Entitled to Have You

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Bob identifies himself with a socially-constructed group. A nationality, a religion, a subculture, "Nice Guys", or whatever. As such Bob feels Alice is obligated to be with him, one way or another. Perhaps they identify with the same group, and she will be a 'traitor' to their category if she does not date or marry within it. Or maybe he just feels that by belonging to the category he 'deserves' her more than someone that does not. The former self-justification often goes hand-in-hand with the latter. If Alice complies, she might even discover that Bob is willing to take his sense of entitlement further still.

There are several basic ways in which Bob can justify his sense of entitlement:

  • A: Who he is. For example, "She must sleep with me because I'm part of Clan X and a woman of Clan X must always choose X over Y".
  • B: What he does. For example, "She must sleep with me because I repair her television and listen to her drama, therefore she must give me something in return, and this can only mean one thing".
  • C: What he doesn't do. For example, "She must sleep with me because I wouldn't rape her", or "She must sleep with me because I normally abstain from sleeping around".
  • D: Extreme circumstances: The world is ending, someone is dying, Only You Can Repopulate My Race, or similar.

Type A is usually more aggressive, and often the (implicit if not explicit) attitude of the Mighty Whitey's native rival for the hand of The Chief's Daughter and/or Nubile Savage. Or any other male prone to accuse people of being a Category Traitor. The mindset can in some cases lead to Honor-Related Abuse, especially when based on race/ethnicity/religion. This is a primary source of much of the unfortunate negative attitudes towards mixed couples, such as black man/white woman and Asian woman/white man pairs (see Where Da White Women At? and Asian Gal with White Guy respectively). Type A is also usually the root cause of the Marital Rape License.

Type B is usually more passive-aggressive, and one of the big reasons why being a self-defined "Nice Guy" might mean something entirely different from actually being good or even nice. (See also Nice Guys Finish Last; contrast Dogged Nice Guy and All Girls Want Bad Boys, where the nice guy actually is nice, or at least expected to be seen as such according to the narrative.) However, this behavior is not limited to guys who consider themselves nice. A straight Jerkass character might buy a woman a drink... without informing her that he considers her a very cheap hooker who he has now bought and is entitled to use.

Type C can easily come across as Insane Troll Logic, but is actually quite reasonable From a Certain Point of View: the view of a guy who believes that regular male sexuality is mostly about Sex Is Evil and I Am Horny, and that women owe him a debt of gratitude for not being a rapist like those other guys. (Of course, he might even be a rapist—making the whole thing even more ironic.) Or the view of a gal who learned to identify a bit too much with My Girl Is Not a Slut. In both cases, the character might come across as a Prude Supremacist.

Since this trope in general and Type A in particular is based on a traditional male gender role, it's mostly male. However, female examples can exist, even with Type A. For example, a western woman might invoke Asian Hooker Stereotype when a white man dates an Asian woman. And of course, certain female characters might engage in the worst male stereotypes, especially when Played for Laughs.

See also Sour Prudes and Sex Is Evil and I Am Horny, as well as Lie Back and Think of England and My Girl Is Not a Slut. Polar opposite of Ethical Slut, where characters of any genders have fun together—and encourage potential partners to want to have sex with them, rather than trying to squeeze favors out of someone who just isn't interested. Compare Entitled Bastard, It's All About Me, and Prince Charming Wannabe. Contrast Sexual Extortion, where the creep backs her demands with threats/"offers" rather than moralizing and guilt-tripping. Contrast Wants a Prize For Basic Decency where Bob/Alice expects a reward for acting like a decent person (or compare Wants a Prize For Basic Decency, if the "reward" Bob wants is Alice).

No real life examples, please; tell your local police force, not us.

Examples of Entitled to Have You include:


Comic Books

  • In Bitchy Butch, Butchy herself is often a (female) example of this trope, ranting about how random women ought to "be loyal to their gender" and have sex with her rather than with the men they are in love with.
  • In one Mega Python album, the male protagonist demand sex from a random woman, using the argument that she must sleep with him because he's gay. When she dispute that he'd even want to have sex with her if he's gay, he replies that he's considering getting turned straight.
  • In one strip of Inrutat (by the same guy who makes Pondus, a male dinosaur is pleading the Type D with a female dinosaur, as the Extinction Level Event Comet is blazing down from the sky.
  • Yondu pulled this on Photon, thinking they were the last two of their species, in the 1990s Guardians of the Galaxy. It didn't go well. (Jim Valentino meant to eventually get them together, but it never panned out.)
  • In City of Dreams, The white prince seem to have more then a little bit of this mindset, but this turns out to be caused by the fact that he actually IS her boyfriend - yep, Christine's sexually repressed Heteronormative Crusader real life boyfriend is a dreamer too, but as much as he'd like to tell himself he's only there to rescue her, he did in fact end up in Morrigon of his own accord...

Film

  • Debated in Female Perversions, a debate played for horror: A particularly creepy woman is holding a little lecture about how a woman "must" be an empty canvas for men to project their desire on. Her niece's (slightly delayed) response is to start cutting helself - carving the word "love" into her own flesh and explaining that she meant to write "hate". Maybe she didn't know the difference anymore?
  • The case for Chad in Tucker and Dale vs. Evil who believes that he is entitled to Allison because she and him are special and goes crazy when she falls for Dale who he sees as a hillbilly and beneath him

Literature

  • The Turner Diaries argues that women should not sleep with those of another race, claiming that those who do so "defile their race". The male white nazi "heroes" even murder a lot of white women, hanging signs saying "I defiled my race" on their corpses. (And no, calling the protagonists "nazi" is not Godwin's Law - the book is written by a neonazi for neonazis.)
  • Mike "Ghost" Harmon in the Paladin of Shadows series is openly and blatently a Type C. This is a major contributing factor to the meme Oh, John Ringo, No!
  • In the most recent book of A Song of Ice and Fire, practically none of the men looking to marry Daenerys to make their lives and respective likelihoods of becoming king better think even for a second that she might say no. Aegon Targaryen VI has to be flat out told by Tyrion, "She has her own claim to the Iron Throne, her own kingdom and, oh yeah, the only dragons in the world and you think she's going to give that up for you and your fuck-all?" for him to change his mind from "Of course she'll marry me, I'm me!"

Live Action TV

  • Peter Cambell in Mad Men does Type B with a German au pair that his neighbours hired. He goes through some trouble to fix a dress with red wine or some such spilled on it, but it's only after he returns it that she tells him she already has a boyfriend. Her reactions indicate that it was naivety about his intentions rather than an attempt to use him, but he still forces himself on her a bit later. This comes back to bite him when the neigbour finds out.

Theater

  • Subverted in Fiddler on the Roof. Tevye arranges the marriage of Tzeitel, his oldest daughter, to an old friend of his—the wealthy butcher, who also happens to be older than Tevye. When Tzeitel reveals that she wants to marry her Victorious Childhood Friend, and her father goes along with it, her original fiance does not take it very well.
  • The princes of Morocco and Arragon both feel this way about Portia in The Merchant of Venice, and, when they each have to choose a casket to win her hand in the Engagement Challenge, they both contemplate choosing the silver casket, labeled "Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves." Morocco sums their logic up nicely:

"As much as he deserves"; why, that's the lady,
I do in birth deserve her, and in fortunes,
In graces and in qualities of breeding,
But more than these, in love I do deserve.
What if I strayed no further, but chose here?

    • He doesn't end up choosing that casket, but Arragon does. They both get sent home, and Portia ends up marrying a poor gentleman below her station.
  • In The Taming of the Shrew, Gremio believes he's entitled to Bianca because a) he's her father's neighbor, b) he was suitor first, and c) he's rich.

Video Games

  • In Umineko no Naku Koro ni, George confesses that he used to be this sort of guy, assuming he should be more popular with women because he "treated them well" and that he wasn't because they have bad taste in men and prefer jerks. He hit a turning point when he realized that Battler was getting more attention from Shannon and other girls not because he was a rude punk, but rather because he was an outgoing and genuine guy who didn't put up a "Nice Guy" front simply to win over girls. George admits in hindsight that his past behavior was pretty douchey and entitled, and he'd rather forget he was ever like that.
  • The protagonist of the game Next Station: "Mary should love me, I loved her so much and I was so niiice to her!"
  • In Persona 4, Adachi feels entitled to have both Mayumi Yamano and Saki Konishi (who is a high school student) because they both apparently date around. In Mayumi's case, she was dating a married man, but in Saki's case, it was an issue of misunderstanding. He kills them both.

Web Comics

  • Something*Positive sums up the "Nice Guy" variety.
    • Oddly enough, a later storyline features a flashback to Davan in high school, where he has the same basic attitude about a girl he tutored. In this case it was his sister Dahlia who made him realize how his perspective was messed up.
  • Becca in Peter Is the Wolf is this, bordering on Yandere for Peter. The only thing holding her back is that wolf!Sarah is nearly twice her height and can fling Becca out of the way... or possibly worse. She's a partial deconstruction though—her history of being regularly raped by her father gives her possessiveness to Peter a Freudian Excuse.

Web Original

  • Heartlessbitches.com portray this sense of entitlement as one of the biggest problems with self-defined "nice guys". Like, gee, thanks for not trying to rape us, but whining about how we owe you a pity-fuck isn't at all sexy or endearing either...
    • Are you fed up with your Male friends who are looking to date a woman with the appearance of a supermodel, and yet they continually whine about how "women don't like nice guys - they only want good-looking assholes"?
    • "Nice Guys" = Bleah!
    • The site itself is Rant Comedy, and actually far more reasonable then the name might come across as.
    • This piece also analyzes Type B and C Nice Guys.
  • This is generally what 'friendzone' memes come off as.
  • The Nostalgia Chick once had a long rant about what an asshole Todd in the Shadows was because he didn't "want her love and affection".

Western Animation

  • In Ice Age 2, Manny comes across this way to Ellie after a That Came Out Wrong moment. He was thinking a bit more along the lines of Adam and Eve Plot.
  • In Megamind, this is a big part of what makes Hal so creepy.
  • Gaston in Beauty and the Beast seems to expect Belle to just fall into his arms because... well, he's Gaston. When she finally makes it clear that no, she's really not into him he... doesn't take it well. The other, less independent women in town have no problems with falling into his arms should the opportunity present itself, because... well, he's Gaston, so it's a double insult to him.

That makes her the best! And don't I deserve the best!?

  • In Superman the Animated Series, the Kryptonian criminal Mala is freed from The Phantom Zone by Superman because he believes that she had been Just Following Orders from her superior, Jax-Ur, and that her sentence had long been served. He teaches her to use her powers under a yellow sun like he has, and she naturally assumes that since they are the last two Kryptonians, she and Superman are mates. When she discovers that Superman is not interested in her and, instead, wants Lois Lane (a squishy human), she is disgusted and enraged and releases Jax-Ur... who turns out to also be her lover.
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