Anyway, damned if I'm going to read 90 pages of this shit, but the general gist is that women need to be tricked into "giving up" affection and sex and being a manipulative little weaselboy is the height of studliness. Implicit in this, of course, is what Figleaf would call "the no-sex class"--the ridiculous belief that women don't want sex for the same regular horny reasons as men, and therefore will only have sex if tricked or somehow paid. I've heard variations of this belief in a million places and it always drives me insane, because, well, I'm really horny. And of course I'm not horny for all people or at all times, but when I'm not, payment won't help. Pay me enough and I'll fake it, but I cannot be paid or tricked into feeling horny.
But why make fun of the underlying assumption when there's so much to be made fun of in the book?
For most men, a woman is like a Chinese puzzle inside of a brain twister.
Really? Because I feel like I'm just a person. It's not like my actions are apparently-random, is it? I... do things that are fun and avoid things that suck. It's very unmysterious. And I feel like that when guys say "women are a mystery" what they really mean is either "making women have sex with me is a mystery" or just "women are crazy."
Have you ever listened to a group of women talking about men? Ever notice how they speak largely in some kind of code language and constantly make a big deal out of tiny details that seem totally irrelevant? Have you ever noticed, on the other hand, how men are direct with each other and have no interest in bickering over small things? What's going on? Have you ever noticed how attracted to drama most women are?
Nope! I never noticed any of those fucking things! And I don't understand how you can write a book on attracting women from a perspective of hating women. If they're that damn crazy, why do you even want one?
One good example is to say to a hot woman who's acting arrogant "You don't have me fooled for a minute, dear." When she say's "What are you talking about?" you say "Well, I know that most men fall for this 'I'm beautiful and aloof and I get my way' part of your personality... but I know something that none of them know... that there's really another side of you. A side that none of THEM get to see. I'll bet you a dollar right now that I know something about you that no one who's only known you for 5 minutes has EVER known...
Oh MAN. I would love to see a guy actually go through with this routine. On the ludicrous offchance that it actually works, do you really want an arrogant woman? (Well, "arrogant" here probably means "not properly sexually available," but let's play along.) Seems like it would be more efficient to just walk away and find a woman who's polite in the first place. Oh wait, then she wouldn't be hot, because all hot chicks are arrogant bitches, I nearly forgot.
Women often view men picking up on them as a sort of game. They talk about it with each other, they have standard lines that they learn when you ask for their number - "Why don't you give me YOUR number instead and I can call you...?" and so on.
That's not a game, that's so your creepy ass doesn't call us 500 times at 3 AM.
I believe that underneath it all, men are usually trying to find women who will give them sex, and women are usually trying to find men who will give them loyalty and commitment.
I believe that's your fundamental problem. It seems like if you really just want sex NO STRINGS NO EMOTIONS AWESOME MAN, you could hire a hooker. So are the pickup games just a cash-saving move?
If she complains about you or doesn’t like something, turn it up a notch and do it more. If she says to me “I don’t really like it when you say that” I say “Well then you might want to leave, because I say it a lot” Get it?
Women: Every Day is Opposite Day! (It isn't Opposite Day.)
I do crazy things, like if I’m standing next to a girl at a bar, I’ll turn to her and say in a completely serious voice “Will you PLEASE stop touching me?” And then look them right in the eye. Or say “What are you doing at a bar for godsakes? Can’t you find a nice normal guy? Or are you desperate?” All with a completely straight face.
Hahahaha Jesus Christ this guy has never had sex in his life.
I could go on, there's 90 pages of this shit, but you get the idea. I think even normal men know that "pick-up magic" is for creepy little trolls, so I guess I'm doing the fish-in-a-barrel thing here, but God is this shit hilarious.
Holly's Two-Step Pick-Up Magic:
1. Say hi to a woman. Talk to her like you'd talk to a human being.
(1a. This will not always work, and not always lead to sexytimes. This is not because you lack some asset or skill, it's because she didn't wanna. Don't take it personally and try again.)
2. Once you've gotten to know her a little better, continue to treat her like a human being. The panties will melt down her leg, I tell ya.
Really, Holly, pick-up is about playing the game of traditional masculinity and femininity for those who enjoy that sort of thing. It's true it includes an ethos of "woman as consumer good", but the problem is that lots of women have an investment in traditional femininity (women as the "object of desire", flirtation solely for ego-boosting, indirect communication, etc.) The fact is that you don't belong to the subculture of "sorority girls" who play those games doesn't mean that subcultures of men won't evolve to match them. Most of the debate on PUA is subcultures talking past each other. DYD is currently considered overdone and primitive, and lots of other "systems" practically evangelize AGAINST its brand of one-upmanship.
ReplyDeleteI also think you are better-placed than most women to understand the degree of isolation and social pressure involved in a system that requires men to exercise virtually all initiative in romantic approaches, because (to judge from your blog) you are an exceptionally pro-active woman.
Eurosabra - I suppose in a sense dumb sorority-chick women and dumb "PUA" men deserve each other, but it's still a damn shame.
ReplyDeleteYou know, I'm not a pro-active woman. I'm a woman who thinks of myself as a reasonable human being and of men as reasonable human beings and I think that this entire "game the system" concept assumes otherwise. I'm not a system, I'm a person.
"Holly's Two-Step Pick-Up Magic:"
ReplyDeleteI don't understand this crazy moon language you're speaking! You mean I don't have to be a conniving bastard to get women into bed? Amazing!
You may act tough, but you're actually EXTREMELY sensitive on the inside. If someone makes a negative comment to you, you might act like it doesn't bother you... but you'll think about it all the way home... I know that secretly you're as sensitive as a little girl...
ReplyDeleteIf someone actually said this to me, who wasn't Aebhel, I'd punch them in the fact and walk away.
But that's just me.
Ok, maybe I just have terrible luck, but dealing straight with women generally backfires on me. A little teasing, a little gaming, a little mystery, tend to work better and keep women interested. The women I have dated, casually or seriously, got bored if there wasn't enough going on in the relationship and split 'cuz I wasn't exciting enough, (or perhaps more accurately, because I wasn't dancing to their tune). The shit in that book, however, isn't teasing so much as asshattery. A woman who sleeps with you after that crap has little or no self-respect. Not a quality I want in a woman. Guess I'm not a "studmuffin."
ReplyDeleteDo most guys really want a large number of women? Seems like one or two attractive ones on a recurrent basis would be more satisfying. But maybe I just don't understand because I'm a girl.
ReplyDeleteReally want? No.
Think they want? Sure.
Part of it is that "getting" women in a lot of these cases is a heck of a lot more about displaying status than it is about sexual or emotional satisfaction - to the degree that can be said when the concepts are so intertwined.
(If I'm being really cynical, I might observe that for some men, "getting" a large number of women means that they don't have treat any particular one like an equal, which might be appealing if you treat sexual encounters like iterations of the Prisoner's Dilemma.)
If they're that damn crazy, why do you even want one?
To prove to the other boys that you can. Duh!
I posted, a while back at Taking Steps, about how some of the Nice Guy Tee-Em types seem to think women are some kind of arcade game. Put in the cheat code, get laid. Only the cheat code doesn't work on this woman like it did on the last one, it must be broken.
ReplyDeleteMe, ... I like nerdy boys. Which means I sorted out that I'd have to do the pursuing a while back, because geeks are oblivious. ;)
"You may act tough, but you're actually EXTREMELY sensitive on the inside. If someone makes a negative comment to you, you might act like it doesn't bother you... but you'll think about it all the way home... I know that secretly you're as sensitive as a little girl... it's just that most people never get to meet that part of you.."
ReplyDeleteExcuse me, what sort of BS is that? If I guy honestly came up to me and said that I'd laugh in his face and tell him to go fuck himself. How's that for being a sensitive little girl? Honestly, I'm a sucker for a guy who will banter back and forther with me. And intelligently at that. Bt seriously, the 'go up and talk to like a normal human' method totally works and would be a nice change from being looked at like a piece of meat.
One thing that gets elided in all these discussions is that the subjective experience of many men is that "women want sex, they just don't want sex WITH YOU" and that is what leads to the rise of pick-up subcultures. There's real anthropological evidence that women want fewer partners, have more rigid standards, etc. etc., and it leads to the perception that women (in general) are pickier. Perhaps far more men drop off the radar of all women than vice-versa, perhaps men have a stronger sex drive, perhaps men are simply not socialized to give up in face of their desires being consistently stymied--indeed, the punitive force of law in many jurisdictions is not enough, assuming that some percentage of johns really DO act simply on unfulfilled desire. So the result is a search for some cultural interpretation that makes pairing up intelligible, and in the context of our society--in which traditional masculinity and femininity carry unquestioned social rewards--that's going to be PUA. The idea is to adopt behaviors that (in the aggregate) produce an attraction/arousal response in some kind of archetypal woman, with the archetype being close enough to lived experience that a certain number of women will go for it, certainly more than the 1 in 200 that I can anecdotally report from the "talk to her/build rapport/ask her out" approach, which works if you are ALREADY physically attractive to a large array of women. I've been doing "pick-up" for years, and I can tell you that "one from column A one from column B" is a god-send the more nervous you are--and I think men who are socially dysfunctional because of a history of abuse have a right to whatever social crutches they can acquire.
ReplyDeleteThere is a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem in asking men to be generous, and giving, when they're continually frustrated, but it may be that exactly that type of Zen is what's needed.
I'll be honest: when I was younger and dumber, the "I can see what a smooshy sensitive little girl you are" totally worked on me.
ReplyDeleteNow, I'd probably laugh so hard I'd fall off my barstool.
I've only skimmed the .pdf so far (I don't have much patience for reading off my computer screen), but the author had what I thought was one good insight: You can't assume to know what women want.
ReplyDeleteObviously that goes both ways, but it's a common mistake. Not every woman wants Fabio; not every man wants Pamela Anderson.
Eurosabra - To be perfectly honest it seems kinda sad to be "doing pickup" (it's a sport?) for years. You didn't ever have... a girlfriend?
ReplyDeleteYou're right about one thing; the "building rapport approach" is useless if you treat it as just another approach. But personally (here I'm talking as a girl of course), I think of it as making friends. I won't sleep with a guy because he "takes a building rapport approach," but I'll sleep with a friend.
The whole "PUA" thing just gives me the giant creeps because other human beings aren't a goddamn game, goddamnit. You don't want to make a girl feel like you're her friend, you want to be her friend. Like, giving a shit about her and distinguishing her from other women in your own mind. (No, this isn't guaranteed, being a friend will not automatically earn you the sex you deserve. Women having free will sucks like that.)
Bruno - I didn't see that part, but I have to point out that very few women want Fabio. And the ones who do are lousy in bed.
So cut your hair already.
I always wondered what was in those books.
ReplyDeleteI guess those "How To Pick Up Women" books are like Nigerian 419 Scams, somebody's buying them somewhere. I can't imagine what a conversation with someone that dumb would be like, however...
It's kind of like the Bible. I don't know how to get to Heaven or how to get a woman to have sex with me, but I can look through the book and figure out for myself that this is not going to be it.
ReplyDeleteHolly,
ReplyDeleteI'm a bit more dysfunctional than the average PUA, since I've got visible physical disabilities as well as depression and a not-helpful history of abuse, and I'm not BS-ing you when I say I've approached ca. 500 women in the past two years and wound up with TWO girlfriends in that time. Oddly, both are (like me) tubby Jews, only one of them likes to be hit, and even then not very hard, thank you very much. And the openly poly thing was a mess. But, yeah, each is a unique and valuable and special human being, and (more importantly) each one wants me as I am, which is kinda important since I can go 9-10 months between partners. There isn't a single area in which I'm mainstream, whether in appearance, economic role (still in school), home life (I take care of my Dad, who's in a wheelchair), diet (vegan) or transit (public, I have no car). I'm also a trained classical musician with an interest in Baroque, speak four languages fluently, and I'm Israeli. In short, ultimate potential incel nerd. Also, I live in a very rich and ultimately superficial place. So even pulling out all the stops, I get about one date for every 100 approaches, and even that's in places (university, classical music appreciation societies, etc) where my intellect should supposedly "guarantee" a match with someone.
I think that the "women having free will sucks like that" can only be as flip and dismissive as you have written it because you went ten months without a partner. Try TEN YEARS. That was why I settled on the whole "openly poly" thing, because I started dating at 25 and am now only hitting my stride (so to speak) at 34. I also inhabit figleaf's blog, where I am a bit of a nudnik since my position tends to be read as complaining that there isn't enough "free pussy" in the world.
The "game" aspect is disconcerting, too, philosophically--you really have to arrive at a situation of living in the moment and seeing what you can learn from every person and every situation, where the interaction is a "game", just playfully putting yourself out there, with absolutely no strings attached to anyone. I've done both the ultimate mind-fuck manipulation bit AND slowly building rapport, and nothing "works" like actually being attuned to the person in front of you. What the more extreme stuff does is allow you to adopt an alternate persona and play with it, which then sometimes squicks your partner out when you drop it and reveal your truly needy, vulnerable, approval-seeking self.
ReplyDeleteThe only way I succeeded was by building (from the ground up) a persona free from the neediness and social tics that a lifetime of abuse both foreign and domestic left me. In the end, I still have to face the fact that much of the time the most ethical thing to do is walk away. (The poly thing, for example, needs to be brought up BEFORE you sleep with someone. I was doing it wrong for a long, long time.)
"Do most guys really want a large number of women? Seems like one or two attractive ones on a recurrent basis would be more satisfying."
ReplyDeleteOh, I can see what's so cool about having lots of partners. But what I don't get is, why do they want that kind of women? Why the selfish, manipulative, frigid cheating bitches? Are they really so much more physically attractive than women who like sex, and won't expect the man to give them his coat so he'll freeze, or make him buy them expensive gifts?
Or is it that all attractive women turn into bitches, because they notice they get away with it?
"For most men, a woman is like a Chinese puzzle inside of a brain twister."
Actually, I agree with this. Most women are incomprehensible. Most men are, too. I don't feel like a Chinese puzzle myself, but that's just because I see myself from inside to out, and that makes understanding me a whole lot easier.
"Have you ever listened to a group of women talking about men? Ever notice how they speak largely in some kind of code language and constantly make a big deal out of tiny details that seem totally irrelevant? Have you ever noticed, on the other hand, how men are direct with each other and have no interest in bickering over small things?"
Totally, I've been in groups of women talking about men. We'll go on about tiny details like how great so-and-so looked wearing only a tiny thong, or how it'd be nice to take so-and-so to bed and then dump him, but you'd need to dump him real quick or he'd do it first, or how some of us look first at the face and some the body.
TMI? Well, most of the men within hearing distance seem to think so. Must be our "code language" isn't all that obscure after all.
"(1a. This will not always work, and not always lead to sexytimes. This is not because you lack some asset or skill, it's because she didn't wanna. Don't take it personally and try again.)"
(...with another woman.)
If you go trolling for crazy bitches, that's exactly what you're going to wind up with, so don't act like the female gender is crazy as a whole; it's just that the crazy ones are the only ones who will hang out with an asshole like you.
ReplyDeleteSeriously, this book reads like a step-by-step instruction manual for getting drinks thrown at yourself. "Find out what annoys her and then do it more often"? That's a great strategy.
That was damn funny.
ReplyDelete"Well, I know that most men fall for this 'I'm beautiful and aloof and I get my way' part of your personality... [etc.] I know that secretly you're as sensitive as a little girl...
Wouldn't it save these guys a lot of time to make up a T-shirt that says "O HAI I'M A DOUCHE"?
Can I suggest one more step for your two-step magic?
3. Make yourself attractive. This can be accomplished by cultivating your mind and character (because sweet, brainy men are hot) and cultivating a pretty body (because even though appearances aren't everything, they do contribute to your sex appeal). Proper hygiene is also an excellent idea.
(Do most guys really want a large number of women? Seems like one or two attractive ones on a recurrent basis would be more satisfying. But maybe I just don't understand because I'm a girl.)
ReplyDeleteObviously I can't speak for most guys. I've known guys who were clearly interested in accumulating high numbers, and I know a number who've married their first serious girlfriends.
For me, sleeping with a few women is principally about knowing that I'm getting what I want. I felt a lot of pressure to marry my first girlfriend. She was terrible in bed, but I understood that only in retrospect.
Being able to attract a lot of women is nice for its own sake, but reassures me (well, it would...) that when I find someone I really like, I can attract her, too.
It's been awhile since was single and looking but talking to women usually is a good start. Ive had some odd responses to my efforts to communicate though so don't be surprised if it all goes wrong.
ReplyDeleteOnce a girl immediately said to me, "I have AIDS". Now, being a moron I was very concerned for her health and believed her for a good several minutes. I think she re-evaluated me based on the fact that I was missing the lion's share of my brain and apologized for making it up. We had a good time though obviously I never fucked her. That was decided up front apparently.