I’m at the opposite polarity. I liked girls as friends and classmates growing up, and continued to like them as women when we were adults. I am kinda horny sometimes so it’s nice if things go in that direction as well, since female morphology is what does it for me, but it’s never a dealbreaker if things don’t go in a sex direction and neither sex nor connection require that she be the most enticingly cute specimen. I’m kind of intimidated by the extremely cute specimens, honestly. I’m expecting that they’re used to zillions of people being attracted to them so that they’re in demand, and I can’t relate to that. The ones who are kinda cute but seeking and looking are more like me. (I actually am kinda cute and sweet and sufficiently vulnerable but confident and it works for me).
You may have a more idealized version of human interaction in general than I do. A major hypothesis of what drove human brain development was playing that game: the arms race of trying to manipulate and not be manipulated by others, winning resources, sex, and more. All of advertising and marketing is built on how to “manipulate” people, sales is getting people to do what you want them to do, “closing the deal”, “how to win friends and influence people” …
Humans have forever been in an existential game to win what they desire … (definitely not what they despise) whether they see it as a game or not. PUA and readers of “The Rules” are people who feel they have been consistently losing at that game and are looking for cheat codes, “one simple hack”, to get what and who they desire, the ones they assume others must be using and they just need to learn.
The point for the thread is precisely a sub population of men feeling they have been dealt bad cards out of a stacked deck in the game. And they are not completely wrong.
It’s absolutely true that traditional patriarchal society is set up much more for the benefit of socioeconomically elite men than for non-elite men. You would think that men who not unreasonably resent this injustice would focus more on making society more egalitarian and less biased towards socioeconomic elites, instead of putting so much energy into complaining about feminism-driven reductions in men’s privileged status vis-a-vis women. Of course, society is also built to make it seem easier and more natural to punch down at women than to punch up at the rich.
That said, it’s also true that the traditional gender norms decreed by patriarchal society have remained in some ways more inflexible for men than for women. It’s still perceived as less “appropriate” for a man to become a nurse or receptionist than for a woman to become a surgeon or a firefighter, for example. It’s less acceptable for a man to cry than for a woman to tell a dirty joke, more expected that a man will pay on dates than that a woman will accept a lower salary than a man for doing the exact same job, etc. etc. In some very real ways, the liberation promised by feminism has worked out to be somewhat one-sided.
Again, though, most of the resistance to male liberation is internalized by men themselves. Not to pick unduly on one random anecdotal example, but when @Odesio upthread found that his wife wanted to mow the lawn, for instance, did he say ”Hot dawg, less hard work for me, I’ll clean up the dishes and fold some laundry while I watch the game, and honeybunch can wrassle with the mower for once! Liberation!”? No, he insisted that he had to mow the lawn because otherwise he might be perceived as a “deadbeat husband”: it’s part of what a man is “supposed” to do.
We see this internalization, this clinging to burden despite diminishing privilege, all through male resentment of perceived inequality. Many men are still taking it for granted that they need to play by “the rules of manhood” that used to deliver much more of a payoff in terms of recognized male authority and privilege. But as women overcome more of the sexist barriers to equality and life becomes more precarious for the non-rich, the average man is getting less and less male-privilege payoff in return for his conformity to male gender norms. And a lot of men are, understandably, mad about that.
It works for a lot of guys, in fact; and the biggest part of that is the “confident” bit, which is very very hard for inexperienced daters to achieve.
As @DSeid noted, most of the guys who get sucked into PUA mindsets don’t go in wanting to despise and dehumanize women: what they’re hoping for is a dating “cheat code” that will guarantee results for them despite their lack of confidence. And they don’t reflect that reducing other human beings to an object to be manipulated and cheated is in itself a dehumanizing and disrespectful thing to do.
When someone is repeatedly unsuccessful, it can become a vicious circle. It’s not the fault of the person turned off by the lack of confidence. I think we have a tendency to say, “I got past my lack of confidence, so you should be able to as well.” I’m confident my wife will stay with me because she has for a few decades, but if I had to start dating again at 60 something I don’t think I’d be any better at it or more confident than I was in my twenties. Will it take us evolving more as a species for people of all genders to not be left behind? I don’t know. I feel for those who are going through what I did from the time I reached dating age until I met my wife in my early thirties. I’m where I am today largely through the dumb luck of being in the right place at the right time.
Humans are a social species. We do best in cooperative groups. Many of the advantages to such groups aren’t competitive, one person must win and others lose. Such situations do come up; but the group doesn’t work well if that’s the only thing that’s going on; and a lot of situations are win-win, in which cooperation benefits multiple parties often including all concerned. Figuring out how to work together in such situations seems to me at least as likely a driver of human intelligence.
Yup. And the often implicit calculations that occur that result in the choice that results in win-win with multiple turns … also appropriately covered by game theory.
I don’t think it’s a complete tangent. Predatory marketing and scams are a huge drain on our entire society. They lower trust and patience in all of us. They spread misinformation that makes it harder to understand issues. They help manufacture discontent. I would bet good money that if we could somehow get rid of them, all kinds of problems with how we relate to one another would improve.
I’m not condoning the actions of so-called pick-up artists, I just find it odd that there’s so much hatred directed at it when there are so many similar behaviors that get mild condemnation at the worst.
Again, I guess, you’d have to point me to specific discussions that you consider to be demonstrating “so much hatred” for me to know if I agree with your calibration.
And also what specific behaviors you consider “similar” that are receiving only “mild condemnation”. As with my example of widely despised phone and email scammers trying to cheat and rob people, ISTM that the general level of condemnation of similar behaviors is not really all that “mild”.
You think people complain about TV commercials less (and with less vitriol) than pick-up artists? Same with telemarketers? It was an entire industry that people hated so much they supported Congress killing it off.
And those (TV commercials, telemarketers) were just the behaviors that were merely annoying you by demanding your time and attention to try to pitch a product.
Not people who were individually getting up in your personal physical space and going through manipulative fake conversational and handling routines to—-best case—-get you disconcerted and insecure enough that you’d try to placate them with receptive attention. And—-worst case—-maneuver you into sex without caring whether or not you really wanted it, just as long as you were ambivalent enough about it not to immediately call it rape.
I get that a lot of guys who dabble in some PUA -adjacent advice forums aren’t trying to do anything worse than boost their own poise and charm. But the core of the subculture that they’re on the fringes of really is pretty misogynistic, exploitative and skeevy.
I do. There’s one forum I participate in where a poster referred to commercials and telemarketing as “merely annoying”, and PUAs as engaging in behavior that their victims wouldn’t immediately call rape.
A search on this board for ‘telemarketers’ turns up some vitriol, including this ancient classic:
Wait, my most recent post is what you consider “vitriolic” about PUA strategies? I think you may be using “vitriolic” as a synonym for “critical”. “Vitriolic”, to me, suggests rage-filled “kill them all”-type rhetoric.
I agree, I don’t see any vitriol there.
I think one source of confusion may be that @Robot_Arm, as he noted upthread, doesn’t know anything about PUA culture except from discussions here on the Dope. So he may be thinking of it as basically just a somewhat tone-deaf but largely innocuous “How To Charm Women” social-self-help type thing, which could appeal to well-intentioned but not dating-confident Doper-type decent guys.
He may not have encountered the more prominent self-proclaimed spokesmen of PUA culture, like Roosh V and Andrew Tate. Those guys are not all that innocuous.
I admit to my ignorance as well but I’d make a big distinction between the snake oil salesmen and their marks.
Oh absolutely, hence my comments about “core” versus “fringes” of the PUA movement, a couple posts ago.