Is 'nice' a compliment?

Related to my former post is an aside on the word 'nice' and its recent social currency.

I need to look up the history. Probably best if I post this before I don't.

But what makes me ask the question is the recent fact that 'he's such a nice guy' has become a famous insult. I tried to think about whether that is ever the case with women and to my knowledge it isn't.

I think this reveals different cultural expectations about men and women. I think women are expected to just tell people what they want to here all the time and men are given the freedom to actually be themselves--at least with each other, with their wives it may be a different story--by telling people how they really think about things.

Anyone have any thoughts on what you think about that? I know people have differing preferences with whether they want to have people be open with them (when that openness would entail criticism) but I do think it is interesting that 'nice guy' has become a universal pan, and if I am not right about why it doesn't extend to women I think it would be interesting to know why.

(Also, this question was a potential poll question because of similar things I was interested in, but I am not sure the poll venue works for it exactly, esp because I am not able to enter (yet) multi-question polls to do multivariate analysis).