KB, you and I are NEVER going to agree on gender issues (and yet, I'm miles closer to you than to Warlizard, and somehow the both of you are among my favorite Internet people) but I think you missed the point: The genuinely nice guy isn't having less sex, he's spending less time pursuing people who do NOT want to have sex with him. He is off to the races with the next prospect, not pestering a woman who has no urge to fuck him. And maybe, because he IS off to pursue someone who is more interested, he can really be a friend of the woman who said no--because he understands that just because he converses with her does not mean she is his only sexual prospect or even a sexual prospect at all, and if he enjoys the conversing he can keep doing that while pursuing sex elsewhere.

The arsehole is the one having less sex, as far as I can tell, because he keeps chasing the "no." Unless we're assuming the arsehole is also a serial rapist, in which case he doesn't even really belong in the comparison because this isn't about rape, it's about guys who overinvest in friendships they don't want and become angry when an unwanted friendship doesn't turn into a wanted sexual liaison.

I also disagree that you can't ask for sex from someone without radically altering the relationship. I have multiple male friends who I know are sexually interested and would be up for it if I was, but they're dating people, I'm dating people, and we're friends and that friendship hasn't really changed when it went from "Yeah I know you would fuck me but you haven't said so" to "It's on the table that if we're ever both single at the same time, we could fuck."

I have a lot of hangups, like everyone else, but being unable to discuss sex isn't one of them, as you may have noticed. The people I choose for friends have a lot of issues, like everyone else, but being unable to express their feelings about a friendship isn't one of them. I do not think I'm leading on a handful of "nice guys" -- I think we've established boundaries and lines of communication that would allow them to back away from the friendship if they didn't want it in the absence of sex. Not to mention that they, genuinely nice guys, ARE getting sex, from their girlfriends, who are aware that they have female friends who if they were single they wouldn't decline sex with. When people are able to discuss sex like it is--an ideally mutually agreeable activity, which either party has every right to decline--they don't get so freaked out by one refusal or obsessed over one potential partner.

There's a lot more I'd like to respond to here, but I have a busted furnace and have to wrap up, so I'll leave it with one more point: The scarcity of sex is not responsible for nice guy syndrome. Even if prostitution were legal and fully available, or if there were a designated everyone-fucker in every bar who would literally fuck anyone, anyone at all, some males would become obsessed with a single, uninterested woman and pursue her while whining about how they're so damn NICE, even as they totally not nicely pester a woman for sex after she's refused time and time again. It's not about sex, even though sex is what makes it so complicated. It's about overinvesting and underdisclosing. It's about maintaining a friendship when you want anything but, and then having too much into that friendship to risk losing it all by being blunt about the fact that you can't keep spending all this time on her if she's never going to be your romantic partner. It's like the homebuyer who buys the gorgeous lemon with the fly-by-night contractor and instead of cutting his losses and moving, pours every dime he has into proving he's really made a GOOD investment by somehow saving the crumbling foundation and the leaky roof and holding the house long enough to turn a profit.

A 19th-century southern politician, whose name escapes me at the moment, advised young campaigners that the most important thing to do was to ask for a dime for their campaign from every supporter at every stop on their speaking tour of their district. Not because they needed those dimes, although they did. Because "those hardscrabble farmers who pinch every penny will never, ever admit they made a poor investment, so once you've got a dime you know you have their vote this year, next year, and forever." People hate to admit they've made a poor investment, especially if it was an investment they could ill-afford.

So, no matter how much free, easy sex he got, the guy with "nice guy syndrome" would still be chasing the girl he'd spent six months attempting to court while never coming out and saying that he didn't really want to continue the friendship unless it became romantic -- especially if he's one of the guys who doesn't conversate with his male friends, doesn't do "friend" things as women do them. Then the friendship has been an investment he can ill afford, and he starts treating a person who has invested equally in the friendship (but was more easily able to afford it) as a target to acquire no matter what it takes, rather than admitting he's made a poor investment beyond his means.