Eh, I really have no sympathy either way with this sort of thing.
I suppose I could have slept with some woman who lied about using birth control. If it was a one night stand, I just have no sympathy for those guys that get someone pregnant because it’s 100% their responsibility, even if she is lying.
In the case of the fake football player, the women have no idea who any of these players are, so they lose in the short term calculus.
Lying in a case of a LTR, yes, that’s bad. But both genders should be wary of these short term deals.
My take on it is that PUA was a response to the weakening of societal pressures on women that it’s mandatory to “have a man” and be part of a (heterosexual) couple in social situations.
As being single (or polyamorous, for that matter) or just hanging out with friends became more acceptable alternatives to having an opposite-sex date or spouse, women became less inclined to go out with guys they weren’t really interested in. Old assumptions about only the very few creepiest or geekiest or least attractive guys being unable to get a date/spouse—because after all, almost every woman NEEDED a date/spouse and would eventually have to settle for SOMEBODY—became less true.
Some level of awareness of this shift was manifested in a lot of guys as a panicky determination to become better at “selling” themselves to women. Paradoxically, ISTM that as singlehood became more socially acceptable for women it became less so for men.
At the same time, romantic comedies and porn were pitching the idea that masculine success for even an “ordinary” “average” guy meant being able to get a HOT woman that other guys would envy. Dating became less of a ubiquitous social routine that everybody had to follow in order to be able to go to prom or do other group activities, and more of a competition among men to impress one another.
That’s certainly a bog standard take on the last 40 years of relationships.
I think it’s in error, because the root belief is that women don’t have an attraction to men in general. And I don’t think that’s true at the root. That the average man is worthless and a non-person is a very convenient belief to many people. The attraction is based on biology. Same as men’s attraction to women, or same sex attractions.
Huh?? Of course what I said is in no way implying that “women don’t have an attraction to men in general”. (Much less the even more bizarre notion that “the average man is worthless and a non-person”.)
Of course (heterosexual) women do have such an attraction, and many of us are and always have been strongly attracted to a wide variety of men, including many men who might generally be considered “ordinary”, “average” or even “ugly”.
But women are no longer so strongly pressured and expected to routinely go out with men even when they’re not attracted to them. If a woman doesn’t happen to like any of the guys who ask her to the dance, for example, she doesn’t have to accept one of them just in order to be able to go to the dance. She can go by herself, or with a group of friends, or with a platonic “pseudo-date”.
So yes, if you have more people are single in their 20s and 30s, actually learning how to meet and date strangers would seem to be a skill one would need to acquire.
I would also agree that the average person isn’t that desirable. Or at the very least, their “averageness” would cause them to fade into the background. Particularly in a society where people are constantly bombarded by images presenting an unobtainable standard of beauty as the standard. Go to a Target or other big store on a typical day if you don’t believe me.
As a side note - The thing that highlights the misogyny and entitlement of the PUA movement is their core belief of “attractiveness”. Women’s attractiveness can be quickly summarized by a single scoring metric (1-10 scale) while men can apparently alter their attractiveness through various tools and techniques.
And part of the issue is that people are compartmentalizing more and more of their romantic lives into specialized online environments, where the fundamental structure is competition among total strangers on the basis of conventional attractiveness (and/or wealth and/or youth and other conventionally “desirable” attributes).
When people get to know each other in nonromantic social situations, they have more opportunity to figure out whom they actually like and get along with as people, which often makes them more attracted to those people. Even if the people in question aren’t somebody they would have considered very attractive from just glancing at them on a dating app or while shopping at Target.
On a side note, now that abortion will be incredibly unavailable, and, if PUA/incels are correct that 80% of women think only 20% of men attractive, there’s a few guys out there who will be laying the long green in child support
People can meet at work, but there’s problems with that, hostility towards approaches there that can be very costly to people’s careers.
We could go back to more formal meet and greets, dances and actually managing relations with younger people. Now this would lead to these situations where you are being asked out by men you don’t like.
I guess my response to that is there is no free lunch in life. All voluntary heterosexual relations require the participation of both a man and a woman. I actually do think that women are being sincere in their emotional reactions. In this case I think the PUA-manosphere crowd is usually off base. Most of them don’t really know how women think or react very well. That being said, heterosexual relations require the participation of both a man and a woman, and conversations about them should be dialogues by both genders, not monologues by one gender. Women’s opinions are only half of the element. KEEP IN MIND that I am referring to voluntary relations ONLY, we have had methods to deal with unvoluntary relations for millenia.
One thing I have seen over the last decades is “concern” over couples that marry young, like if both the man and woman are 19 or something like that. Now often these people are conservative, likely both virgins, but the concern comes across to me like the man in the marriage is getting “something for nothing” and the woman should have more experiences before being married. Assuming this is what’s wanted, the woman is going to be having these experiences with other men. So a supply of other men seems to be needed. The PUAs are effectively applying to be these other men for these needed experiences. Their applications are met with hostility. There seems to be a disconnect here. If these experiences are wanted, men seem to be required.
I’m reminded of something I heard back when I was in the dating world. Many, many successful relationships start off meeting at work. So it’s really common. And, for most people, it’s easier to find a new job than to find a new romantic partner. Therefore, if the opportunity presents itself at work, one should go for it.
Yeah, I know. Work for a decently large company and there are quite a few couples. I’m single right now and am considering it myself. There I am known and it might be easier for me rather than going through the sea of people on apps.
I used to work with some people where two of them were in a relationship and one supervised the other. Probably shouldn’t be done, but they worked it out okay and I don’t feel that life needs to be disrupted if people are making things work.
Harassment is going to happen anywhere there are people. Including dating apps, if someone changes their mind. Don’t know how we can eliminate it completely. I used to belong to social Meetup group which was pretty good. Someone complained and it was emphasized that the group was supposed to be platonic only. The group kind of died after that, since most people were using it to meet potential partners.
One the “It’s a man’s world, women should be barefoot & pregnant” crowd gets fully in charge, it seems a silly fantasy to assume “child support” won’t also be eliminated as an unnecessary restriction on male freedom; the only sort of freedom that matters.
Also, once can ask out a coworker without being harassing. It’s always been pretty clear to me what sort of behavior was acceptable and what wasn’t.
The problem with dating a coworker isn’t so much dating a coworker IMHO. It’s having to deal with them after you stop dating. And if you work in an environment where coworkers frequently date, it can create an uncomfortable “high school” like environment of social politics, which can impact actual work. It my not be the companies business that so and so are dating. It becomes their business if they can’t work on project because their ex is also on it.
I grew up in a very conservative Mormon family, and was typically clueless myself, so not only did I think women or girls weren’t interested in me, I also had been repeatedly taught that they didn’t want to have sex with anyone until they were married.
That was a surprise to learn otherwise.
I was in Japan during the whole PUA movement and the only expose I have is from threads like this.
No, not large. Certainly not as large as “The Rules” faction among women. But nearly everyone was aware of someone who would spout stuff learned from the PUA types. And the term “friendzone” became mainstream.
At one time my company had a ban on employees being married to each other. Despite the company being a couple of thousand people at this point. Ban was rescinded when a high level person wanted to marry a lower level person and the higher level person decided they would be the one to leave to meet the quota. Also had a ban on smoking, even in personal life, that went away when the new CEO smoked.
I don’t think the Rules were all that popular. They just got a lot of media attention … like the PUA movement. I didn’t know any woman who took the Rules seriously or followed them. We all just mocked them. They were a joke.
This. I have oodles of nephews and nieces now aged 28-34 who were high school and college age during the peak of this.
The Rules were always a joke. PUA was a crying point for guys who were (sensibly) rejected by women allegedly for being “nice”. In reality they were self absorbed, moralistic, paternalistic pricks.
I don’t think it was “large”, other than elements of the PUA movement seemed to seem to influence aspects of the culture at the time (rom-coms mostly). Like in the film ‘17 Again’ (2009) one of the characters is conspicuously and buffoonishly “peacocking” (and specifically called out as such) in an attempt to pick up a woman.
How much did popular media paying attention to it reflect any actual popularity vs rom - coms finding it a convenient meme, somewhat hybridizing established tropes of the smooth “ladies man” - a trope from before Greek comedies one suspects - and the desperate fumbling wannabe - often with each blind to the true love right in front of them until the end of the story as a standard schtick. Or sadder endings like in Carnal Knowledge where Nicholson was the that time’s PUA.