Warriors... stay home and play with yourselves

I'm a big comics fan. A phrase you used to read a lot in the comics of the 80s and 90s was "a warrior born". Starfire of the New Teen Titans was "a warrior born". Wolverine was "a warrior born". Batman was "a warrior born". The Punisher was "a warrior born". Ms. Marvel was "a warrior born". Etc, etc, etc.

Leaving aside the probably ridiculous notion that anyone is ANYthing at birth besides bloody and squirming and crying, the notion of someone being "a warrior born" is actually kind of scary.

The posted quotation, above, bothers me because it pretty much directly compares 'warrior' and 'really nice guy' and states that 'warrior' is better. And it's not.

Warriors break things and hurt or kill people. They may have a good reason, they may not, but that's what they do. Really Nice Guys... are really nice guys. They don't break things or hurt or kill people. At least, not on purpose, and if they do, they don't throw back their heads and yell "FREEEEEEDOMMMMMM!!!" or something retarded like that, they feel bad and they apologize and if they can replace whatever it was they broke, well, that's what they do.

I do not in any way argue with the concept that many many women PREFER a 'warrior' to a 'really nice guy'. Many many woman do really like great big manly chunks of violent testosterone strutting around all hairy and belligerent and shit. I know this is true. I do not deny it.

Still, I am troubled by the claim that what women NEED is a warrior instead of a really nice guy. Because that's just bullshit. The women I know who couple up with Captain Macho are usually pretty miserable, and spend much of their time lamenting that they can't ever seem to meet a 'really nice guy'.

This concept -- women need a 'warrior', not a 'really nice guy'... seems to me to be akin to our culture's insane fetish for the military. I've been in the military, and the military is an organization where they spend a great deal of time uncivilizing their recruits. Why? Because when you grow up in a civilized culture, you gain an instinctive aversion to violence. The process is called 'socialization' and it's probably the greatest emotional advance the human race has ever made. The military is all about violence, they need their people to be violent -- on command -- so what the military does is, it takes civilized people ('civil' is the root word of both 'civilization' and 'civilian' for a reason) and turns them into folks who will blow things up, or hurt people, or kill them, just because someone with a decoration on their sleeve tells them to. This is not admirable. It is certainly not something that we should fetishize or worship.

Very Nice Guys... hell, Very Nice People... are what we are all supposed to be, and far too few of us are... and it's attitudes like the one below that cause people to think that being 'nice' is something that is foolish or futile or laughable or ridiculous or not cool. It is an attitude that encourages a culture of selfishness, of mean spiritedness, of bullying, of... well, of violence.

Very Nice People are far, far more important than Warriors. If there were more Very Nice People in the world and fewer Warriors (or people filled with contempt for the former and drooling worshipful awe for the latter) the world would be a far, far better place.