That’s a good question. We’ve had this conversation here in the past, and my position is that you can’t put much stock in the connotations of PUA language. Is it problematic? Is it bad PR? Yes, but thankfully it’s not a mirror image of the attitudes of PUAs. You know what PUAs call their regional meeting clubs? “Lairs.” And that’s not because they believe that they are evil creatures.
To me, “time distortion” sounds like bad science fiction. Captain, ready the Time Distortion Ray!
“Compliance” indeed has negative connotations. But I think that the same thing could be described as “cooperation.” If you are trying to date someone, and they are completely uncooperative with you, then something is probably wrong. You want to be a in situations where you can say something like “hey, hold my jacket for a sec?” or “hey, let’s go to the park...” and the other person will cooperate. If things are going well, then you can hold your hand out when walking and see if the other person grabs it, or you can pat your lap and see if they sit in it.
The other person’s willingness to cooperate (or even comply) with your lead in the interaction is one measure of the other person’s interest in you. Also, making a request subcommunicates a belief in one’s own status.
Although in principle such compliance could run both ways (and for me, it does), PUAs don’t think of compliance totally gender-neutrally. The reason they don’t is that they believe that it’s typical for most heterosexual women to prefer men to be in charge of the interaction. They believe that the ideal heterosexual interaction from the perspective of most women involves such traditional gender roles, characterized by men taking the lead, and women wanting to comply with that lead. This doesn’t mean that PUAs necessarily want women to be Stepford Wives who comply with everything.
Yes, some PUAs are obsessed with traditional gender roles in unhealthy ways. But a big part of the reason that PUAs obsess with these roles is probably the same as why so many women obsess about their physical appearance: because it seems to be so important to most members of the opposite sex.
You say in another post:
Then again I prefer androgynous cooperative helpful people, rather than overtly masculine (or feminine) ones.
As far as PUAs can tell, your preferences aren’t typical. As I’ve argued several times here, it’s unfortunately the priors that PUAs are forced to hold about women’s preferences are so far from the preferences of certain minorities of women.
As annoying as it might be for you to date a guy who is being Mr. Take Charge, consider the possibility that if guys don’t act that way with most women, they will spend a lot of the time getting discarded as boring wimps. The incentive structure favors men taking charge in dating situations, which requires a certain level of compliance.
Personally, I hate this system, and I hate being in charge of everything, but it’s actually really hard to find women who don’t want me to take the lead in most areas, make most of the decisions, and make most of the physical advances. I really had to learn what to look for (the secret: don’t date gender-typical women, because they seem to want gender traditional interactions).
If the art is so ethical why are description of it so often done in such a bad way?
How would you describe it in a neutral way? That’s how I attempt to describe pickup on LessWrong, but it’s not easy. Try describing “seduction” in a morally-neutral way, for instance (I’ve managed to do, but it takes about 20 words). The fact is that most of the words and concepts relating to how men initiate sexual interaction with women have negative connotations, which is very telling about how male sexuality is perceived in our culture. There’s just no nice and concise way to say this stuff.
At a certain point, I think that PUAs just realized that they are going to be demonized no matter how they sound, and stopped caring. Maybe they even started deliberately using politically incorrect language in order to be perverse. The tone is also useful for creating an ingroup.
That’s a good question. We’ve had this conversation here in the past, and my position is that you can’t put much stock in the connotations of PUA language. Is it problematic? Is it bad PR? Yes, but thankfully it’s not a mirror image of the attitudes of PUAs. You know what PUAs call their regional meeting clubs? “Lairs.” And that’s not because they believe that they are evil creatures.
To me, “time distortion” sounds like bad science fiction. Captain, ready the Time Distortion Ray!
“Compliance” indeed has negative connotations. But I think that the same thing could be described as “cooperation.” If you are trying to date someone, and they are completely uncooperative with you, then something is probably wrong. You want to be a in situations where you can say something like “hey, hold my jacket for a sec?” or “hey, let’s go to the park...” and the other person will cooperate. If things are going well, then you can hold your hand out when walking and see if the other person grabs it, or you can pat your lap and see if they sit in it.
The other person’s willingness to cooperate (or even comply) with your lead in the interaction is one measure of the other person’s interest in you. Also, making a request subcommunicates a belief in one’s own status.
Although in principle such compliance could run both ways (and for me, it does), PUAs don’t think of compliance totally gender-neutrally. The reason they don’t is that they believe that it’s typical for most heterosexual women to prefer men to be in charge of the interaction. They believe that the ideal heterosexual interaction from the perspective of most women involves such traditional gender roles, characterized by men taking the lead, and women wanting to comply with that lead. This doesn’t mean that PUAs necessarily want women to be Stepford Wives who comply with everything.
Yes, some PUAs are obsessed with traditional gender roles in unhealthy ways. But a big part of the reason that PUAs obsess with these roles is probably the same as why so many women obsess about their physical appearance: because it seems to be so important to most members of the opposite sex.
You say in another post:
As far as PUAs can tell, your preferences aren’t typical. As I’ve argued several times here, it’s unfortunately the priors that PUAs are forced to hold about women’s preferences are so far from the preferences of certain minorities of women.
As annoying as it might be for you to date a guy who is being Mr. Take Charge, consider the possibility that if guys don’t act that way with most women, they will spend a lot of the time getting discarded as boring wimps. The incentive structure favors men taking charge in dating situations, which requires a certain level of compliance.
Personally, I hate this system, and I hate being in charge of everything, but it’s actually really hard to find women who don’t want me to take the lead in most areas, make most of the decisions, and make most of the physical advances. I really had to learn what to look for (the secret: don’t date gender-typical women, because they seem to want gender traditional interactions).
How would you describe it in a neutral way? That’s how I attempt to describe pickup on LessWrong, but it’s not easy. Try describing “seduction” in a morally-neutral way, for instance (I’ve managed to do, but it takes about 20 words). The fact is that most of the words and concepts relating to how men initiate sexual interaction with women have negative connotations, which is very telling about how male sexuality is perceived in our culture. There’s just no nice and concise way to say this stuff.
At a certain point, I think that PUAs just realized that they are going to be demonized no matter how they sound, and stopped caring. Maybe they even started deliberately using politically incorrect language in order to be perverse. The tone is also useful for creating an ingroup.