jamesq | Los Tres Mujeriegos

Womanizers bother me and they really shouldn't. I know three that differ greatly from each other and I'd like to spend some time describing them before I get into my issues.

The first I'll call X. X, near as I can tell in my layman's way is a misogynist. He doesn't really like women per se, but is more then happy to use his good looks and charisma to take advantage of women. He has no shortage of partners, whom he mistreats. It's irritating and pokes me right in the dysfunctional Nice Guy part of my brain that I try to keep under wraps.

He seems to have found a home for himself in the local BDSM community as a low-level dom. I don't think he really is a dom though, just that that label allows him to treat the women he encounters like dirt. Do misogynists become doms disproportionately? Probably. They're probably the last people who should be doms, and I expect that a good dom isn't a misogynist. Just like a good sub shouldn't be someone with a low self-esteem. Quite the opposite really. However, the amount I know about the scene could fill a thimble. I'm an outside observer of the human condition though and I've become decent at figuring out social dynamics that I'm not a part of.

So X has at least found a place to do what he does. I don't think this is an ideal solution (not being a misogynist would be better), but it's better then nothing.

Still, I've never seen him ask a woman's opinion, or talk to her about anything other then sex.

Next up is Y. Y is the slimy used-salesman type and that doesn't suggest misogyny to me so much as a sort of low-level callousness towards everyone. People are to be used, not just women. The only difference is how they get used. Men and women both are used for what they can provide to Y, sometimes this is sex. Y had one of the nicest looking girlfriends around, yet I heard several, independent accounts of him trying to hook up with other women at an SCA event a few years ago. Now maybe they were swingers, but I don't think so - as evidenced by the fact that she dumped his sorry ass.

In fact, about the only time I've seen Y at an event is when he's trying to get something from it - additional sex partners usually, but sometimes he's trying to drum up support for his home business. I have no problem with people trying to network at an SCA event, but when that's the only reason you're there, it's time to step back and decide if medieval re-enactment is right for you.

On the bright side, he's not that good at it. He gets turned down a lot. A lot. That fills me with schadenfreude.

Z is the only one with positive personality traits. He seems to genuinely like and respect women. And he wants to sleep with them. His partner seems completely OK with this and is much the same. He's crystal-clear about his intentions and only pushes it with acceptable targets.

Z is the only one that makes me feel guilty about disliking the behavior. When we're together and there are no women around, he's a fantastic guy. The sort of guy whom you know has your back. When he's around women though, he turns on the charm. I dislike it because he can unconsciously do something that I haven't got a clue how to do. Something that fills me with dread like a cold corpse gripping my heart. And he can do it without effort or thought. It would be fascinating if it didn't simultaneously send me spiraling into depression.

He certainly doesn't deserve my dark thoughts - he's been nothing but kind to me over the years (unlike X and Y, who's behavior has swung between callous indifference to attempts at taking advantage of me). It's simply an aspect of his personality that bothers me because of my own issues, rather then the behavior itself. Still the lizard deep in my brain doesn't always listen to the primate on top.

It took me awhile to put that together. I'm happy I did. I'm less happy about the other Unfortunate Implications of this line of thinking.

So why does it bother me? Simplistically, I don't like seeing my friends mistreated. Who doesn't really, and both X and Y have mistreated (or attempted to mistreat) women I know. But it's not just that. I don't like seeing people mistreated in general, even if I don't know them personally. It's one of the reasons I don't watch horror movies very often - my empathy is a little to high. I remember being taken advantage of as a kid. I remember being mistreated as a kid. Womanizers don't quite hit my bully trigger, but they come awfully close.

No, what really bothered me was the fact that I saw them as squandering a finite resource (eligible women). When I realized I was thinking of women as resources, I was taken aback. That's not who I want to be. First, it's not a nice thing to think. Second, and more importantly, it's just incorrect. Whether other guys are successful with women doesn't really affect how successful I am with women. Which is to say my lack of success really has nothing to do with X, Y or Z.

I need to stop worrying about them except in seeing stuff so over the top I need to intervene.