I self-identify as a feminist but I’m troubled by a ban on discussing PUA techniques. In the discussions I’ve seen I’ve usually come down on Alicorn’s side. But I wonder if the need to avoid language that is objectifying or excluding requires us to avoid the topic of pua/game in its entirety. That seems strange. The times I’ve seen complaints voiced have had to do with how the topic is brought up not the topic itself.
For example if someone says, “I think posters on less wrong don’t value having sex with women.” Or “here’s how you can get women to sleep with you.” then the sense in which female posters are being excluded is pretty obvious. But I don’t see why a discussion of game needs to necessarily be done in this way. Its just that, unlike all the other subjects we discuss here, game isn’t a typical topic in academia so the traditional ways of communicating methods and knowledge is “Here’s what you do to bed women” rather than a descriptive account of behavior or an experiment. Obviously any account which attempts to predict the behavior of people will be objectifying—but that isn’t the problem. The problem is that as it is traditionally discussed PUA theory only objectifies women. Indeed, it subjectifies men when it is explained in first or second person. What we ought to do here is stop talking about it like that and start talking about game the way we do signaling and evolutionary psychology—so that both the men and the women are objectified.
Similarly, because pua theory has been developed by a community of straight men/straight male run businesses it isn’t used to incorporating female and homosexual voices. In the same way that male-dominated university sciences has long had a weaker understanding of female sexuality than male sexuality (someone can correct me, that has always been my understanding) the PUA industry has little to say about how women seduce men and even less about developing attraction between lesbians and gays. But there is no necessary reason for this topic to exclude those voices, its just overwhelming has in the past. I don’t know if such a male dominated community could or would make strides in this area. However, as long as we didn’t lose the good female feminists on this site (We must have some non-hetero posters too!?) I think we could have discussions on this topic that don’t exclude.
Do those who feel excluded think that this topic needs to be outright banned or do they think there is a way that PUA theory could be discussed that you wouldn’t object to (along the lines I mentioned above)?
What have we learned from discussion of PUA to date? I honestly can’t say I’ve gained anything useful from reading about it, but then I’ve never considered using a pickup technique, either. The problem is that I haven’t learned anything of other interest to a rationalist. If someone can offer what they’ve learned from talking about PUA on Less Wrong that applies to the art of refining human rationality and not simply picking up women, perhaps it’s an appropriate subject. In that case, if someone writes a good article on PUA, I don’t see a reason to ban it. I would expect to see it argued from a more credible perspective than anecdotal evidence and self-help books, though.
This. I’m not “creeped out” by people merely talking about PUA techniques, but I do find it boring, irrelevant, and pretty much useless in terms of any capacity to improve my thinking abilities. I don’t think all examples / analogies used to make a point about rationality, etc., need to be things everyone can identify with (that would likely be impossible anyway), but PUA stuff really is sort of distractingly specific to the “hetero males trying to score hot chicks” demographic. I’d just as soon be reading about how to choose the best golf shoes.
I think an outright moratorium on PUA discussion is probably the most practical of the acceptable results. If the people inclined to talk about PUA had the skills and sensitivity necessary to separate the appropriate methods from the inappropriate ones, then this problem would probably be moot in the first place. I said specifically:
If it is necessary to refer admiringly to a pickup artist or pickup strategy (I’m not sure why it would be, but if), care should be taken to choose one whose methods are explicitly non-depersonalizing, and disclaim that specifically in the comment.
These non-depersonalizing methods (or at least, methods which can be used by non-depersonalizers) exist. pjeby mentioned one a while ago that consisted of a greeting, a couple of sentences, and a straightforward request; there is nothing dishonest or intrinsically objectifying about that, and if I could rely on PUA-discussion-inclined people to confine discussions to non—depersonalizing ways of achieving their (not inherently immoral) goals, I’d back off.
I think an outright moratorium on PUA discussion is probably the most practical of the acceptable results.
As long as that moratorium applied equally to denigrations of PUA and related concepts, I’d be fine with it myself. Virtually all my comments on the subject are attempts to correct ignorance and stereotyping (or less often, to answer questions), so stopping the stereotyping would eliminate my desire to correct said stereotyping.
(Not that I claim to speak for anyone else’s feelings about the matter. Just saying I’d be fine with a moratorium, because I’m not the one who keeps bringing the subject up.)
If I could rely on PUA-discussion-inclined people to confine discussions to non-depersonalizing ways of achieving their (not inherently immoral) goals, I’d back off.
It’s a bit of a cliche, but I don’t think techniques depersonalize people. People depersonalize people. It’s a rare PUA technique that falls unequivocally into one camp or another, because people can do the same thing with different attitudes or for different reasons.
As far as “techniques” go in any case, some PUGs have said that, apart from honesty, confidence, and other “inner” issues, the most important things to learn are social and logistical skills, like how to gracefully handle her friends’ concerns about you, set up other meeting times, etc. But these basic and pragmatic qualities and skills are unlikely to be a topic of heated discussion on LessWrong!
The nature of the PUA topic is that discussion will be biased towards the sensational and the controversial, since to the extent everybody agrees that honesty and confidence and basic social skills are good, we don’t see any reason to talk about all that.
Thus, the only things that get talked about here are:
The bad things that outsiders have heard about, but don’t always know much about, and
The things some insiders believe outsiders get wrong about “women” or “dating” or whatever
And I don’t actually like either #1 OR #2 showing up here, because #2 usually consists of overzealous, immature, borderline-misogynistic babblings about how terrible conventional views of relationships are and why guys shouldn’t be “nice”, and occasionally attacking honesty as a poor policy.
In its own way, this is just as ignorant as the things in category #1, except that the people in group #2 really ought to know better. So then I end up wasting a lot of trying to educate (or just arguing with) both groups… something I could just as easily do without.
I self-identify as a feminist but I’m troubled by a ban on discussing PUA techniques. In the discussions I’ve seen I’ve usually come down on Alicorn’s side. But I wonder if the need to avoid language that is objectifying or excluding requires us to avoid the topic of pua/game in its entirety. That seems strange. The times I’ve seen complaints voiced have had to do with how the topic is brought up not the topic itself.
For example if someone says, “I think posters on less wrong don’t value having sex with women.” Or “here’s how you can get women to sleep with you.” then the sense in which female posters are being excluded is pretty obvious. But I don’t see why a discussion of game needs to necessarily be done in this way. Its just that, unlike all the other subjects we discuss here, game isn’t a typical topic in academia so the traditional ways of communicating methods and knowledge is “Here’s what you do to bed women” rather than a descriptive account of behavior or an experiment. Obviously any account which attempts to predict the behavior of people will be objectifying—but that isn’t the problem. The problem is that as it is traditionally discussed PUA theory only objectifies women. Indeed, it subjectifies men when it is explained in first or second person. What we ought to do here is stop talking about it like that and start talking about game the way we do signaling and evolutionary psychology—so that both the men and the women are objectified.
Similarly, because pua theory has been developed by a community of straight men/straight male run businesses it isn’t used to incorporating female and homosexual voices. In the same way that male-dominated university sciences has long had a weaker understanding of female sexuality than male sexuality (someone can correct me, that has always been my understanding) the PUA industry has little to say about how women seduce men and even less about developing attraction between lesbians and gays. But there is no necessary reason for this topic to exclude those voices, its just overwhelming has in the past. I don’t know if such a male dominated community could or would make strides in this area. However, as long as we didn’t lose the good female feminists on this site (We must have some non-hetero posters too!?) I think we could have discussions on this topic that don’t exclude.
Do those who feel excluded think that this topic needs to be outright banned or do they think there is a way that PUA theory could be discussed that you wouldn’t object to (along the lines I mentioned above)?
What have we learned from discussion of PUA to date? I honestly can’t say I’ve gained anything useful from reading about it, but then I’ve never considered using a pickup technique, either. The problem is that I haven’t learned anything of other interest to a rationalist. If someone can offer what they’ve learned from talking about PUA on Less Wrong that applies to the art of refining human rationality and not simply picking up women, perhaps it’s an appropriate subject. In that case, if someone writes a good article on PUA, I don’t see a reason to ban it. I would expect to see it argued from a more credible perspective than anecdotal evidence and self-help books, though.
This. I’m not “creeped out” by people merely talking about PUA techniques, but I do find it boring, irrelevant, and pretty much useless in terms of any capacity to improve my thinking abilities. I don’t think all examples / analogies used to make a point about rationality, etc., need to be things everyone can identify with (that would likely be impossible anyway), but PUA stuff really is sort of distractingly specific to the “hetero males trying to score hot chicks” demographic. I’d just as soon be reading about how to choose the best golf shoes.
Ok, I’ll try to put together a top level post.
Yup. But I have no confidence in the ability of bringer-uppers to dance through that minefield, and the whole topic seems eminently skippable.
I think an outright moratorium on PUA discussion is probably the most practical of the acceptable results. If the people inclined to talk about PUA had the skills and sensitivity necessary to separate the appropriate methods from the inappropriate ones, then this problem would probably be moot in the first place. I said specifically:
These non-depersonalizing methods (or at least, methods which can be used by non-depersonalizers) exist. pjeby mentioned one a while ago that consisted of a greeting, a couple of sentences, and a straightforward request; there is nothing dishonest or intrinsically objectifying about that, and if I could rely on PUA-discussion-inclined people to confine discussions to non—depersonalizing ways of achieving their (not inherently immoral) goals, I’d back off.
Sadly, I cannot rely on that.
As long as that moratorium applied equally to denigrations of PUA and related concepts, I’d be fine with it myself. Virtually all my comments on the subject are attempts to correct ignorance and stereotyping (or less often, to answer questions), so stopping the stereotyping would eliminate my desire to correct said stereotyping.
(Not that I claim to speak for anyone else’s feelings about the matter. Just saying I’d be fine with a moratorium, because I’m not the one who keeps bringing the subject up.)
It’s a bit of a cliche, but I don’t think techniques depersonalize people. People depersonalize people. It’s a rare PUA technique that falls unequivocally into one camp or another, because people can do the same thing with different attitudes or for different reasons.
As far as “techniques” go in any case, some PUGs have said that, apart from honesty, confidence, and other “inner” issues, the most important things to learn are social and logistical skills, like how to gracefully handle her friends’ concerns about you, set up other meeting times, etc. But these basic and pragmatic qualities and skills are unlikely to be a topic of heated discussion on LessWrong!
The nature of the PUA topic is that discussion will be biased towards the sensational and the controversial, since to the extent everybody agrees that honesty and confidence and basic social skills are good, we don’t see any reason to talk about all that.
Thus, the only things that get talked about here are:
The bad things that outsiders have heard about, but don’t always know much about, and
The things some insiders believe outsiders get wrong about “women” or “dating” or whatever
And I don’t actually like either #1 OR #2 showing up here, because #2 usually consists of overzealous, immature, borderline-misogynistic babblings about how terrible conventional views of relationships are and why guys shouldn’t be “nice”, and occasionally attacking honesty as a poor policy.
In its own way, this is just as ignorant as the things in category #1, except that the people in group #2 really ought to know better. So then I end up wasting a lot of trying to educate (or just arguing with) both groups… something I could just as easily do without.