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Comment by yolobey | Hacker News Reader

He was a product of his time. That section (unsurprisingly) is preceded by him acting gentlemanly, as he always had, and failing to attract anyone. Gender roles work both ways, and that was apparently how society there and then in that social context expected men to act.

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He was not really gentlemanly before, he was slimy. He attempted to play innuendo and manipulation game, but he was bad at it. He was not nice guy as in "polite helpful man nice to people around indiscriminately". He was a guy that buys drinks to random women he just met hoping they will have sex with him afterwards. The actual 1950 gentlemen was supposed to buy stuff to show how good potential provider he is, then girl supposedly falls in love, then they marry and he provides while she cares about house, children and him. There was no such intention in these interactions.

Then he moved on to directly state his intentions, which actually worked, because those women were actually open to having one night stands. But that move was not possible for him unless he convinced himself that women in question is worth less then nothing.

But, if his nice guy play would work and they would really fall in love with his nice guysness and then had sex with him, they would be really hugely disappointed next morning cause he was in it for sex only. So I guess it is very good thing all players except him were experienced enough to recognize the situation and seen through his nice guy act.

I'd argue that is still the case. As long as people working at bars don't earn a fair wage and as long as tipping culture remains a thing, I won't trust anyone's kindness over there as genuine, and more as a tool to get more tip money.

> He was a product of his time.

This is never an excuse because millions of other men were products of the same time and didn't behave like this, FFHS.

His time was a product of people, like him, the ones that lived at that time. The causality is reversed.

Surely you understand that the both statements are true and that culture and people are an iterative process where both affect each other?

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