..just wanted to point out, scarred, that there’s also “chicks before dicks” – that’s ALSO “an **actual** saying”..it works both ways..

Scarred: you say this to say what?

If you want to pretend patriarchy doesn’t exist, go elsewhere, not this blog. If you can’t contribute to the discussion of ideas, count yourself out. Talk down to someone else, and shop it elsewhere, because I’m not buying.

I have a bit of experience with the use of NLP in PU, and I’d say that it’s a type of soft persuasion, easily resisted–the person you’re leading still has to value or desire the type of experience you’re leading him/her to. All it can do is shut down conscious barriers for a while, and you still have to be a master hypnotist to pull it off.

At least this has been a productive discussion away from the usual tropes of “entitlement”, “exploitation”, etc.

I’m interested in the idea that women are using The Game, because the dogma is that “Women don’t need game.” Are you saying that women are using The Game to gain things other than sex, or that women are using The Game to gain more attractive/better men than their looks alone would get them? Because frankly, I find it hard to believe that ANY woman of acceptable appearance couldn’t get whatever she wanted from men simply by “being herself” with a few flirtatious hints of a possible sexual payoff. (And if she really, really IS after the sex, it’s a “two for one” deal.)

(Key is “acceptable appearance”, I know–women feel they are forced to meet an impossible ideal. But how many women are truly “below the radar” in appearance, invisible to ALL men, compared to the # of men who are “below the radar” in achievement/dominance, to the average woman? This is why street harassment is so prevalent–it’s perceived by the perpetrator as an upending of a hierarchy, a working-class man’s way of imposing himself on the reality of a middle-class woman, when a simple “Hi, how are you?” or in fact ANY romantic overture might be ignored. (Well, you never know. But Street PU is very, very hard, you have to be fun, interesting, and non-threatening, in 30 seconds or less. The benefits of “getting to know you” need to be obvious and immediate, to both parties.)

And, y’know, it’s odd that you have a bizarre, ritualistic encounter that makes everyone feel BAD, or capitalizes on negative emotions, enacted over and over.

I just want to share two things that came to mind while reading.

What is the role of NLP? I guess I wished to have a deeper social understanding of it. Some call it technology, others call it manipulation. There seems to be a high level of interest from a growing number of people on “how to succeed”. In these philosophies, more often than not, the end justifies the means. And the means, as Elana writes, may sometimes look morally arguable. The self-improvement movement is a study all by itself, and I wondered why she chose not to include some of it in her paper. I’m hungry for an objective criticism of it.

Second, I had a reaction during the conclusion when she writes about the role of women in the community. Reading PUAs’ posts, I’ve noticed women becoming aware of The Game and starting to use the information to score. It is a small minority. Yet I predict that, with time, regardless of some women’s resistance, there’ll be a growing number of female players. I’m quite curious to see how the community will adapt to it.

In both cases it seems to come down to our human crave for power, and the social need we have to manifest it to others.

1)The thesis ignores the extreme sense of grievance that animates PUAs; it is not the case that men who were already enormously successful with women inaugurated the field, rather, Ross Jeffries, Mystery, Style, and Thundercat are all noteworthy because of their descriptions of the total social isolation and sensual starvation that brought them to the field. It is a symbolic, feminine-controlled exclusion in which other harms and exclusions caused by patriarchy are subsumed, possibly ignored, and are often expunged by AMOGing, a process in which male-dominance rituals are exploited by the PUA’s adoption of traditional masculinity as a “demo” of evo fitness/DHV during the pick-up.

2)One of the most insidious results of the reinforcement of body-image anxiety is that “average” women are plagued with self-doubt about their own attractiveness, and are ironically quite hard to pick up. Any approach is going to be seen as motivated by a desire for quick sex and nothing more, because these women have also absorbed society’s negative messages about male desire as well.

3)Hugh’s post above about not forcing his view of proper male-female interaction on women who want to play a “traditional” (feminine = submissive) sex role actually demonstrates a key article of PU philosophy, empathy. Watching Ross Jeffries’ evolution from angry, vulgarian notch-cutter to empathetic guru reinforced (from my point of view) the necessity of empathy. When married to a lack of expectations, empathy can lead to letting someone go her own way if such is truly her inclination or if it is truly best for her–and empathy also means respecting a woman’s judgement in that matter, instead of attempting to “buy, bully, beg, or berate” her into the PUA’s preferred outcome. (Ross is a fan of alliteration.)

Again, these are just sketches, because of the lateness of the hour. I wish I had something more solid to report, because I have an odd personal style, being older, more interested in “long game”, long-term relationships, and feeling myself more socially and economically marginal than most. (I am an academic/archivist/librarian, in an immigrant community which honors the trifecta of doctor/lawyer/chieftain above all. “Masculine/Feminine” career dichotomies shape the impressions made in interactions between the sexes in my subculture all the time.)

I think you are early 20s, no? You are dealing with people whose subcultures are more fluid, where they don’t have to face the permanent adoption of a look and a persona. The “vibe” among horror-movie professionals, who DO get all gothed-up for their wrap parties on occasion, is totally different, and “adult” dynamics of dominance-submission play out as scripted by the “real world”–the director and producer, in jeans and t-shirt, are mobbed by the starlets and hopeful starlets to be, while the crew and make-up men, either in goth-wear or suits, try to pick up the waitresses, while the corporate lawyers are nowhere to be seen, refusing to hang out with costumed “losers.”

I once saw a friend of mine, a reasonably beautiful and accomplished lawyer, flee from a set-up date with an artist from her home country at an art gallery because she saw a brilliant but totally unfashionable man, newly famous, holding court for the first time, and panicked at the reversal of the usual power relationship.

I have absolutely no way around this power dynamic except to adjust my presentation and body language to appear more masculine, and to strive to acquire more social power. Aging, in increased self-awareness, has helped, to the extent that I am a much better companion for myself, which makes doing without any particular woman, or even women in general, much easier.

Thus, feminine men on the margins are right to notice that they are not “in the game”, and to change their presentation and behavior, because to a certain extent WOMEN are reinforcing traditional male sex roles.

I’ve thought a lot about this idea and I take it seriously (at least, its been my personal experience with women). I’ve never particularly wanted to be masculine for its own sake, but rather because it has seemed necessary with women. Some aspects of masculinity feel good to me, but for others, doing so is like women putting on high heels: it’s uncomfortable, but it gets results.

For my blog, I did a bunch of research on women’s preferences for masculinity in men, and found that women, on average, do seem to find certain masculine qualities important in men, which is consistent with the arguments of the seduction community. Simultaneously, women also seem to have preferences for certain stereotypically feminine qualities in men, which is under-emphasized by the seduction community.

(For a man, try approaching in a low-key, non-dominant but non-shy manner in a club, and then finding common ground. This is considered reaching for rapport and does NOT often result in attraction, except (as dogmatic PUAs would say) as a DLV among low-value people.)

This is true as a general rule. However, there are some environments and subcultures that have a higher rate of exceptions. I’ve been hanging out in goth clubs a lot this summer, which have a much different vibe. Being energetic and dominant is a lot less necessary. You can approach someone in a low-key manner and drop straight into rapport. Goth clubs tend to select for people who are more introverted, artistic, and androgynous. There is still gender display, but it is much more fluid (I get to make myself all pretty with eyeliner and give myself bangs with hair gel).

A positive aspect of pick-up is that by emphasizing process rather than essence, men are no longer placed in the position of essentially “being themselves”, which I think is short-hand for “factual question-and-response rapport-based day-game.” This should, in theory, reduce an awful lot of the anger directed against women because it transmutes the rejection from a rejection of the man’s essential being in toto (because if he’s only “being himself”, and gets rejected, that self IS the inadequate, rejected object) into a rejection of a certain projected persona or, in the most value-neutral sense, a polite refusal to take part in a consensual, pleasure-generating psycho- and socio-sexual RITUAL.

Clift does discuss “scoring”, but only as a pathology, not as a mechanism by which society reinforces both male and female sex roles. She does make the point that Mystery’s (and to a lesser extent, Style’s) authority comes from success not merely with women, but from stupendous success with stereotypically model-like women. Take beauty out of the equation, and the guru-worship vanishes and they become the mere advocates of a set of useful social tools, i.e. one can compliance-test any woman by taking her someplace quiet to talk more as easily as a supermodel. A more interesting (and more subversive) take would be to investigate the extent to which the “Pickup 101 Super Girls” (whose beauty is advertised to validate the efficacy of PU101) resemble the normal women actually approached by students (not gurus) in the field.

Interesting discussion, good inputs…please keep it up, people. Well done.