Rolling 'this is sexist' thread

I read The Game a few months back and came away feeling like these were the saddest of nerds and none of them would be getting laid, ever.

(he's suggesting) it's okay to be the cause of a woman having to forcefully stop you or get you away from her. That is pretty game over to me.
― Tottenham Heelspur (in orbit), Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Stuff like negging and other tactics for lowering self-esteem and social capital etc are just modified abuse techniques, lots of manipulative people use them in lots of situations (unfortch). It's just that it takes a social...movement? phenomenon? like the PUA one to codify them into a set of guidelines and endorse them worldwide.

Yeah, a lot of it struck me as 48 Laws of Power amoral shit, just transferred explicitly onto sex and fear of women.

i think it's possible that what (some of) these guys really want is acceptance but since our culture teaches them to be men an be invulnerable they sublimate this desire, and think instead that is a desire to "get laid."

I think what Bustillos was getting at with that "clarifying the issue" comment though, and this is a touchy area, is that we don't exist in a world in which everyone is entirely consciously 100% sure of what they "want" at every given moment, and I don't see this as something that should be gender-divided. Sometimes having the other person make an advance IS the thing that pushes you from being unsure to sure that you want the other person, or sometimes the other person making a move gives you an excuse to get over your own inhibitions. And sometimes the persistence or the desire itself is an attractive quality. So it's sort of a tricky line to avoid crossing -- teaching a person not to be afraid to assert what they want and at the same time teaching them that they SHOULD be a little afraid to be overly assertive with a person who is acting uncertain about it (forgetting for a moment the no-brainer scenario where a person says "no" or makes their non-consent clear). People who are socially intelligent can hopefully learn to pick up on cues about these things, but as pointed out above, many of the target audience of these books are not very socially intelligent.

I guess to use a PG example from my own life, back when I was extremely shy with girls, I went on a date with a girl, and at the end of the night we were sitting together on a bench, and her body language seemed kind of mixed, and I did something uncharacteristic of myself and pulled her toward me to kiss her. She pulled away and said she wasn't sure about the whole thing. So I didn't push things further and told her (again, very uncharacteristically of me) something along the lines of "I know that I want you, and it's up to you to decide if you want me too." I went home, and she called me later, and we wound up dating. I realize that this isn't really exactly the equivalent of making her grab my dick, but I did act in kind of a forceful and aggressive way at first. And if I hadn't done it, I don't think we would have wound up dating.

I agree with Bustillos that not all PUA material fits the stereotype of objectifying women (I know this because I have watched youtube videos out of pure curiosity -- I haven't been in a position to "pick up" women in 11 years), in fact some of the "artists" emphasize that they used the techniques to meet people that they got into committed relationships with, not for one-night stands.

xp

i don't see the need to jump thru those hoops, i think wanting to get laid is an understandable and common desire, the difference between being an adult and a sociopath is the steps one takes to fulfill said desire

I'd make a horrible PUA because I did put a woman's hand on my clothed groin once and I still feel bad

i've probably talked about this before but PUA stuff is a wide-open gateway into a bunch of other really nasty political and social thinking (it more or less depends on it for coherence). follow the linkages and straight-up white nationalism is not even a degree removed.

Yeah, if they really wanted was acceptance there are about infinity-1 other ways to go about it. xxxp

I don't know any PUA's but I have noticed that some people I knew from college (with whom I don't hang out much anymore) are full of terrible "advice" about women. Also somebody was trying to tell me the other day that women "want to feel intimidated" by men they're interested in. Uh, no, nobody really wants to feel intimidated. I thought that was kind of fucked up.

xp to noodle. i guess so, but with these dudes and these manuals there seems to be a consistent impulse to reify all aspects of social relationships and interactions: like, instead of wanting to make a good impression you need to *be* an alpha, instead of women being people with their own ideas and desires they are objectified as these entities who react in familiar ways to things, instead of wanting validation they want to be a "pick up artist." like, they are trying to simplify everything, in a detached "sociopathic" manner that, i think, might arise due to the fact that life as they know it is just too painful and complicated for them to directly deal with. this isn't meant as an exuse, just like an observation.

i'm curious, has anyone here run into one of these dudes irl?
― goole, Tuesday, June 25, 2013 12:08 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

totally. usually at the types of places I don't generally like to frequent (clubs). they don't necessarily take it to the length that this guy suggests, but I see it quite a lot.

In fact, one of them tried to steal my g/f once! this guy who was out of a failed engagement moved back to town and started FBing my g/f, innocently saying he wanted to see her. Then he kept calling her, trying to set up a hangout. Over and over. Then he managed to find her at at a local bar she frequented and flat out asked her if she wanted to fuck him. She replied "I'm seeing someone right now" (I'd have just said "No!!"), and he replied "That's not what I asked." He kept flirting with her too, within my vision. One night he asked her 100 feet away from me "are you still dating Neanderthal?" and she laughed and said "YES, YOU ASSHOLE!".

And then there was a dude once who basically walked up behind my b/f, grabbed her ass while I was standing there, and then walked away, winking at her. We were both a bit shocked and wondered if it was mistaken identity, and then he was gone.

xp yeah i am not giving these guys an excuse and this is a really dysfunctional way of thinking, and super socially harmful. maybe it is just too bleak for me to think that there are tons of dudes who like, really think of women this way, and really are this detached and calculating in their thinking.

goole, that's very interesting but on second thought isn't exactly surprising! The basis of PUA stuff is that NO ONE ELSE IS A PERSON, LIKE YOU ARE, or at least if they are, they don't matter. How could that not be built on, and/or reinforce, other superiority-themed structures?

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3334/3550798584_6e11d33e13.jpg

Oh, it's bleak all right. You know who it's even bleaker for? The women they target. Or, in some ways, all women, since you don't know who is or could be targeting you.

But I agree that there has been to some extent a kind of hysteria about the book

We can't help it, it's all those wombs just wandering around the place.

― Tottenham Heelspur (in orbit), Tuesday, June 25, 2013 12:03 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Her word!

not to be all "i have seen some shit" but if you take a second to read, say, the twitter feeds of some of these guys you are in the deep hard-right zone instantly. and i don't mean like rush limbaugh republicanism but stuff that is way wilder and darker. derbyshire is a touchstone, if that tells you anything.

I always assume PUA stuff is explicitly linked to video games/internet porn/p much any scene where the gratification of the male end-user is the only thing that has any value.

the thing is Treeship that i doubt most guys who buy or read PUA stuff cd be described as calculating. i'm speculating, but desperate and awkward are probly closer to the mark. and the majority probly don't aspire to be PUAs, they just want a girlfriend. the problem is in thinking of girlfriend as this thing to be got rather than thinking about "how do i engage with people i'm attracted to?"

i'm curious, has anyone here run into one of these dudes irl?
Formally, no. No one has ever said "I'm a PUA" or "PUA 4 lyfe" or anything. Anecdotally, absolutely, more times than I can count with several notable standout performances.

do tell!

"hey girl, fuck me if I'm wrong, but don't you want to kiss me?"

airtight imo

xp yeah, that is the reification element i was talking about noodle. they want society to be a game with rules. this causes them to turn women into objects to be acquired and not subjects to engage with.

would rather not tbh! i did tell the pasta primavera story somewhere on 77 iirc
after the age of 19 or so i could smell them from a mile away
that's why i said upthread that it seems like this stuff preys on inexperienced women

I don't think I have ever dated anybody that I didn't hang out as a friend for at least two weeks first

i kind of associate PUA culture, or see it intersecting with, the mentality that everything can be solved if only you would take time to sit down and analyze the metrics and come up with a few rules based on hard data... technocratic thinking

yeah, that is why i think the root of this issue is capitalism

there may be, to some extent, inescapable consequences to the way men in particular are capable of abstracting their libido. learning to undo that, or to deal with it in social and humane ways, feels like a v. important aspect of attaining maturity, and there will be plenty of guys who never really make that step. i think most of us can look back at stuff we've done as young men that we're not proud of. the thing is to want to learn to be better.

I don't think I have ever dated anybody that I didn't hang out as a friend for at least two weeks first

― Neanderthal, Tuesday, 25 June 2013 17:35 (1 minute ago)

there must be a pickup term for trying this as a strategy.........fakezoning, friendspoofing, sthing like that

i think most of us can look back at stuff we've done as young men that we're not proud of.

christ. yes. I should be killed tbh.

new board description

Hi, crut!

Also somebody was trying to tell me the other day that women "want to feel intimidated" by men they're interested in. Uh, no, nobody really wants to feel intimidated. I thought that was kind of fucked up.

It's...complicated? Maybe some people do want to feel intimidated or overpowered or lots of stereotypical things women are supposed to naturally want by virtue of having vaginas or being observably feminine. Other women don't want those things. None of those kinds of desires are the problem.

The problem is when a suitor can't come to terms with women as people so those stereotypes are substituted for any acknowledgement that relationships and intimacy are complex and require work/risk.

the thing that kills me about all of this is that all you have to do is ask "what do you like?"

you get the impression from some of the comments on the Kickstarter book that for some people there is no area of nuance in communication in between a formal written contract of expectations and outright rape.

i'm curious, has anyone here run into one of these dudes irl?

I have, looking back, been negged in the past, but it's not happened much - partly a function of the social circles i run in and the places i go out to, partly I guess because i'm not sufficiently pretty** to be a target or for it to have the required effect. but also, like, i do not notice because i am basically not interested.

Also because (i think i've said this on ilx before) the first adolescent way i learnt to talk to strangers at parties was to find out someone's music taste (v often whatever boy had taken control of the stereo) and then pick an argument with them about it, so potentially i do not notice negging-type interactions because it is me who is the negger.

** i sort of mean "pretty" as a class, here, a qualitative thing. my actual face/body/etc aside, i don't, historically, dress the part of a pretty girl, i don't code as such. so, like, i took part in a good flirtatious conversation in an electronics store the other day which was largely about video games: whatever appeal i have to men it is not "pretty girl who needs to be cut down to size in order to notice you".

Looked up "derbyshire," saw chapter headings including "European Fertility" and "Female sufferage (cont.)" and was like, How about never? Is never good for you?

I don't even have anything to do, and I STILL don't have time for that.

if we're going to start using the word "negger" in this conversation I don't think I'll be able to control the full-on body cringes

Also somebody was trying to tell me the other day that women "want to feel intimidated" by men they're interested in. Uh, no, nobody really wants to feel intimidated. I thought that was kind of fucked up.

― Romantic style in da world (crüt), Tuesday, June 25, 2013 9:25 AM (14 minutes ago)

i dunno, people vary. i'm sure there are a significant number of men & women out there who are attracted to that which intimidates them. i have to figure (or at least hope) that they're a fairly small minority, though. it's horrible "rule of thumb" advice either way.

oops, in orbit already covered that

It's...complicated? Maybe some people do want to feel intimidated or overpowered or lots of stereotypical things women are supposed to naturally want by virtue of having vaginas or being observably feminine. Other women don't want those things. None of those kinds of desires are the problem.

The problem is when a suitor can't come to terms with women as people so those stereotypes are substituted for any acknowledgement that relationships and intimacy are complex and require work/risk.

yeah, I know what he meant by "intimidated" & I know for some people feeling intimidated/manipulated/powerless is part of the excitement & it's probably not fair to lump that in with the PUA game. tbf I am kind of a scaredy-cat when it comes to personal boundaries. I don't ever want to make people feel uncomfortable. Especially people I am attracted to!!

whatever appeal i have to men it is not "pretty girl who needs to be cut down to size in order to notice you".
i never thought mine was either, but some people will seriously aim at any target in front of them! even when it's me.

I don't think I'll be able to control the full-on body cringes

oh jesus i did not think of that

please can we pretend i wrote "the one who was negging", would that be ok with everyone

The basis of PUA stuff is that NO ONE ELSE IS A PERSON, LIKE YOU ARE, or at least if they are, they don't matter.

I feel like this is close to otm, but I think sometimes that people who tend toward PUA strategies have low self-confidence and self-esteem and instead of figuring out how to raise that, they learn ways to push the self-esteem of others below their own.

Yes? So do bullies and abusers, which are just other words for people who do that. The Game: Becoming a bully, an abuser, and finally a rapist, all in 10 easy chapters--that there should be an exception for anyone who pursues this? Nah.

^

bullies and abusers are also often people who hate themselves though. if they were more productive about dealing with their self-loathing, maybe they wouldn't abuse people. that doesn't mean that anyone else should care about them though... it's their fault that their mental problems manifest in a way that hurts others.

but still, i guess i think there is some value in recognizing how this shitty behavior arises out of insecurity, and for that matter insecurity that is caused by the same patriarchal system these dudes often seem committed to upholding.