way he must have made women feel in the past when he was trying to cling to them, he knew that they weren't so evil after all.
One day he decided that there was only one way to be free of the spineless woman once and for all, the stick up his ass had to go.
So he pulled the stick out, and to his amazement a miracle happened: he was still standing! All of the years of inflexibility allowed him the chance to grow a spine. At first he was still a bit stiff but eventually he had the flexibility to contort a bit and yet maintained the firmness to struggle, push, and wriggle from the spineless woman's grasp (though she protested much). He stayed far out of her reach and the reach of other spineless women so that he could never be grasped by one again.
He was overjoyed with his new-found freedom; he could bend sometimes like he used to (but not too far) and also he could stand tall. He went out, partied, enjoyed life to the fullest, and eventually found a woman with a normal spine like his.
They stood together as separate individuals giving mutual support and enjoying time alone too, and lived (relatively) "happily ever after"...
Event: Slimelight 4th Febuary: 3 floor special, with trad goth floor, ebm/progressive goth and Industek floor with Savak and Zymosis live.
Monday 16-01-05
- Got up about eight ready to head to university
- Attended my last ever Human Nature lecture which just rounded things off. Apparently there might be a revision session coming up sometime soon though that will certainly be worth attending
- Wondered down with others to Avenue Campus, sat about and chatted for a while until they went for their theories of justice lecture, which gave me a chance to do a bit more reading. Have nearly finished Noel Carroll's 'Philosophy of Art' now :o) Turns out Julie had a similar problem with her Religious Philosophy lecture as I did, she did another question, her started with an objection by Swinburne and she was told she should have stuck to Hume more and talked about Swinburne less as well. Seems a lot of people didn't do so well with the coursework for that subject it seems.
- Went to my tutorial with Christine Lopez. Early part of the tutorial went well with presentations from me and two others concerned Hume's 'Enquiries into Human Nature', afterwards Lopes engaged in some spurious associations with Hume. Whilst I admit that Hume's sectioning off between belief and knowledge is interesting, to link it to all the things she did was just odd. She made it sound like Hume approved of people believing in miracles, no wonder people come out of her tutorials confused. She overran by a ton again, was much amused when another student asked whether she could go at twenty to four because she had a doctor's appointment, the funny bit is that the tutorial is supposed to finish at twenty-five to four :o)
- Walked up to the Highfield campus and sat outside my next lecture reading until it started.
- Had an interesting Religious Philosophy lecture on Wittgenstein. I think there are some interesting things to be taken from Wittgenstein, but I don't think his langauge philosophy makes much of a defence of religious beliefs for the most part.
- Had a History of Philosophy lecture about Hume's discussions of Miracles in his Enquires, fairly interesting, still not doing an essay on the subject though. Not because I don't understand it, but I'm not sure I want to try to write about it for a whole ninety minutes
- Headed home and mucked about on the computer, was intending to go to bed early but somehow managed to end up watching Stargate and a few other things. Surprised by how out of date I am with Stargate, I have no idea what's going on! Ended up not going to sleep until some time past eleven :o(
- Get up at eight thirty in the morning and headed off to an Aesthetics lecture
- Aesthetics lecture was on an Expressionist theory of Art and it's problems. Basically the issue revolves around expressive properties of Art. The art itself lacks mental states and emotions so how can it express them? They're not always the artist's as some artists create works that express different emotions to what they feel, and we also talk of non-art expressing things. Seems to me that this confuses the idea that all expressions have to be genuine, and that we can just suggest that artworks are non-genuine expressions if what they express is not shared by the artist (although that isn't meant in a derogatory way). We imagine non-constructed things to express things only in the sense that it seems as if it has a character, but it is really just an illusion. Equally, the illusion of a painting having a character is just that, and art is just involved with creating that illusion (sometimes anyway)
- got home and ended up writing a fairly long set of thoughts at feminism after being told that my gender concerns were not a part of feminism (whilst a few days ago I was told that because of my gender concerns I was a feminist whether I like it or not)
- The thread about community rules at discussfeminism seems to have been taken up by discussion of negative influences on sexism by men, bit of a shame for that to become a dominant issue (there were others) but it seems to be unearthing some interesting conversation
- Managed to not get to bed at an early time again due to allysaundre distracting me on MSN :o)
- Got up early to get a lift to university, leaving me a couple of hours spare before my History of Philosophy Lecture study hour, which I took to read the first two parts of Nietesche's 'Genealogy of Morals', which I'm not fond of. I prefer philosophy to be to the point rather than to bury itself in pretension and waffle, I always get the feeling that he's trying to show off rather than being interested in pursuing knowledge. I've talked to people who write similar online and they always tend to be vacuous.
- History of Philosophy Study Hour was good albeit very small, discussed a couple of things and then left to meet elegy_of_flames at the Cafe.
- Went down town, elegy_of_flames made us take the bus because she'd hurt her legs :o(
- Bought some hair dye down at Boots and went down to ASDA to buy myself some salad to eat for lunch (salad is nice) :o) Was going to buy some alcohol but because elegy_of_flames didn't have any ID they didn't serve me (yes, get that logic)
- Went to elegy_of_flame's and sat about on her computer whilst she caught up on some sleep, then went back to mine to watch Buffy :o)
- Woke up, went downstairs, ate, watched Buffy.
- Ate more, studied for a little bit, watched more Buffy
- Went to sleep
- Woke up about one in the afternoon, elegy_of_flames caught a taxi to go to an important university tutorial
- Read a short book on Hume to help with my exams and practice exam essays, picked up a few things that seemed useful and interesting
- Saw an interesting thread on Gender Double standards on VF, is quite interesting to read. Some guy, more extreme than myself, is having a good at women based on the double standard rule. Interesting to note that I can be forced to suddenly defend feminism by people that take similar arguments that I use and stretch them further than they work.
- Got an invite to go out to Dungeon, it was apparently eric_the_girl's birthday, unfortunately I missed all the merriment and stayed at home. Needed to get my sleep so I can be sure of getting in enough, or at least an adequate amount, of studying this week so I do well enough in my exams that my lack of numerous firsts in my coursework doesn't hold me back so much.
- Got out of bed a little past one in the afternoon
- Read back through the important parts of Hume's 'Enquiry into Human Nature' and made a few pages of notes ready to help me with my essay. I have about three or so pages to help me with an essay on Causation, and another two to help me on Compatibalism. Should be fun writing those, and at least that will help me demonstrate to myself that I have enough knowledge to write a good essay on Hume come examination on the twenty-seventh.
- Managed to write out about six printed pages of notes that move from chapter II to chapter VIII of Hume's Enquires, separated into two parts, one dealing mostly with causation, the other dealing mostly with Liberty and Necessity, the two subjects I'm planning on brushing up on and focusing on for my History of Philosophy exam.
- Got an invite to go to Dungeon from eric_the_girl, seems I'm getting a lot of invites to go places in the late evening, but beyond being a hassle to get ready so quickly I just have to put my mind to other things at the moment, uni things :o)
- Read through a book from the 'short introduction to' series by Thomas Pink on Free Will, though it would be useful in writing my essay on Liberty and Necessity, and some of it was. Never finished the last two chapters because that was when he started trying to create his own defence of psychological libertarianism, and the foundations were so weak that I didn't think it worth readin the rest
- Got up in the morning to head of to university for my essay tutorial, ended up chatting to Isabelle and eldritchreality for a while waiting to see if anyone else was going to turn up for it
- No one did so decided to skip that and go down to elegy_of_flames's place
- Sat about and chatted there for a while, and left taking with me my Demon: The Fallen book, two boxes of 'Intense Dark Brown' dye, and a copy of Echoes and Artefacts :oD
- Wrote myself out a pratice essay on Hume's account of Causation, now I have two essays of about six printed pages on Causation and Compatibalism, so that should hopefully prep me quite well for the exams and work well as revision aids. Hopefully it will give me enough to say when I'm in the exam room :o)
Thoughts: Maliciousness
Just recently I’ve been increasingly troubled by just how outright malicious some people can be for pleasure, makes me quite uncomfortable sometimes. I’m still human, I know how it is to want to lash out at people occasionally, and that sort of very bitter satisfaction, but beyond the fact that such things are very hollow pleasures, they’re special cases.
I’m not thinking of maliciousness to those that haven’t actually done any harm to anyone, and this can be about anything, online it’s often about aesthetic matters, and it’s present in most places. Whether it’s some MSN board, Vampirefreaks, or various livejournal communities I seem to see a lot of it, the desire of people to tear others down in order to gain some grim satisfaction.
The fashion boards on Vampirefreaks are often full of people making very derogatory remarks at each other and as much slagging off fashions as discussing fashion. Meanwhile there are entire livejournal communities dedicated to slagging people off and mocking people’s pictures, although at least it’s behind doors and not presented to the people themselves (which I suppose is a good thing…) I just get very uncomfortable when I read something where someone is linking to some place where someone has put pictures of themselves up just to be malevolent about the way it looks.
That doesn’t mean I don’t always share the aesthetic judgement though. It’s true that I am quite happy to acknowledge that different people have different tastes in fashion and aesthetics, and that some people might like styles that I really don’t like, and I’m happy with that. However, even outside that it’s the purposes that bother me here. If I saw a picture of someone that I felt could do with a couple of fashion tips the thing I would want people to be doing is really sharing their advice rather than attacking them, I’m just not sure what purpose the latter works for.
There are times when I look at pictures of people and think they’ve just not made themselves look good. Whilst there’s lots of room for different tastes, there are some things which seem just aesthetically unappealing in a very general sense. Particularly with make-up a lot of people could probably do with some advise, not everyone is an expert with the stuff, most people aren’t in fact (myself included). Some people don’t seem to be aiming to look good though, some are trying to be shocking. I’ve seen numerous profiles, some linked to by people I know, of people that are applying make-up in ways that couldn’t really be said to be making them more attractive, usually they are people that fall outside of the mainstream aesthetic, tending to not be very slim et cetera, and probably have low self-esteem. I can quite imagine, and in some cases this seems blatantly true, that many such girls have such low self-esteem that they use make-up to hide under, or to make themselves look shocking et cetera as a way of rejecting beauty standards. I think that’s largely a shame because a lot of them would look perfectly fine if they didn’t do this, but in any case my reaction is sympathy and I don’t really have any desire to mock or try to humiliate them.
Which leaves me to wonder why others do. Is it simply that I carry certain moral values that makes me uneasy? Is that the whole story? Is it natural for people to want to tear down others to make themselves feel better? I’m not sure that can be the whole story, there’s no rational gain to victimising others. Perhaps it’s just some barbaric legacy of days where hurting anyone around you helped you mark out your dominance and show you to be superior. Or perhaps, and I suspect this might be more true, people that do this are just the sort that are suffering from low self-esteem themselves and need to mock others to make them feel better.
Presumably then there’s room for sympathy there as well. It does all seem very sad on all accounts though. The viciousness of this kind of attitude being not uncommon is most unsettling. For those that are the direct victims it’s no doubt very uncomfortable, but I should imagine it puts a lot of people on edge as well, it creates a need to try to impress everyone, and for many people it no doubt transfers the importance of making yourself look better to be less an enjoyable good and more a necessity to avoid abuse. The whole thing seems so much like a child’s play ground. And for the idea that the people doing it are really doing it for feeling sad, which is worse because it undoubtedly doesn’t really solve the problem because it could only be a temporary fix, it really just suggests no one benefits from people being malicious in this way.
Presumably people just never stop to consider why they are doing these things or what good comes from it?
Thoughts: On being nice
On a tangentially related idea is this idea of being ‘nice’ and how it relates to sexual attractiveness. Now, most people have heard the complain that ‘girls don’t like nice boys’, and I’ve heard it in a million places again and again, with some boys feeling that a man ought to start treating people badly in order to get girls, a picture that is not only unpleasant but seems entirely untrue.
Now, I’m not perfect, but I’m nice. I also know other nice guys, and they don’t suffer from this either, yet this myth still exists. I suspect it’s got a lot to do with the misuse of the term ‘nice’.
The problem is that people that are ‘nice’ in this way usually aren’t in a strict sense of the term, they’re just weak. I’ve known girls that are weak in this way and that try to please in numerous ways to try and gain affection, and they get walked over. The problem here isn’t being nice; it’s that weakness of character and lack of self-worth. For a start, I know I don’t want a girl to be trying desperately for my affections, that just seems demeaning to them, I want to be treated as an equal and I want her to respect herself as much as she respects me, hence I prefer girls that can call me on my mistakes, criticise me, joke at my expense, without trying to hard. Secondly, the affection of those with low self-esteem is worth less, not feeling themselves worthy of anyone they will be affectionate to anyone that will be interested, and hence it means less.
Some guys actually like this, it makes assuming the dominant role much easier and it makes them more comfortable. I’ve often seen older guys that like particularly young girls to often fall into this pattern. I’ve seen plenty of relationships of an older guy that’s not really anyone special try and search out young impressionable girls that are easier to impress because no one on their level will be impressed.
However, the genders switched and the culture changes. Whilst many guys are socialised into having personalities that like being in charge like that et cetera, and are comfortable with that situation, many girls like guys they can respect, and hence the issue of being ‘nice’ (read weak) is more important.
Anyway, my main point is that it’s important for these guys to realise that they’re problem is not being nice, nice is a good thing and people like it, and it’s not good enough to blame women for picking the wrong guys because they didn’t pick you and you’re nicer to these women (most likely because you’re sycophantic and feel the need to desperately try and impress them), it’s to realise that the problem is you lack self-respect and need to better yourself.
I picked up a few interesting things on this topic on some forums, the latest of which was one on the more general topic of whether it is possible to be ‘too nice’
The Man With No Spine - A parable for "Nice Guys"
By John Russell
There once was a man without a spine.
He was a very likable guy. The advantage of not having a spine was that he could fit himself to anyone, and he frequently did. He could flex this way and that.
But he couldn't stand up ...
...and being kinda mushy and flat most of the time, people often walked on him without realizing he was there.
So he got sad, having this dreadful absence of a spine, and he was resentful too. He wondered why other people couldn't fit themselves to him the way he fit himself to others, but that was silly because he never felt he had the right to ask anyone directly to fit themselves to him. He was formless, what was there to fit to anyway? In cyberspace he talked tough as if he had a spine, but people could clearly see by his rage and resentment that he didn't have one in real life, and he perished in the flame wars he provoked and only came out feeling more ashamed and ineffectual.
He wished he could be with a woman, to help him the way a spine would. If he clung to a woman with a spine, he could stand up, but women didn't like it when he did that. He often called them "bitches" for the women with spines coldly asked him to let go of them, or unceremoniously shrugged him and his issues off onto the ground telling him to get his own spine.
If he fancied a spineless woman, on the other hand, he couldn't get her interest because they were looking for men with spines that they could cling to. But the spineless women would hang around with him for sympathy, and he'd be their platonic male friend and play "therapist" though he was as sick as they were. He'd often call himself a "feminist" and lecture these spineless women how to stand on their own when he had no idea of how to stand for himself.
With all the bending and flopping around he did, a spine never could get a chance to grow.
Then one day he had a brainstorm, he decided he'd make himself a spine.
He took a long stick.... and he put it far up his ass.
It was an improvement, though uncomfortable. It was the first time in his life he could walk tall, if not a bit stiff. He found he could have opinions at odds with others, and stand for them. He found out that he didn't have to be liked, that the world didn't end if he pissed someone off. He didn't want to fit easily with other people anymore, in fact he became inflexible.
People commented on the change, some people didn't particularly like him with the stick up his ass but they did notice him more. Some people felt that at least they could respect him, even if they didn't always like him because he did less whining. At least nobody stepped on him by accident.
However relationships still didn't come easy, it was hard for a woman with a spine to love him with the stick up his ass. He was stiff, cold, brutally opinionated, condescending, and self-righteously hostile. But eventually he did attract a very pretty woman without a spine who saw him as a tower of strength to cling to.
At first he loved this woman, he thought the stick up his ass was the answer to his dating problems. He was finally being loved the way he once loved others. At first it was great, and then it was good, and then it was ok, and then it was uncomfortable, and by the end of a year it was infuriatingly suffocating. The spineless woman clung like a straightjacket. The horror!!! The horror!!!
But the stick up his ass made him so inflexible he didn't know how to get the spineless woman off of him, If only he could bend. He was trapped, upright in his "obligations", "duty to her", "guilt", "pride in his commitment", he spent months with his arms helplessly flapping about trying to get her off of him and trying not to look like he was doing that.
He was hoping that she would leave by hinting her indirectly, he used sarcastic tones, said mean things that were "just a joke", neglect, "constructive" criticism intended to insult. He only made the spineless woman feel more insecure, so she clung HARDER.
Spineless men envied him, called him a jerk for the way he was treating her, just the way he remembered how he used to envy other men before he had the stick up his ass (when he'd play consoler to their teary-eyed spineless girlfriends). If only they knew what it was like to be on the receiving end of a spineless person's embrace they'd understand. He wished she'd leave him for one of the spineless men who envied him. He felt ashamed for the way he must have made women feel in the past when he was trying to cling to them, he knew that they weren't so evil after all.
One day he decided that there was only one way to be free of the spineless woman once and for all, the stick up his ass had to go.
So he pulled the stick out, and to his amazement a miracle happened: he was still standing! All of the years of inflexibility allowed him the chance to grow a spine. At first he was still a bit stiff but eventually he had the flexibility to contort a bit and yet maintained the firmness to struggle, push, and wriggle from the spineless woman's grasp (though she protested much). He stayed far out of her reach and the reach of other spineless women so that he could never be grasped by one again.
He was overjoyed with his new-found freedom; he could bend sometimes like he used to (but not too far) and also he could stand tall. He went out, partied, enjoyed life to the fullest, and eventually found a woman with a normal spine like his.
They stood together as separate individuals giving mutual support and enjoying time alone too, and lived (relatively) "happily ever after"...
Event: Slimelight 4th Febuary: 3 floor special, with trad goth floor, ebm/progressive goth and Industek floor with Savak and Zymosis live.