PUA is hardly ever defined and explained as being in women’s best interest. It’s more likely to appear alongside evo-psych stories that play up the zero-sum aspects of mating. Taking PUA writers at their word, their methods are bad for women—and by design. So of course women wouldn’t like it.
I actually think that it would be a net gain for straight women if social skills and sexiness improved across the male population. It gives us a broader pool of appealing people to choose from. But that’s looking at benign behaviors; I wouldn’t be so cheerful about behaviors designed to put women at a disadvantage.
Taking PUA writers at their word, their methods are bad for women—and by design.
This is not really true. There’s obviously a spectrum of writers and they don’t all agree but generally they are advocating emulating the behaviours and traits that women use to identify high value mates. ‘Fake it until you make it’ is a common idea in self help and it is often claimed that emulating the signals associated with certain desirable traits can ultimately help to make those underlying traits real. To the extent that desirable traits are genuinely developed rather than falsely signaled these methods need not be bad for women.
There are also traits that women find attractive which may not be in their own considered best interests in a mate. The classic ‘bad-boy’ or ‘dark triad’ personality traits for example. If it is possible to emulate the attractive behaviours associated with these traits without developing the underlying traits ‘for real’ you could argue that this is actually good for women.
Taking PUA writers at their word, their methods are bad for women—and by design.
Not all such writers; for example, on this page, scroll down to “Here’s What Women Have to Say About AMP”.
Of course, the AMP people don’t talk evo-psych at all in their sales materials or training; the closest thing to zero-sum logic I’ve heard them use was when they commented on the idea that a man feels most loved when his woman can give him the freedom to be with other women… and that she in turn feels most loved if he doesn’t feel the need to actually use that freedom.
(Even there, though, they were talking about it from the perspective of transcending the zero-sum aspect, so as to get both people’s needs met, rather than taking it for granted that it means somebody has to “lose” for the other to “win.)
Thanks for the link to AMP—I’d definitely only seen the darker side of the spectrum. (Stuff disturbing enough that I don’t want to name or link it.) But this seems perfectly fine. Making yourself into a person that women like better—not acting like a creep, dweeb, or dull nice guy—is good for women as well. I didn’t know there were actually programs that helped you do this, straightforwardly, and it actually sounds great. I almost wish there were a women’s or unisex version.
My attitude to PUA comes from reading things that I actually have good reason to dislike. Planning to wrest back domination of the West from ugly feminazis is… not really in women’s best interests. Neither is encouraging guys not to talk to women unless they plan to fuck them, to consider women over the age of 23 damaged goods, to keep their wives and girlfriends subservient, to resent women’s right to vote, etc.
Ah, you’ve run into Roissy, or people inspired by him, haven’t you? No wonder you have such a low opinion of the motives of PUAs.
Roissy started a network of blogs combining pickup with conservative (and often misogynistic) gender politics (for instance, he seems to condone slapping women). Although Roissy has succeeded in repackaging common pickup advice for mass consumption, he is not an important figure in the seduction community. While there is enough pickup theory in his writing that I can’t say that he isn’t a pickup artist, he and the community around him are not representative of PUAs in general. I’m not going to say that you won’t easily find misogynistic beliefs among PUAs, but it’s just not typical for PUAs to resent women’s right to vote, for instance. There are plenty of liberal-leaning PUAs.
Roissy insn’t really conservative. Social conservatives often cast him as a dangerous, hedonistic nihilist. Which he will be the first to admit he is.
He is a odd and quite honestly interesting if for many people scary new breed of reactionary who doesn’t take his tips from a old geezer in the sky but from good old allegorical god of biomechanics (http://roissy.wordpress.com/category/biomechanics-is-god/). This goes for everything from gender all the way to class and even race relations.
I’m just paraphrasing his own use of the terms, I’m well aware he’s abusing the terminology.
I think its an etymologically awkward (if awesome sounding in a “don’t think about it too much” way, Roissy isn’t anything if he isn’t a brand made for popular consumption) phrasing that humans are Adaptation-Executers and that judicial study of the underlying “function” so to speak of our social and attraction circuitry gives vital insight into why humans behave as they do while providing testable predictions as well. I suppose Evolutionary Psychology studies a large part of this, however the way he uses one might be tempted to call it Evolutionary Sociology.
Calling this force a God is his way of saying all social engineering and even personal planning that doesn’t take it into account in some way or another is very likely to fail.
Simply personifying this as Unlce Darwin or the blind idiot God has the unfortunate connotation of evoking fitness maximizer associations.
I’ve spent a good ten minutes thinking about the best way to phrase this. “Human nature” captures much of this, but that comes with baggage, the worst of this is the implication that it doesn’t change at all over time, when in reality it does change under selective pressures, however slowly. Any suggestions?
Replace “sciency” with “popculture reference” in my previous post then. The way he uses it however I think does still mesh with what I wrote. He often emphasises how our “monkey brains” sometimes go off the rails exposed to evolutionary new situations.
PUA is hardly ever defined and explained as being in women’s best interest. It’s more likely to appear alongside evo-psych stories that play up the zero-sum aspects of mating. Taking PUA writers at their word, their methods are bad for women—and by design. So of course women wouldn’t like it.
I actually think that it would be a net gain for straight women if social skills and sexiness improved across the male population. It gives us a broader pool of appealing people to choose from. But that’s looking at benign behaviors; I wouldn’t be so cheerful about behaviors designed to put women at a disadvantage.
This is not really true. There’s obviously a spectrum of writers and they don’t all agree but generally they are advocating emulating the behaviours and traits that women use to identify high value mates. ‘Fake it until you make it’ is a common idea in self help and it is often claimed that emulating the signals associated with certain desirable traits can ultimately help to make those underlying traits real. To the extent that desirable traits are genuinely developed rather than falsely signaled these methods need not be bad for women.
There are also traits that women find attractive which may not be in their own considered best interests in a mate. The classic ‘bad-boy’ or ‘dark triad’ personality traits for example. If it is possible to emulate the attractive behaviours associated with these traits without developing the underlying traits ‘for real’ you could argue that this is actually good for women.
Not all such writers; for example, on this page, scroll down to “Here’s What Women Have to Say About AMP”.
Of course, the AMP people don’t talk evo-psych at all in their sales materials or training; the closest thing to zero-sum logic I’ve heard them use was when they commented on the idea that a man feels most loved when his woman can give him the freedom to be with other women… and that she in turn feels most loved if he doesn’t feel the need to actually use that freedom.
(Even there, though, they were talking about it from the perspective of transcending the zero-sum aspect, so as to get both people’s needs met, rather than taking it for granted that it means somebody has to “lose” for the other to “win.)
Thanks for the link to AMP—I’d definitely only seen the darker side of the spectrum. (Stuff disturbing enough that I don’t want to name or link it.) But this seems perfectly fine. Making yourself into a person that women like better—not acting like a creep, dweeb, or dull nice guy—is good for women as well. I didn’t know there were actually programs that helped you do this, straightforwardly, and it actually sounds great. I almost wish there were a women’s or unisex version.
My attitude to PUA comes from reading things that I actually have good reason to dislike. Planning to wrest back domination of the West from ugly feminazis is… not really in women’s best interests. Neither is encouraging guys not to talk to women unless they plan to fuck them, to consider women over the age of 23 damaged goods, to keep their wives and girlfriends subservient, to resent women’s right to vote, etc.
Ah, you’ve run into Roissy, or people inspired by him, haven’t you? No wonder you have such a low opinion of the motives of PUAs.
Roissy started a network of blogs combining pickup with conservative (and often misogynistic) gender politics (for instance, he seems to condone slapping women). Although Roissy has succeeded in repackaging common pickup advice for mass consumption, he is not an important figure in the seduction community. While there is enough pickup theory in his writing that I can’t say that he isn’t a pickup artist, he and the community around him are not representative of PUAs in general. I’m not going to say that you won’t easily find misogynistic beliefs among PUAs, but it’s just not typical for PUAs to resent women’s right to vote, for instance. There are plenty of liberal-leaning PUAs.
This is good to hear. Some links here would be great!
Roissy insn’t really conservative. Social conservatives often cast him as a dangerous, hedonistic nihilist. Which he will be the first to admit he is.
He is a odd and quite honestly interesting if for many people scary new breed of reactionary who doesn’t take his tips from a old geezer in the sky but from good old allegorical god of biomechanics (http://roissy.wordpress.com/category/biomechanics-is-god/). This goes for everything from gender all the way to class and even race relations.
I took a couple classes in biomechanics, and what I think of as “biomechanics” is not at all relevant to these articles.
Is there a meaning of this term that neither I nor wikipedia is aware of?
I’m just paraphrasing his own use of the terms, I’m well aware he’s abusing the terminology.
I think its an etymologically awkward (if awesome sounding in a “don’t think about it too much” way, Roissy isn’t anything if he isn’t a brand made for popular consumption) phrasing that humans are Adaptation-Executers and that judicial study of the underlying “function” so to speak of our social and attraction circuitry gives vital insight into why humans behave as they do while providing testable predictions as well. I suppose Evolutionary Psychology studies a large part of this, however the way he uses one might be tempted to call it Evolutionary Sociology.
Calling this force a God is his way of saying all social engineering and even personal planning that doesn’t take it into account in some way or another is very likely to fail.
Simply personifying this as Unlce Darwin or the blind idiot God has the unfortunate connotation of evoking fitness maximizer associations.
I’ve spent a good ten minutes thinking about the best way to phrase this. “Human nature” captures much of this, but that comes with baggage, the worst of this is the implication that it doesn’t change at all over time, when in reality it does change under selective pressures, however slowly. Any suggestions?
Mechanistic sociobiology.
Probably it’s a reference to Blade Runner, i.e. the “god of biomechanics”.
I think you are correct.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zK7DBo9Ye6Y
Replace “sciency” with “popculture reference” in my previous post then. The way he uses it however I think does still mesh with what I wrote. He often emphasises how our “monkey brains” sometimes go off the rails exposed to evolutionary new situations.