On Babies and Vampires, Revisited: My Post of July 3rd on Thinking Girl’s Thread–and a Modified Article

Dearest Readers,

We *all* make mistakes.  When we do, the best thing we can do is rectify them…and change them so that that would-be predators can’t try to bite you for raining on their parade and foiling their efforts at preying on the innocent.:)  Sometimes the wolves will try to bite the pit bull who fights for the Shepherd and  the sheep…so the pit bull must be prepared, with giant fangs and a nice long crook stick called a lawyer.:)  It turns out that I had quoted from an article very extensively that was copyrighted without realizing it; well, I took it down.  However, what my lawyer says is that *by Internet law,* I’m **allowed** to **provide the link** and comment on the link and the person who wrote it to my heart’s content; as long as I use NO quotation from the link–even if copyrighted–NO  legal action is possible.  I dislike paraphrasing, but I dislike mainstream patriarchal PUAism even more–so I’m thinking that I’m going to get very good at the paraphrase, even enjoying it. 😉 Yes, we **still** live in a free country, Virginia…one where even vampires can’t silence the whistleblowers and their opinions.:)))

So here is  “On Babies and Vampires, Revisited:  My Post of July 3rd on Thinking Girl’s Thread–and a Modified Article.”  ENJOY.

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Modified Article:

I have decided to take the majority of my writing of July 3rd, 2007, on Thinking Girl’s thread and re-post it **here.**   I know that Thinking Girl’s two PUA threads are lengthy and can present real challenges for reading, so I’m going to help my readers out by  taking this chunk and post it here as well–with more original writing and commentary.  I really advise that people read the two threads on PUAism at TG’s, because this will give you the real background to understand just precisely what my viewpoint is on this subject.  My added commentary will be in red text, so that it becomes clear which of my writing is the original from the post on TG’s blog and which is what’s been added on here.

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Scarred:  TO CLEAR UP THE RECORD ONCE AND FOR ALL ABOUT **WHY** I’M ON THIS THREAD, AND WHY I FORMED MY BLOG:  I have never, not once, claimed that I’m some kind of intellectual giant. I have been **very** honest all along about the purpose of my writing on mainstream patriarchal PUAism, which is **TO BUILD METHODS OF RESISTANCE TO AND INCREASE AWARENESS OF** its methodologies. Some people are more interested in critique; that’s okay, my intellect has always in some ways been more geared towards the practical rather than the theoretical, although I’ve gave analysis a good “college try” on the first PUA thread here on the blog.

In the earlier section of the first PUA thread at TG’s, I brought up a lot of ideas regarding Terror Management Theory and sexual addiction to explain the intransigence and rationalization of many mainstream PUAs about the methods they use to “attract” women.  Many to most mainstream patriarchal PUAs insist on their “right” to get women into bed by any means “necessary”–by hook or by crook.  The justifications and denial is incredible to me, but there it is.

Scarred:  I’m *still* going to analyze PUA methodology, but it’s going to be on **my** terms–which is analysis **with an eye towards resistance.** I have made this clear all along; I’ve never hidden this fact, not once. And my own feeling is that if my critique/analysis was **so** premature and overgeneralized, it wouldn’t have ignited the firestorm on this blog that it did. People respond incessantly and persistently to effectual threats, not ineffectual ones. I watch behavior, NOT claims.

I realized early on that we feminists were never going to persuade mainstream PUAs as a group to abandon their unethical methods of “seduction,” because I realized that there’s no quarreling with a patriarchal “junkie” hooked on controlling women with methods involving sex and power.  I decided to focus my efforts on educating women as to what mainstream patriarchal PUAism is all about, and to develop methods of refusal and resistance.  Some men will **get** this as well.

Scarred:  I’ve noticed that the reaction has become particularly fierce since I’ve started advocating using methods of propaganda analysis to deconstruct PUA advertising and methods. This tells me, quite rightly, that I’m very much ONTO something with recognizing PUA methods of approach, seduction, and advertising as a type of propaganda and marketing brought down to the **personal** level! If all women have to do is sit back and apply propaganda critiquing to the PUAs who are trying to approach them, it reveals the mirages for what they are–***doesn’t it?*** (And yes, that question was EXTREMELY rhetorical.)

If you combine using propaganda analysis and my methods of resisting pick-up methods that I entered on this blog on May 30th, 2007, you will have a nascent but probably *very* effective way of resisting mainstream patriarchal PUA methods.   However, I also forgot to mention another very, very important tactic in my “Methods of Resisting Pick-Up Artists, Advertising, and Other Manipulators.”  This tactic is this:  BEWARE THE OPEN-ENDED QUESTION.  I’ll add a second post explaining this either  today or tomorrow.

Scarred:  Am I new to this? Certainly!! Is there a possibility that my advocated methods of resistance and analysis will change over the years? That’s a given. However, WHAT WILL NEVER CHANGE is my insistence on developing ways and means for women to refuse and resist patriarchal domination in whatever form it presents itself. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say this again: “If there’s anything I want women to take with them once you’ve read this, I want you to develop a ***bullshit meter*** that can rival or surpass a cop’s.” For this, I, Thinking Girl, and the feminists on this thread have been vilified and attacked incessantly, and there’s been a non-stop, CONSTANT effort to derail or distract our efforts. In case PUAs still can’t understand this, get this, and get this through your heads: WE’RE GOING TO KEEP ON NO MATTER WHAT.

This is self-explanatory.

Here’s one of the samples of some of the SHIT that has been thrown my way for daring to develop and argue for methods of resistance:  “Being a victim of past scarring events doesn’t mean that you should keep reducing yourself into a victim for the victimizers, it won’t make the certain future victimization of yourself less scarring – strengthen your mind and defend yourself with actions that aren’t knee-jerk reactions.”  Posting of April 17, 2007, 4:07 am by J.A.

Scarred:  This person did everything he could to slur me and my work, although granted in a very sideways manner–had he chosen to be honest with himself, he would never have said this. He knew DAMN WELL somewhere, deep down inside himself, that I wasn’t reducing myself or others into chronic victims; this especially doesn’t fly with me given how much EFFORT I’ve put into developing ways of spotting and resisting manipulative PUA methods. Working on ways to prevent victimization ISN’T being a professional victim.

I am by no means the only feminist who has ever been accused of having a “Victim Mentality.”  What many people seem unable to grasp is that the messenger isn’t usually the one creating the situation.  To  talk  about women’s victimization is not the same as creating it, wallowing in it,  or enjoying it.  Let’s say that there was an outbreak of bubonic plague in Albuquerque, New Mexico on a *massive* scale.  If the CDC shows up on the scene in biowarfare suits and tons of antibiotics while enforcing a quarantine of the city and **warning** New Mexican and other American citizens to stay out of Albuquerque and watch for the symptoms of plague, would you accuse the CDC of creating an epidemic?  Of course not!   But when feminists try to inform people or observe that we live in a patriarchal culture with lots of infected mindsets, we get accused all the time of indulging in a victim mentality!  I’m not saying that we’re plaster saints or that feminists or feminism is above criticism, but ANYTIME we talk about a nasty phenomenon, we *routinely* get tarred with the “Victim Mentality” brush.  The above idiocy written by J.A.  is a good example of this. 

Or, how about this? 

Prophet 919:  “I have become genuinely disgusted and shocked. I have never seen such an utter waste of intelligence, knowledge and time in my entire life. This is the sort of extremist stereotyping that completely discredits the entire feminist movement. I’m sorry if you have had problems with men in your past or if you have never had a positive relationship with a male, but for you to so ignorantly label men as your enemy is simply foolish. Have you ever really deeply thought about why men act the way they do? Is the society that we live in not just as controlling for men as it is for women?”

Scarred:  When this person got confronted and exposed on his bullshit about how I was stereotyping all men as “The Enemy,” he backtracked, lied to himself, and rationalized THIS WAY:

Prophet919:  “well, youve pretty much agreed with what I meant actually, I think you misunderstood me as I was not clear enough.. I understand that scarred was not claiming all men are her enemy..”

Scarred:  YEAH, RIGHT.  Thinking Girl understood him **perfectly well.** He slung mud at me, then got real angry when I slung mud right back and pointed out to him that if he ignored and misread my posts, I can ignore [and misread] his, that he had his logic, I had mine. For daring NOT to get bowled over by his bullshit, he posted this:

Prophet919:  “…and you scarred are the reason why your movement is getting nowhere. if you ever hope to create anything more than tension then you will have to accept the fact that there’s more out there than your own adamant opinions and pit bull feminist rage..”

Scarred:  I will let his statement stand as one of the penultimate examples of male privilege that I’ve witnessed on a feminist blog. This ad-hominem non-logic was so thick you could cut it with a knife.

I think this man was angry because I simply stood my ground and didn’t roll over for his non-arguments.”…waste of intelligence, knowledge, and time” indeed!  He fully admits that he couldn’t finish reading the thread, and then proceeds to lambaste me.  That’s okay;  I expect it.  But what he DIDN’T expect is that I would get just as dismissive of him as he was of me.  THAT seemed to really knock him through a loop.

Scarred:  Now, I can have respect to a certain extent for criticism like this, although I don’t agree with it:

Hugh Ristik:  “The problem I have is that you are making premature claims for which you don’t have sufficient evidence (at least, not yet), like the one I identify above; thus, your critiques are frequently overgeneralized and risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I understand that you aren’t particularly worried about throwing out the baby, since your focus is on draining the bath, yet for me, this lack of concern for the baby is problematic, because my project is either to reform the community, or to take what is positive from it and leave the rest.”

Scarred:  Although I think this is well-reasoned, I also think that it’s a bad case of denial. Here’s why. Hugh [Hugh Ristik, creator of FeministCritics.org] and I fundamentally disagree on whether there’s a baby in the bathwater. He says it’s a baby. I say it’s a **vampire.** Maybe in some instances, Hugh is right and it’s just a baby in certain tubs. However, the more research I do into mainstream patriarchal PUAism, the more convinced I become that even if the creature may start out as a baby, it winds up becoming a vampire. If the vampire **leaves the bathwater,** then it seems to be going back towards being a baby, **but not as long as it’s in that bathwater.** Allow me to demonstrate my point.

Earlier in the thread, Hugh Ristik had made mention of Juggler, the founder of the Juggler method of PUA, as giving compliments on a woman’s good qualities that aren’t related to her looks.  He did this as a rejoinder to my observation to a highly manipulative method that the Mystery Method advocates to seduce women by giving them compliments on qualities unrelated to their appearance.  The post I had from the Mystery Method, however, blatantly and openly says that women are terrible at attracting men except through their looks; it was assumed that the PUA wasn’t attracted to the “target” except for her appearance and therefore was advocating a *nasty* little deception!  This was my reaction, and Hugh’s rejoinder: 

Scarred:  THIS IS WHAT MAINSTREAM PATRIARCHAL PUAISM IS ALL ABOUT. This is its real face.

Hugh Ristik:  This is one of its faces. Other PUAs, like Juggler, also advocate giving women compliments when they show positive qualities unrelated to their looks; yet for Juggler, this is not really a “technique,” because he argues it should be sincere.

The face I was referring to was the face of deception, not necessarily *a particular method* of deception.  But, I left Hugh’s comment unchallenged at first…then, later on, I came across a particularly immoral advocacy and method of delibrately creating an addiction that–yes!–came out of the Juggler Method.  And I used it in my post.  Where does the deception come in for the Dark Side of the Juggler Method?  Easy.  The deception comes in with the idea that the PUA who sets out to emotionally addict a woman to himself actually cares about her.  This is a gross illusion.  One of the common ideas floating around in our culture is that you can gauge someone’s level of caring by how you feel around that person.  PUAs take advantage of this and turn it into a monstrous deception.  Watch the following.

 Now, dearest readers, this is where I seriously modify the article due to copyright law.  Therefore, I recommend that in order to follow the link back to its original source and **read** my commentary at the same time, open up another window to access the Net with your browser and GO TO THESE LINKS.

Scarred:  I refer you to one of the senior instructors at Charisma Arts, Juggler’s method of PUA, a fellow who calls himself D1M1TR1. He was posted on Thundercat’s Seduction Lair–an entry entitled “The Dark Juggler Method.” Please check out the following two links, but be warned:  hang onto your stomachs, women, because this will make you blanch hard if you think about it.  You are about to read the method of delibrately addicting a human being to a predator:  be warned: 

http://www.thundercatseductionlair.com/2007/06/the-dark-juggle.html#more

http://www.fastseduction.com/discussion/fs?action=9&boardid=2&read=68055&fid=16

That’s right, people…and by the way, if you feel like doing rape, cannibalism, or suicide bombing, that’s okay too, now isn’t it??  Sure, it’s okay to addict a woman to yourself…and it’s okay to sell heroin or little children, too…NOT.  I myself have pointed out that we have the right to exist without approval or validation.  But the right TO BE is a different animal than the right TO ACT.  With action **always** comes moral obligations.

I felt sick as I read this method.  I think D1m1tr1 is sociopathic in advocating this, and if anything **finding** this confirmed my observation that I have been right all along in my **own** ferocious intransigence on insisting that feminists design methods of refusal and resistance towards PUA methods.

Scarred:  D1M1TR1 refers to the women he uses this technique on as  “VICTIMS.”  This is HIS language, people, not mine. I’m not selling you any wolf tickets, women; read this post very, very thoroughly.  It gets horrifying if you really think about the implications of what he’s talking about. Could it be “just” a marketing technique? Yeah, I think it’s marketing, however I also know from my ugliest personal experience that this is ***possible:***

I think that D1M1TR1 was trying to be humorous here, as the drugs he’s referring to in his posting are the endorphins and other chemicals that exist inside the human brain.  However, **I’m** not laughing.  I know from personal experience that this is a **nasty** thing to be hooked on.  When I was recovering from my love addiction, I went through everything that alcoholics go through in withdrawals with the exception of the delirium tremens.  I went through extraordinary grief that was so intense that I occasionally bayed like a hound INVOLUNTARILY; all I could do was disassociate and observe myself howl; I swear that the sounds that came out of my mouth weren’t human at times.  Other times I sounded just like an infant.  This wasn’t ordinary crying and weeping, people; to me, it seemed that I was POSSESSED by a spirit of grief.  Believe me, you don’t EVER want this.   

Scarred:  Remember the posting I’ve done on sexual and love addiction on the first PUA thread at TG’s? THIS is how it begins–by euphoria and ecstacy as intially manufactured in the brain of the sex or love addict. And please understand me very, very thoroughly: THIS IS THE DELIBRATE CREATION OF AN ADDICTION. This is **also** what drug dealers like to do to the newbies–the first sample is ***free.***

Scarred:  WHEN, not if, I perfect methods of resistance, D1M1TR1 will most certainly NOT be able to do this to any woman he chooses, and MANY women will be able to resist these drugs. In fact, I’m thinking that a wariness of the open-ended question and the ability to recognize and refuse the inital “rush” of brain chemicals as any basis to act on or make a decision of will be enough to head off any “seduction.” I’m not going to bet the farm on that, however; that’s why our research must be ongoing.I urge people to go back to the first PUA thread that TG has on this blog. On it, you will find my posting on Terrance Real, sexual addiction, and what my love addiction almost brought me to. I wasn’t kidding when I posted initially about how I almost threw myself off a tall building or ate a .45: I was as addicted as addicted as someone could be to a big-time manipulator and womanizer, PLUS earlier in my life I had been stung by a PUA (or possibly just an NLP master) who could have given Ross Jeffries lessons!! PUAs have done their level best to try to discredit me as someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about, but the truth of the matter is **I know damn WELL what I’m talking about!** I LIVED with the results of brain-chemical addiction to someone: I KNOW what it can and will do to you.

**My boss** thought I was getting suicidal; he knew I was behaving in an uncharacteristically quiet way at work, and I was starting to really visualize blowing myself away or diving off a downtown tall building.  That’s when I caught myself and got my ass into serious therapy.

Scarred:  No intelligent junkie, pothead, coke head, or meth user deludes himself or herself that the drug dealer actually cares about the customer. Is there a possibility that some mainstream PUAs care? Maybe, **but I sure as hell wouldn’t bet the farm on it, and I SURE AS HELL am not going to leave my well-being and safety up to them.** Real caring and love doesn’t involve getting women so addicted to you that you can manipulate them and get them to do **whatever** you wish. And if your desire is casual sex, the LAST thing you want is to be addicted to someone, because how the hell are you going to move on??

If all someone wants is casual sex, it’s not hard to find other people who are into it to get it on.  And if you want that person to have casual sex, you **don’t** want that person addicted to you!  Some PUAs will say, “Yeah, but there are methods of detaching someone from you after you’re had sex with them.”  Uh, If you can never guarantee the attraction, what makes you think you can guarantee the **DETACHMENT?**  And furthermore, NO ONE has the right to play with other people’s heads this way.  And it WILL undermine the mental health and stability of the person you’re playing with–if not now, sometime down the line.  I can’t prove this, but I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that one of the reasons why Britney Spears and Paris Hilton are volatile could be that they’re both *rumored* to have dealt with PUAs before–meaning, they’ve possibly been manipulated into the sack.  Neil Strauss mentions in his book “The Game” that *both* of them have been approached by PUAs.   

Scarred:  We talk about drug cartels and big-time drug dealers in this society, as well we should. While I tend to be pro-legalization regarding drugs, I will NEVER claim that drug dealers and members of drug cartels are fine, upstanding citizens. We have, for the most part, NO PROBLEMS recognizing hard-drug pushers as vampires and parasites on society. Given that the chemicals in our brains regarding emotional bonding are very, very powerful, mainstream PUAs are just as vampiric and parasitical, IMHO.  At best, your local pot-and-acid dealer might be a harmless chap caught in an economically rough time in his or her life; at worst, the head of the Cali and Medallin Cartels are monsters. And the harder the drugs, generally, the more monstrous the dealers. Also, the higher up the drug-dealing chain you go, the more monstrous the people become. Given what you’ve just read from D1M1TR1, and given all the **other** PUA gurus out there, what makes you think they’re any different? Yes, the “baby” in the bathwater in **many** cases is a fucking vampire–so **many** cases that it’s NOT worth taking the chance that it isn’t!!I’m not sure how much clearer I can make it that mainstream PUAism is the creation of emotional subjugation and slavery of women. There is NOTHING HERE that will do women any good, and ultimately it will only harm us. Feelings of euphoria and ecstasy are **only** feelings; and unfortunately, because women get battered by life in a patriarchy all the time, we frequently wind up miserable a big chunk of the time–so we get fooled by people who “make us feel good.” **This** is what renders us so damn vulnerable to this stuff. Our vulnerability MUST end, and only women can rely on ourselves to get out of this mess. If we find **some** trustworthy men to help us, great!! But first and foremost, self-reliance FIRST. Because I guarantee you that THIS clown, Thundercat, who posted D1M1TR1’s method, ***isn’t*** going to help you.

Read very thoroughly what Thundercat had to say as a response to what D1M1TR1 just taught the readers of Fast Seduction:  read it over and over again.  Understand very, very thoroughly that Thundercat has no objection to what D1M1TR1 has just taught:  in fact, he appears awfully RELIEVED to see that a method of enslaving someone has just been taught.  Because, after all, feminism is just being “PC” when it objects to men enslaving women, because goodness knows we can’t have LIMITS on men, now can we?  

UNDERSTAND THIS, DEAR SISTERS:  THESE MEN HAVE NOT  AND WILL NEVER CARE ABOUT YOUR HUMANITY.  THE FACT THAT PICK-UP ARTISTS CAN FORMULATE SOMETHING LIKE THIS AND THEN PRACTICE AND TEACH IT IS THE PROOF THAT–NO MATTER HOW PLEASANT, ATTRACTIVE, OR “EMPATHETIC” THEIR FACADE–THEY DO NOT SEE YOU AS A HUMAN BEING. 

Scarred:  The saying on the bumper sticker about feminism is~what? “Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.” You see, the idea that women are people and deserve better than to get hooked on some misogynist pig is apparently viewed as just an unfair “obstacle set upon men by society.”  Women, please forget about thinking that some PUA brain-chemical pusher is going to view you as a human being, or that he’s actually going to care about you.

Finally, I will leave you with the words of Hugh Ristik, whom I wish would actually believe what he wrote here, because it is the TRUEST thing he has ever written. I’ll just want to add this one thing: you don’t have to **be** a sociopath in order to cause the **damage** of one if you adopt a quasi-sociopathic attitude to justify your dealer actions:

“The seduction community is a group of men who believe that women are attracted to what pro-feminist author R. W. Connell would call ‘hegemonic masculinity.’ Prior to the community, some of its members buy into masculinity, and some do not. What they agree on is that women are attracted to masculine men (we’ll save the question of how true this is for later). Since they believe that the vast majority of women have such preferences, they believe that the only practical way to approach sex and relationships with women is by learning to perform masculinity better. Unfortunately, the performance of masculinity, as feminists have correctly pointed out, can have negative consequences both for these men and for the women they interact with. For example, in seduction forums, I have protested the maxim “don’t give a shit,” a classic example of male stoicism. Only a sociopath truly doesn’t give a shit. This doesn’t mean that PUAs are sociopaths, but it is disturbing that they feel they need to adopt stoic and quasi-sociopathic attitudes in order to be successful with women.”  Yes, Virginia, the baby in the bathwater really IS a vampire.

I don’t have a magic wand to wave to convince the reader that mainstream patriarchal PUAism is immoral and unethical, not to mention soul-destroying and horrid.  As you can see, I’ve done my very level best to try to persuade others of this reality, but I’m not going to focus the bulk of my efforts on this.  If someone doesn’t ”get it” and chooses to become a PUA, there really isn’t much you can do to convince them; his motivations are going to be much more about addiction and the love of power and control rather than about love and relatedness.  And there isn’t a **damn** thing you can do about it until he gets help.  The ONLY thing you can is to avoid enabling that person in ANY way, shape, or form; this means that you must not fall for his tactics, you must not make it easy for him, you must not fall for “reframing” mindgames, you must not go along with HIS program, and you must decide for yourself what it is that you really want.   Frankly, if I had a boyfriend or husband who became a PUA, I would dump or divorce him–and **I wouldn’t take him back until he went into treatment for sexual addiction.**  But each woman must decide for herself what she’s going to do faced with this situation.  I believe that the best way for women to avoid being preyed on by PUAs is to **avoid them** and not to fall for their tactics.  To this end, we MUST educate and arm ourselves with knowledge, ability, detachment, and motivation.Most of all, as women we must quit repressing what we observe or allow other people to convince us that we’re “deluded” or “crazy” or “mistaken” or “uptight” or what have you–**especially** if you’ve spent some real time and energy researching and learning PUA methodology.   If you think you’re seeing a vampire in the bathwater, don’t let other people try to convince you that it’s a baby!