In her profile, Allthegood lists her interests as “AHunter3”. So I think you have multiple reasons for taking her comments with a grain of salt.
I think this should be reiterated - I read ten lines into the OP and decided that I never wanted to read anything AHunter3 ever wrote again. (Fortunately the rest of his posts in this thread have been substantially more digestible.) If you want to use a blog - which is to say, writing samples - to attract an audience for your book, those writing samples should be at least as appealing to read as the book is.
If the problem is that AHunter3’s book is terribly written, then that’s something he should address. If the problem is that just his promotional materials are terribly written, then that’s also a problem that he should address. First impressions matter, particularly if you want to get people to pay money for the second one.
Yeah, I already knew that part.
He probably thinks that because he didn’t have a male-girl to model himself after, that then he was not trained in the art of flirting as a male-girl. Or something.
Yeah, something along those lines.
That’s the thing. I’m well aware of how queries work, and that they often don’t involve the full manuscript. In fiction it is a bit different, they usually request the first ten pages, and then they assign some underling to go through the slush pile. But what this means, to me, is that my first ten pages have to be really damned good, and illustrate everything an agent is looking for. If I get 750 rejections from the slush pile, I’m going to assume something is wrong with my query letter or my first ten pages. If I truly believe in the value of my manuscript, and I have reasonably objective people who also believe in it, then there must be some breakdown in my efforts to communicate about its value.
I’ve not submitted a single query yet and haven’t a clue how my work will be received. My opinion is based on the preparation I have thus far done, including paying a professional to critique my query letter. I’m not trying to disparage for disparagement’s own sake. But for me, it’s a question of where the effort is concentrated. If the book is truly ready to go, it’s time to turn attention to effective communication in marketing. I value AHunter3 as a poster, I find his posts about mental illness and mad pride particularly interesting, and I’m fascinated by gender dynamics, but I’ve never been able to get into these blog posts.
Based on the posts, my initial instinctive advice is ‘‘less is more.’’ There is too much text and not enough clarity. You want to say a million things but structurally this is kind of a mess. I’m not an expert in nonfiction or anything, that’s just my opinion. The post is in want of a good outline. Non-fiction is a different beast, but there are also commonalities. What’s the hook? What are the progressive complications - the questions you propose to answer? What is in here that doesn’t serve the story?
I haven’t listened to this particular podcast episode, but I’m a fan of The Story Grid podcast (and book) and maybe you’ll get something out of Shawn Coyne’s advice for non-fiction writers and the equally compelling need for structure.
I’m curious–as a mod, can you go back and edit your own posts after the 5-minute window?
It’s possible, but discouraged. I try not to do it. Did I do that? If I did, it wasn’t intentional.
Oh… I see. I should have done that. :smack: BRB. (If I can edit someone else’s post, at their request, to fix their typos, I figure I can do the same for mine. The biggest mistake I’ve made so far is accidentally responding to people’s posts within their original post… ‘‘Edit’’ and ‘‘Reply’’ are easy to get mixed up.)
The thing is, the “Femmy” characteristics mentioned in the guide either don’t make someone a male-girl, or magically turn a huge chunk of men who consider themselves (and are generally considered) masculine males into male-girls. And again, if “I was never taught flirting” means “there were people modeling flirting behavior, but not flirting behavior that fits my personal situation exactly”, then the experience is true for the vast majority of men (and women), including me. It’s not like I grew up watching people model flirting for geeky and kinky individuals, both were considered inappropriate (geeky was supposedly ‘no girls are into this’ and kink was super scary stuff that you only discussed behind closed doors after knowing someone for a long time).
Or, like many girls, you don’t follow any repertoire at all. You just wing it and hope that you eventually through trial and error you figure out what style fits for you and the kind of person you’re trying to attract.
I went back and read your OP, and unless I missed this (which is very likely, given the verbosity), I don’t see any consideration given to the diversity of preferences that exists within the (heterosexual) female population. Are you providing guidance on how to flirt with women in general, or is this guidance supposed to help guys attract women who like a certain kind of femme guy? Because if the former, I worry you’re setting your trainees up to fail. Take this bit:
(bolding mine)
First off, not all women like long-haired men, and even among those that do, opinions are going to vary about how attractive this is. My personal view is that whether long hair works on a guy depends on a lot. If you’re thinning on top, long hair is horrible, I’m sorry. If you have 90’s rock star charisma, then long hair is winning.
Second, even if the guy sporting long hair strikes me as attractive, I can’t imagine him fiddling with it is going to make me think he’s flirting. Snap impression will be that he probably cares a lot about his hair, probably more than I care about mine. That is going to turn many of us off. If he came up to me stroking his pony tail or whatever, I can’t see myself being drawn to him.
I also question this idea of women (people) watching hands. Some people talk with their hands, but plenty of people don’t but they still manage to flirt successfully. How is that? Because they are able to express themselves using their faces, maybe? I don’t notice men’s hands because my eyes are trained on their face. If I were talking to a dude and his hands were moving around touching things for the sake of it, I’m not seeing how someone like me would be taken in by this.
My conclusion is that your perspective is obviously biased towards the male gaze. You are drawn to these flirting behaviors when they occupy a female form, but instead of acknowledging this bias, you present your own tastes as the woman-at-large’s taste. And that is wrong on multiple levels.
Yeah, if you’re going to be all gender deterministic (which is generally the feel I get from the OP), it’s really weird to assign traditionally masculine traits to women.
And if you’re not going to be gender deterministic, it’s really weird to assign traits to all women.
And speaking just for me, I would prefer people of every gender STOP PETTING YOUR OWN FUCKING HAIR. God.
I do not like long hair on men.
This concept of male-girl confuses me a bit. Femininity is a social construct. The OP seems to imply that women are defined by their feminine interests. Perhaps I misunderstand.
We may misunderstand together, but I’ve always found AH to be a gender essentialist. I feel like he’s trying to break out of a box by shoving me in one.
I went through four periods of evolution for flirting in my gender journey. In chronological order,
- As the “boy,” quickly realizing how boys try to actively flirt.
- As the “boy,” discovering to my surprise that in at least one circumstance passive unconscious flirting worked.
- As myself, quickly realizing how boys and some other girls interpret submissiveness as flirting.
- As myself, eventually teaching myself how to actively flirt, being shocked at how effective it was, and taking this to a point where it caused me significant harm.
Which leads me to now, where I not only don’t actively flirt, I try not to passively flirt either.
I’d discuss the four steps I went through if folks are interested, but this is AHunter’s thread and I’m concerned people would think I’m being boring and obfuscative. Or write such, which of course is worse. 
I don’t remember having in person models of how to flirt. I’m sure any that i may have witnessed wouldn’t have considered themselves " teaching" anyone anything. I see a difference between someone teaching and someone learning by observation. Again, repeatedly saying " no one taught me how to flirt" comes across very differently from “i didn’t learn how to flirt because i didn’t think i had any appropriate models.”
I’m sorry but I have to laugh at this. The ability to communicate interest through flirting hinges on mutually shared assumptions about what signals mean. These assumptions are largely shaped by context. Among important contextual factors is the gender and sexual orientation of the players involved!
How could this not be true? If a female acquaintance suggests we get a drink after work, I’m less likely to read romance than if a guy asked me. If a female stranger smiles at me when our eyes accidentally meet, I will assume she’s just outgoing. Not trying to charm her way into my heart and pants, which might be what I assume a guy is doing.
Anyone—male or female— batting their eyelashes at a straight woman with the aim of “speaking her flirting language” is asking for disappointment. Why would she find that attractive? Why would she assume a man displaying such a signal is interested in her, when she’s accustomed to men showing interest using different cues?
The logic expressed above just doesn’t make sense unless you are talking about a small subset of women who are 1) drawn to guys that behave in overtly feminine ways and 2) approached frequently enough by such men that they’ve learned to associate their hair primping etc. as signs of interest. In the absence of such conditions, your typical woman is not going to be speaking their language.
That’s what I get as well. Plus, men are define by their masculine interests. And both are defined by overly sweeping generalizations like “women like long hair on males” and men talk about their sexual conquests all the time.
And if your experiences as either a woman or a man do not match up, well. It’s the reader’s fault.
Finally! Thank you!
Is this in part because of heteronormativity and in part because of expected differences in male and female behavior?
Thank you thank you. Finally a freaking conversation.
So yes, she is accustomed to men indicating interest using different cues.
So if he tries to use the same cues that she herself might use, he’s asking for disappointment because she’s not primed to expect that, or to interpret it that way.
She’s accustomed to men showing interest in a different way than how women tend to indicate interest.
Yeesh, I thought I’d never get any concession that expectations are at all gendered. That it wasn’t just me insisting that they were.
I wish to extend that, to say that it isn’t just the batting of the eyes versus doing something more typical of men indicating interest, and make the audacious claim that the entire damn courting-flirting-dating behavioral thingie is similarly scripted. That there are expectations based on what sex you are. And that anyone engaging in this activity has to contend with that somehow.
So, no, it’s not that I am imposing a bunch of rigid definitions of sex where they didn’t previously exist. I’m saying they are THERE already and a person is going to come up against them when they attempt to flirt and date.
The logic expressed above just doesn’t make sense unless you are talking about a small subset of women who are 1) drawn to guys that behave in overtly feminine ways and 2) approached frequently enough by such men that they’ve learned to associate their hair primping etc. as signs of interest. In the absence of such conditions, your typical woman is not going to be speaking their language.
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oops final edit on the last paragraph:
Well and accurately put. And yes, this is aimed at the small subset of women who are drawn to guys that behave in overtly feminine ways. (It’s a guide for guys who do in fact behave in overtly feminine ways, after all, and we want to connect with the women who like us this way!) The part 2 is tricker: approached frequently enough to associate these behaviors as a sign of interest. Did I at some point mention that I’m trying to draw some social attention to this phenomenon on behalf of us, collectively? A shared notion, an expectation, a greater awareness of this as a possiibility.