So, I have trouble reconciling statements like "Could we say that the rant contains misogynistic ideas? Yes" and "I have trouble seeing his views as analogous to racism." You seem to be saying that he's stating misogynistic ideas but that's really okay, reasonable, and ultimately sympathetic--which I don't know what to do with.

The reason you are seeing seemingly-conflicting assessments is because I am conflicted over exactly which aspects of the rant are misogynistic or not, and why. I could make arguments either way. If being insulting towards women is misogynistic, then some of his language (e.g. "infantile") is misogynistic. If "unleashing cynicism and resentment" is a threat rather than an observation or impersonal prediction, then it would be misogyny. As for making generalizations about women's preferences based on his experience that are wrong, I think it's more tenuous to call that misogyny.

The reason I sympathize with him is that he had a life of romantic rejection due to bullshit that was fed him, and that he hasn't actually harmed anyone (as far as we know). The primary person hurt by his misguided ideas about romance is he himself. If we did have information that he was intentionally attempting to hurt women, or that he had stalked someone, then any sympathy I feel would get extinguished pretty fast. Stalking is indeed outside my conceptualization of "nice" (and outside my schema of how self-identified "nice guys" behave).

Your experience leads you to sympathize with him, and (from my perspective) to rationalize away the parts of his rant that are aggressive and threatening. My experience leads me to view him very unsympathetically, and (from your perspective) to zero in on the parts of his rant that sound the worst, and blow them out of proportion.

I appreciate your summary.

I don't know what to tell you except that I and many other women have observed that stalkers, misogynists, and other not-truly-nice-at-all guys often use the "women only date jerks!" line to absolve themselves of any responsibility for their own romantic failures, and to justify their continuing resentment and anger toward women in general.

I have no trouble agreeing with you on this point. The question on my mind from the start of our discussion is about the proportion of these not-truly-nice-at-all guys relative to the larger population of self-identified "nice guys." If that proportion is low, then we should be less worried that the "nice guy" in the rant actually holds stable misogynistic attitudes.

We use the "Nice Guys(TM)" label to refer to this phenomenon, not to play "gotcha" against reasonable & sympathetic dudes.

The problem is that those phenomena are not always correctly demarcated. My worry is that reasonable and sympathetic dudes may make certain complaints that sound similar to complaints of genuine misogynists (e.g. "nice guys finish last"), leading certain feminists to fail to recognize them as reasonable and sympathetic, and instead classify them as "Nice Guys(TM)."

I hope you will update your beliefs to assign a greater probability to the notion that when women talk about the Nice Guys(TM) concept that we are reporting honestly on our own experiences, as opposed to simply looking for ways to score rhetorical points off innocent men.

I already believe that that when women talk about the Nice Guys(TM) concept that we are reporting honestly on their own experiences. The question is how representative those negative experiences are of self-identified "nice guys."

If I hear more women complaining of being mistreated by self-identified "nice guys," then I will update to higher estimates of malfeasance on the part of guys with that identification. At this time, however, I will maintain that, the base rate of men who self-identify as "nice guys" and who believe that women go for less-nice guys is just so high that it dwarfs the subset of those guys who also mistreat women. Here are some of the reasons why I believe that (or why I believe that I believe that), other than my own experiences:

Herold & Milhausen found that 56% of women in their sample believed that "nice guys finish last" sexually. If those women can hold that belief without being misogynists, then so can men.
Herold & Milhausen had a qualitative component of their study, where they asked women to explain their choice for or against "nice guys." Some women had positive views of "nice guys," and some had negative views:

Within the nice guy category, a dichotomy of two stereot ypical personalities emerged from the comments, with the women perceiving the nice guys as either losers or good guys. The losers were seen as needy, weak, predictable, boring, inexperienced, and unattractive. One woman stated, ‘‘Nice guys often don’t provide the drama and adventure women think they want.’’ The good guys, on the other hand, were seen as having such positive traits as good personality, high standards and morals, and politeness. [...] The nice guys and bad boys were also seen as differing in their styles of interact ing with women. The nice guys were considered to be far more passive with ‘‘losers’’ depicted as lacking confidence and unsure of themselves and good guys depicted as willing to wait for sex because they cared about their partners and treated them with respect. The women explained that nice guys had fewer partners because they were less forward in their interactions with women. One stated, ‘‘To me, ‘nice guys’ aren’t as persistent or aggressive and don’t use sleazy tactics to add another notch to their bedposts.’’

As you can see, perspectives varied, but Herold and Milhausen don't report that any of the women in their study were mistreated by "nice guys." There are no complaints of unethical behavior by "nice guys," no complaints of stalking, misogyny, or entitlement. The only ethical complaints are about "bad boys."

Some women who spent time in the male sexual role (and who are presumably not jerks) anecdotally report some similar views to self-identified "nice guys." Norah Vincent dressed up as a man for 6-months, and had a rude awakening in dating.

From here:

Dating women as a man was a lesson in female power, and it made me, of all things, into a momentary misogynist, which I suppose was the best indicator that my experiment had worked. I saw my own sex from the other side, and I disliked women irrationally for a while because of it. I disliked their superiority, their accusatory smiles, their entitlement to choose or dash me with a fingertip, an execution so lazy, so effortless, it made the defeats and even the successes unbearably humiliating. Typical male power feels by comparison like a blunt instrument, its salvos and field strategies laughably remedial next to the damage a woman can do with a single cutting word: no

From here:

Vincent said the dates were rarely fun and that the pressure of "Ned" having to prove himself was grueling. She was surprised that many women had no interest in a soft, vulnerable man. "My prejudice was that the ideal man is a woman in a man's body. And I learned, no, that's really not. There are a lot of women out there who really want a manly man, and they want his stoicism," she said. If we see men ranting, it could well be the same sort of momentary misogyny that Vincent contracted from dating straight women. Vincent's experiences also convinced her to update her estimate of the amount of traditional masculinity that other women desire.

In her chapter of feminist anthology Yes Means Yes, Julia Serano describes her experiences with women while she was male-bodied:

Just as women are expected to fulfill the stereotype of being sexual objects in order to gain male attention, men are expected to fulfill the sexual aggressor stereotype in order to gain female attention. In other words, they have to act like "assholes." Granted, this isn't true in all situations. For example, in the progressive artsy, and/or queer circles I inhabit nowdays, men who act like "assholes" don't get very far. But in the heterosexual mainstream culture, men who unapologetically act like "assholes" tend to thrive. [...] During my college years, I watched a number of "nice guys" transform into "assholes." And when they did, women suddenly became interested in them. [...] …many men become sexual aggressors primarily, if not solely, to attract the attention of women. In fact, if heterosexual women suddenly decided en masse that ‘nice guys’ are far sexier than ‘assholes’, it would create a huge shift in the predator/prey dynamic.

Based on the Herold & Milhausen study, the "Nice Guys(TM)" discussed in the feminist blogosphere seems relatively rare. If 56% of women, Vincent, and Serano can hold certain views of women's preferences that aren't kind to "nice guys" without being misogynists, then so can men. P( "nice guy" genuinely mistreats women | he believes that "nice guys finish last" ) has got to be pretty low.

The relative rareness of self-identified "nice guys" who mistreat women (or men who believe that "nice guys finish last" and who also mistreat women) doesn't make that phenomenon unimportant. This phenomenon is interesting, not because it is typical of self-identified "nice guys," but because it is atypical, and we shouldn't miss the exceptions just because of the rule.