I was going to say “Evidently you’re not familiar with Athol Kay,” but I don’t know what you may or may not be familiar with, just as you probably don’t know what jsalvatier is familiar with.
I think we would all agree that abusive behavior is bad, and can go on for a long time in a cursed, miserable relationship. Based on the information in his blog, Athol Kay (apparently his real name) is not in anything like an abusive relationship with his wife. To the contrary, it’s all about mutual satisfaction and support in all the areas of a marriage or LTR.
I’m not previously familiar with him, no, but I did follow the link you posted to his site. The entire front page was about how women can doll themselves up to be more attractive to their hubbies. I was not impressed. Hoping to give him the benefit of the doubt, I followed the links to some of the “most important posts” on the site, and found more misogynistic bullshit: relationships boiled down, essentially, to how much she’s putting out, whining about Nice Guy™ Syndrome, and perpetuation of pathological gender roles. So, zero points for ethics.
With regards to gender roles: is your criticism 1) desire to play that role (in women) is not as common as Athol claims 2) such gender roles are bad regardless of whether people want to play them 3) something else?
Gender roles of any sort are fine if consciously negotiated by consenting adults. When presented as the default, however, or as biological facts, with no chance for negotiation, they become oppressive. Kay’s suggestions would be fine as suggestions for husband and wife to discuss and decide on together, but as presented they dangerously mislead their audience.
Why is explicit negotiation, as opposed to say ‘looking for what your partner seems to respond better to’, important on this topic? Lots of people cannot or do not want to verbalize what they like when it comes to relationship behaviors.
I do agree that treating such roles as immutable facts with no chance for negotiation is bad. Is treating such gender roles as default bad because you don’t think desire to play those roles is common enough to justify it or for some other reason?
Why is explicit negotiation, as opposed to say ‘looking for what your partner seems to respond better to’, important on this topic? Lots of people cannot or do not want to verbalize what they like when it comes to relationship behaviors.
Exactly. Interacting with your partner, even implicitly, is a form of negotiation and communication.
A century of feminism is enough to convince me that, at the very least, a large minority of women are seriously, deeply upset at the lot they’re traditionally given. In more recent years, some men have started to come forward and say they’re not too happy about their own default either. If it were only a tiny handful of people who felt this way—say one in a hundred million—then it wouldn’t make sense to adopt the more progressive approach by default, although we would still have a responsibility, if we chanced to meet one of these people and if they expressed their views, to take them into consideration.
Explicit negotiation is important because of the immense variability of romantic and sexual drives in humans, and because of the dreadful ease of misunderstanding (and even if you really are a perfect mind reader, you probably don’t need to visit PUA websites). In my experience, and that of other people in my community, “cannot or do not want to” is an ephemeral state arising from the awkwardness of a new form of dialogue. All it takes is a bit of practice and it becomes the easiest thing in the world to communicate your desires, plus it improves your romantic life tremendously.
Almost every post he writes is mostly applicable to a stereotype, he just assumes readers know by now that he isn’t saying it will work for everyone. Not very conducive for attracting newcomers, but that’s his decision.
If you want proof, click this and do a control f search for the word mileage.
I think I need more help seeing why I should think the links you provide are examples of Not Good Things.
Most of his blog is devoted to how husbands can be more attractive to their wives. Coming to the blog for the first time, its natural to miss his explanation that for April he is focusing on ‘Girl Game’ (link). Partially for a change of pace and partially because he’s gotten requests for it from commenters. I can easily see how this would be off putting if this is the first thing you see. Given this context, do you still see this as problematic?
Boiling down to putting out: Yes, he mentions ‘wife putting out more’ as the consequence of raising the husband’s relative mate value more than anything else, but the mechanism he describes is that the wife wants to have more sex, which doesn’t seem terribly problematic to me. Elsewhere he talks about doing things to build comfort in a relationship. Do you find any of the behaviors suggested in that link problematic? Is your notion that too much focus on sex is problematic?
Whining: I am sympathetic to your link. I think a lot of this kind of discussion is really about word choice. If you reframe nice vs. jerk as passive vs. active or non-aggressive vs. aggressive, I think a lot of discussion would dissolve. If passive vs. active (or somesuch) was the framing used, do you think this would be less problematic? Perhaps such discussions need comments like “guys think they’re being nice, but they’re really just being passive, and that’s often not attractive”?
I think he can have, like, one point for ethics. He’s a little sloppy about it in places and does sling generalizations, but there’s nothing that egregious and he doesn’t seem to hate women or consider us interchangeable.
because of this quotation:
“yes we still had sex on Friday night (she squirted), Saturday night (she cried), Sunday morning (she tolerated it) and Sunday night looks good too (she’s gonna go for the handjob option when I offer it). ”
Do consider his competition. At some point, if you don’t want to be accused of not reading them or being fair, you need to award the PUA Blogger of the Month award to someone, even if it’s for not-deserving-an-award-the-least.
I was going to say “Evidently you’re not familiar with Athol Kay,” but I don’t know what you may or may not be familiar with, just as you probably don’t know what jsalvatier is familiar with.
I think we would all agree that abusive behavior is bad, and can go on for a long time in a cursed, miserable relationship. Based on the information in his blog, Athol Kay (apparently his real name) is not in anything like an abusive relationship with his wife. To the contrary, it’s all about mutual satisfaction and support in all the areas of a marriage or LTR.
I’m not previously familiar with him, no, but I did follow the link you posted to his site. The entire front page was about how women can doll themselves up to be more attractive to their hubbies. I was not impressed. Hoping to give him the benefit of the doubt, I followed the links to some of the “most important posts” on the site, and found more misogynistic bullshit: relationships boiled down, essentially, to how much she’s putting out, whining about Nice Guy™ Syndrome, and perpetuation of pathological gender roles. So, zero points for ethics.
With regards to gender roles: is your criticism 1) desire to play that role (in women) is not as common as Athol claims 2) such gender roles are bad regardless of whether people want to play them 3) something else?
Gender roles of any sort are fine if consciously negotiated by consenting adults. When presented as the default, however, or as biological facts, with no chance for negotiation, they become oppressive. Kay’s suggestions would be fine as suggestions for husband and wife to discuss and decide on together, but as presented they dangerously mislead their audience.
Why is explicit negotiation, as opposed to say ‘looking for what your partner seems to respond better to’, important on this topic? Lots of people cannot or do not want to verbalize what they like when it comes to relationship behaviors.
I do agree that treating such roles as immutable facts with no chance for negotiation is bad. Is treating such gender roles as default bad because you don’t think desire to play those roles is common enough to justify it or for some other reason?
Exactly. Interacting with your partner, even implicitly, is a form of negotiation and communication.
A century of feminism is enough to convince me that, at the very least, a large minority of women are seriously, deeply upset at the lot they’re traditionally given. In more recent years, some men have started to come forward and say they’re not too happy about their own default either. If it were only a tiny handful of people who felt this way—say one in a hundred million—then it wouldn’t make sense to adopt the more progressive approach by default, although we would still have a responsibility, if we chanced to meet one of these people and if they expressed their views, to take them into consideration.
Explicit negotiation is important because of the immense variability of romantic and sexual drives in humans, and because of the dreadful ease of misunderstanding (and even if you really are a perfect mind reader, you probably don’t need to visit PUA websites). In my experience, and that of other people in my community, “cannot or do not want to” is an ephemeral state arising from the awkwardness of a new form of dialogue. All it takes is a bit of practice and it becomes the easiest thing in the world to communicate your desires, plus it improves your romantic life tremendously.
He actually does that, but not in every post.
Almost every post he writes is mostly applicable to a stereotype, he just assumes readers know by now that he isn’t saying it will work for everyone. Not very conducive for attracting newcomers, but that’s his decision.
If you want proof, click this and do a control f search for the word mileage.
I think I need more help seeing why I should think the links you provide are examples of Not Good Things.
Most of his blog is devoted to how husbands can be more attractive to their wives. Coming to the blog for the first time, its natural to miss his explanation that for April he is focusing on ‘Girl Game’ (link). Partially for a change of pace and partially because he’s gotten requests for it from commenters. I can easily see how this would be off putting if this is the first thing you see. Given this context, do you still see this as problematic?
Boiling down to putting out: Yes, he mentions ‘wife putting out more’ as the consequence of raising the husband’s relative mate value more than anything else, but the mechanism he describes is that the wife wants to have more sex, which doesn’t seem terribly problematic to me. Elsewhere he talks about doing things to build comfort in a relationship. Do you find any of the behaviors suggested in that link problematic? Is your notion that too much focus on sex is problematic?
Whining: I am sympathetic to your link. I think a lot of this kind of discussion is really about word choice. If you reframe nice vs. jerk as passive vs. active or non-aggressive vs. aggressive, I think a lot of discussion would dissolve. If passive vs. active (or somesuch) was the framing used, do you think this would be less problematic? Perhaps such discussions need comments like “guys think they’re being nice, but they’re really just being passive, and that’s often not attractive”?
I think he can have, like, one point for ethics. He’s a little sloppy about it in places and does sling generalizations, but there’s nothing that egregious and he doesn’t seem to hate women or consider us interchangeable.
He has this post about the “dark side of game”: http://www.marriedmansexlife.com/2010/03/dark-side-of-game.html
This post from him really flipped me out: http://www.marriedmansexlife.com/2011/02/life-sucks-marriage-still-good.html
because of this quotation: “yes we still had sex on Friday night (she squirted), Saturday night (she cried), Sunday morning (she tolerated it) and Sunday night looks good too (she’s gonna go for the handjob option when I offer it). ”
which, uh, doesn’t sound like his wife is all that into the sex. On the other hand, she later asserted that she has no problem with their current setup in this post: http://www.marriedmansexlife.com/2011/02/jennifer-answers-some-questions.html
so the problem I think is more with careless phrasing than careless treatment of her feelings. At least, I hope so. She sounds pretty ok to me.
Well, fair enough. He also didn’t shoot anyone in the face, so...
Do consider his competition. At some point, if you don’t want to be accused of not reading them or being fair, you need to award the PUA Blogger of the Month award to someone, even if it’s for not-deserving-an-award-the-least.