this 1,600 or so words is part of an epic(ish) series on pick up artists, The Seduction Community, and hey, the whole damn world. That-which-came-before is below:
1. I’m Not Picking On Pick Up Artists. Much.
1.5 Interview with a Former Pick Up Artist
2. wherein I take a (temporary) break from bitching about pick up artists
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In my last essay, I wrote
…we’re all trying to get the same thing.
Together.
But maybe that isn’t quite true. At different times, we want different things. Women want different things than it is expected that women should want; men, too. It is pretty damn difficult to say, definitely, categorically, Women are this and want this or Men are that and want that. That sort of binary approach to gender and desire pretty neatly renders everyone outside of those constructions and intentions invisible.
Like: if ciswomen want x and cismen want y, what do transwomen and men want? And what happens if you’re a woman and you don’t want a man? What if you don’t identify with either gender? What if you’re queer? What if you do identify with what it means to be a stereotypical woman, but don’t necessarily want a boyfriend or a serious relationship?
Obviously, the Seduction Community doesn’t deal with any of that or anything outside the realm of hot chick/must fuck.
~
Dating is a numbers game so it isn’t fundamentally offensive that PUAs advise their students to approach lots of women.
Women, after all, work the numbers by looking hot.
And therein lies the fucking (literally) problem.
- “Hot” is, essentially, youth – and is therefore pretty temporary and a risky foundation for feminine identity.
- There is an entire industry dedicated to teaching women that we are not attractive.
- There is an entire society dedicated to teaching women that we have no worth beyond our looks, our ability to dispense sex, and, possibly, create new life. But once we do that, the first two are shot, so society can feel free to indulge in mama-targeted misogyny.
- You know why there is misogyny in the Seduction community? Because there is misogyny in real life.
- Still, when I encounter misogyny in the Seduction Community, it freaks me out because it is so naked and explicit. The Seduction Community overtly embraces the paradigm that young, thin, curvy is a woman’s worth. These women are “HBs” = hot bitches. Everyone else is a “fattie” or “warpig”. Women are rated by their attractiveness (0-10), called “targets” and talking to them is called an “approach” or a “set”. All of these terms chess-ify human interaction and dehumanizes both parties. The man running the set becomes the wizard behind the curtain twiddling the knobs -
(and I think we can safely presume from the lessons of Oz and real life that wizards are lonely. Neil Strauss wrote that the more success he had with women, the less he respected them, which doesn’t sound terribly fulfilling)
- while the woman is just matter to manipulate. It is a science experiment and experimenting on human beings usually requires an ethics committee. I demand an ethics committee.
I also get the sense –from the forums and the language – that some PUAs feel that men are getting screwed by women who are The Keepers of The Pie and therefore have the upper hand in dating and sex.
(This is not unique to the PUA community. See, for example, the superbowl ads that amount to what Mary Elizabeth Williams calls “an annual evening of misogyny punctuated with occasional outbreaks of football”; or even the current debate in the fem-o-sphere about hook up culture.)
The very basis of the PUA methods is inversion. PUAs examine how women attract men and then mirror those techniques. They model women in order to secure the thing they want that women have: the power of sexual selection.
~
Men feel screwed. Women feel screwed. We’re all feeling screwed by each other, and by the world.
Some of it feels like a reaction against sterility and routine. We’re lusting for authenticity and creation. We suspect that we’re alienated from our wildness and our humanity, our flesh biology and imperatives, our appetites and desires, our spirits, communion, and communities. We’re fleeing corporate world; we’re making cartoons and books and blogs and art; we’re manufacturing community; we’re connecting with the divine feminine and the sacred masculine; we’re railing against commutes and building cottage industries. Maybe we’re resisting scale and reasserting the primacy of intimacy. Maybe we want to be together on our own terms rather than warehoused in cubicles and condos.
~
This anguish – about men and women, sex and commitment, intimacy and power, and nature versus the human world – is old. It reminds me of Rousseau’s Emil and Sophie, his fictional, idealized versions of men and women in his new world.
Of course, Rousseau, who wrote the Social Contract – examining the bases of political cooperation – was fixed on figuring out Woman and Man. What kind of citizens will our democratic societies need?
Answer XY: Emil. Ideal Man. Educated to be self-governing. The goal is moral mastery and individual self-sufficiency: The Citizen.
Answer XX: Sophie. Ideal Woman. Educated to be governed by her husband. The goal is to complement The Citizen.
It is an age-old story: when we’re trying to figure out our world and our future, we turn first to figuring out women, men, sex, love and babies.
Every political philosophy and most religions start with organizing sex.
~
A friend of mine told me the following story:
He’s given vibrators or sex toys to several girlfriends as gifts. And every time he has, he noted, the relationship ended. So, he told me, he thinks maybe he should not give sex toys to girlfriends any more.
I told him – all future girlfriends, you owe me a debt of gratitude, please send cash – that his conclusion was based on crap logic. Correlation is not causation. He’s single, so in fact all of his relationships have ended – not just the ones in which sex toys were exchanged. I doubt the problem vibrates.
(Which is not to say that the common denominator is him – I don’t think a history of ended relationships indicates pathology. Instead, I think it indicates being wise enough to move on when it isn’t right.)
I think this urge, though – to rationalize, systemize, isolate variables, invent causation, define a methodology – is pretty understandable.
And that’s what pick up artists do. They attempt to systemize attraction. They try to structure magic.
By most accounts, it seems to work, initially.
~
Let’s be clear:
- Men trying to get laid: ok
- Women trying to get laid: ok
- Relationships: ok
- Casual sex: ok
My issue with PUAs isn’t the pursuit of sex. I take issue with the community’s basic conception of what women are, what they are for, and why and how they are valued.
In essence: sex, sex, sex, preferably all while looking like a “hot bitch”. (Nothing against hot bitches.)
If that is all women are, and are meant for, then why are women bothering with all this education and creating and you know, thinking?
Which bring us to the the New York Times trend section.
It seems like a non sequitur, but it is not. The NY Times trend section could easily be known as “Ladies, you know it is all your fault.”
Mixed martial arts and Jesus? You made church too womanly and anti-bloodsport. Ballstealers, all of you.
Can’t get a boyfriend at college? Blame feminism. This is what happens when you get ideas and an education.
Got a hot career (thanks, college!) but can’t get married or, if you’re married (phew! Close call, that one) and you’re having problems with your earning-less-money husband? Blame your career and your buying power. ‘Cuz men don’t like it if you’re successful and money can’t buy you love, you uppity bitch. Booyah!
About the money/career/successful thing as a barrier to romance:
Really?
Because I don’t know any man who was turned off by me being, you know, self-sufficient. The cool guys I’ve liked and even loved always thought it was hot that I have ambition.
Once, when I was in the middle of a really challenging project, with a really challenging co-worker. (By “challenging” I mean we were having a pissing match that I was determined to win.) I was talking about how I fixed the problem and my beau at the time looked at me and said “that just turned me on.”
Another time, when I was talking about resolving a problem with a sort-of-bf-who-screwed-me-over, I described how I dug in my heels and got mine, a guy friend told me “that’s so hot. Hearing about you fighting back and winning makes my dick hard.”
That is hot. Only weak people – and I use people, not “men”, because this truth is universal – are intimidated by strength.
And all this handwringing about monied career chicks not getting any lovin? (New York Times, I’m a-talkin’ to you.) I call bullshit, especially in sexy cities where an aged bungalow costs a million bucks. Two fat paycheques are way better than one.
~
So the Seduction Community is just a way to talk about what the NY Times is so confused about: just what exactly are our gender roles these days? What do we do if our usual gendered shorthand doesn’t work, either for describing gender itself or the aspirations or temperaments of people? And, more pruriently, who’s doing what to whom?
~
Again, this is an old question.
The women everyone from Pick Up Artists to the New York Times seems to be longing for – the ideal mate – is Rousseau’s fictional Sophie: intelligent but decorous, educated but subservient, beautiful but without vanity, and absolutely, essentially feminine.
And she did not end well.
No woman who exists as the complement to another or for the purposes of another ever does.
After I published part 1 (I’m Not Picking on Pick Up Artists. Much) of my essay on The Seduction Community, a guy got in touch with me. He used to study pick up and he had lots to say about it.
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The Seduction Community made me socially awkward. I’m not socially awkward. I’m extroverted, friendly, comfortable with people. Still, I didn’t have a girlfriend until I was 25. I got in it because I wanted a girlfriend, and I got a girlfriend, fast.
I went in it wanting a girlfriend, and I got one, but once I was in it I think my expectations changed a bit because I realized other things were possible and that maybe I could have a lot of women.
The biggest thing I learned – from studying this stuff, and spending time with these guys, and then getting disillusioned with it – is that whatever your issue is, it isn’t with women. The issue is with you.
I had no issues with women. I had issues with me.
I wanted to fix that – and the truth is, most of the guys in the community are genuinely good guys trying to fix shit in their life. It really is nothing more than personal development disguised as pick up. Half these guys, though, are just painful to be around. Not just with girls. With everyone.
Honestly, I don’t know how the gurus teach this stuff. It has to be draining, like being a therapist and all day, day after day, you’re listening to people tell you how fucked up their lives are.
And some of the people who teach this shit? Some of the teachers are genuinely good guys and want to help people but lots of them are just a whole ‘nother level of fucked up.
I spent a weekend at Project Hollywood with Style (Neil Strauss) and Mystery and I can tell you that my biggest problem with these guys – outside of Neil Strauss, who’s really funny and cool – is that they are utterly one-dimensional. All they think about talk about and do, is pickup. Every human interaction is transformed from a conversation with a person into a set or an approach. It was disturbing to me to spend three days, twenty-four/seven in a house together and leave without knowing a thing about each other beyond pick up.
Pick up is personal development, but it is the inverse of personal development, because personal development teaches you to rely on yourself, validate yourself and that everything is supposed to be easy. In pick up, though you’re trying so hard to gain someone’s approval even though you’re pretending otherwise, and that’s just the opposite of any useful kind of personal growth.
The whole thing is based on scripted, unnatural interactions that don’t lead to anything substantial.
From my experience, 70% of guys say fuck it and give up.
A small percentage of guys figure out that it is about personal development and life in general and apply the principles of persuasion and personal improvement to life…
…I can say that I think that pick up artists and porn creates barriers to real relationships. Now, I would never tell a woman I was in the community because it is too much of a risk and she’ll assume that I’m sleeping with a million women.
The biggest thing I’ve learned from the community – and this applies to all of us – is that the amount of shit that we’ll put up with because we like someone is extraordinary.
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This interview is a bit of an interlude – the original essay isn’t finished yet. I’ll be posting parts 2 and 3 this week.
If you’ve got stories and opinions to contribute, please e-mail me or let’s hear them in the comments.
thanks so much.
In my last piece, I wrote:
Want to be able to discuss violence against women and the importance of claiming your sexual pleasure without setting up permanent camp – or throwing rocks – at either end of the philosophical spectrum.
In the comments, Dawn Haney made a terrific point:
I’ve been in the violence against women “camp”, working at rape crisis centers for years. And I would say that nearly all of us (at least those in the under-40 crowd), are doing that work because we are pro-sex, because we want to be able to claim the full range of our sexuality, because we don’t want to walk around in fear that we’ll be punished or violated for embracing sex. So while the manifesta is waiting to be written, these camps are already intermingling on the ground.
Dawn’s point is an important corrective: I took Betty Dodson’s critique of Eve Ensler and used it as emblematic of a contradiction within feminism that possibly exists more in theory than in reality.
Dawn’s experience, when I reflect on it, echoes my own. A long time ago, and for a very brief time, I volunteered as a rape crisis counselor – and the people working together in that collective were absolutely pro-sex. So there is no disconnect or contradiction between
- acknowledging oppression, supporting women experiencing violence and campaigning against it, and
- embracing sexual power and pleasure.
In fact, in Marilla’s piece on feminism and rough sex at Where is Your Line, Heather Corinna (of Scarleteen) writes:
I think it’s important to remember that at the heart of feminism is the goal for women to be able to have enjoyment of our lives and the freedom to make our own choices and take our own journeys. We all also get to have our own ideas and opinions about what feminism is or should be: not all feminist women agree that this thing or that is or is not feminist. It’s a movement made of people, and people vary and also adjust our ideas, and thus, the movement itself, as we all go through our own processes.
yes. exactly.
Pro-sex yet leary and weary of casual sex because I know myself and it doesn’t often work for me (it is boring and I’m an emotional creature and so I attach). Feminist but worried about the anti-porn, women-as-victims structure of some feminisms. Worried about critiquing anti-porn feminisms because not entirely comfortable with the way women are treated and portrayed in mainstream heterosexual porn. Admire Eve Ensler and Betty Dodson all at the same time. Wish that activism against human trafficking didn’t so often slide into anti-sex-work arguments that condescend to adult woman who claim choice and power. Think, though, that Catherine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin have some seriously pointy points. Also think that reacting against “there is no consent when there is oppression” line of thinking forces pro-sex and sex-worker activists into extreme positions where they have to downplay the dark sides of the industry and play up the cupcakes, cash and orgasms. Want to be able to discuss violence against women and the importance of claiming your sexual pleasure without setting up permanent camp – or throwing rocks – at either end of the philosophical spectrum. Maybe I’m a ideological nomad. Have recently started to appreciate Camille Paglia and think that Katie Roiphe is right (which pisses me off greatly) and that sometimes feminists don’t like kids. Neither does our society. It isn’t terribly unique but it isn’t okay, either. Love my kids but am not defined by motherhood and am not that worried about fucking up because I have faith in my children. Don’t want to be judged by my looks but totally want to be celebrated for my looks. And then there is the knowledge that this looks game is a racist one, too, and I could go my entire life without ever confronting it. Except I must confront it. Tired of marketers slapping a pink ribbon on products and think they’re talking to women while also tired of the boy language that pervades the blog-o-sphere (and, ummm, the world). Still, really do think that a lot of men are getting screwed over by The Man. Also suspect that some apprentice pick up artists are studying women because they want to improve their social skills and find a nice girlfriend (mostly because one smart, warm-hearted, socially-adept guy told me so) but then there are the misogynists. Fuck them (don’t). Want to use vivid, compelling, physical language. Don’t want to reinforce social stigmas and straight-up discrimination by insinuating that to be blind, deaf, dumb or lame is an awful, invalidating state of being. Wild about theory but worry that we beat each other about the head and shoulders with a fist full of it. Wish that people would be nicer to each other and think a little harder and own the gaps between what we wish for and where we are.
R: Have you read my book yet?
K: No
R: Why not?
K: Because I’m in Overwhelm. I’m so busy writing for other people that my own work isn’t getting done.
(Didja notice?)
Blah blah blah professional, pretentious talk. He’s an artist, I’m a writer and we indulged in some mutual angst about creative demands and the hell of self promotion. I’m over the hell of self promotion. I like it, now. Hell is toasty and I heart warm.
R: So what’s up with your personal life?Any new dudes on the horizon?
K: There are always new dudes on the horizon. What about you? What’s up with you? Are you getting married, yet?
(Lots of personal details that are not mine to share. In essence, crossroads. )
K: I’m a bit taken aback – you’re talking about this crossroads without a lot of emotion. You love this woman; you’re thinking about marrying her; you want to have a family, and yet when you talk about the decisions that need to be made, you’re not anguished by the prospect of that not happening. But I know you; you’re a passionate, emotional guy. I don’t get the disconnect. What’s that all about?
R: I’m talking about it in a really dispassionate way, because loving someone and choosing to have a life and family together are different things. If we have a life together, I want it to work for us. I don’t want a dysfunctional family. My requirements are higher than those of most guys. Most guys would just be happy if their wife looks good and doesn’t bug them too much on Sundays when they’re watching sports.
K: What do you want?
R: I want someone who is independant, pursuing a passion – it doesn’t matter what it is, it could be anything but it has to be something – and who likes to communicate, and communicate effectively, on a deep and intense level, and can say, hey what you did pissed me off, can you cut that out, without it disintegrating into a soul-assassinating argument where the relationship is on the line.
K: Wow, that’s my list too. We have so much in common.
R: Umm…maybe that’s because we’re born on the same day.
K: I don’t know about that. I’m a little woo and not very woo all at the same time.
R: What is woo?
K: Woo is kind of a derogatory term for all things intuitive, mystical, and unsubstantiated by empirical science. And although I’m inherently an intuitive, spiritual, lovey-dovey, angels-and-unicorns-and-cupcakes chick, I’m also a product of western culture. I like me some MDs, statistics and scientific inquiry. I like proof. So although I love the metaphors and the use of astrology as a lens into self-reflection, I’m a bit skeptical about it. All that is to say, I don’t really know what it means to be a Pisces.
R: Pisces are imaginative, intuitive, intense, passionate, sensual and live in the realm of fantasy.
K: Oh, so Pisces are slutty.
R: We’re generous.
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