The comment thread below this post from last Thursday is still active, and has taken a number of twists and turns. There’s been much discussion of the “seduction community”, lookism, privilege, and the difficulty in finding people to date. It’s been remarkably civil to boot. I think I’m gonna give out the “best comment thread of the year” award in December, and so far, this looks like the winner.
One comment jumped out at me, from “Eurosabra”, who wrote yesterday about the difficulty of meeting women:
…by the 50th sidewalk café, you’re feeling pretty tired and put-upon and wondering when you’re going to be seeing some of the mythical “female sexual agency†directed at you. So it’s a cart-horse problem, compounded by the fact that (at least in college) everyone is always constantly meeting people, it’s just that some people get…no results. And straight women’s means of showing interest are so indirect, because of that whole slut-shaming thing….
it really makes me feel like I have to put myself out there and hope, hope to be chosen, while initiating everything.
I’ve spent my share of time being quite tough on young men like Eurosabra, but having read enough of his comments, it’s clear that he’s not coming so much from a place of male entitlement as from a place of genuine hurt and disillusionment. And that hurt and disillusionment, that sense that meeting potential dates requires constant receptiveness to rejection, is widely felt among many men I know. Some lose all claim on sympathy with misogynistic tirades rooted in a sense of frustrated privilege. But others don’t claim that women are obligated to be attracted to them. They don’t secretly believe that they are God’s gifts to women. They’d just like to meet women with whom they could perhaps have a relationship, and the system for meeting potential dates seems so opaque, so difficult to understand, so set up to guarantee disappointment after disappointment after disappointment. No wonder some of these men retreat into pornography addiction, or turn to the slick purveyors of seduction techniques. No wonder that others just, well, get very sad and a bit cynical.
The only dating advice piece I ever wrote was this one, but that addressed more the raison d’etre of the system than how to make it work. The closest I came to touching on the issue was this bit:
Most of the (other dating advice lists) I see are essentially techniques for more effectively cultivating a mask, a false image, an “idealized other.†Once we’ve “hooked†the other person, we then start to drop the mask in the hope that they’ll be sufficiently comfortable with us that they won’t run away when we show them all of our filth. But obviously, that’s both a dishonest and ultimately ineffective way of resolving the problem of human loneliness. Even in adolescence, the focus has to be on helping folks to become worthy of being dated, worthy of being slept with, worthy of being married! Though it’s trite to say so, you’re not going to be effective at getting other folks to like you — and stay around — if you aren’t clear on why it is that they should do so.
I think that’s true, but that still favors the conventionally attractive extrovert. A fellow might have a realistic (rather than inflated) sense of his worth, and believe sincerely that while far from perfect, he might be a very good boyfriend because he happens to be, well, a pretty cool dude. But other people are not mind-readers. Women, who have been given good reason to be suspicious of male advances, cannot be expected to discern the “good guy” from the “creep” at first glance. Telling the hot from the not is considerably easier. And in a system in which female initiative is still often shamed, the expectation that men will make the “first move” means that guys with less confidence will experience, as Eurosabra writes, a tremendous amount of rejection.
Yes, from a feminist perspective we need to do much more to empower women’s sexual agency. Yes, we need to do more to help young people (and sometimes, not-so-young) people demystify the process of meeting and dating and mating. And for young straight men, there aren’t many good, reliable guides for how to find a girlfriend. In conservative evangelical culture, there is some guidance — largely in the service of abstinence and promoting early marriage. And of course, in the secular world there is no shortage of fellas hawking DVDs, seminars, webinars, and hands-on-coaching designed to help turn the sexually unsuccessful and the socially awkward into first-rate Casanovas.
I went through my own awkward stage as a teen, certainly. I knew my share of rejections, and had more than one unrequited crush. But by the time I was in college, my ENFP asserted itself. Meeting women wasn’t hard. Getting dates wasn’t hard. Staying out of dysfunctional relationships and marriages — and learning to be faithful while in those — was hard. For most of my adult life, I’ve been fortunate enough to be socially and sexually confident. Where I’ve struggled, and struggled bitterly and painfully, is with developing the skills to make an enduring monogamous relationship work.
I didn’t realize just how privileged I was, by the way, until I wrote a post about a brief but intensely enriching period of celibacy in my past. In 1998, following my release from still another psych ward and what turned out to be (b’ezrat hashem, deo volente, and all that) my last drink, I chose a break from what had been a very, very promiscuous lifestyle. In that post, I talked about the extraordinary experience I had learning to “self-soothe” as a consequence of withdrawing from “the lifestyle” as well as from drugs. I was celibate, both physically and emotionally, for nearly six months — which for me was the longest such period since high school. I was rather proud of the post, but was ashamed when I realized how much unconscious privilege undergirded it. For me, after all, not being sexual with other people was a choice that had to be made; for some of both sexes, it isn’t perceived as a choice.
I don’t have any nifty answers that will serve to assuage the feelings of rejection so many young men feel. I can assure them that they aren’t alone; those same feelings of being unwanted are found in women. After all, while Eurosabra and others lament that they don’t get to see what they regard as the “mythical female sexual agency” of which we sometimes make much, they forget that while slut-shaming happens to virtually all sexually assertive women, those who are perceived as physically undesirable are not only slut-shamed but mercilessly ridiculed. A young man who isn’t conventionally attractive can, at least, be encouraged to continue to work on sincere and effective ways to approach women; women who are not perceived as conventionally attractive are simply told to remain sexually invisible — or risk the ridicule that is far worse than rejection.
Beyond what I’ve already written, I don’t have any unique tips or techniques to share for meeting new people. The basic rules apply: be honest, be friendly, be sincere, and try to meet people spending time doing things you would do anyway. That’s easier for some than others, of course; in my academic fields, I was usually outnumbered by female peers and colleagues. It’s presumably easier for a man in the humanities or social sciences, for example, to meet women than it is for a fellow in electrical engineering, which remains male-dominated. And in the end, what “works” for ENFPs isn’t going to work for INTJs and so on.
But here’s what I can say, and commit to saying more often:
The fact that we live in a society in which men are still privileged as a class does not mean that all men will feel that privilege all of the time. Indeed, many men will perceive a particular burden that falls on them as a result of their being male; one such burden is the expectation that men will make the “first move”. That expectation carries with it the assumption that rejection is to be expected, and it carries the bitter reality that rejection will be more frequent for some than for others. One particularly painful aspect of our sexist society is that we imagine men to be more emotionally resilient, somehow better equipped than women to handle being told “no” over and over again. But men are not sturdy oaks; rejection can wound, and repeated rejection, accompanied by repeated imperatives to always initiate and pursue, can leave many men lonely, alienated, exhausted, and angry.
The anger needs, of course, to be at the system rather than at women — and this is where so many men make a critical mistake. But the wound that is the source of the anger is real, and it needs healing. As a feminist, I have no patience with misogynistic rage at women. But as a man and a pro-feminist, I can repudiate the misdirection of that anger while simultaneously empathizing with the very real pain that gave birth to it. And I can do a better job of affirming those justified feelings while redirecting the anger towards more positive action. Good youth ministry is all about “affirming and redirecting” — and I’m often so quick to do the latter when working with young men that I forget it’s important to do the former, too.
“And for young straight men, there aren’t many good, reliable guides for how to find a girlfriend.”
That may be true. However, it’s just frustrating and insulting when these men refuse to listen to women when we try to tell them what we do or do not want from a potential partner (as evidenced on the thread below). I mean, if you’re trying to make a connection with women and interact with us, does it make more sense to take advice from women on what we find attractive in a potential partner, or does it make more sense to listen to “fellas hawking DVDs, seminars, webinars, and hands-on-coaching designed to help turn the sexually unsuccessful and the socially awkward into first-rate Casanovas.”.
The answer is obvious. And the men who are successful are the ones who know the answer to that question.
I think it helps to be realistic about one’s own attractiveness. We can’t all date supermodels, but men are more likely to have trouble accepting this fact than women.
A young man who isn’t conventionally attractive can, at least, be encouraged to continue to work on sincere and effective ways to approach women
That sounds like wishful thinking, and I think quite a few conventionally unattractive men would concur. If sincerity worked as an effective approach, it is doubtful so many men would be rejected as often as they are. Likewise, there needs to be a recognition that the feelings and anger rejected men feel are warranted, fair and valid. That the anger is directed as women results from the fact that it is women rejecting them, often after those men try approaches they have learned having listened to women’s advice and suggestions.
Reframing the current dating situation from a feminist perspective does not make it a better system. The result is still the same: all the expectations are still being placed on men and they are still expected to just accept rejection, the only difference being that rather than being thought of as a loser, they will be thought of as misogynists. That is not very helpful, especially since half the responsibility for this broken system lies with women.
Wow, every time people talk about dating I get really creeped out because it sounds like they are talking about market transactions, and the availability of commodities, and how some people just have more social currency to spend than others and thus end up having more of this commodity (sex partners), and it’s all quantified by your ratios of success to rejection. It makes it sound like potential sexual partners are fungible, and you can try generic approaches that will make you more generically successful at attracting some generic sex partners. Ew! Plus, I’m an introvert and I hate small talk, I hate meeting random people and undertaking the amorphous task of “getting to know” them. So whenever I hear people talking about a dating scene I feel like a martian.
Which makes me sound like a hermit, which I’m not. I have just never, ever met a boyfriend out in the open market. Would it kill people to, you know, sign up for classes or activity groups doing things they actually like to do, and meet people that share common interests with them and maybe work from there? Or are we just way too eager to evaluate our sexual worth on some supposedly objective scale here? If you want to do that, then fine, but that’s a totally different goal, and a different activity from finding an actual person that you’re compatible with.
oh plus, @toysoldier, I think the feminist perspective on this is that we’d like to work towards a world where (among other things) men aren’t so much expected to take the initiative in dating. But in order for that to happen, it needs to be safe for women to do so, and it isn’t always — i.e. slut-shaming and rape are still real fears that convince women that it’s safer to avoid making any first moves. So it’s not that feminists are all “oh just accept the rejection, loser”, it’s that we see it as part of a larger problem, and we’d really really like to change things, but it’s not happening overnight. You’re focusing on the women who have rejected you, but what about the women who secretly liked you, and wanted to say so, but didn’t want to be labeled as aggressive? I bet they’re frustrated too.
I asked out an INTJ guy who described his looks as “homely” and his personality as “boring” and got rejected. He said that he would be flattered if a girl took the initiative. So, I did. He turned out to be quite a jerk, even though he had what I was looking for on the surface. Perhaps I am opening myself up to criticism here (like there was something really wrong with me, which is why he rejected me). Still, to this day, I wonder, even though I am glad nothing worked out: was he being dishonest when he said he would be flattered if girls asked him out? He was a very traditional Christian, so perhaps he didn’t think that was the way things *should* have unfolded in a Christian relationship. I don’t really know, and I will never ask.
Faith,
“The answer is obvious.”
Not really. The problem is, again, that people (including women!) don’t usually openly communicate in a mutually accessible way what they really want but what they think they are expected to say. And people who listen have a filter system of their own. It takes an awful lot of effort to understand just a single person’s vocabulary sufficiently well to actually know what she/he means when she/he says something.
It’s important to understand these limitations. See, Faith, what I read into your statements about men not listening is anger to be not taken seriously when you were serious. But even for good-willed people, real communication isn’t easy at all. We have our own agendas, constantly revise our preferences and intentions with respect to a particular interaction, and, again, most people simply don’t have much of a clue about body language.
So, well, asking women about what they want is important, of course, but it should not be one’s only source of information: I was brought up by women who explained to me that all male sexuality is inherently harmful. Well, turned out they didn’t really want to tell me to be afraid to kiss my girlfriend, but that’s what I took with me, that’s what shaped me for years.
Basically, the answer isn’t as obvious as you make it to be, and that’s precisely because women are people, too. They’re not as perfect as you seem to believe.
(Just listening to people trying to exploit one’s vulnerabilities to sell DVDs obviously isn’t a particularly clever move either. But there’s more information out there about male and female interaction than just those DVDs… in fact there’s a lot more information out there, part of which is actually feminist literature…)
metamanda,
I think there’s some truth to the market analogy, and part of the problem is that humans probably have conflicting internal circuits with respect to sexuality – one that is driving reproductive urges and one that is more related to love and attachment and evaluates sexuality as a part thereof. Clearly, those systems will not always produce the similar preferences…
“They’d just like to meet women with whom they could perhaps have a relationship, and the system for meeting potential dates seems so opaque, so difficult to understand, so set up to guarantee disappointment after disappointment after disappointment.”
Yes. This is what dating *is* for most people, men and women alike. Women’s self help books sometimes frame it as “you’ve got to kiss a lot of frogs.” What’s interesting is how one perceives and responds to the regular rejection – Which I believe occurs to most everyone on the dating scene, since people are individuals and no matter how you met the person, chances are more likely that either they won’t be someone you’re interested in or you won’t be someone they’re interested in, rather than a match.
I think a healthy person – male or female – takes this in stride as best they can as part of the process. Picks up, dusts off, looks around again and says, “Next!”
And yes, sometimes for years. That’s not a male thing or a female thing. That’s just life.
“Not really. The problem is, again, that people (including women!) don’t usually openly communicate in a mutually accessible way what they really want but what they think they are expected to say.”
Yes, it really is that obvious, Sam.
The thread below can be basically summed up with this:
Woman says: This is what I feel, believe, and find to be attractive, etc.
Man (Sam and Euro) says: No, what women (you) really feel, believe, and find attractive is this, this, and this. I know because this dude who wrote this book about women says so.
If men want to know what women want and need, they need to listen to women, not other men. Talking over women when they are explaining what they believe and feel is absolutely, completely, and utterly insulting. The sad thing is that neither of you even realize that you are talking right over the very people that you are claiming to want to understand and then getting ticked when you get rejected. The men who are successful are the ones who have mastered the fine art of doing one simple thing: LISTENING to what women are saying and actually believing them when we say it. NOT telling us what we really believe because the man in question doesn’t like what the woman is saying.
The other matter I take issue with is this: You and Euro and “nice guys” and PUAs seem to be operating under the illusion that there is some scientific formula that can be figured out and followed to ensure success in human relationships. There is no such formula. Human relationships are and always will be messy.
“But even for good-willed people, real communication isn’t easy at all. We have our own agendas, constantly revise our preferences and intentions with respect to a particular interaction, and, again, most people simply don’t have much of a clue about body language.”
Real communication is often difficult because people’s egos tend to get in the way. It is not impossible, however.
“Basically, the answer isn’t as obvious as you make it to be, and that’s precisely because women are people, too. They’re not as perfect as you seem to believe.”
I don’t think anyone is perfect. Humans are messy, paradoxical creatures. That’s something I know well and accept.
“That is not very helpful, especially since half the responsibility for this broken system lies with women.”
How precisely are women responsible?
“The problem is, again, that people (including women!) don’t usually openly communicate in a mutually accessible way what they really want but what they think they are expected to say.”
This. This right here is exactly what I’m talking about. If you start from the perspective that people can’t be trusted to tell the truth, how can you possibly expect those people to trust you or want to have anything to do with you?
“Wow, every time people talk about dating I get really creeped out because it sounds like they are talking about market transactions, and the availability of commodities, and how some people just have more social currency to spend than others and thus end up having more of this commodity (sex partners), and it’s all quantified by your ratios of success to rejection.”
You noticed that too, huh?
Again, I think most of the pity-party is because I don’t access and process interpersonal communication the way a non-Aspie does, so I often don’t pick up *positive* signals directed at me. Negative, yes, because I’ve trained myself to notice them because the sanctions for unwanted touching (for example) are greater in this culture than in many others. Which is why I grouse that so few women are *attracted* to me at my most charming, while lots are interested in what I have to say or like me as a friend or distant acquaintance Again, imagine, if you can, a situation in which it seems other people are communicating telepathically around you and you are the only one who IS NOT, plus they know what you think as you think it. That’s what social interaction is like for me.
Again, the example in the video was of indirect communication that was successfully read as a test, and discarded. Obviously, that is only valid for that one case, and there are plenty of women who might have replied “We’re waiting for a friend, have a seat, what’s your question?” or “Please go away and stop bothering us now.” The man’s response was valid for the women in the video, and in the broadest sense, proceeding in the face of ambiguity is a positive move because the brunette’s communication style WAS so indirect and so ambiguous. She was pretty accepting of him in the end, which means, his communication was successful. This is a far cry from the boogeyman of “If I ask, she might say ‘No’, so I won’t ask.”
Wow…these latest conversations here have been addictive…I find myself checking back constantly…
This is all new territory for me. I had no problem attracting the kind of boys I would be interested in, and was taken off the market fairly early in life. Our three sons NEVER had difficulties approaching young women, and two married by the age of 24. My guess is that the smaller pool of choices out here in Podunk made connecting a little easier.
So this evening, when #3 son, Sir Galahad, popped by to pick up the rototiller, I brought up the question of “rejection and hurt.”
Hugo might have written his laconic response: (paraphrasing here)
“I took a lot of shit in the dorm for being p-whipped, because i was committed to one relationship.
Faith,
“This. This right here is exactly what I’m talking about. If you start from the perspective that people can’t be trusted to tell the truth, how can you possibly expect those people to trust you or want to have anything to do with you?”
How do you get this? I’m sorry, but I tend to not wear my heart out on my sleeves, how does that mean I’m not willing to trust someone to tell me the truth, ever? I don’t trust all people. When I’m meeting a woman, she’s a stranger to me and I am a stranger to her. We’ll possibly get over this and become friends or lovers who will THEN trust each other and share their realities as completely as possible. You know, maybe she loves being pushed against the wall for kissing, but would never admit so would I be asking her five minutes after meeting her. Truth and reality has different perspectives. Aren’t you repeating again and again that women have been socialized into being too nice and accomodating? How’s that NOT not telling what they actually want?
I don’t expect a woman I meet to trust me entirely. I mean part of getting to know each other is that process of progressively opening our realities to our partners. There are lots of different levels of accessibility for my reality. I assume that’s also the case for other people.
And I certainly don’t think that I will be able to accurately interpret meaning I hear from people I don’t know. I mean, c’mon, we were looking at the same pictures in the other thread and we had a hard time agreeing on the appropriate term for the behaviour we saw. So if I’m asking a woman – do you like it when a guy is more assertive or not? – and she says, “no I don’t like it” but her “assertive” was what I think of as “domineering” then I would not be able to adjust my behaviour even though we were both completely honest.
This isn’t easy.
I mean, I’m usually the one criticizing feminism for excessive use of standpoint epistemology (in a “class” context), but here there’s simply no other way to approach the matter – we’re all different and closed systems, after all.
Accidently hit post before I was finished. Sir Galahad’s point is that if one is out for random sex, one can expect to get shot down out of the gate ALL THE TIME, and one has no business whining about. Our DDIL is smart, funny, fearless and beautiful, and #3 son knew a good thing when he met her.
“Again, I think most of the pity-party is because I don’t access and process interpersonal communication the way a non-Aspie does, so I often don’t pick up *positive* signals directed at me.”
Euro,
The thing is, I’ve heard plenty of men who do not have any actual disability say all the things that you have said. While you might be at a particular disadvantage, there are plenty of men who do not have any obvious reason to be having such trouble interacting with women.
ahunt,
I think it’s great that you have a relationship with your sons that allows you to openly talk about such issues!
Sam…Dad’s job took him away from home roughly six months out of the year for many years…fostered a semi-relaxed maternal relationship. Sort of. Also helps that we’re close with our DILs.
This post (and others on this blog) are weird to me because the assumption is that there is basically one way of doing something that works in society. Yes, there is one mainstream American narrative about dating, but come on, how many people find their happiness that way? I’ve never been into the narrative at all and it’s never stopped me finding guys and it’s not like I’m anything more than normal looking. And that’s true for a lot of people, especially those that possess, uh, less social capital (I’m sorry, I agree the market model is creepy, but you know what I mean); since they aren’t privileged by the system they find other ways. Think about all the married/coupled/dating people you know. Are they the most beautiful, wealthy, outgoing people in the population? Some are, sure, but a lot aren’t, but they somehow they got a foot in the door. If you have a problem dating you have a personal problem or you are just really unlucky. One of those things, maybe both. I just don’t buy the premise that there are tons and tons of people out there that can’t find anyone ever. There are some, but generally people work it out, at least as enough as to land a date.
This post (and others on this blog) are weird to me because the assumption is that there is basically one way of doing something that works in society. Yes, there is one mainstream American narrative about dating, but come on, how many people find their happiness that way?
Exactly.
I’m not clear on why it is so difficult, and while I get the rural angle, I also spent enough time in Ann Arbor to know that people who wanted to find good relationships usually did… PEOPLE…in all shapes and sizes and profiles.
ElleDee,
“There are some, but generally people work it out, at least as enough as to land a date.”
I think you’re wrong in that respect. The “single” population is rising every year, and I don’t think most people will tell the truth if asked about their dating mis/fortunes. I have a friend whom I never see with any woman, ever, but he tells great stories of his sexual successes which, alas, never last longer than a day and all happen whenever no one I know is around to witness… and I know how I was embarrassed to be a virgin when I got my graduate degree. Of course I lied about that, it’s embarrassing when you’re not actually talking deeply with a person and can expect privacy and a certain level of compassion and comprehension. So, yeah. I think there are a lot more unhappy uncoupled people than there seem to be.
How precisely are women responsible?
You active participants in this with your own agency, or not?
It doesn’t seem so obvious to me that it’s both implausible and grossly offensive to suggest that a man could find more accurate sources of information about what women find attractive than what women say they find attractive, even if it might sound that way on the surface.
Speaking as a man, I could probably make a reasonable effort at articulating the kind of traits and behaviour I find attractive, in the form of some lengthy checklist, say. But it certainly wouldn’t be comprehensive – I could easily be unattracted to someone who checked many of the boxes or attracted to someone who didn’t. Now, hopefully this is at least partially because my mind (like everyone’s) works in a somewhat deeper way than can be summed up in a checklist. But I think it would also be because there are traits and behaviours that I’m attracted to without really registering in a conscious enough way to be likely to articulate them. Besides which I could easily be somewhat biased in my articulation e.g. playing down the importance of physical traits so as to not seem superficial. And it wouldn’t surprise me very much if some hypothetical person who had carefully studied my behaviour could correctly identify things I (generally) found attractive but which I hadn’t listed. Or, more plausibly, even an anthropologist who’d made a more general study of attraction in humans could probably do the same. And if it weren’t me personally who was being considered, but rather men, *in general*, I would expect the anthropologist to be even more accurate at identifying general trends that men didn’t necessarily articulate, even if they wouldn’t necessarily apply to every man.
Was motivated to post because I’d coincidentally been reading an old article about PUAs (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,20029-1766167,00.html) (of whom I am not one, FWIW) and it seemed that, below the cod-psychology, the fundamental claim of many such people was just starkly empirical – look, we have tried many things, this works, try it for yourself and see. And while it seems ridiculous that that would be true for *all* women, it doesn’t seem implausible (I’m not saying it’s necessarily true) that the behaviour they recommend could *on average* be found more attractive than whatever their audience was doing before. And for someone who’s, say, never had a first date, improving their average chance of getting one could easily be a very desirable goal.
And if correct, what it says about human behaviour seems to be less the insulting “women are superficial” or even “people are superficial” but that *attraction* is superficial. And at a “getting a first date” kind of level, with two people who are essentially strangers, that seems quite plausible to me – they hardly know each other well enough for it to be anything else. And yet said attraction is often (though of course not always) necessary for them to ever get to know each other better. Hence the motivation behind people seeking out this kind of advice seems quite understandable.
OK, not kidding here and too funny not to share in this context…: facebook just notified me that a lesbian friend of mine has just joined what seems to be a pickup-coaching-group on facebook. Have to ask her about this…
Jebedee – of course many of those techniques work, just as the techniques Gavin deBecker discusses in The Gift of Fear work; people tend to behave in certain ways and tend to have predictable responses, particularly when you are taking cultural mores and training into account.
So if a woman tells you ‘we’re waiting for somebody’ when you ask for her attention, it’s a very reasonable assumption that she is asking you to go away, but isn’t willing or perhaps able to be clear and forceful about it; therefore if you ignore her and treat her social signal of ‘no’ as pro forma, she probably won’t fight you very hard, because she’s on some level concerned about being perceived as a bitch.
By the way, I imagine if a woman posted here that “you guys are all liars, we women all know what you really want is a dumb blonde with big tits,” the guys would properly be up in arms about being told that what they claim they want is a lie; women know better than men do about what men ‘really’ want; and all men want the same thing.
Mythago – with regard to your last paragraph, sure. But if the woman took out the “liars” part and just said “Well, what you say about what you find attractive may be true, but it seems to me that a very effective way to get more male attention would be to dye my hair blonde and wear a push-up bra” it wouldn’t shock me if a) she was, *on average*, right b) it wasn’t something men had told her because they weren’t very inclined to answer “blonde hair and prominent cleavage” when asked what they found attractive even though c) what they *had* told her about what they found attractive was perfectly true.
The second paragraph doesn’t seem like a great example of the phenomenon because it doesn’t seem to bear on attraction, just not being told to go away. Being indifferent to social hints might help if you just want to obnoxiously loiter around someone, but it isn’t going to incline them to be attracted to you, which seems to be what advice of the PUA kind revolves around.
This is the thing. There are three things:
1) How I want a guy to treat me.
2) What I find attractive in a guy.
3) What a guy might have been able to get out of me, by pushing me, when I was young and inexperienced enough not to stand up to him.
(Leaving out of the equation for the moment that, if it’s me, I might also find women attractive, and just sticking to het relationships.)
Now, I get that part of men’s frustration is that 1 != 2. And so, you get all kinds of dating advice of the listen to women and be sincere and treat her well and so on and so forth variety, and it doesn’t work as far as getting her to go out with you if she doesn’t find you attractive. I’ve had the same frustration, frankly, with a lot of the dating advice given to women, who also get the advice about just being yourself and being sincere and listening and building him up and whatever. Which of course won’t work if he actually wants me to have blonde hair and be a D cup. (Fortunately for me, there are enough fish in the sea who are fine with medium-breasted brunettes that I still had some to choose from.)
The problem is, it’s also the case that 2 != 3. Scary guys, when I was young, walked off with my phone number because I thought it was the easiest way to get rid of them. In one case, it was a house phone that no one answered earlier than the 20th ring or so, but still. I realize that my giving that number (even the one that didn’t work so well), probably reinforced, for those men, the very behavior I found threatening, but, well, at the time, being young and scared, all I wanted was to get out of the immediate situation without further grief.
Anyway, I may not be able to tell you exactly what my 2 is, everything that draws me to a guy. I can tell you, for instance, who is, as far as I’m concerned, the sexiest celebrity guy ever. But I can only partly tell you why I find him the sexiest ever. And, sure, sometimes even someone else might notice something about my attractions more sharply than I do. For instance, Match.com had a test up once (maybe they still do), that I took for fun, where you rate a whole bunch of photos and it tells you your physical “type.” And when I told my husband what sort of woman it said I liked he said, I know, that’s exactly who you look at on the street.
But what I do know is when I’ve been attracted to a guy, and when I’ve been letting myself get steamrollered. And, at least some of the dating scripts men get advised to follow works better in the steamrollering sense than in the inspiring genuine attraction sense.
There are ways to test whether a rejection is real that don’t just brush right past it as if it weren’t there.
The place where I think it’s most important to take women at their word, rather than going for second hand information, is on where that steamrollering boundary is. And, sure, as with anything, different women will have different boundaries, and what would really piss one woman off will fly right by another. But if enough women say they’d resent something, in a pick up attempt, it’s worth listening to, even if that pick up attempt might in some sense “work.”
This may be redundant, but I haven´t seen it mentioned explicitly in the comments…
Women are not a monolith, and neither are men.
I absolutely hate being ¨hit on¨. I tend to date men who are a bit shy, so that I have to make the first move. There are also women who like being hit on, or are afraid to make the first move.
Having said that, I have formed friendships with men who have approached me out of a place of interest for who I am.
I second the commenter (sorry, I´m having trouble finding the comment again in order to quote the commenter) who suggested taking classes, joining an organization. Finding someone through common interests is much easier than trying to meet someone in a bar or on the street.
Being an American who has lived in Japan, Mexico and now lives in Spain, I am becoming more and more convinced that the TV/video game culture in the US is destroying the ability to meet and socialize on more than a superficial level…which is where outside interests come in…
“You active participants in this with your own agency, or not?”
I’m not responding to a man who believes that it’s understandable to commit murder for any reason.
One of the things that struck me about the previous thread was the continuing emphasis by some of the men present on “physical attractiveness” as a key factor in the ability for men to attract. That strikes me as wrong for several reasons. With most couples, the woman is distinctly “more attractive” by community standards—it isn’t often that the man is the “pretty” one. Men consistently underestimate their own attractiveness by equating a certain “classic” set of facial features or a certain body size/shape with “handsome”, and measuring themselves against that narrow standard—not realizing that women tend to add in other factors besides the visual to a greater degree than men do (movement, voice, smell, etc.), not to mention that individual standards vary. (seriously—I haven’t seen much of the “ugly guy who thinks he deserves a supermodel” thing; I see more perfectly attractive men who just don’t know it—don’t have confidence in their appearance.)
Maybe I’m not being “picky” enough, but really—-I see very few men I would consider too physically unattractive to go out with. Like Lynn said up above, I have a general “type” of man to whom I’m attracted at first glance, more so than the rest of the crowd—but like Jebedee said, that checklist is fluid. I literally cannot recall a time when I’ve ever turned down or brushed off a man for not being physically attractive. When I was younger, I routinely turned down older men (“older” meaning “closer to my father’s age than mine”), but even that wasn’t for reasons of appearance. Rudeness, chip-on-the-shoulder, and scary vibe (spidey-sense of dangerous) always get turndowns, but those instances weren’t all that frequent. My most common reason was….incompatibility. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for me to assume a certain fundamental incompatibility after one conversation, if that conversation reveals that: he loves the spontenaiety and freedom of the child-free life (I’m a single mother of a grade schooler); he’s very active in his conservative, fundamentalist church; he’s a registered Republican; he’s non-monogamous; he enjoys recreational drug use, etc. Everyone ain’t for everybody, and no matter who you are, you can’t take “rejection” personally. It isn’t just about you, it’s also about them. Their likes, dislikes, and what they can make work, also.
In my world, I’m out of step with the crowd. I’m reasonably attractive, physically-fit in appearance, but I also have a number of “strikes” against me: my age (42), being a single parent, being “too independent” (whatever that means), looking too “ethnic” (not the “girl-next-door” type. I like to quip that I’m the girl next door if you grew up in New Jersey, LOL!), having dissimilar interests to most of the local folks, spiritual but not comfortable with organized religion, and sometimes, not “feminine” enough. I call all of the above “being the weirdo”, tongue-firmly-in-cheek. There’s no way I’m going to have the “numbers” of successful contacts that a more conventional (by local standards) woman is going to have.
But I don’t let that stop me. I get the discouragement of seeing people pass you by; what I don’t get is not seeing it as for the best. Trust me—being with someone who doesn’t actually like you, who is just using you as “the substitute” (like the Who song—substitute for who the person really wants, until the “real thing” comes along) is no picnic either. Being single is infinitely preferable.
Question: on that video talked about in the previous thread….am I the only person who thought that when the brunette said, “we’re waiting for a friend”, actually meant what she said?
“How do you get this? I’m sorry, but I tend to not wear my heart out on my sleeves, how does that mean I’m not willing to trust someone to tell me the truth, ever? I don’t trust all people.”
Sam,
You stated that people don’t directly communicate or honestly communicate. You have also insinuated repeatedly that women aren’t usually honest about their desires. In essence, you are accusing the average woman of being a liar. I’m not going to have any real communication with a man who believes that I can’t be trusted to honestly communicate with him quite simply because I’m not going to communicate with him at all. If I have reason to believe that he doesn’t trust me to tell him how I feel – and that he isn’t going to believe what I do say when I say it – I’m going to arch my eyebrows at him and tell him to fuck off.
Question: on that video talked about in the previous thread….am I the only person who thought that when the brunette said, “we’re waiting for a friendâ€, actually meant what she said?
That was actually my take, while watching the video. On weighing the alternatives, after the discussion, I’d say:
1) Most likely take: they were waiting for a friend (and she didn’t want to talk).
2) Distinct possibility, but not the most likely one: There wasn’t any friend coming, but she was using that line to get rid of him (because she didn’t want to talk with him).
3) Really, really unlikely possibility, that I’ve never personally known a woman to actually do, but hey, women vary, so maybe he’s hit on the weird and unusual woman who actually does do this: She was using the line as some sort of dominance, “see if the guy cares enough to push through my resistance” test.
Sam: Look, I can’t relate to anything you have said in this thread at all. It sounds like you are talking about dating like it is on tv shows and not what real people are like at all. Seriously.
I’m reading the other women on this thread (at least I *think* they are all women, sorry I’m mistaken) and I’m nodding along the whole time. It all rings true or at least mostly true to me. When you talk about how women are and what they like I feel like you are talking about aliens. I don’t know what else to say about it.
I do not have the opinion that most people lie about their sexual adventures. Maybe virgins do, I imagine male virgins would be more likely to than women because “purity” is values in women while men are expected to be experienced (not by me personally, I think that’s bullshit, but just by society in general), but virgins are the exception and not the rule. I’m sorry you were raised to have a fucked up view of male sexuality, but that is not the fault of all the women in the world.
Faith already told you at the beginning of this thread to let go of your assumptions and listen to women and I know you explained why that wasn’t going to work for you, but really that just reinforces her point. If you find dating to be difficult and totally unfair, you need new assumptions because the old ones weren’t working for you. I know if I approached dating the way you did I’d find it unfair and frustrating because I’m not the “ideal” woman (and don’t even want to try to become her), so working under the traditional dating techniques I’d probably never get dates who didn’t suck.
But I’ve never had trouble dating. You say “The problem is, again, that people (including women!) don’t usually openly communicate in a mutually accessible way what they really want but what they think they are expected to say,” and I don’t have that experience at all. I find that if I am honest about who I am and what I like in other people and I’m actually meeting new people something will happen eventually. That’s pretty much true for everyone I have ever known, save the a few that are unlucky by chance.
For all the advantages that attractiveness, wealth and wit afford the blessed in the dating world, I still just don’t find a lack of them to be truly prohibitive for getting dates. One might have to wait longer and approach dating in a more unconventional way, but it happens. I know you said that you are surrounded with unhappy singles, but if that’s the case you need to meet some new people.
Lynn and La Lubu — you’re smart!
I gotta say, having done design and ethnography and software requirements and stuff, it’s an ungendered truism that what people *say* they want isn’t the whole story. It’s not that people are lying, it’s that there’s much that “goes without saying” or that people don’t think about consciously, and that you have to interpret from closely observing what they actually do. Or better yet, participating. I mean, you also have to ask, and really listen to what people say, but probably a useful supplement would be to go out with some of your single female friends and be their wingman. So um, maybe a copy of Lofland and Lofland’s “Analyzing Social Settings” would be useful, huh?
Incidentally, when “I’m waiting for a friend” didn’t get the point across, I’ve literally said “And I’m not looking to make any new ones.” That still hasn’t always worked.
Oh, and @Gonz — agency and structure coexist. I don’t think either one or the other can give you a 100% explanation of social anything.
A couple of old posts on PUAs from Thinking Girl:
thinkinggirl.wordpress.com/2007/01/29/professional-pick-up-artists-run-woman-tricking-business-to-help-guys-get-laid/
thinkinggirl.wordpress.com/2007/06/22/pua-continued/#comment-42655
oops. that should have been:
thinkinggirl.wordpress.com/2007/06/22/pua-continued/
“It sounds like you are talking about dating like it is on tv shows and not what real people are like at all. Seriously.”
Or like it is in books written by men who are basically misogynists who just want to make a buck preying on men’s entitlement and insecurities.
“it’s an ungendered truism that what people *say* they want isn’t the whole story.”
It isn’t a truism at all. It might be – and likely is true – of many people. It is not true of -people-.
Mythago –
It’s OK if she isn’t dumb.
Faith, I imagine you might be able to find an exception to that truism, but there’s good reasons that qualitative social analysis depends heavily on participant-observation and not just interviews. By no means am I claiming that everyone lies. I want to be clear about that. I still think it’s really important to ask and listen. But there’s a lot to interfere with perfect verbal communication — do we have the same vocabulary? do I trust the person who’s asking me? do I even know how to articulate everything that I find attractive? I mean… at 29 I know that I can articulate it better than I could at 22, mostly because I observe myself and my own relationship successes and failures.
At any rate, it is totally lame and unacceptable for people to say “women don’t really know what they find attractive, or if they do they’re lying to you, so I’ll tell you what they’re into”. But it’s a different thing to say that a lot of what people know and do is not easily articulated verbally. I can tell you’re getting the former read off of some of the comments here, but not everyone (I scrolled up far enough to read Jebedee’s comment at least) is saying that.
@samseaborn, something you said way way upthread about the market analogy and reproductive urges vs. love-and-stuff. I look at even casual sexual encounters as a sort of short-term relationship, so the market analogy still doesn’t work for me there. I still have to actually like the person holistically, even if we’re just hanging out for an evening, so if I somehow had the “currency” to attract 90% of the men at the bar, that would be of very dubious benefit to me because I view it entirely as a matter of compatibility or magnetism rather than currency. That is, if a person is attractive to me, there’s a better chance that I am also attractive to them, because the attraction is a relational quality (compatibility) rather than something inherent to either of us. Whether we’re compatible for a night or a year doesn’t hugely change how it works for me.
metamanda: It’s not that people are lying, it’s that there’s much that “goes without saying†or that people don’t think about consciously, and that you have to interpret from closely observing what they actually do. Or better yet, participating. I mean, you also have to ask, and really listen to what people say, but probably a useful supplement would be to go out with some of your single female friends and be their wingman
Yes, this! That’s why I like Jebedee’s response about the “checklist”; some aspects of “attractiveness” exist primarily in conjunction with other aspects—and isn’t apparent on “paper”—only in practice.
metamanda, I like your emphasis on ‘what goes unsaid’. I know that I take for granted that most people will assume that I mean what I say. That’s part of why I react so strongly to the assumption that I don’t actually mean what I say; that it’s just feminine coyness, or shyness, or “nice” behavior, what-have-you. Makes me want to shake ‘em, say, “Look at me, dammit! I’m a midwesterner! I’m Sicilian-American! I’m a blue-collar woman! I wear my heart on my sleeve! I say what I mean and I mean what I say, for crissakes! Get with the program!!” LOL! Because seriously, I think I provide plenty of “tells”, as they say in poker. To the point of….the only way I could make my thoughts and feelings more blatantly obvious is if I carried a big red wagon behind me with a flashing neon sign announcing my intentions.
But as I said on the previous thread—it’s obvious to me, because I was raised amongst people who used an intense, extended-version of nonverbal communication. I thought people who didn’t communicate in that manner were either shy, or consciously holding back—playing tight to their chest, as it were. It didn’t occur to me that it could be a foreign language. I thought everyone knew how to “speak” it, or at least interpret it.
Which is why you end up with this:
Faith: Or like it is in books written by men who are basically misogynists who just want to make a buck preying on men’s entitlement and insecurities.
And those books contain just enough truth to make it saleable—the rest is “truthiness”, just as in the get-rich-quick schemes and lose-40-pounds-in-30-days schemes and flip-real-estate-with-no-money-down schemes.
Where I think most of that PUA stuff is completely wrong is in the interpretation of nonverbal communication—that stuff is highly situational, and wholly dependent on whose nonverbal communication it is. I mean hell, awards are given out to actors who are able to embody the nuances (including the non-and-semi-verbal language) of the characters they play—it’s difficult work! So, generalizations have major flaws already built in.
I wonder about Eurosabra generalizing from his own experience. I mean, he himself states that he has a neuro-atypical mode of thinking, that specifically interferes with his ability to communicate in a way that neuro-typical people communicate. So I don’t see how he can really complain about women who are strangers to him not acting in a way that is conducive to him understanding them, when they have NO REASON TO KNOW that he is not typical in his communication style/abilities.
If you are not typical in a way that is a significant barrier to communication, I would think it’s reasonable to think that women would need to get to know you better before being able to appropriately read and react to YOUR communications, and there’s no reason to expect strangers in a cafe or bar to be able to do this.
If you miss women’s subtle signs of interest, it is entirely appropriate for the woman in question to interpret that as non-reciprocation and back off/give up. If you want to prevent that, you will have to develop a way of alerting them to your Asperger’s and advising them of how you communicate. They are not communicating “wrong” by being subtle. And I can think of a number of ways to say “I’m not really good at picking up on social cues, so I appreciate it when people are willing to be really direct with me, and don’t get offended by things that others might consider so blunt as to be rude.” Of course, you have to actually not be offended by women who are then blunt to the point that others might consider rude, whether to state their interest or non-interest in you.
My experience with dating was that I was most attractive to women when I was most together in myself. And I had disastrous sh*t happen to me when I was in my death spiral phases. Maybe that’s only for neurotic freaks like me, but if you subscribe to the idea of “love your neighbor as yourself” you’ve got to learn how to love, accept, and build up yourself before you can love your neighbor. Hard work for us self-proclaimed nice guys. There’s always a tension between irrational exuberance about our wonderfulness and despair about our unworthiness.
Jebedee – and saying “but this has worked for me” is different than talking about what women ‘really’ want, or suggesting they’re really liars or idiots whose stated preference can be treated as pro forma.
On the Asperger’s issue – you know, it’s a problem, but it’s also not an excuse. People with Asperger’s can indeed learn to notice and interpret social cues and behavior. It’s just not intuitive, and has to be learned, the way times tables are learned.
mythago – I agree with you and metamanda that it’s insulting and incorrect to say that women either routinely lie or are clueless about what they find attractive.
However, if one says that women’s own stated preferences should not be the exclusive guide or necessarily the best guide to what they find attractive, then I don’t think that implies that women are all lying/clueless. I’m not certain it’s a statement I agree with, but, for the reasons I gave in the earlier post, I wouldn’t be too surprised if it were true of both women and men, nor feel insulted if it were said to be true of men.
(that is, at least as regards superficial “initial meeting” attraction).
I do not think it is a matter of women lying. It seems more like a matter of women giving out mixed signals, false signals, miscommunicating and failing to communicate. I think those things happen because of women’s presumptions about men and their presumptions about how their own cues and responses are interpreted by men. We all assume that our cues and responses are understood, and sometimes they are.
Often times, however, they are not understood as we intend. I think it would helpful and insightful if women tried to understand what it is like to be in the receiving end of their responses instead of seeing it only from their own perspectives. Listening is a mutual activity. It cannot be one-sided, nor is it fair to place all the expectations and requirements on one group.
Just as it is a good idea for men to listen to women, it is a good idea for women to listen to men. If men are telling women that your responses, cues or what have you are not being perceived as you intend and that your advice tends not to work, it would be to everyone’s benefit to acknowledge that.
ElleDee,
thank you for your concern, I’m serious. I’m sorry you seem to have read my statements completely wrong – if you’re interested in a longer version of my personal story, please check the last thread – “Feminism made women too picky…”, La Lubu already asked and I replied in detail. That said,
“I’m sorry you were raised to have a fucked up view of male sexuality, but that is not the fault of all the women in the world.”
And I never said so. I don’t blame all women, I don’t blame all of feminism. If you’re reading this into my statements that would, I’d say, prove my point that we don’t always easily understand what someone else is saying….
“but really that just reinforces her point. If you find dating to be difficult and totally unfair, you need new assumptions because the old ones weren’t working for you.”
I don’t – anymore. As I said, these days 8.5-9 out of ten women I approach are interested in continuing our interaction in some form. I met three women I did not know tonight, one of which was in a relationship, one of which I will see again (socially, not on an explicit date, but that’s also why there was no need for a date) tomorrow evening, and one who was sad I won’t be able to make it to her reading on Friday evening.
I’m not complaining because I can’t get laid. It wasn’t women’s fault that I couldn’t get laid, but my personal experience does give me some probably rare insight into some social and psychological processes.
Metamanda, La Lubu,
“It’s not that people are lying, it’s that there’s much that “goes without saying†or that people don’t think about consciously, and that you have to interpret from closely observing what they actually do. Or better yet, participating. I mean, you also have to ask, and really listen to what people say, but probably a useful supplement would be to go out with some of your single female friends and be their wingman”
Completely agree. And I do that, by that way, rather regularly. Problem is though, when I’m out with my female friends I tend to concentrate my attention on them and they usually concentrate their attention on me – this is great for bonding and for increasing our mutual understanding (including even some of their sexual dreams and fantasies) as well as gaining more insight into “what men/women want”, whenever generalizations seem possible, or useful. With most of my female friends I do have the kind of shared vocabulary and level of trust that this conversation, particularly the one with Faith, is partly lacking. But somehow, “winging” my female friends or being “winged” by them doesn’t really work as advertised,…
more tomorrow…
Just as it is a good idea for men to listen to women, it is a good idea for women to listen to men.
Of course. But part of we’re hearing, at least here, is that some men are going to choose to ignore what we’re saying because it doesn’t serve their goals.
Cool!
By the way, I imagine if a woman posted here that “you guys are all liars, we women all know what you really want is a dumb blonde with big tits,†the guys would properly be up in arms about being told that what they claim they want is a lie;
I’d more likely assume you’re coming from a position of what the “default” man means; as an Asian (sort of) American I’m more than likely excluded from that default.
That being said, I think each woman’s different so there isn’t really a one-size fits all approach.
@metamanda
I somehow had the “currency†to attract 90% of the men at the bar, that would be of very dubious benefit to me because I view it entirely as a matter of compatibility or magnetism rather than currency.
I’m a little confused here. If you view it as compatibility/magnetism, doesn’t attraction still matter? As an extreme, if you could attract 0% of the men at the bar, would you be unable to have any compatibility at all?
Or are you viewing attraction as a separate component from compatibility? Rereading the comment it seems that you do separate the two.
@La Lubu
looking too “ethnic†(not the “girl-next-door†type. I like to quip that I’m the girl next door if you grew up in New Jersey, LOL!),
“too ethnic”? Doesn’t that assume that the people who are thinking that are not ethnic at all?
I second the commenter (sorry, I´m having trouble finding the comment again in order to quote the commenter) who suggested taking classes, joining an organization. Finding someone through common interests is much easier than trying to meet someone in a bar or on the street.
I agree that it’s much easier – but on the other hand, Hugo mentioned (and I’m with him on this) that there are just some activities and interests that are heavily gender-skewed. And forcing someone to go to an organization they don’t like to meet people is just as bad.
I’d have to say it’s hit or miss for me. I did mountainloads of extracirriculars in college, even outside of engineering (I know a lot of friends who went this route and succeeded, just not me – but I had a lot of strange circumstances anyway and it wasn’t like I failed completely). It can get pretty dramatic because engineering in my alma mater was very close-knit – your classmates were literally yours for the whole of your college life, which is a rarity in college life.
Because I can mimic it well enough for the OUTGOING message that what I’m really miffed about is the paucity of positive responses to normal flirting behavior FROM ME, and the fact that the positive responses are veiled, inchoate, and positioned for maximum deniability when they do arrive. This seems to crop up as a response to my autism in the way that sexual hesitancy in my partners does, basically, the fact that everything has to be spelled out is used as an excuse for Antioch Rules and for some reason that level of explicit consent takes all the “sexiness” out of the exchange, and when I ASK I’m refused, whereas, if I intuited the proper escalation, it might be viewed as a kind of “standard operating procedure” for typicals. So I wind up having very little sex at all and only with women who can voice proper consent, a small group of disappointed women who wanted me to read signals but refused when asked or refused to make them explicit, and a vast mountain of easily readable totally negative responses.
Having read Temple Grandin on autistic women’s experiences, I can see why much more is at stake–they can’t intuit signals, so they don’t know when they are sending signals that can be mis-read as interest, sexual escalation etc, and they don’t know when predators are about to rape them. I am getting the inverse/reverse of that, and it sucks, although much less is at stake.
Jay: Doesn’t that assume that the people who are thinking that are not ethnic at all?
Exactly! That’s why it’s in quotes. They don’t read themselves as “ethnic”, but they do me, LOL! I think what they mean is, that I would be incompatible with them because my ways of expression/manner of being doesn’t fit with theirs, and that it is connected intimately with my ethnic background. If they feel that way—they’re right. And who wants to go out with someone who reads you as a stereotype (whether based on ethnicity or some other trait) anyway?
Eurosabra, I don’t deny you’re frustrated, but I think that you are asking a lot more of these women than you are willing to put forth yourself. First of all, not everyone is going to be attracted to you, physically, or personality-wise. Personally, even if I knew that a partner’s “blunt” manner was the result of Asperger’s, I don’t think I could be in a relationship where I felt criticized all the time. I happen to be a person who is pretty hard on myself to begin with, and being with a partner who speaks to me in a way that, in my family and usual experience, denotes criticism would be untenable, even if it was a matter of misunderstanding rather than actual contempt.
You’re expecting women to easily change their whole manner of communicating for you, and you’re expecting some certain number or percentage to do so. I’m sorry you have a personality/physical characteristic that makes it harder to connect with the opposite sex than it would be without that characteristic. But EVERYONE has those characteristics, to different degrees. EVERYONE has characteristics that make them more appealing and some that make them less appealing to most people. And there are people out there who are not put off by the specific characteristics that many find unappealing in any one individual. They just take longer and more effort to find.
In sum, fine, it sucks. You can be upset about it, or you can work with what you’ve got and congratulate yourself for doing as good of a job as you are and appreciate the people who are willing to go out of their way for you and rejoice in finding the people who find that actually, they don’t have to go out of their way for you because they are fine with that communication style.
Happy people are not happy because other people give them everything they want. Happy people are happy because they appreciate what they have.
what I’m really miffed about is the paucity of positive responses to normal flirting behavior FROM ME, and the fact that the positive responses are veiled, inchoate, and positioned for maximum deniability when they do arrive
As Emily already pointed out, the ‘paucity of positive responses’ may have absolutely nothing to do with ASD.
And another feature of ASD, as I’m sure I don’t have to tell you, is misconstruing other people’s motivations. You’re assuming that these women are acting in a dishonest and unfair way – look at what you wrote. Of course if you think women are fucking with you on purpose you’re going to feel frustrated. Did it occur to you that perhaps your ASD is not simply making it hard to read the outgoing signal, but leadig you to misinterpret the reasons for it?
“they can’t intuit signals, so they don’t know when they are sending signals that can be mis-read as interest, sexual escalation etc, and they don’t know when predators are about to rape them. I am getting the inverse/reverse of that, and it sucks, although much less is at stake.
”
I suspect that most women do not realize that they are about to get raped until they actually are getting raped. I certainly had no idea that the man that I knew well (I actually thought of him as family) and was hanging out with one night was going to suddenly rip my dress off, throw me down on the bed and jump on top of me. There was no warning. It just happened.
The problem with signals being misread as sexual interest without the woman being aware is also not exclusive to autistic women. This is part of what tickes me off about PUAs. Teaching men that women are signaling sexual interest by doing something as simple as touching our hair, crossing our legs, smiling, and making eye contact is just asking for trouble. Just because I bat my eyelashes does not mean that I want to fuck the man I’m talking to. It could just mean that I have something in my eye. Or maybe it means that I have sensitive eyes and have to blink a lot. Who the fuck knows? This is why I am firm about -verbal- communication being a necessity in social interactions.
Again – apparently this can’t be said enough – if you want to know how a woman feels: ASK. Let her tell you explicitly before making any assumptions about sexual interest.
I’ve been in a sexual relationship with a man for over 5 years. He -still- checks my consent -constantly-. He still asks if I want him to fuck me. He still asks if I want him to kiss me. He still asks if I want him to do anything at all sexual with him -before- we do anything. It is this level of respect that has kept me with him this long. Because he does -not- assume and he does not try to manipulate the situation by refusing to listen to what I’m saying in hopes of getting something out of me that he wants that perhaps I don’t.
Long comment made in advance of reading the comment thread.
I think that’s true, but that still favors the conventionally attractive extrovert. A fellow might have a realistic (rather than inflated) sense of his worth, and believe sincerely that while far from perfect, he might be a very good boyfriend because he happens to be, well, a pretty cool dude. But other people are not mind-readers. Women, who have been given good reason to be suspicious of male advances, cannot be expected to discern the “good guy†from the “creep†at first glance. Telling the hot from the not is considerably easier.
This, though I think the “good guy”/”creep” dichotomy misses the point. It’s not about “I should get laid because I’m not a creep,” it’s about seeing a standard out there that seems both counterproductive and unavoidable.
I love the person I’ve become, and from everything I can tell I would and do make a good partner for a lot of people. However, I’m *not* a conventionally attractive extrovert, and most of the qualities I like about myself aren’t really the sort that are going to encourage a romantic/sexual relationship (the ones that would are not as obvious).
And while there’s some justification to the accusations that a lot of guys in this situation hold that standard themselves, it needs to be pointed out that an individual, male or female, who decides that conventional attractiveness isn’t important doesn’t automatically get treated reciprocally; most people still go by looks.
was celibate, both physically and emotionally, for nearly six months — which for me was the longest such period since high school. I was rather proud of the post, but was ashamed when I realized how much unconscious privilege undergirded it. For me, after all, not being sexual with other people was a choice that had to be made; for some of both sexes, it isn’t perceived as a choice.
I think there’s a fundamental disconnect when it comes to these experiences, something that I tend to oversimplify into the “sexual haves and sexual have-nots” when it’s a bit more of a continuum than that. But I think that a lot of people just don’t get it, and that leads to a lot of resentment and accusation.
I can assure them that they aren’t alone; those same feelings of being unwanted are found in women.
I understand the need for perspective, and not thinking that men aren’t the only ones facing hardship when it comes to dating, but I think it’s an oversimplification to call it the same. We wouldn’t call the pressure to look conventionally attractive the same just because both men and women get that pressure; it’s highly gendered.
A young man who isn’t conventionally attractive can, at least, be encouraged to continue to work on sincere and effective ways to approach women; women who are not perceived as conventionally attractive are simply told to remain sexually invisible — or risk the ridicule that is far worse than rejection.
Honestly, while I can’t say this doesn’t happen, this comes across as unrealistic and patronizing. It always comes across to me as “since you’re not conventionally attractive, you must accept that ‘effective’ means ‘have a good chance of someday finding a partner,’ whereas for conventionally attractive me it means reliably finding a partner in a relatively short time.”
And whether ridicule is worse than ubiquitous rejection seems to be a “grass is greener” question that’s largely unanswerable.
La Lubu:
I see more perfectly attractive men who just don’t know it—don’t have confidence in their appearance.
This may be the case sometimes. I know I’ve seen plenty of women who don’t know how attractive they are, because their sense of “conventional attractiveness” is rather narrow. That said, they still get a lot of attention.
The “men underestimate their own attractiveness” argument seems to be the same as the “nice clothes and a shower” argument – that any guy is that far away from being attractive. It’s a nice thought, but it’s just not true in a lot of cases (and I suspect it leads to the “it must be because I’m not doing/saying the right things” trap that the PUA “gurus” prey on). The folks who say this, like the Nice Guys who say that women have it easier because they’re generally more attractive, have a specific set of people in mind, and habitually fail to consider
And people’s preferences differ, and the degree to which they think those preferences are important differ too. But I think the difference between Hugo thinking six months is a long dry spell and the guy who thinks six years is par for the course is a little bit more than just Hugo being such an affable guy.
Again, you’re selling the “all are equal but some are more” perspective, which isn’t really helpful from where I’m sitting. I would say that the problem is somewhat as JFP Bookworm has described, although PUAs would be crass about it and say that low-testosterone low-dominance men whose livelihoods are dependent on an institutional support network (MSLIS) are simply not as exciting to women as testosterone-soaked bikers and rock stars. It’s a question of mismatching to the extent that subcultures like each other, however, the different experiences of men’s and women’s experiences in Study Abroad programs tend to remind me that men’s attractiveness is achievement-based, which is culture-and-context specific, while vagina-bearing-humans are (disproportionately?) popular everywhere.
I don’t think that the women involved are being deliberately cruel, it’s just that I’m (apparently) not the Bright Shiny Thing they’re drawn to in a place where style, geography, and youth conspire to create a certain subculture. Getting past that involves more than effective communication strategies for dealing with ASD.
I don’t know how to block quote but re:
“It always comes across to me as ‘since you’re not conventionally attractive, you must accept that ‘effective’ means ‘have a good chance of someday finding a partner,’ whereas for conventionally attractive me it means reliably finding a partner in a relatively short time.’”
I agree that people who are less conventionally attractive must accept that “effective” does not mean “reliably finding a partner in a relatively short time.” HOWEVER – I think that anyone, even the conventionally attractive people, who has standards for what they are looking for in a partner is not going to be able to “reliably find a partner in a relatively short time.”
I mean, if you’re attractive and you don’t care who you sleep with, then yes, you can probably get laid in a relatively short period of time. Is THAT what you’re envious of? Is that what you want people to sympathize with you not being able to get? If that’s all you want – HIRE A PROFESSIONAL.
If you’re talking about relationships, then even the conventionally attractive have to wait and meet and sort and get to know people until they find someone that they are COMPATIBLE with. And maybe they find that the people who go out with them are not particularly interested in who they are as a person, or in being in an emotionally deep relationship, because they are just attracted to their outside.
I guess my refrain has become – everyone has their srengths, weaknesses, gifts and burdens. Being a happy well-adjusted person requires that you know yourself, and work as best you can with what you’ve got. No one is ENTITLED to be blissfully paired. A lot of it is LUCK. Luck to be born with good looks, well, I guess you could see that as part of it. I tend to think of it more as luck to stumble accross the right person at the right time, when you are both single and open to a relationship and able to recognize a good thing when you see it.
Again, I have sympathy for people who find it hard to meet people. But I cannot abide the sense of entitlement. You know, some people are smarter than others. And some people have an easier time getting jobs than others. And some people are better at standardized tests than others. And some people are more charming than others. And some people are more conventionally attractive than others.
You are not ENTITLED to the same access to relationships that other people have. You are not ENTITLED to control other people, or to demand that other people change so that you get more of what you want. If you’re unhappy, the only person whose actions you can change is you. All of the “women” out there who are perfectly happy going about their lives and communicating as they always have and who aren’t having a hard time finding good, decent guys to date have no obligation to change to suit you. The women out there who are UNHAPPY because they can’t find a dating relationship that suits them should also realize that the only person whose actions they can change is their own.
As far as feminism is concerned, I think that the role of feminism is to encourage space for both sexes to enact the variety of traits that individuals of those sexes have. In other words, as assertive women are less stigmatized for being assertive, less assertive men may have more options. And that’s good for everyone. But honestly, those kinds of societal shifts are not going to happen fast enough to solve the problem of the currently unhappy. It will improve the world that our children and youth groupies and what have you live in. It may improve your own prospects in 10 years should you remain single. But it’s not going to make “women” as a group suddenly act differently toward you.
If you want to be happier – change yourself. If you want other people not to feel your particular unhappiness in the future, then working to change the norms that restrict our actions and communications in the dating realm based on sex/gender might help. But blaming women is no help on either front.
“are simply not as exciting to women as testosterone-soaked bikers and rock stars.”
I’ll be sure to tell my pacifist, buddhist, mostly vegan (he eats a bit of seafood from time to time), quite male partner that he is not really exciting or sexually attractive. I’m sure he’ll find that terribly amusing.
Again, I think treating it as a simple issue of entitlement is a red herring, but it’s a typical one. As JFP noted, you’re relying on a positivist, feel-good notion about the malleability of the self, whereas I would argue that it also enshrines women’s preferences and interests above those of men as untouchable, not subject to critique.
Faith,
Anecdote !=data, except when it’s my anecdote.
Eurosabra:
although PUAs would be crass about it and say that low-testosterone low-dominance men whose livelihoods are dependent on an institutional support network (MSLIS) are simply not as exciting to women as testosterone-soaked bikers and rock stars.
Not only would they be crass, they would (IME anyway) be wrong.
This is just more of that trap that says that men are all fungible in terms of actual attractiveness, which leads to them coming up with ridiculous theories about why there’s orders-of-magnitude differences in the ability of various men to find what they’re looking for.
Emily:
Simply saying “it’s not easy for Hottie McHotterson to find twue wuv either” ignores the fact that “not easy” means something very different for him. Hence, “relatively short time.” Maybe it takes him several years–during which our have-not counterexample has maybe one or two people expressing any interest at all.
Is it really entitlement to be resentful of the fact that one’s consistently overlooked? No, nobody’s obligated to find me attractive, but I’m not going to say it wouldn’t be nice if it weren’t so damn rare. It’s not the fault of any particular person; we can’t control who we’re attracted to (though I do think plenty of folks of all genders are too fixated on looks), but it still hurts in a way that “well, at least I’m smart” doesn’t make up for–or invalidate.
(Additionally, it’s a cop-out to say that more casual relationships don’t count, and so the folks who want them but can’t find them shouldn’t want that or shouldn’t mind or should just shell out for a poor approximation.)
And who wants to go out with someone who reads you as a stereotype (whether based on ethnicity or some other trait) anyway?
Good, this allows me to segue properly. Thanks.
The answer is “people who think the alternative is worse.” Take a look at the comments for http://www.hyphenmagazine.com/blog/2009/05/kate-gosselins-asian-fetish.html
It was talking about that exact issue from the view of a question posed in the Jon and Kate plus 8 series – Kate referred to her kids as “China dolls” and the Hyphen editor thinks that Kate is objectifying Jon and the kids.
However a lot of Asian American males wrote in that thread and said, that was okay. A lot of this is because of male privilege – males don’t get objectified day in and day out so they’re inclined to think it’s “better” – but part of it is because their normal experience is the total opposite – invisibility and ridicule.
The ridicule by some Asian American women who declare that they won’t date Asian men for (insert stereotypical reason here) sometimes causes Asian men to lash out misogynistically as well. Of course, the system is more to blame just like it is in the general case.
“Is it really entitlement to be resentful of the fact that one’s consistently overlooked?”
Well, I would answer that I think resentfulness is counterproductive. If your resentfulness leads to contempt for a category of people (women) and/or leads you to believe that that group (women) has some responsibility for seeing to it that you do not continue to be overlooked then YES, that’s entitlement.
And really, what else can you do with resentfulness? You can accept it and be resigned to it, or you can persevere and try to overcome it. There are plenty of women out there who feel similarly overlooked. And there are plenty of women out there who are persevering in the face of being constantly told they’re not attractive. Honestly, resentfulness just makes you that much more unattractive than you were to begin with to anyone with a healthy self-esteen.
Also, it seems to me that the men in these discussions complain that “women” overlook them, but they don’t seem to see all the men out there who “overlook” AND HARASS women who are unattractive.
This is not a “problem with women” – perhaps it is a problem with our society’s emphasis on looks in general. If so, have at it railing against society’s emphasis on looks and the status that one gains by having a conventionally attractive mate. But the male complainers on these threads are not complaining about society’s emphsis on physical beauty. They’re complaining about “women” as a group not liking them, based on particular women they’ve known, and who knows what particular characteristics those women had, or how attractive or not they were/are.
And Eurosabra – if the “self” is not malleable – then why are you expecting women to change for you? Why should women be willing or able to change to suit you when you seem to think you are incapable of changing yourself?
As for “enshrining women’s preferences over men’s” – there are plenty of men getting along just fine who don’t see a need for women to change their dating behavior at all. Again, this is not a “men” v. “women” issue. You are taking “me” and turning it into “men” and you are taking “the women who don’t seem to want me” and turning it into “women.” I’m not saying you’re the ONLY person in the world that feels this way, but who says you’re representative of all men?
“are simply not as exciting to women as testosterone-soaked bikers and rock stars.â€
Are you kidding me? The purchase of a motorcycle or a guitar increases the testosterone level? Sounds like all you have to do is break out your wallet and get the right toys, then!
Ahem. Again, if you have to be an “Alpha Male” to have regular dates, then at least 85% of the men I see must be Alpha Males—which would make the term meaningless, would it not? (and don’t get me started on the average age of bikers—age having a negative correlation with testosterone).
Eurosabra, in light of this part of Hugo’s post:
A young man who isn’t conventionally attractive can, at least, be encouraged to continue to work on sincere and effective ways to approach women; women who are not perceived as conventionally attractive are simply told to remain sexually invisible — or risk the ridicule that is far worse than rejection.
Do you honestly believe that physically unattractive women have an easier time finding partners than physically unattractive men? Do you think adopting compensatory characteristics (being “smart”, talented, athletic, congenial, outgoing, etc.) work better for unattractive women than they do for unattractive men? Do you think the average man’s standard for female beauty is lower than the average women’s standard for male beauty?
And…in your locale, L.A., does the male part of the average male-female couple tend to be better looking than the woman?
Emily,
as for the “hire a professional” – this is only partly about sex. In all those years in which I wanted to have sex but was too afraid of being sexual I occasionally thought about “solving” my problem with professional help. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. Because sexuality is a “wanted” issue for me. I would need to feel desired, not just horny. So I can enthusiastically agree with jfpbookworm about the amount to which this lack of being desired physically is hurting – again, my first kiss was so much more important to me than my graduate degree.
That said, I would agree with you that very unattractive women will have a harder time to overcome their difficulties than socially unskilled men, and they will feel similar issues. But the lack of comprehesion that some women in this thread are displaying indicates, in my opinion, that they are probably not aware of such cases, which would probably indicate that such cases of female unattractiveness are rare (or that the women aren’t communicating their problems effectively, even to their friends).
they are probably not aware of such cases
Sam, I do struggle with this, and ’twas never my intention to be unsympathetic. Relationships always came fairly easily to me
The larger picture does demonstrate that the vast majority of folks do find partners and do marry. That the road is longer for some folks does suggest some form of a learning curve, but I do not question that expectations and rituals have changed wildly since the boys first started knocking on my door. (And again, there is that whole insular rural thing.)
Still, I wonder about the whole “wanted” angle. “Wanted” in what way? Let’s face it…physical “wanting” is invariably about physical attributes?
So while it does seem to me that you are looking to be wanted for the whole package, the end game is sex absent the strings that come with wanting the whole package.
So yeah…I’m confused.
Emily,
I don’t expect women to change to suit me, I am in fact displaying a near-sociopathic level of disassociation from my normal self as I attempt to become a “party guy”, the type of man “party girls” want. I think the spectrum could make my “self” super-malleable, at least behaviorally, and I was pretty much the happy-go-lucky naïf in my younger years, something to which I’d like to return.
La Lubu,
There is also the minor matter of remaining congruent with the persona, so a guitar is useless without a club at which to appear onstage, the point is the *dominant position*, not the accouterments. A small man on a big Harley is a rolling Napoleon complex, and nobody makes a macho Vespa. Besides which, my ribs remember my last accident on a borrowed bike too well
. Perhaps the real cure is to “be one’s [best] self.”
I believe that physically unattractive women have an easier time finding partners than physically unattractive men, that compensatory qualities are irrelevant because of men’s absolute fixation on looks, but that the male libido is so powerful that (as we have seen historically) 80% of women, across-the-board, find mates. The average man’s standard for female beauty is that sex is better than no sex, period.
Actually, FWIW, for me, personally, ability to sing and play the guitar makes you sexier regardless of whether you have a stage available to perform. On the other hand, other things work as well for increasing your sexiness to me, and all of these are pretty much idiosyncratic Lynn-preferences, anyway.
Speaking of idiosyncratic Lynn-preferences …
However a lot of Asian American males wrote in that thread and said, that was okay.
Oddly, out of the three whole guys that I can recall succeeding at picking me up in some public space or other (bar, bookstore, whatever), one was Taiwanese and another was Chinese-American. I suspect this is actually random coincidence, but, if not, well, actually if not I’m not sure what it says, but there it is.
I am in fact displaying a near-sociopathic level of disassociation from my normal self as I attempt to become a “party guyâ€, the type of man “party girls†want.
So you’re being as unlike your real self as is possible, and you don’t understand why that might affect whether women are attracted to you?
it needs to be pointed out that an individual, male or female, who decides that conventional attractiveness isn’t important doesn’t automatically get treated reciprocally
Absolutely. On the other hand, there is a certain amount of eye-rolling due a person who demands that everyone else ignore attractiveness in a partner.
I believe that physically unattractive women have an easier time finding partners than physically unattractive men, that compensatory qualities are irrelevant because of men’s absolute fixation on looks, but that the male libido is so powerful that (as we have seen historically) 80% of women, across-the-board, find mates. The average man’s standard for female beauty is that sex is better than no sex, period.
So much to unload. Where to begin?
Are you are claiming that physically unattractive women can attract somewhat less physically unattractive men because men will bone anything? WTH?
Authenticity doesn’t help much, really, because I live a fairly unexciting life, outside of the life of the mind. I can’t tell you how many self-admitted geeks don’t want to deal with someone who works from home as a translator/proofreader/lobbyist, suffers from chronic illness, and doesn’t have a car because the vision problems related to that illness make night-time driving impossible. (My other car was a Vespa, until I borrowed a friend’s Ducati and got into trouble.) Add to that the fact that I inherited an elder-care situation in the apt, and I look like the Israeli version of the 40-year-old Virgin, if not the Parents’ Basement loser. (If I don’t take care of my Dad, he goes to a home.)
And yes, straight men are less demanding of their partners’ physical types, although that may be my Middle Eastern cultural bias showing through.
So Eurosabra…like Sam…you are not just looking for casual sex. You are looking for someone who can also help you carry some pretty serious baggage? (And of course, looking hot while she does it?)
Euro…the second you lose the notion that your overall social status will be enhanced by the hotness of your woman…the faster you will find the woman who wants to be with you.
Ah, actually, two of the three women I’ve dated most recently have been somewhat-differently-abled. For some reason, those are the ones who didn’t RUN AWAY immediately. And yes, I have a great deal of baggage, and no, I’m uninterested in someone’s hawtness as a measure of social status–I’m curious as to what it would be like to date someone conventionally hot for a change, I guess. Of course, the fact that there might not be much intellectual compatibility in all likelihood will take care of that by itself.
For some reason, those are the ones who didn’t RUN AWAY immediately.
Why is that…do you think?
Because those aspects of my situation didn’t represent some undefined, unknown and unknowable fear, but something concrete.
ahunt,
sorry, but your reply to me left me as confused as my comment apparently left you -
“Still, I wonder about the whole “wanted†angle. “Wanted†in what way? Let’s face it…physical “wanting†is invariably about physical attributes?
So while it does seem to me that you are looking to be wanted for the whole package, the end game is sex absent the strings that come with wanting the whole package.”
What do you mean? No, I don’t think physical wantedness is invariably about aesthetics. I may physically want a woman even though I find another one standing right next to her more aesthetically pleasing. Being wanted means being wanted sexually, not merely aesthetically.
And you completely lost me with respect to the endgame – what do you mean? Sorry, I really don’t get it.
Eurosabra,
“The average man’s standard for female beauty is that sex is better than no sex, period.”
I’m not sure about this. While this is true for not just a few men, I would contend that inexperience and lack of success don’t necessarily lower some men’s visual standards with respect to women, but that their lack of real interaction with women makes them potentially more likely to have unrealistic beauty ideals, be unable to look beyond them, and less able to realize their own “marriage” market value. I’ve met guys who complained about women’s appearances to whom I would have liked to say – “Dude, use a mirror.” Not helpful though, in most cases. It also doesn’t have much to do with “entitlement” in the feminist sense in my opinion, but often rather with a lack of actual physical interaction.
Oh, and I just found this in my twitter feed because the link got 2000 diggs
. No endorsement, not my opinion, but I thought it’s too on-topic to not share.
metacafe.com/watch/2912540/how_to_seduce_a_girl/
Aahm – share for a laugh. Just making sure… And I hope to find enough time over the weekend to summarize my thoughts with respect to this thread and the two previous ones.
I attempt to become a “party guyâ€, the type of man “party girls†want.
Ah, well….not much I can say to that. “Party guy” is the opposite of the sort of man I’m attracted to, so I can’t understand the appeal. No heavy drinking, absolutely no recreational drug use, no philandering, no “star-time” egos, and definitely no stupidity. In my mind, “party guy” equals (stereotypical) “frathouse mentality”. Good luck with that, but I don’t think you’ll like the results (I know, easy for me to say).
The average man’s standard for female beauty is that sex is better than no sex, period.
That’ll work at closing time, for the man. (go back to the past thread and read mythago’s responses if you want a good illustration on how appealing that is for the woman).
Perhaps the real cure is to “be one’s [best] self.â€
Go with that, instead!
And yes, straight men are less demanding of their partners’ physical types, although that may be my Middle Eastern cultural bias showing through.
I can literally count on one hand the number of straight couples I’ve seen in my 42 years of life where the man was better looking than the woman. That leads me to believe that straight men as a rule are more demanding of physical beauty in their partners than straight women.
I can literally count on one hand the number of straight couples I’ve seen in my 42 years of life where the man was better looking than the woman. That leads me to believe that straight men as a rule are more demanding of physical beauty in their partners than straight women.
How much of this, though, has to do with the cultural narrative that beauty is something available to women but not to men? I *can’t* count how many people, including plenty of women who identify as heterosexual, have told me that women are just better looking than men.
If You Wanna Be Happy
Jimmy Soul
May, 1963 LeGrand-S.P.Q.R Records
If you wanna be happy for the rest of your life
Never make a pretty woman your wife
So for my personal point of view
Get an ugly girl to marry you
If you wanna be happy for the rest of your life
Never make a pretty woman your wife
So for my personal point of view
Get an ugly girl to marry you
A pretty woman makes her husband look small
And very often causes his downfall
As soon as he married her and then she starts
To do the things that will break his heart
But if you make an ugly woman your wife
A-you’ll be happy for the rest of your life
An ug-a-ly woman cooks meals on time
And she’ll always give you peace of mind
If you wanna be happy for the rest of your life
Never make a pretty woman your wife
So for my personal point of view
Get an ugly girl to marry you
Don’t let your friends say you have no taste
Go ahead and marry anyway
Though her face is ugly, her eyes don’t match
Take it from me, she’s a better catch
If you wanna be happy for the rest of your life
Never make a pretty woman your wife
So for my personal point of view
Get an ugly girl to marry you
Say man!
Hey baby!
I saw your wife the other day!
Yeah?
Yeah, an’ she’s ug-leeee!
Yeah, she’s ugly, but she sure can cook, baby!
Yeah, alright!
If you wanna be happy for the rest of your life
Never make a pretty woman your wife
So for my personal point of view
Get an ugly girl to marry you
If you wanna be happy for the rest of your life
Never make a pretty woman your wife
So for my personal point of view
Get an ugly girl to marry you
Emily:
Yes, feeling resentful is counterproductive. That doesn’t mean that one doesn’t feel it.
I’ve seen two attitudes toward this. I think the “don’t dwell on what you can’t change, improve what you can” version is healthy. I think the “even if you feel unattractive, for gods’ sake don’t ever acknowledge it, because potential partners will sense that and avoid you” version is not. The former leads to self-improvement; the latter just leads to paranoia and, on a larger level, silence about a common problem.
Beyond that, I think you’re pulling in a lot of strawmen, or lumping very different attitudes together into one easy-to-argue-against position.
Leander,
My most recent significant other was 5’1″ 180lbs, down from 360lbs, which she lost over about 5 years. She told me that she realized she needed a divorce when her Japanese-born husband began singing along to that song every time their local oldies station played it, with the excuse of “practicing his English.”
She listens to classical music exclusively now.
Eurosabra – yes, you have a lot going on in your life. (And I’m sorry about your dad’s situation.) But you’re unloading those things in a lot of places they don’t belong. I have no idea how ‘conventionally hot’ you really are, but being self-employed, having an elder-care situation and chronic illness are going to be baggage in a potential relationship even for a person who is ‘conventionally attractive’ or who doesn’t have an ASD. They would be baggage for a woman in a similar situation.
Not buying the “any sex is better than none”, i.e men will fuck anything with two legs and a hole, argument. Back in the heydey of Usenet I used to counter this argument with “Okay, send me your address and I’ll come by and we’ll fuck.” (Yes, I was younger and crazier then.) You know how many guys accepted? None. Zip. Zero. And this was not because I had announced that I was ugly or overweight or anything that might be offputting. The backpedaling was comical: uhhhh, I didn’t mean me, of course, I simply meant men, in general, well, some men, oh of course I’d take you up on it if I didn’t have a wife/girlfriend…..
And another feature of ASD, as I’m sure I don’t have to tell you, is misconstruing other people’s motivations. You’re assuming that these women are acting in a dishonest and unfair way – look at what you wrote. Of course if you think women are fucking with you on purpose you’re going to feel frustrated. Did it occur to you that perhaps your ASD is not simply making it hard to read the outgoing signal, but leading you to misinterpret the reasons for it?
That may be true to a certain extent. However, what he describes is something that many men without ASD also experience. The underlying assumption you are making is that women are always clear in their messages, never act in a dishonest or unfair way and never fuck with men on purpose. From many men’s perspectives, that simply is not the case. Many of women’s responses and cues are so subtle and so vague that short of actually asking what it is they are trying to convey most men will never have any clue what women intend. Likewise, there are women who flirt with men they have no interest in, women who are interested in men, but pretend not to be, women who feign interest for a period of time and then change their mind, etc.
It is not fair to expect people to be able to interpret one’s responses, particularly if they have no means of knowing what it is you intend. Yet that seems to be the situation at present. Women often are not clear in what their messages and, as has been related by several women on this thread, are willing to let men they clearly are not interested in believe that they are. Again, all the expectations are being placed on men without any consideration for the possibility that it is women’s lack of directness that may be the problem.
Very true, Mythago. It’s just a posture, just manly bluster: “I’m packing so much ravenous manhood that I just gotta get it all the time, I don’t care who it is” When you’re blustering like this you can’t ever indicate your brain has the slightest control. Certainly not your heart.
mythago,
I’d agree with you that men won’t f**k any woman indiscriminately, and I think I said so already, but at the same time I think a lot of men need less convincing to have casual sex than women. There’s quite a bit of data on that, and we can’t just say it doesn’t exist or it’s wrong. It may be wrong, if men lie about their “conquests” and women lie about being never being “conquered” then the data will not tell us the truth, but assuming that it is at least partly compatible with individual perceptions, part of that difference will be slut shaming, part of it risk management, and part of it probably evolutionary baggage (spread the genes with little risk of parental investment attached). This is a complex mix of variables.
Btw, if you (having a compatible ASL) suggested having sex like that I’d definitely say yes, simply to find out if my intuition was right and you were just testing… of course, I never used the usenet.
Women often are not clear in what their messages and, as has been related by several women on this thread, are willing to let men they clearly are not interested in believe that they are.
If you’re referring here to my anecdote about giving men my number that I had no intention of seeing again, I feel compelled to add that one of the men in question had a knife, and the other one was a drunk stranger who had put his arm around my waist unsolicited and announced that he would beat up any other man who paid me such attention. The fact that I’ve sometimes pretended to be compliant in situations where I feared for my physical safety should not be confused with a habit of toying with, lying to, or misleading men under normal social circumstances. I was just saying that what would normally be signs of interest can, in some cases, be bullied out of a woman, and so if women say that certain behavior appears to them to be scary and threatening, it’s not wise to assume that they really like it because it sometimes “works.”
The only situations in which I’ve intentionally let a man believe I was more interested in him than I was were situations where I feared for my physical safety, and said what I thought I needed to in order to extract myself.
There may have been other situations where men found my signals contradictory or confusing, but there have similarly been situations where I felt I was getting mixed signals from men (and, in lesbian contexts, other women). Usually, for men and women alike, such giving of mixed signals isn’t intentional toying or malice.
Perhaps, I don’t know. It is all related to social status, of course, and if a few lucky breaks had gone the other way, and if I weren’t sick, I’d be in a tenure-track academic position at a major American university now. At the very least, I’d be mentally and physically healthy enough to be a very good adjunct. I think I’m the only one of my classmates who is NOT a professor. I wished that I’d learned that life is totally winner-take-all a lot sooner, I’d have been a bit more open with women who were dropping hints, and I’d have been a lot happier.
I don’t think it’s bluster, I think a large number of people are really desperately lonely, and of course given compatible ASL, I would have called Mythago’s bluff as well. (And I have asked someone out over Usenet, as have most computer-using people my age.)
I feel a bit “stuck in place”, and being a short walk from everybody else’s paradise doesn’t really help.
Also, in hindsight I do think I see ways that I could have extricated myself from those particular situations that didn’t involve giving the men in question my phone number, and I think those choices would have been preferable, but I don’t think I was morally culpable, under those particular circumstances, for giving my number to those particular men when I had no intention of seeing them further. It would be different, of course, if I had just been wimping out on seeing them upset at being rejected, rather than actually having a rational basis to be physically afraid.
I don’t think it’s done only in response to bullying, every straight man with an active dating life or an attempt at one is familiar with the phone number which is given as a brush-off and to break contact, usually fake but sometimes not. It’s why dating coaches counsel one to focus on the connection, not on the contact info. It may be that I’ve met up with a bunch of passive-aggressive women, that everyone is indirect when young, and that women are socialized to be non-confrontational for fear of male violence.
I *can’t* count how many people, including plenty of women who identify as heterosexual, have told me that women are just better looking than men.
I don’t think that most of them are even thinking about the average when they say that. They’re probably looking at what’s popular, and because in media relatively few women who are not thin and beautiful make it very far, of course they’ll see more better looking women than men.
“Many of women’s responses and cues are so subtle and so vague that short of actually asking what it is they are trying to convey most men will never have any clue what women intend.”
Gosh. Really?
Who would have ever thought that maybe men should try verbally communicating with women.
Wow. What a concept.
Who would have ever thought that maybe men should try verbally communicating with women.
Technically speaking, it should be the other way around since the problem is the lack of clarity of women’s responses and cues. In other words, maybe women should try verbally communicating with men instead of expecting men to guess or somehow intuitively know what women’s intent actually is.
@Eurosabra: Yes, I’ll buy that the phone number as brush off, even in non-bullying situations, may well be common enough that many men in active straight dating life have run into it. I just didn’t want to be confused with having said I’ve done that kind of thing myself, because I think it’s kind of scummy, outside of situations where you have actual reason to be physically afraid. Also, Toysoldier’s wording sounded to me as if he was saying women often fuck with men for the fun of it.
What I do believe is that a combination of slut-shaming of women and socialization of women to be non-confrontational sometimes makes for women subtly hinting at things they’d be better off saying outright – both in the direction of encouraging the men they want and in the direction of cutting to the chase in putting off the men they actually don’t want. I don’t think that “act in a dishonest or unfair way” and “fuck with men on purpose” are the best ways of characterizing this behavior, but I’ll accept “passive-aggressive” for at least the more extreme versions of it.
“In other words, maybe women should try verbally communicating with men instead of expecting men to guess or somehow intuitively know what women’s intent actually is.”
I’m actually a great big fan of both parties verbally communicating with each other. It’s sort of a two-way deal, after all. It’s just not women who are complaining about men communicating subtly. Usually with men the problem is they don’t communicate at all, or they communicate with aggression, anger, resentment, entitlement, or even fists.
Lynn,
Unfortunately, we cannot assume what motivates various individuals’ actions as we have no real means of doing so. All we can state is that mixed signals occur, and women appear to send them out more often. Part of the reason for this may lie in the fact that women tend to be more indirect in their responses and cues. The other part may lie with people tending to consider their responses and actions as clearer than they are actually perceived. Another is that people tend to view their own actions as innocuous regardless of how others react.
Speaking from personal experience, what a person regards as threatening and what is intentionally threatening is not often the same thing. Likewise, what a person may perceive as threatening may not be perceived that way by others. It is not good advice to say a particular cue does not work in general because it does not work for a handful of people. For example, I do not like to be touched. Women very rarely perceive their tendency to touch others, particularly men, without prompt or permission as threatening. That does not mean I do not feel threatened by some woman putting her hands on me in a familiar, potentially sexual manner without my consent. However, most men do not seem to be bothered by that (or perhaps do not state that they are). So, if women wanted to befriend or flirt with a man, following the advice of men like me would probably not be very helpful because in general touching men does appear to “work.”
The best advice would be to pay attention to other people’s cues to and to be clear and direct in one’s own responses and cues. That is not going to prevent bad situations (I can attest to that), although it will greatly reduce the confusion.
Okay Sam…my mistake. I think I understand a bit better though I’m still not clear at all.
You need to be “wanted” sexually, and you are not hung up on physical attractiveness. So this is where it gets messy.
Everyone here has pointed out that attraction and desire can develop as a relationship progresses, but then what you have is A Relationship, with everything that implies.
If I misinterpret, please do not be offended…but it seems as if you want the good sex that often characterizes good, romantic relationships without any of the messy.
Hugo, dude.
You claim to know what it is to be rejected, but from what I can tell, that hasn’t ever been your story. You can claim you won the hottest professor award because of your passionate commitment to good teaching, but that rings hollow. I’ve been your student, and I remember how female students responded to you and still do. And I notice that your wife (whose pictures you are reluctnt to display, even on your Facebook) is drop-dead supermodel hot. Word is she WAS a model. And now you have your perfectly beautiful daughter.
None of this, in and of itself, is bad. But you yourself surely know that your best writing comes when you write about what you KNOW. Your posts about relationships are really good: I’ve learned a lot about them. Your posts about porn have helped me come to a whole new understanding as a man about them. But it’s impossible for me to read these more recent posts of yours about men getting rejected and not visualize you. You’re white and wealthy (living way above the lifestyle of your average CC prof). You are outgoing, yes, but you’re also trim and athletic and you have a nicely chiseled jaw. And you know how to be charming. So please stop being surprised when other men find it infuriating, presumptuouus, and unhelpful of you to counsel patience and self-transformation.
Some of what you’ve achieved, Hugo, has been truly thanks to your impressive willingness to make big changes. And some of it has been thanks to being born WASPy and affluent and, in the eyes of a lot of women, hot. Deal with it, and write about something else for a while.
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ahunt,
I’m terribly sorry, but I still don’t really understand what you’re trying to tell me. I went back up to reconstruct the original context and your reply was to one of my statements agreeing with Emily that particularly unattractive women will have a harder time attracting men than socially awkward men, but that I’m thinking that this kind of female unattractiveness seems to be rare given that the women participating in this thread seem to be unaware of such cases from their own environments while I am very much aware of the attraction problems faced by men who are not particularly socially skilled, or attractive, or offer a lot of social/financial status to compensate for their lack in other areas.
I said further that “professional help”, as suggested by Emily, would only solve a part of the problem, as I want to be desired as a physical being, *as a man*, and not just get rid of the stuff. I’ve learned how to do that myself. Not saying that masturbation and sexual services are equivalent, just that both don’t live up to my standard of wanting being desired as a physical, sexual being.
So I’m a bit confused when you’re talking about (long-term) relationships in this context. Of course, being desired as a sexual being can – and will mostly – be a part of a long term relationship that involves all the messy stuff you mention. But it can and does also happen outside – and it doesn’t even have to include sex. Last night, I was at a bar with a couple of friends. At some point I realised that a woman was repeatedly looking over to me. She was older than me, approaching 40, but very attractive. So the dance began. We passed each other a couple of times, looking and smiling each time. Eventually, she used an opportunity to position her so close to me that it would have been insulting of me to not say hello. And so I did. The sexual tension was palpable, and it grew with every word, every little touch. She wasn’t trying to play hard to get, mentioning within the first two minutes of the conversation that she was sexually very active and adventurous (much more so than I was, am, and probably ever will be
). So we danced a little bit and who knows what would have happened if I would not have had to say goodbye because of a friend’s emotional emergency. So nothing happened yet except for a facebook exchange a longer embrace, touching hands and a peck. But for me, and I’m rather sure for her, too, it was a moment that reassured ourselves that we’re being wanted as physical, sexual beings (actually, I hope she wasn’t too disappointed I had to leave, but I actually had to).
It’s this kind of feeling that I know many men are missing constantly, and I know how that feels because I have missed it myself for too long. If I can get that feeling within a great complete relationship, even better, but a relationship is not necessary for the kind of feeling of being desired that I’m thinking of. A relationship is adding to it, in important ways, but it’s not a necessary condition, in my opinion.
everyone,
I remembered I once saw a Swedish short film that I think excellently captures some of the dynamics Eurosabra tries to communicate. I found it on youtube, but, alas, without subtitles.
To summarize, it’s about a guy trying to jump from a bridge, trying to be cool. Eventually, an old man convices him that jumping is dangerous, and he gives up. The group of three guys and what apparently are their three girlfriends are walking off the bridge again. The girls seem relieved, they weren’t too happy about the dare in the first place. One of the guys starts a status attack on his friend, asking him if he was scared when the old guy said he could have died jumping. The almost-jumper says no, he wasn’t but is eventually pushed as far as running back up and actually jumping. Everyone else is running up behind him. The girls are screaming in fear. But then, when he apparently makes it, they change their tune: “Look, he made it, how *COOL* was that!”
“Scen nr: 6882 ur mitt liv” / (“Scene no. 6882 from my life” (or so, I don’t speak Swedish). (8’49”)
youtube.com/watch?v=sWK2gF6DuuE
Does that make the male mixed-signal perception a bit clearer?
Sorry to keep being short with you on this, Sam, but I’ve found that the number of men who say they want straightforward, no-game-playing communication with women is significantly less than the number of men who actually want this. (And anecdotally, in my experience, the Toysoldier types who think that the entire problem is women being game-players and/or idiots are the least likely to appreciate straight talk.) Probably this is because it’s harder to ‘misinterpret’ straightforward communication. Look at the example Eurosabra posted, where a woman says ‘we’re waiting for a friend’ and the man ignores her objections and sits down (making it clear he’s not going anywhere). If she’d told him “we really don’t want you around, thanks” that certainly would have been clearer; what do you think the odds are that he would have retreated with grace?
but at the same time I think a lot of men need less convincing to have casual sex than women
Sure, and for the reasons you laid out (sorry). I’m not so sure about the evolutionary argument, but let’s face it, your chances of being shamed, harassed, beaten, raped or killed if you come on to a stranger are much less than mine. And I’m sorry to say that your Internet compatriots back in the day were not as open-minded as you were. I most certainly was serious. Nowadays, of course, I think my husband might have Views on “back in a few hours, honey, I’m going to go sleep with some guy who posts on a blog”.
mythago,
actually, I posted that clip, mostly to have some real world example to calibrate our understanding of the terms we were using to describe male and female behaviour in an interaction. I think that partly worked, and it partly didn’t.
As for the guy in the clip, I’m actually pretty certain that he would have left if she had repeated that she doesn’t want him there in such a clear manner. There’s no point in arguing or asking what she really means in that case, as his, her and probably her friend’s mood will not be open to any interaction at that point.
I wonder what you mean by “gracefully” though – how can you retreat gracefully after having crashed and burned like he would have in that case? There’s really no grace in that. But yes, I reckon he would have said something like – “oh that’s quite alright, you’ll just never know what I was about to ask you, have a nice life…” – and he would have left trying to find a more approachable group after a bit of time needed to regain his composure – rejection sucks, after all.
“And I’m sorry to say that your Internet compatriots back in the day were not as open-minded as you were.”
As I am (approaching to be) now. Back when there was the usenet (that’s late 90s, right?) I would have wet my pants reading that proposition, hopefully just figuratively speaking. I mean, I am a guy who was too scared to even kiss his first girlfriend, to French kiss his second “girlfriend”, who was so afraid of his sexuality that he ran away whenever (and that was *exceedingly rare*) it became obvious that more than talking was required, including running off after – what most men will probably consider to be in the top-three of the dumbest things a man can possibly do in his life – being literally *asked* to join in by two girls who were already making out with each other. Sadly, I’m not kidding.
But it can and does also happen outside – and it doesn’t even have to include sex.
Oooookay, I’m following now, and my own myopia is largely a product of my own satisfaction with a policy of “sex in the context of love and commitment.” But it is also rooted in small patience with what you appear to be describing…a sense of self-worth too heavily based in whether one is seen as sexually desirable by all and sundry. I can’t understand how any basically well-adjusted individual needs such affirmation, especially when one considers the gritty realities of engaging sexual relations.
Sam, you do realize that the folks who do command such responses comprise…what…two percent of the population? The desire for universal sexual attention is a fantasy…completely unrealistic, and frankly, childish.
Again, the objection to direct communication seems to be phrased as a not-so-sotto-voce complaint that men don’t want to hear “No” and inevitably become violent, so very Marilyn French in its tone that it leaves me perplexed. The man did in fact answer the implicit question: “That would be me. (Sits) This’ll only take twenty seconds.” If you want to be less brash, and arguably less coercive, you can say something like “I’m sure you have twenty seconds to meet a new friend.” The complaint seems to come down to “Can I ask you a question? Say ‘Yes’ or else.” I mean, I don’t know WHAT world you live in where men get what they want through the coercive cancellation of female agency, but I’ve NEVER had a rapport-based situational intro, like asking those women how they came to be speaking German, succeed. In essence, he took the one route that WOULD work. Asking permission is somewhat weak, which is why he got an implicit “No” that he proceeded to ignore. I suppose that having a woman spontaneously doing kata as we stand at a traffic signal waiting to cross on foot is also an implicit “No”, but what it DOES do is make men (me) feel that we are an implicit threat and not much else, certainly not legitimate bearers of any kind of sexual agency looking for a romantic connection.
And again, if all you ever get is the pre-emptive “We’re waiting for a friend” (who is not you) (and not looking to make a new one) as an average-looking man would, or honoring the pre-emptive brush-off, you’ll be consistently upstaged by those who aren’t average and don’t honor the brush-off. Unless, of course, you like dating women who are desperate for attention from an average-appearing man, which has its own implications. Basically, the gripe is that men’s intangibles don’t come into play, yet most women claim to evaluate on the intangibles, whereas the bar for women is set so low that the conventional system works for 80% of women a priori.
but I’ve NEVER had a rapport-based situational intro, like asking those women how they came to be speaking German, succeed.
Funny, those rapport-based situations intros are the only thing that works for me and every other woman I’ve spoken to about it. The men I know seem open to hearing PUA lines from women, but as for myself and the women I know, the mental calculus we perform on hearing “lines” is: “this is a guy who wants to fuck a woman who still has a pulse—who she is, is completely immaterial.” That’s a turnoff to me, so I turn away from “lines” before they’re finished. Mentioning or asking something about me—recognizing me as a human being who is interesting to you, rather than just some anonymous female that is still breathing—always works.
The safety issue can’t be underestimated. Men who come off as open to any woman with a pulse also tend to come off as men who won’t hear the word “no”. That’s why the sitting-down part of that video Sam referenced is getting a universal two-thumbs down from the women on this thread—what other “nos” is he going to ignore? And not just sexual nos—ignoring other nos from women is a warning sign of an abuser. Compare the advice of PUAs with the checklist of warning signs of abuse in a relationship—note how possessive, controlling, and “makes all the decisions” are in this list—and maybe you can understand why this sends up red flags in the minds of most women. (again, I can’t recommend Gavin DeBecker’s work highly enough)
Asking permission is somewhat weak
No, no, no, and furthermore, no. Being polite is never weak; it is respectful. “Do you mind if I sit down?” doesn’t make you a wimp, it makes you someone who is respectful of others—and likely to be respectful of others in other situations as well. The best predictor of a person’s future behavior is that person’s past behavior.
yet most women claim to evaluate on the intangibles
First, define “intangibles”. I haven’t read any woman’s post on this or the related threads that mentioned intangibles.
conventional system works for 80% of women
You are conflating your earlier statistic of the number of women who have had children with ‘success’ in partnering. Sorry pal, but those are two different things. If a woman has had a child, but then doesn’t have sexual or any other companionship for years—is that “success” in your book? Or does it more resemble the situation you describe for yourself? I think that men and women are equally likely to claim satisfaction or dissatisfaction in finding the companionship they seek—I don’t think the number differs between the sexes.
I find this comment particularly telling:
Unless, of course, you like dating women who are desperate for attention from an average-appearing man, which has its own implications.
I read that as: “there must be something wrong with a woman who likes average-appearing men—she must be ‘desperate’”.
WOW. I mean, setting aside the fact that I have no idea what you mean by “average-appearing” (I define that as “average height, average weight, average facial-features. doesn’t look like a troll, but nothing that stands out, either.”) But…..damn. Writing off women who will go out with “average-appearing” men means…..writing off a whole lot of women.
FTR, at no point did Toysoldier say or imply that women were idiots.
FTR, at no point did SamSeaborn say or imply that the desire was for universal sexual attention.
These are strawman arguments.
The other thing is that you mention Gavin de Becker, and when I look at the bonafides of his collaborators, I see stuff like “CIA threat assessment department”, “Defense Intelligence Agency”, LAPD Special Investigations Unit, etc. He’s a spook who works to maintain the worst aspects of the kyriarchy’s interventions in human life, like the Latin American community organizer who goes to bed and doesn’t wake up.
The other thing is, obvious cases of predation aside, men experience their desire as effectively bounded by the absence of reciprocal female desire, such that feminine agency isn’t really in question. The pushing (like the competitive approaching, or the compulsive approaching) is in most cases a response of learned helplessness, just as the “we’re waiting for a friend’ is an autopilot response made without any personal evaluation or awareness. And what you have then is two automata banging away at inefficient, unhelpful programming, reproducing unhappy results.
The communication issue aside, teaching men to be more attractive (in the aggregate) is a useful thing, and unfortunately one of the things that men have to be taught to avoid is stuff like bullying and bribing, and those exist because they’re a misreading of women’s reactions (in the aggregate, again) to the typical behaviors of high-status men, which ARE attractive. I don’t think I have the luxury of Sam’s blithe “rejection sucks”, because I run into a tremendous amount MORE of it than he does, so I have to treat it from the much more feminine perspective it’s proffered from, as a “No, thank you” to a superfluous offer. (Thing is, when things work out, it’s still superfluous, desire is, after all, an acte gratuit par excellence.)
FTR, at no point did SamSeaborn say or imply that the desire was for universal sexual attention.
Then let me restate: feeling “hurt” because any given woman does not want to engage in random PU-ONS-stranger sex is simply ridiculous and childish.
ahunt,
I think ballgame actually put it well – at no point did I say or imply that the desire was for constant and universal sexual attention. I’m really confused as to why you seem to get that from my comment.
Again, who said all and sundry? I certainly didn’t. In fact, I was describin a situation that gave me something a lot of men I know do experience rarely at best. It’s really a bit unfair to say they’re looking for universal attention when they’re really just hoping for a bit of attention that makes them feel desired, ocassionally.
Well, I think what we’re agreeing on is that a sense of self-worth is probably the most important bit of a human psychological condition. It’s never healthy if it’s mono-causal, because mono-causality doesn’t actually imply self-worth but rather self-worth dependency, regardless of the variable in question, intellectual or sexual validation or whatever a person desires – I guess that’s what you refer to with “well-adjusted”.
So in a way, your argument *is* my argument: in order to be well-adjusted, and non-needy with respect to any of those variables, we need to be aware enough of ourselves to manage expectations but at the same time be confident enough that we will be able to get the balanced validation we require (to be “well-adjusted”) as complete human beings.
I think that’s actually true for a lot of women. They don’t understand this need because most of them seem to get sufficient attention and are, as, in a way, is also apparent from this thread, more concerned with how to avoid (sexual) attention rather than looking for it. This goes back to my original premise, also, in a way, implied in Hugo’s earlier post about the male desire to feel “hot”, that one of the best ways to address some of feminisms behavioral concerns with respect to men would be to help men gain the sexual confidence they usually do not have.
Not exactly sure what you’re referring to here.
Again, not sure how you can read this into my reply. I didn’t say or imply “universal” at any point.
LaLubu,
“The men I know seem open to hearing PUA lines from women, but as for myself and the women I know, the mental calculus we perform on hearing “lines†is: “this is a guy who wants to fuck a woman who still has a pulse—who she is, is completely immaterial.—
Hmm – you do realize that the assumption that there are men out there whose only requirement for women is a vagina and a pulse is actually just rephrasing Eurosabra’s argument that women (with a vagina and a pulse) have it easier than men to find sexual attention? At the same time, I’m wondering about this: if a guy actually *is* a pickup-ARTIST, then wouldn’t it be a more plausible assumption that he has a wider choice among women and is more selective than other men? And actually, even in that apparently seminal book about the “seduction community” by Neil Strauss *lines* are apparently regarded as something so very 1980s… by the way, it’s an interesting book (for both men and women), but have a look into that feminist BA-dissertation paper that I linked to above (or in a previous thread) first – that’s actually “fascinating” stuff.
As for this -
“No, no, no, and furthermore, no. Being polite is never weak; it is respectful. “Do you mind if I sit down?†doesn’t make you a wimp, it makes you someone who is respectful of other…”
I’d agree in general, and in particular with respect to the clip. Moreover, it would not have made any difference. But, and you knew there was one coming, this takes us back to the original question of how to demonstrate assertiveness, which we, sadly, haven’t really gotten closer to solving, in my opinion.
So let’s ask Hugo. He wrote this -
hugoboy.typepad.com/hugo_schwyzer/2006/06/its_election_da.html
- with respect to “pro-feminist men”, but I think the gist of his argument is applicable here as well -
Or is it?
ahunt,
longer reply in the moderation queue because of a link – but briefly -
Are we using the same language? I’m confused, because I really, truly, actually don’t think I’ve said or implied anything like what you seem to read into my comment. I’m seriously confused. I actually said myself that getting the feeling to be desired *doesn’t* even need to lead to sex of any kind, ONS, affair, or relationship of unspecified length. The example I chose was one that *explicitly* did not entail sex but a conversation and dancing. And I never said that someone, woman or man, should feel “hurt” because any given man or woman wouldn’t want to engage in casual sex (although it’s certainly a possibility they do feel hurt – as I said, I was a bit worried the woman I danced with Friday night would feel hurt because I had to leave.).
What I did say that a lot of men are hurting because they rarely get the feeling of being desired. Again, I don’t understand how you can read into my comment what you seem to read into it.
But yes, I reckon he would have said something like – “oh that’s quite alright, you’ll just never know what I was about to ask you, have a nice life…â€
Thanks for giving an example of exactly the problem I was talking about. The only ‘graceful’ retreat you can imagine in the face of a clear negative response is a snotty, fuck-you-bitch comeback. Be vague and ‘nice’, and you’re ambiguous and getting men to pay mind games; be clear and you’re a bitch who deserves an insult.
He’s a spook who works to maintain the worst aspects of the kyriarchy’s interventions in human life
He says things that make you uncomfortable, so you’re going to dismiss him as a “spook” because some of the professionals he relies on for his business (which is in protection and threat response) worked for the CIA? Okey-dokey.
mythago,
actually, I said I couldn’t imagine a “graceful” retreat. I didn’t say the one I offered as a hypothetical for the situation was.
What would have been “graceful” and appropriate in your opinion?
actually, I said I couldn’t imagine a “graceful†retreat
So, again, the choices are to be ambiguous and ‘nice’ and hope that the guy figures out your hints (or simply doesn’t choose to ignore them), vs. being clear and straightforward, and getting anything from a snide remark to profanity in response.
This is why women are ambiguous a lot of the time. It’s not because we deeply enjoy fucking with your heads.
A ‘graceful’ response to rejection is simply to walk away, perhaps with a “thanks anyway” or “sorry to bother you ladies”. Gay men manage this all the time without anybody needing to be elaborately vague or having their egos crumple into a tiny ball. Somebody isn’t interested? They let you know and you move on and that’s it.
Hmm – you do realize that the assumption that there are men out there whose only requirement for women is a vagina and a pulse is actually just rephrasing Eurosabra’s argument that women (with a vagina and a pulse) have it easier than men to find sexual attention?
(headdesk headdesk headdesk)
Sweet bedda matri, Sam, are you being deliberatly obtuse? Do you not see where from the woman’s point of view, that is not only completely nonsexual, but anti-sexual? That ‘any port in a storm’ is the antithesis of sexual attraction?
mythago,
did you have a look at the older Hugo post I linked to with respect to the excessive taking of temperatures? I suppose the problem is partly our assumptions, and those are based on experience: Have a look at my discussion of explicitness with Lynn in the other thread – imagine this guy and all others would start to say what’s actually on their mind in the situation: “Hey girls, you look nice, well actually, you (looking at the red one) are even a bit more my type, but I’d consider your dark haired friend if she’s cool. So, well, basically, I’d like to see if we get along sufficiently well for a while to see if we may be interested in some make out later, after the coffee, no hurry, really, and maybe having sex later on tonight. Totally open ended, all this. We could fall in love with each other and end up getting married and producing a couple of babies together. Sound good? Can I sit down?”
You’d run away screaming and no one could blame you. This is just not how this works. But you know what? I’ll use that one next weekend. Tell you how it turned out.
“Gay men manage this all the time without anybody needing to be elaborately vague or having their egos crumple into a tiny ball.”
You mean among gay men or with respect to women? The latter case would be rather self-explanatory, but even the gay men among themselves case seems rather clear to me… and the answer to that is precisely the differential we’re talking about here. I can’t really think of any gay person I know (and that’s not just a few people of both sexes) who has ever been as sexually frustrated as straight men. For one thing, I think it’s much more accepted in the gay community to be sexually explicit and say so than it is for heterosexual people. So, for one, it’s ok to go for a guy to go to a gay club just for the sex. If a straight guy did the same and said so, the standard assumption among most women would be what LaLubu said above: he’s looking for a vagina with a pulse – not a woman to be a partner for a mutually pleasurable activity… right?
I mean, just look at how the whole situation is being discussed here: Most of the women are gate keepers and most of the men are looking for keys.
So maybe it’s a chicken and egg question to ask what caused it, the more important question seems to me: how do we change it? If that’s actually possible…
LaLubu,
hope your head doesn’t hurt too much now
…
I’m not trying to be deliberately obtuse – but I think this illustrates very well the extent to which we’re (and I do think this is a gender-based difference) from different points of view, possibly irreconcilably so (although I have come to a common vocabulary with a couple of female friends).
“That ‘any port in a storm’ is the antithesis of sexual attraction?”
Love the metaphor. And it’s true, to a degree. And in a way, it is my point, too: Choice. Without choice, you get no sexual confidence, no power to attract, to say good bye. All you get is desperate competition among the left out ships for the last remaining space in the last available harbour. Not a good position to be in. But for the one who gets the spot, it’s better than to weather the storm out on the open sea, no? Isn’t that, metaphorically, what we’ve been discussing here all the time?
Sam…any man or woman can feel desired…though it may be a matter of lowering one’s standards/expectations.
any man or woman can feel desired…though it may be a matter of lowering one’s standards/expectations.
Perhaps most people can. *Any*, though?
I find that most people who say this are thinking of some person of ordinary attractiveness who just needs a little “cleaning up” for a significant portion of people to find them attractive. That’s not really the issue.
I also find that there’s a lot of moralizing about unattractive people knowing their place – “one or two people you’ve met in the last decade found you attractive, why can’t you be happy with that?” I don’t think it’s “childish” to feel dissatisfied with an orders-of-magnitude disparity in this regard, even if there’s no good solution to it.
Well, as a former EMT in the combat zone that was central Jerusalem from 2000 to 2002, I’ve gotten plenty of “threat protection” briefings, and it seems that you keep bringing up predation as some kind of default, when it’s really not, when the real problem–in my experience–is a reaching for rapport, Twenty Questions, “How do you like your job?” kind of thing. So de Becker provides a list of obvious things NOT to do, but he really *doesn’t* offer anything to a man who is UNDER the hierarchy, except to provide a stunning list of “tells” that the nervous tics of failure in competition with other men will provide to women. Snark is, of course, one of those “tells”, which is why the mantra of pick-up is “It’s no big deal.” Whatever she/they does/do, “it’s no big deal.” Which is the antithesis of the screaming meemies of the sociopathic, “This THING is BROKEN, it won’t DO what I WANT.” So of course the only proper response to rejection is “Oh, okay, have a nice day.” But the POINT is to avoid the rejection in the first place, and the average man is going to cash in TENS if not HUNDREDS of rejections for every positive response.
I don’t really have any answers, because as an immigrant I’m likely to be working no-collar jobs for some time to come, having trained for a white-collar career (Hebrew prof) much less in demand here. I can write copy, translate, etc, but by-and-large, I’m competing with able-bodied men who get “real-world” results, which means that my attempt to “fit in” is, well, la frime/Als ob/pozah. And believe me, “owning your shit” when you’re this marginalized is a really BIG DEAL. So when I have a coffee date for which I pass with my invisible disability (except the hunchback) and it dissolves into Twenty Questions rapport-reaching with no spark, I feel angsty and disappointed, especially when Miss Reticent drops hints about how in demand she is. Same with the chit-chat with the Australian tourists on the bus. Everyone seems to be running a script that benefits them, and I’m partly comfortable with myself and partly not.
You seem to think that there’s something magical about straight men being okay with “No” that would make it all okay, and I’m telling you as a straight man with plenty of exposure to “No” that it’s not a cure-all. It’s Square One, you still have to be attractive. Gay men have mastered it, sure, but gay men have the male libido bouncing off other male libidos, which is a totally different dynamic.
Again, I keep going around in circles, because it’s not enough to be able to handle rejection, own one’s place in the world, one still has to be attractive and initiate EVERYTHING.
So, again, the choices are to be ambiguous and ‘nice’ and hope that the guy figures out your hints (or simply doesn’t choose to ignore them), vs. being clear and straightforward, and getting anything from a snide remark to profanity in response.
Such is the nature of rejection. No one likes being rejected and very few people take it well, especially when they give their sincerest effort. There is, however, a difference between being clear versus being blunt. This is something I have talked about with my brother because when women flirt with him instead of being clear that he is gay, he is blunt and do not take that well. Yet again, a person who feels burned is likely to say something back in response. In this instance, the best advice is the same as what so many have told men to do: take it in stride and walk on.
Gay men manage this all the time without anybody needing to be elaborately vague or having their egos crumple into a tiny ball. Somebody isn’t interested? They let you know and you move on and that’s it.
The dynamic between gay men is different than the dynamic between men and women, so it really is not comparable. Gay men do not resort to vagueness because, unlike with women, it does not help them. Women can afford to protect their egos by being vague because men always initiate. With gay men, where the initiation is mutually shared, being vague could very easily mean you get ignored. However, in regards to dealing with rejection, gay men handle it the same as everyone else does: not well at all. Again, no one likes being rejected, and in a community full of people who have been ostracized by most of society, rejection from their own may feel even worse.
imagine this guy and all others would start to say what’s actually on their mind in the situation
Sam: if you are not actually trying to argue dishonestly, you are doing a bang-on imitation of somebody who is. You keep coming up with these ridiculous, passive-aggressive fantasy scenarios instead of actually discussing the point. All you’re really doing is showing that your problem isn’t really how women reject you, but that they do.
Eurosabra: I really and truly am not following your argument here. de Becker’s focus is on teaching people (not just women) to recognize predatory behavior, and to distinguish genuine threats from pointless, life-destroying fear. One of the things that predators rely on is that we have a culture that places certain expectations on men and women, and no, that doesn’t mean Men Are Evil.
Toysoldier, nobody likes being rejected. But the problem is that it’s not just rejection, or the occasional SamSeaborn who thinks that rejection itself merits nastiness; it’s that you guys, here, are upset when women are unclear or send ‘mixed signals’ but then turn around and are upset when women’s signals are clear and unmixed – but those signals add up to “no”. What that comes across as, is ‘the stuff about your tone and ambiguity is just blowing smoke, the real problem is you all don’t give it up enough’.
Gay men are expected to deal with rejection; they’re not expected to sit quietly and send out ‘notice me’ rays with their brains rather than directly approach someone they’re interested in. And while gay men can certainly gossip, I’ve never heard them engage in the kind of bonding that La Lubu descibes (and which I’ve seen from straight men), the gratutious, I-got-one-up-on-them-bitches contempt for a sexual partner.
it’s that you guys, here, are upset when women are unclear or send ‘mixed signals’ but then turn around and are upset when women’s signals are clear and unmixed – but those signals add up to “noâ€. What that comes across as, is ‘the stuff about your tone and ambiguity is just blowing smoke, the real problem is you all don’t give it up enough’.
Exactly! Everything I have read here, despite Sam’s repeated rejection of the interpretation, boils down to the fact that “women are not giving up the sex” to “lesser (unattractive) men.”
I don’t think I have ever struggled more in any series of threads. This is killin’ me.
I also find that there’s a lot of moralizing about unattractive people knowing their place – “one or two people you’ve met in the last decade found you attractive, why can’t you be happy with that?â€
Because sexual attractiveness is not an entitlement.
Still, jfpbookworm:
Ouch. I’m truly sorry to have left such an impression. I’m struggling because I do not believe that one’s sense of self-worth should be heavily invested in the ability to sexually attract X number of people. Youth flies and beauty changes.
And face it; every single one of us knows people, men and women alike, who do not fit conventional standards of attractiveness who nonetheless are highly successful in the mating game.
For heaven’s sake, compassion, intelligence, kindness, basic competence in dealing with life’s little surprises…do matter and do figure into one’s desirability. Very, very few people have it all, and apparently, all THOSE folks are solely about the “night life.”
My own vicarious experience suggests the “club scene” is a draw for a small subset of folks, and you “gets what you finds”…in the words of my Mom. IOWs, ‘Tis a small pool from which to draw any general conclusions.
The rest of the world is finding sexual connection with the people at work, at play, at school, and while contributing to their community, and yes…at church.
I’m just not getting why it is so hard.
mythago,
hmm, I had the impression that we were getting closer to a shared vocabulary and understanding, well, maybe not, after all.
For me, the point of this entire debate is not *that* women reject men but the perceived and real asymmetries between women and men when it comes to interactions with the oppositie sex, and what behavioral consequences this asymmetry causes. So, well, yes, that’s an *aggregate* consideration of the assumption that women reject men more than men reject women and the psychological and behavioral consequences for both women and men.
You were suggesting that explicitness was necessary and a way to deal with rejection in a graceful way. At least that’s what I understood. So I constructed an explicit hypothetical to ask you about your opinion thereof, and you come back with me being ridiculous and passive aggressive?
What’s ridiculous and passive aggressive about that? Could this, again, be a matter of communication? And what’s the point you thnk I’m missing?
ahunt,
“I’m just not getting why it is so hard.”
yeah, I’m starting to feel exhausted as well. It’s hard to understand someone else’s reality if it is so different from one’s own.
“you all don’t give it up enough”
This concept embodies the entire problem – men apparently/allegedly want something women need to protect, and they will have hoops to make men jump through to see if they’re worthy of their treasure. This isn’t about individual rejections but the behavioral consequences that result from the dynamics of the mating game. Don’t you see the contradiction I see when we’re talking about female sexual agency but you are almost only talking about how to fend off men, if possible without too much damage to his ego. If female sexual agency can’t change these asymmetries of desire, then I doubt that we will see any changes to male or female behavior, because however painful it may be for both sexes, it is probably functionally adjusted to this kind of mating structure – whether in clubs or anywhere else…
I normally only lurk here, but the subject matter is unfortunately too relevant to my life. I am 25 and have never had a girlfriend or been on a date. In spite of being miserable and lonely, I spent the majority of my time reading and listening to music alone. By 24, I had given up hope on anything resembling a life with relationships or sex of any kind. More recently though, my friends have been forcing me to come out on the weekends rather than holing myself up and reading or playing video games. I honestly could not have predicted that my experiences would be so positive. Not only did I find that find that women were much friendlier than I ever conceived of them being, but they were much more forward than I imagined. When I went to bars and parties, the sort of women I used to imagine was too attractive to waste her time talking to me would approach me and show interest in me. I’m educated (headed to a decent law school) and in decent shape, but you would never mistake me for an “alpha male” living some glamorous life. In spite of being fairly nerdy and quiet, women flirt with me. I don’t mention any of this to brag or even refute the emotions of anyone in this thread, but to point out how harmful certain dating narratives can be one’s romantic life.
I used to do a healthy amount of “othering” and imagined dating as a realm where men were constantly “auditioning” for women and desperately trying to impress those fickle creatures. As it turns out, women do plenty of “seeking” and, as happened last Friday apparently, cute women can spend a half hour flirting with an oblivious nerd and walk away with nothing. If men would start considering sex and relationships as something that arrise from common affinities (friends in common, parties, shared hobbies or interests), they would find a lot more women are not only interested in them, but aren’t being all that subtle about it. If, on the other hand, they continue to consider any women in any public place part of their potential pool of dates, they will inevitably conceive of dating as having one in a million odds. I never considered that a women could ever be attracted to me because I had a hard time imagining a random women wanting to stop and talk to me. Once I discarded that idea in favor of thinking that the sort of women who will be attracted to me are the ones whose life and mine can meaningfully cross paths (that a mutual friend could invite us both to do something versus a random person who drinks at the same coffee shop), my personal outlook has never been better. I should mention that I live in San Francisco where people are, on the whole, a bit more liberal and women are quite a bit more independent than the midwest (where I previously lived).
And what’s the point you thnk I’m missing?
The brunette in the video said that they were waiting for a friend, and reiterated later in the conversation that they really were waiting for a friend. The man’s reaction to her first statement was to say “This will just take a minute” and sit down. Every woman in the thread agreed that sitting down was over the top, would have pissed us off if we’d been in the brunette’s position, and that we didn’t see the brunette (as opposed to the redhead) as welcoming the interaction. We got, in response, the repeated suggestion that the brunette’s body language indicated that she did enjoy the interaction (though none of the women seem to be reading her body language that way), and that she was simply putting the man through a “shit test,” and, in any case, asking to sit down, rather than sitting down uninvited, would have been too weak and wouldn’t have worked.
This led to mythago’s question about how the man would have reacted had the brunette been more direct about not wanting to talk to him.
The issue is that, as this particular situation’s set up, the brunette seems to have no way to let the man know that, no, she doesn’t really want to talk, which doesn’t either a) lead to his not taking her rejection seriously and proceeding anyway, or, b) lead to his getting visibly pissed off at her. This is a difficult position to be in, when being approached by a total stranger.
This concept embodies the entire problem – men apparently/allegedly want something women need to protect, and they will have hoops to make men jump through to see if they’re worthy of their treasure.
From my perspective, the “hoops” are actually more two-sided than this conversation would indicate (I did approach men, back in the day, and did sometimes get rejected), but to the extent that they lean more toward women making men jump through hoops than the other way, it’s not “hoops to see if they’re worthy,” but “hoops to see if I’ll be safe.”
Part of the problem is that a significant minority of men actually are physically threatening to women. Will rape us, or beat us, or stalk us, or at the very least non-consensually grab and otherwise harrass us. It’s a minority, I’m convinced, and I think the safer majority of men suffer for it by sometimes being suspected of being threatening when they’re not, but it’s a large enough minority that any woman would be a fool not to take it into account. The other thing is that, besides the actual predators, there’s a certain use that’s made of them, in policing women’s sexual behavior, so that we get frequent suggestions from the world at large (men and other women alike) that if we’re too forward, we’re risking rape (often even about things that don’t actually, in my observation, affect our risk all that much).
Don’t you see the contradiction I see when we’re talking about female sexual agency but you are almost only talking about how to fend off men, if possible without too much damage to his ego.
Part of that, though, is an artifact of the fact that we’ve been focusing more on stranger pick up situations. The situations in which I, personally, exercised the other variety of female sexual agency were other than that. First I would meet a guy in the course of my normal activities and get friendly with him, and then I’d find that I was interested in him in romantic/sexual way, and wasn’t sure whether he felt the same. In those situations, I did in fact show some active agency (e.g. calling the guy I liked in high school, approaching at a dorm dance the guy I liked in my freshman dorm), including even being the first to ask a guy out, and the first to suggest sex. Not, perhaps, as often and as actively as you guys have, because I’m naturally shy and introverted, and social roles aren’t such that I got pushed to do it anyway. But some. And sometimes I got rejected; actually I got rejected more often than not.
Another thing is that, to the extent that men and women follow traditional roles and scripts, they both face rejection, but in different ways and at different stages. When women make the first move, but subtly, without making any really direct approach, they get rejected all the time (see their approaches fail and interpret it as disinterest on the men’s part), but invisibly. Likewise, women get rejected at the “try to get more commitment out of the guy” stage. What doesn’t tend to happen, if the two sexes are sticking to traditional roles, is women getting rejected when they propose sex, because if the two sexes are sticking to traditional roles, women aren’t proposing sex, but are, as mythago puts it, sitting quietly and sending out ‘notice me’ rays with their brains.
Mythago, I do not see anyone’s statements that suggest or imply what you stated. Are some men going to react badly to be rejected? Absolutely, just as some women react badly to be rejected. However, no one has presented a zero sum situation. Just as all women should not be lumped into a monolith, neither should men. All that demonstrates is the severity of one’s own opinion about the opposite sex. For the record, I am not sexually interested in women, so I comment primarily as an outside observer.
In regards to your other point, it is not just a matter of women being expected to sit quietly and send out “notice me” rays. It is also a matter of women not wanting to deal with the rejection and women thinking that men ought to approach them. Gay men are expected to deal with rejection because they essentially had no other choice but to approach others given that few gay men were out. The situation has changed slightly, but that aspect of the dating culture has not. Curiously, this is not the case with lesbians. There is still the expectation that they should be approached rather than them doing the approaching.
I have no idea what you are referring to in regards to bonding, although I will say that it continues the rather bleak assessment of men that has been pervasive in this discussion.
Lann,
It’s also a difficult position to be in as the approacher, isn’t it? Personally, I don’t usually do this kind of walking over to a table, simply because it’s, quite frankly, still quite scary. I prefer bars or social situations where saying hello is the obvious thing to do. So I do respect him for that. And I know most women I know also respect that in a man – well, if they told me the truth.
So, well, about the sitting down bit. Personally, I don’t think it would have made much of a difference had he asked. They would not have said no. But here’s the thing: try a gender switch – would you still think it’s over the top to sit down if the girls had been guys, and the approacher had been a woman? Or if all of them had the same sex? If you don’t find that inappropriate, what is it about the female-male interaction that does make it inappropriate.
If it is default “protection shields”, then there’s really no way to avoid the problem.
So in the end, there’s only one question complex in this respect for me – which is why I linked to Hugo’s post about “assertiveness” and “constantly taking women’s temperatures”. Why do men and women seem to have a different opinion with respect to this? Why do men say that a little bit of pushing, ignoring assumed pro-forma objections and avoidance of jumping through her hoops is yielding better “results” while women say this never worked for them. Sample mismatch? Social rationalization (saying what we think we should?).
“it’s not “hoops to see if they’re worthy,†but “hoops to see if I’ll be safe.—
I think it’s both. Beacause it’s really a challenge to demonstrate being safe by being assertive.
“Part of the problem is that a significant minority of men actually are physically threatening to women.”
I really don’t want to get into a discussion about the meaning of “significant”, but I’d say it’s a tiny minority. Still, too many, of course.
“they get rejected all the time (see their approaches fail and interpret it as disinterest on the men’s part), but invisibly.”
Yeah, maybe, but they can also say “he didn’t reject me, he just didn’t see me” and it will be a real possibility. Try that after saying “hello”…
Lynn,
sorry for the name typo…
I really don’t want to get into a discussion about the meaning of “significantâ€, but I’d say it’s a tiny minority. Still, too many, of course.
“Significant” meaning large enough that it’s actually fairly normal and common for women to encounter this in real life at some point (as opposed to, say, terrorism, which very few of us in the US will personally encounter). Part of this, of course, is that predators tend to be serially predatory before they get caught and stopped (if indeed they do get caught and stopped), so the percentage of women who’ve encountered any given predatory behavior will exceed the percentage of men who engage in it.
Also relevant here is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs; the rung for safety is below the rung where sexual intimacy goes, and so, even given equal sexual desire on the part of men and women, less safety for women than for men is going to translate into women having stricter requirements than men (on average, with of course plenty of individual overlap and exceptions) for sex.
would you still think it’s over the top to sit down if the girls had been guys, and the approacher had been a woman? Or if all of them had the same sex?
Yes.
Why do men say that a little bit of pushing, ignoring assumed pro-forma objections and avoidance of jumping through her hoops is yielding better “results†while women say this never worked for them.
I wish I knew; knowing that might give me a better idea of what women could do to get their genuine objections taken as more than pro-forma. I can speculate, I suppose.
The “people believe what they’re told” theory: Millions of people, without any real evidence as far as I can tell, believe that women who wear skimpy clothes greatly increase their risk of getting raped. Millions of men, without any evidence that I’ve been able to see, believe that women routinely deliver pro-forma objections that are meant as challenges to be brushed aside. Maybe both of these are matters of people believing what they’re told and not looking more closely.
The “few bad apples” theory: Ask a bunch of women about street harrassment, and you’ll hear that it’s commonplace. Ask a bunch of men, and some of them will be highly skeptical that it’s as common as women say; perhaps because a minority of men are doing it, out of the sight of those men who would be likely to object. Maybe, similarly, there’s some minority of women, highly visible to most men, who do the pro-forma objection thing. (If so, I’d like to metaphorically wring their necks, for all the trouble they make for the rest of us.) I kind of doubt it, but it’s always possible.
The “faint heart never won fair lady” theory: If somebody doesn’t make an approach, nothing happens. If you’re a guy and switch from a) never (or hardly ever) approaching women at all to b) approaching women with as much of a show of confidence as you can muster and sometimes ignoring their objections as pro-forma, b) will surely work better for you than a), in terms of getting you laid. It will work better, not because women’s objections are routinely pro-forma, but because if you don’t approach at all (even before you’ve gotten any objection), your odds are sharply reduced.
The “different women want different things” theory: In the video, the redhead was more eager to talk to the man than the brunette. Treating the brunette’s objection as pro-forma allowed him to stay around the redhead long enough to finish his pick up (though I think he could have gotten the same result more civilly without actually doing the sit down without permission move). Some of the stories I hear from men about why women’s objections can be ignored are of this kind; a man’s approaching more than one woman, and the woman who’s resistant isn’t the same as the one he wants to pick up.
The “people are often ambiguous” theory: Sometimes what looks like an objection may not be a full rejection, not because the woman’s making pro-forma objections to make the man jump through hoops and prove he’s assertive, but because communication, especially in the early stages of meeting someone, has some inherent ambiguity. So checking whether you’ve really been rejected works. The brunette, say, really is waiting for a friend, but is OK talking if you reassure her that you won’t take up too much of her time (for which reason, I wouldn’t think the guy out of line if he’d come back with “this will only take a minute” and hadn’t sat down). (The difference between the “people are often ambiguous” reading and the “objections are often pro-forma” one is that the former is better at encouraging, when testing further, actual attention to what’s being said, and the latter’s more likely to lead to beliefs like “I’ll appear weak if I ask a stranger if it’s OK to sit down.”)
The “men mistake passivity for welcome” theory: Maybe some women make objections and then, when they’re ignored, aren’t assertive enough to repeat them and make them stick, and this comes across to the men ignoring the objections as proof that the objections really were just pro-forma.
I’m sure I could brainstorm other possibilities if I try hard enough. I’m not prepared to be convinced that I, personally, like having my objections ignored, though, since I have too many clear memories of being pissed off by having my objections ignored.
Yeah, maybe, but they can also say “he didn’t reject me, he just didn’t see me†and it will be a real possibility. Try that after saying “helloâ€â€¦
It should be noted, though, that in real life, women aren’t always quite as invisible in their approaches as that (even if the traditional script says we’re supposed to be). So, some of my own experiences of rejection look less like “he just didn’t see me because I never said hello” than like …
He graduated from high school a little ahead of me. I stayed in touch, calling him whenever he was back from college on vacation. I planned a trip to check out his college as a place I might want to attend, got him to agree to show me around, and spent the day in his company. And heard from him about his dating woes with other women, and how men have it so much harder than women. And took away the message that I didn’t, after all, count in that department.
Or …
When we were both in the same house in college, he started a “hug a day club” including me. I overheard some of his friends remarking on my enthusiasm in said hugs, “she likes you.” And saw him start to back off and distance himself. Later I heard through a mutual friend about the long distance girl friend he’d never bothered to mention to me.
And so on. I really have been rejected repeatedly by men I’ve more than bothered to say hello to.
Chuckling a bit here, Sam…thanks for your patience, and for remembering my perspective does not include ever being part of the “club crowd.”
“And I know most women I know also respect that in a man – well, if they told me the truth.”
At least you came right out and said it that time instead of beating around the bush. Those pesky women just can’t be trusted to tell the truth about anything when men are involved, can we, Sam?
The man in the first (South Sydney) video could have read the red-head the phone book, but his behavior was obviously textbook pick-up, following a program–assume you’ll meet an objection that may or may not be pro-forma, treat it as pro-forma, sit down to get into positional rapport as soon as possible. At that point you either try to win over the objector, or concentrate on the one who is happier to see you, which seemed to be the case. The call to order “We really are waiting for a friend” was met with “Well, she’s late, isn’t she?” from the red-head, meaning “I like this guy enough to let him go ahead.” Ideally, someone better at vibing would engage the brunette in a way that let her have fun too, rather than thinking “disarm the obstacle, link attraction to comfort with the target.” This is a man who is being allowed to get away with a lot because of his physical appearance, and he’s running roughshod over objections when someone with better people skills could win over the brunette quite handily. He doesn’t have any emotional or relational or tactical flexibility or even any content, he’s just a fun, good-looking guy who gets what he wants by being fun.
I’d walk up, ask how they came to be speaking German, and get “We’re waiting for a friend.” Because I wouldn’t be running a script, if I continued with anything, that would be the end of it–they answered my question, “Fuck off.” Reaching for rapport is weak and gets a smack-down, entertainment works, but mainly, he’s good-looking, social, and ready to host: “House-party at my place.”
Lynn,
thanks for your thoughts, will reply in detail later.
ahunt,
I’m here to learn, too…
Faith,
“At least you came right out and said it that time instead of beating around the bush. Those pesky women just can’t be trusted to tell the truth about anything when men are involved, can we, Sam?”
You know what, I wrote that half-sentence just for you
. Thing is, I DO believe my female friends, one of them is actually one of my best friends and she’s someone who’s helped me to an almost unimaginable extent when my desperation was almost overwhelming. I know her, I know how to take what she says, I know when to take it verbatim and when not. I do believe her. And I do believe most of the other women when they said it, because they usually said it when they tried to explain to me that I should have been more assertive, to make it easier for them to get things going. The thing is though – and that’s why the half-sentence was in there for you – do I believe them when they tell me to be more assertive and thus potentially ignore actual objections as pro-forma or do I believe their objections? Which one is it?
Eurosabra,
I agree that he should have been more attentive to the brunette, and that he was practically reading a scene from “the game”, which left him a bit unflexible…
But why wouldn’t the “German” walk up work? I think that would work just as well. Maybe not ask why they’re speaking German, but why not ask something like this – “hey guys, you have a minute? I noticed you speak German – maybe you can help me out… I met this German guy at Bondi (beach) the other day who’s fallen in love with Oz and would like to apply for a work visa now but isn’t sure if his English is good enough – are you here on a work visa? Is it hard to get one? I’d really like to help him out a bit.” They will certainly have an opinion on that one. And how easy is it to transition from meeting international people on a beach to get into more emotionally charged subjects… if you’re still interested then.
Lynn, I really liked your response.
Sam: So in the end, there’s only one question complex in this respect for me – which is why I linked to Hugo’s post about “assertiveness†and “constantly taking women’s temperaturesâ€. Why do men and women seem to have a different opinion with respect to this? Why do men say that a little bit of pushing, ignoring assumed pro-forma objections and avoidance of jumping through her hoops is yielding better “results†while women say this never worked for them. Sample mismatch? Social rationalization (saying what we think we should?).
You’re conflating two different dynamics here. Hugo’s post was referring to people who already know each other and thus, already have an established relationship of sorts and a certain level of trust. We’ve been discussing the ways and means of total strangers “breaking the ice” with one another. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I deal differently with people I know, trust, and have an established rapport with than I do with strangers. Some of that is related to safety issues and past experience with dangerous characters/dangerous situations; some of it is being conscious of my behavior so as not to send the wrong impression (Rootless up above made a passing comment about midwestern women not being as forward—as a midwestern woman, I’ll say that one of the reasons we can’t be as forward is because around here, that’s code for “Super-Duper Mega Slut that will do all the Real Kinky Stuff you couldn’t talk your ex-wife or girlfriend into doing”); some of it is the learned ease of communication with people you already know (dealing with strangers invariably means learning their codes—you’ve already learned your friend’s codes!).
Why do men say that a little bit of pushing, ignoring assumed pro-forma objections and avoidance of jumping through her hoops is yielding better “results†while women say this never worked for them. Sample mismatch? Social rationalization (saying what we think we should?).
Outside of Lynn’s response, I’d say a lot has to do with the fact that this type of approach is fairly common in bars, clubs, and at parties. You’ve already said you find it easier to approach women at those places; I suspect the same is true for other men. There is already a tacit understanding at those sites that singles are going to mingle. In other words—the dance steps are already drawn out. Trying that same approach at the grocery store isn’t going to work as often. In places that don’t exist mainly as a forum for singles to meet, pickup lines aren’t as likely to work—rapport-based conversation works better. Of course, you have to be outgoing enough to approach people who may-or-may-not be open to that—which means risking rejection more often. (fwiw, I’m more comfortable approaching men in normal, everyday environments sans alcohol—I’ll go to a bar to hear a good band, but otherwise the drawbacks exceed the benefits. Bars are singularly lousy places to meet men (where I live).
Eurosabra: He doesn’t have any emotional or relational or tactical flexibility or even any content, he’s just a fun, good-looking guy who gets what he wants by being fun.
Guess I missed the “fun” part. (yeah, my bias is showing. pickup lines are standard issue boring/uninteresting.)
Sam: I agree that he should have been more attentive to the brunette
No! He already blew it. She was already focused on having lunch with a friend (and meeting another friend), and this guy’s interruption was a minor irritant because he was using up (not the “just a minute”, but) a considerable amount of time that she could have spent talking with her friend that she probably doesn’t get to see all that often in her workaday life. Now, she saw her friend’s interest in the guy, so she put up with it for her friend’s benefit. No biggie. But the sitting down? That marked this guy as “boorish asshole” in the eyes of the brunette. He was no longer in a “neutral” position, but would have had to come up from the bottom of the barrel. That’s where a polite, “do you mind if I sit down?” would have helped. He didn’t ask though, so he blew it.
I would think the “German” segue would work, because it’s more unusual (makes the guy stand out) and shows some actual interest (he was paying attention). Teach the guy some manners and maybe he won’t have to memorize lines out of the pickup books!
“The thing is though – and that’s why the half-sentence was in there for you – do I believe them when they tell me to be more assertive and thus potentially ignore actual objections as pro-forma or do I believe their objections? Which one is it?”
Why should I answer? You won’t believe me.
Faith,
there is no single answer. The only way to deal with this problem is to better one’s people skills in general so that one’s intuition can be usually trusted. This has nothing to do with me believing you, and everything with people behaving the way they believe they have to until they feel they can let go and be themselves. That’s the moment when you find out if they have told you the truth all along. That’s true for people of all genders and sexes.
Yeah, I probably don’t give women enough credit for being open to meeting people, but that’s because I’ve done the “German” walk-up enough in Miami to get a feel for it, and it leads 50/50 to continuing the conversation. Australians are friendly, though, so you’d probably get a bunch of new friends out of it at the very least.
I am a bit grumpy because I wish things were easier, and they aren’t.
Eurosabra,
plus, there’s hardly any country with a better male/female ratio (from mating interested male perspective) these days. There are about 100,000 men lacking in the relevant age groups in the urban coastal area. It’s the other way around in the outback and the mining areas of Queensland, but on the East coast, there’s a definitive lack of men in the mating-relevant age-brackets.
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7589382.stm
TS:
Curiously, this is not the case with lesbians. There is still the expectation that they should be approached rather than them doing the approaching.
I’m a lesbian. You’re mistaken — if this were the case, and no one was expected to initiate, lesbians would never get a date. Rather, the lesbian community now bears the remnants of the butch/femme culture of the lesbians bars of the early 20th century: butch or masculine-presenting women are generally expected to initiate, while women with feminine genders are often able to wait to be approached. In my observation, though, femmes initiate much more often (and more overtly) than straight women do. (Most young lesbians don’t identify as butch or femme, and people certainly do not pair up exclusively along butch/femme lines, but the expectations according to gender presentation seem to play out nonetheless.)
The norms are certainly very different from those of the gay men’s community — for instance, casual sex and nonmonogamy are much less common — but there are expectations of initiation and rejection regardless. My straight male best friend and my very dear butch lesbian friend have nearly identical troubles with finding dates, overcoming nervousness about approaching women, coping with rejection, etc., problems that both my straight female friends and my queer femme friends have never had (though they have problems of their own). The dynamics of lesbian dating are by means the same as those of straight dating, but the masculine/feminine approacher/approachee structure is similar.
That last sentence should read: The dynamics of lesbian dating are by no means the same as those of straight dating, but the masculine/feminine approacher/approachee structure is similar.
“The only way to deal with this problem is to better one’s people skills in general so that one’s intuition can be usually trusted.”
Or maybe you can better your people skills so that you actually trust -people- to know what they want and what they need better than you do or ever will.
“This has nothing to do with me believing you, and everything with people behaving the way they believe they have to until they feel they can let go and be themselves.”
Believe it or not, Sam, some of us are actually ourselves from the very beginning. Some of us refuse to be anything but ourselves, regardless of the consequences.
Jeez, I’m an introvert and I don’t have these problems…
Hmmm… this has grown even more,
@Lynn
Oddly, out of the three whole guys that I can recall succeeding at picking me up in some public space or other (bar, bookstore, whatever), one was Taiwanese and another was Chinese-American. I suspect this is actually random coincidence, but, if not, well, actually if not I’m not sure what it says, but there it is.
Huh. I have no idea, since all of the studies regarding that are for online dating which is a much different beast. Here’s a recent article: http://dating.personals.yahoo.com/singles/relationships/24298/dating-101-dealing-with-the-race-factor
But I like face-to-face encounters anyway.
@ahunt
The rest of the world is finding sexual connection with the people at work, at play, at school, and while contributing to their community, and yes…at church.
I hate the bar scene bar scene, but I do like parties… although it’s fairly easy to meet lots of people if I’m so inclined, moreso by the fact that I surround myself with extrovert friends (I liken myself to a hybrid, even though my energy derives from people and social things)
@Lynn again
When women make the first move, but subtly, without making any really direct approach, they get rejected all the time (see their approaches fail and interpret it as disinterest on the men’s part), but invisibly. Likewise, women get rejected at the “try to get more commitment out of the guy†stage.
Well, yes, but it depends, it can sometimes be very blatant without actually coming out and saying it. I’ve been approached like that (I, uh, didn’t reject her). Still, if it’s more subtle, sometimes the guy can be clueless.
That second comment makes me think again… when a woman gets rejected in a casual relationship that she wants to take to the “next level”… is that as a casual dating thing (where both people are still seeing others) or an exclusive but still casual thing? Not really familiar with that type of thing.
I think some of the longing has to do with experience too. The American romantic narrative consists of relationships during high school, relationships during college, relationships and/or marriage (or leading up to it) after graduation and job, and I wonder if people who didn’t get that kind of experience suffer real/imagined loss because of it. It may or may not be valid, but the feelings might be there.
Hmmm… this has grown even more,
@Lynn
Oddly, out of the three whole guys that I can recall succeeding at picking me up in some public space or other (bar, bookstore, whatever), one was Taiwanese and another was Chinese-American. I suspect this is actually random coincidence, but, if not, well, actually if not I’m not sure what it says, but there it is.
Huh. I have no idea, since all of the studies regarding that are for online dating which is a much different beast. Here’s a recent article: http://dating.personals.yahoo.com/singles/relationships/24298/dating-101-dealing-with-the-race-factor
But I like face-to-face encounters anyway.
@ahunt
The rest of the world is finding sexual connection with the people at work, at play, at school, and while contributing to their community, and yes…at church.
I hate the bar scene bar scene, but I do like parties… although it’s fairly easy to meet lots of people if I’m so inclined, moreso by the fact that I surround myself with extrovert friends (I liken myself to a hybrid, even though my energy derives from people and social things)
@Lynn again
When women make the first move, but subtly, without making any really direct approach, they get rejected all the time (see their approaches fail and interpret it as disinterest on the men’s part), but invisibly. Likewise, women get rejected at the “try to get more commitment out of the guy†stage.
Well, yes, but it depends, it can sometimes be very blatant without actually coming out and saying it. I’ve been approached like that (I, uh, didn’t reject her). Still, if it’s more subtle, sometimes the guy can be clueless.
That second comment makes me think again… when a woman gets rejected in a casual relationship that she wants to take to the “next level”… is that as a casual dating thing (where both people are still seeing others) or an exclusive but still casual thing? Not really familiar with that type of thing.
I think some of the longing has to do with experience too. The American romantic narrative consists of relationships during high school, relationships during college, relationships and/or marriage (or leading up to it) after graduation and job, and I wonder if people who didn’t get that kind of experience suffer real/imagined loss because of it. It may or may not be valid, but the feelings might be there.
Ugh, I was away all weekend, but I can’t read through all the comments before adding one because I got so g-d pissed.
First of all re: Eurosabra’s comment – “It may be that I’ve met up with a bunch of passive-aggressive women, that everyone is indirect when young, and that women are socialized to be non-confrontational for fear of male violence.”
Yes, yes, and yes. This explains your experience a hell of a lot better than everything else you’ve said.
And second, with respect to women not being “direct” – the consequences, both emotional and physical, for women being direct are SCARY to many women. When I have to fend off an overbearing man who I am not interested in, I am AFRAID that my direct communication will not be listened to, or that it will result in an angry, possibly violent, response (I am thinking here mostly of bars/clubs where communication is inhibited both by noise and alcohol). If you say, “thank you, I’m not interested” or “I have a boyfriend” or (which I did recently) “I’m married” (while holding up ring finger in said extremely drunk asshole’s face) and the person IGNORES you, you are immediately put in a situation where all fun is off and where the rest of the encounter is spent trying to get this person to respect your explicitly stated wishes without turning violent. This is a REAL FEAR that at least some women have. Expecting women to be able to tell who it is safe to be direct with, who would appreciate it and respect it, and who is going to loudly ridicule them to the entire room, potentially follow them out of the establishment screaming obscenities at them and calling them vile names, or physically assault them for it, is not reasonable, particularly in those types of environments.
Now, in a coffee shop, where everyone is sober, and it’s day time, and people are much less likely to get into your personal space, and others are more likely to come to your assistance if someone starts groping you without your permission, I would feel entirely comfortable being direct and saying I’m not interested. Or, I might think that this person who has approached me is interested in a friendly conversation and continue with that despite having no interest in dating the person. I think the context is very important, and honestly, I’ve been confused in this conversation if people are mostly talking about bars/clubs or not.
Wow, so basically you’re saying men have to have a certain level of “game” in order to get a direct rejection out of women. That the default is an indirect, maddening brush-off that could still, for a persistent guy or a very indirect but still interested woman, mean interest, followed by a bunch of non-verbal “tells” like broken eye contact, fidgeting, shifting in seats, one-syllable answers.
I don’t think men really have trouble “reading” women, we just don’t like the answer.
followed by a bunch of non-verbal “tells†like broken eye contact, fidgeting, shifting in seats, one-syllable answers.
It’s all body language. Add in giggles, blushing, and such and this goes from “Go away creep” to something entirely different.
To paraphrase from above, more than merely a significant minority of women do throw up such pro-forma hurdles just to measure interest level, as it serves the useful purpose of winnowing out the guys looking for the quick and easy pick-ups with the message “Work a little. Invest some time in me. Show me what you got.”
While one may ish some women didn’t do it, it remains that they do.
And I do not know any guy who hasn’t been coached by his female friends, “You got to sell yourself, and not just take the first no.”
Eurosabra: “I don’t think men really have trouble “reading†women, we just don’t like the answer.”
And there we have it. That is precisely the vibe I have been getting from you throughout these discussions. You don’t like the answer. And I don’t think that’s my problem or any other woman’s problem.
I really appreciate Rootless’s comment. That is a comment that resonates with my experience. If you get out there and meet people in friendly environments, people who have some sort of connection to you through mutual friends or a mutual hobby or other activity, they will be friendly to you, and may develop an attraction.
Rootless’s problem wasn’t that women weren’t willing to give him a chance, but that he was not open to making connections with women.
Again, while I have to say that it’s not fun, only a certain sense of entitlement allows me to believe that I am adequate (as such) for someone in and of myself, that I have the right to meet strangers and try to connect with them, etc. Sam was making a similar point with his “Walking on Eggshells” reference to Hugo’s post on feminist allies. Figleaf’s Real Adult Sex blog is a good reference on what he terms the “worthiness myth”, that men are useless without external apparatus of attractiveness, and power in terms of what they can do to you or for you, and I don’t really HAVE an answer that says “I’m fine for someone the way I am” without that being a certain sense of entitlement.
To chime back in again, the problematic notion that men should disabuse themselves of is that the entire world is their meat market. Yes, people can randomly meet in the streets or in a bookstore and develop a lifelong affinity. It happens, but it isn’t likely and holding hope for it to and basing ones expectations on it is stupid. If you stop conceiving of dating as involving potentially everything that attracts you that you see in one day and start imagining the people you see in a more “organic” manner, your porception of dating changes, usually for the better. If, during the course of your day, the only women you interact with clear such hurdles as “shop where i shop” or “work with me,” than of course your problems are quite a bit greater. Moreover, I get the impression that all the talk of showing status or power is only pertinent to a certain type of environment (crowded clubs in metropolitan areas and internet dating) than more relaxed environments. And while I’m at a loss for just how any of this discussion has to do with feminism, nerdy friends of mine who moved from our somewhat conservative, mid-western hometowns to more liberal, feminist cities have to-a-person found dating to be easier in the enviroment more sympathetic to feminism.
Rootless,
this conversation spans three threads, has taken a couple of twists and turns, and it started from the question which effect feminism has had on the way men and women are sexually relating with each other, and – particularly – about behavioral expectations and mutual understanding.
As for your post, don’t get me wrong and I may well be wrong, but I feel you’re doing a bit of something I’ve been trying to avoid since I’ve become successful with women – blame it *all* on the guys just as they blame it *all* on the girls. If *I* can do it, everyone can. That’s just unfair.
I still owe Lynn a detailed response to her insightful comment and I’m still too busy to concetnrate on writing it, but I would like to thank Daisybond for her outlining of the dynamics in the Lesbian community. I’m a bit surprised no one has commented on that yet.
Eurosabra,
I think there’s a difference between “entitlement”, certainly in the way it is employed in feminist discourse, and “limiting beliefs”.
Rootless,
Lots of people read the urban vibe in San Francisco as more conducive to meeting and connecting with total strangers precisely because its more relaxed urban culture also includes public cultural events as a backdrop and referent for common interests in a way that few urban areas do. The Internet is also a great tool for pre-selection on the basis of cultural or social affinities, although it suffers from a crisis of rising expectations of sorts.
Flirting with strangers is energy-draining except for extroverts, either natural or learned, and requires both poise and being somewhat agenda-free. Noticing attraction and inspiring it are very different from simply being a friendly interlocutor for a few minutes of pleasant chat.
Sam,
Most feminist discussion on street harassment starts from a point of departure that men are not entitled to a woman’s time, hence men should not initiate interaction with women at any time. So I think one has to counter a certain definition of entitlement as “anything a man does” to have a chance of preserving heterosexuality before we all die out from Eqwalitee.
Rootless’s problem wasn’t that women weren’t willing to give him a chance, but that he was not open to making connections with women.
That is what men have been doing. The difference is that they rarely do it on their own terms. I find that the men who are comfortable, in control and confident generally do better than men who are more concerned with playing to women’s expectations. If a woman is not interested or, more likely, is unwilling to be straightforward in her interest, the guy moves on. Technically that is all the seduction community is trying to teach men, and it is good, valid lesson. The interest and the respect has to be mutual, and if it is not, it is better not to waste your time.
If *I* can do it, everyone can. That’s just unfair.
And once again, I’m baffled.
Maybe an explanation of what you consider to be “successful with women” would help, Sam.
I didn’t want to leave the impression that I believe “if I can do it, everyone can.” That strikes me as a libertarian/Horatio Alger gloss to thinking that I have in neither economics or social health. I don’t believe that my own lack of success was strictly my fault either. Given the state of my mind (depressed and fairly closed off), no relationship worth having was going to manifest itself for me anyway. My current “success” is less me “learning to do it” than arriving at a mental state where I can begin to process “success.” The choice ought to not be between “everything is wrong with me (how I used to think)” and “everything is wrong with women (I merely dabbled here). The most productive way of conceptualizing relationships is to imagine what one can healthily handle and what one can’t. When more depressed and withdrawn, I couldn’t have dealt with a woman having positive interactions with me.
I am aware that some people may never arrive at a state where they can have a relationship without being subsumed in an unhealthy manner. Here I would point to those who never deal with significant mental health problems (drug and alcohol addiction, major personality disorders). Not to be too blunt about it, but Eurosabra mentions that flirting is an energy draining activity. If basic romantic interactions are draining, is it not time to consider that a healthier version of life wouldn’t dwell on romantic fortunes?
My point was, and remains, that the usual narratives for dating don’t serve anyone particularly well. Not everyone will have a dating life that looks like Entourage and not everyone should honestly expect to develop their social skills either at the same rate. Pretending that you ought to be dating or having sex by a certain point only creates more anxiety around what is actually an inconsequential acheivement (compared to say rate of academic advancement). Likewise, imagining that every woman you see is
capable of being picked-up is a rather bizarre way of making sure that, for a lack of a more appropriate term, odds of success are guaranteed to be both abysmally low and discouraging.
I apologize if my characterizations of myself or anyone else were offensive or dismissive.
@ Eurosabra
“Noticing attraction and inspiring it are very different from simply being a friendly interlocutor for a few minutes of pleasant chat.” I might be seeing a slight in those words that isn’t actually there, but I’m going to ignore that and say that this is precisely missing my point. Friendly and pleasant chat is how attraction begins. As I said, I get the impression that the only version of dating people are talking about here is when a 19 year-old part-time model in LA or NYC pairs off with a soap-opera actor or investment banker.
ahunt,
here’s what I replied to LaLubu in the last thread – she asked the same question in a different context.
hugoschwyzer.net/2009/05/27/feminism-made-women-too-picky-more-on-male-rage-sexual-entitlement-and-backlash/#comment-517079
rootless,
thanks for your clarifications, sounds much fairer now. Some things you say merit a detailed response, which, alas, has to wait. Maybe the above link to “my story” may be of interest for you as well.
Rootless,
Since you brought up mental illness, I’ll add that I’ve been dealing with severe depression all my life, sometimes medicated, sometimes not, and the medication has never been effective. Not a single aspect of my economic, work, study, health, or home life has ever been “normal” in conventional terms, and I regard 99% of humanity as walking around unaware of their inestimable privilege. However, all of this is invisible, except for my spinal problem. The depression makes relationships more difficult, making it harder to pick up social cues from women who ARE interested, and often leaving me interested in demonstrating Alpha status through braggadocio to reinforce my normalcy.
Asking me to correct my “narrative” is useless, unless you think that rationalizing a diminished life in everyone else’s paradise is somehow in my interest. What I have gained in life has been accomplished by great effort, and while not every woman is “pick-uppable”, there are very few who won’t react positively to an attempt at connection as long as you honor their choices and respond appropriately. (Which gets us back to the pro-forma objection question, because I’ve had that one go in all combinations and the best response is generally ASK. I do sit down uninvited from time to time, but by and large my experience is that inviting oneself works only if conversation is already engaged. Unlike Sam and Rootless, I do plenty of walk-ups, and you have to police your body language so that it’s non-threatening, movement of the head rather than the whole body, never an approach from directly in front or behind, turn to face full-on only when prompted by your interlocutor’s turn to do so, etc. etc.)
I’ve done absolutely insane things that have might gotten me pepper sprayed or flashed a gun, like approaching a woman walking home in business attire in an isolated area of Miami Beach at night, just a few blocks from the lights of the vacation area and drunk on my own manic extraversion. Good thing I stopped about 20 feet away with both hands in view, apologizing and back-pedaling furiously, I have no idea what she had in that briefcase. Everyone is young and stupid once and the smart, astute, empathetic or just plain lucky manage to survive it.
@Rootless,
That wasn’t meant a a dig, just a sort of reiteration that the main complaint of women on this thread with respect to the video was that the man in question was FORCING rapport, and that men’s real complaint is women’s “No” in the first place, not communicative ambiguities. (Of a masculine mindset of “Prevent Rape, Say ‘Yes’”, as one particularly heinous novelty T-shirt put it.) To be perfectly honest, in LA or NYC, most women are in sufficient, nay, overwhelming, indeed suffocating demand compared to the average man that an “audition” mindset prevails, and accidentally breaking rapport in all sorts of unlovely, awkward ways is met by immediate rejection. (Even if, say, you were bragging about your job as a means of emphasizing how *dependable* you were. And by “you”, I mean “me.”)
ahunt, if someone tells another person everyone can do it, and that other someone is failing, the implication ze gets is that ze is failing because they’re an absolute failure. Ze then beats zirself up over it and compounds the problem.
The difference between entitlement and self-esteem is that entitlement is the belief that you are entitled to any particular person’s time/attention at YOUR discretion/demand. If that person fails to give you his/her time/attention, you are angry at the person because they are not giving you your due.
Self-esteem is believing that you are worthy of the time/attention of others, and that if any particular person is not interested, you respect their non-interest and go away and don’t take it personally. Maybe they are really busy, maybe they’re having a terrible day, maybe you just don’t do it for them, maybe they are too wrapped up in their own issues to be open to meeting you. Who knows, it’s not a reflection of your worth, it’s just a person who didn’t want to interact with you at that time.
When you know you’re seeing someone for an hour for coffee on a Sunday, squeezed in for an audition at the tail end of a 3-date weekend for her, while you struggle to get a date a week by approaching 50 women and emailing another 50 through an online dating service each and every week, you know you’re dealing with an organic, inherent disparity of sexual market value and desire itself that can make you very cynical.
Emily,
“Who knows, it’s not a reflection of your worth, it’s just a person who didn’t want to interact with you at that time.”
very, very true. Just something that’s so hard to learn, if you’re stuck in the dynamic explained by Eurosabra. Still, Eurosabra, I have a hard time believing your figures. Even disregarding my case, those men I know who have the hardest time making women attracted don’t get those figures, simply because they don’t approach fifty women a week. They will maybe approach one a week, and immediately fall in love when they get some signs of interest, at which point they will focus their attention and no longer approach other women. If they’re lucky, great. If the thing doesn’t work out, they will be mad at this one and all women for a while and thus not approach. That’s why they will hardly ever get to a one in 50 ratio. I’m not denying asymmetry, I think it does exist, but your figures aren’t typical of that asymmetry, in my opinion. I don’t know, but I’d say a one in 50 ratio in actual interactions suggests a targeting issue… and the online thing? How personalized are your emails? Because 50 personalized emails a week sounds like at least a 20 hour job. I wouldn’t be able to put that much time into it. But if you’re just “spamming” the women, one contact out of 50 serial emails sounds like a golden ratio to me… as for your cynicism – did you ever read Camus?
“The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” – Albert Camus
Didn’t Eurosabra say he lives in LA? LA is NOT representative of the world at large. And I am also skeptical of his numbers, even if it is in LA. So many of Eurosabra’s comments are just so out of touch with the world it seems like most everyone else participating in this thread lives in (i.e. – not on television).
I don’t know ANYONE, male or female, who has 3 dates in a weekend. I don’t think I know anyone who’s EVER had 3 dates in one weekend. I certainly haven’t, and none of my female friends have. It’s just impossible that that is a “common” dating experience.
@Rootless,
It seems like the path you took could very easily lead someone who’s less inherently attractive into Nice Guy territory after the first N women he tries to get to know based on mutual interests and acquaintances gives him the Just Friends talk. I’m saying this as someone who’s been rejected repeatedly by friends, people I met through friends, and people I met through common interests- even when there’s a friendly rapport, someone has to build it into an attraction. And if the expectation is still on the man to do it based on vague signals from the woman, that’s a parallel problem to the one we’re discussing about initiating contact in the first place.
“Friendly and pleasant chat is how attraction begins.”
I have no idea how much time Eurosabra’s spent in the friend zone, so I don’t know what he was thinking with the comments that led you to say this. But my response to that is that friendly and pleasant chat is also how Just A Friendship begins, and if there’s interest on one side then that side has to make it not become that. (And the Nice Guy is going to be frustrated by the friendly and pleasant chat because he can’t figure out if the woman wants to be Just Friends or if she’s being too vague about her interest for him to catch on.)
I was thinking that Euro’s experiences with failure to interpret social clues are not exclusively male and I can relate to that a lot (whereas some people responded as if it were something that only happened to men–possibly because finessed social interaction is considered of monumental importance for women so they often learn to fudge it better?), but then he started going on about how ugly girls get dates SO EASY (and the only way to not harass women is not to talk to them at all). Yeah right!
Oh, honestly. More of this crap about the poor, poor men, with whom the mean, mean women won’t have sex because we’re BAD AND SELFISH AND SHALLOW AND MYSTERIOUS.
(I was willing to give Eurosabra the benefit of the doubt and believe that Asperger’s might really be part of his problem until the “anything we men do is wrong according to Teh Feminists, oh woe, we’ll die out from Eqwalitee” garbage).
It’s bad enough that they’re whining, but the constant veiled threats, like Sam’s “It’s not FAIR not to listen to us, and it’s also “socially problematic”, get reeeeeeally old.
Lookit. The problem isn’t that women are being inscrutable (we’re generally NOT). The problem lies in some men refusing to reject the whole idiotic “see female–must categorize same and alter own behavior to increase chances of score” paradigm.
Women are INDIVIDUALS. We’re PEOPLE. Just like men are. This is not. that. hard. What is so wrong with just being casually decent to everyone in the course of LIVING YOUR LIFE, and letting attractions happen naturally in their OWN time? They DO. REALLY. Just like friendships, which, quelle surprise!, are the basis for actual romantic relationsips.
Think of women as Pussy Life Support Units, and you won’t get any. The little fact that we’re *people*? Means we KNOW when we’re being hit on by a guy whose festering resentment is going to preclude our having a good time with him, whether it’s for a hookup or something deeper.
And, sorry, Hugo, but this DOES all stem from an attitude of entitlement. You can call it sadness, but the fact is a homely shy Sad Sack who doesn’t feel entitled to use a woman’s body for his own gratification can get laid, and can even find love. A frustrated pissed-off Sad Sack with no immediately visible redeeming qualities is going to have a harder time, and it’s not because women are Teh Suck.
To paraphrase from above, more than merely a significant minority of women do throw up such pro-forma hurdles just to measure interest level, as it serves the useful purpose of winnowing out the guys looking for the quick and easy pick-ups with the message “Work a little. Invest some time in me. Show me what you got.â€
What utter horseshit.
Cara – Asperger’s simply means that one does not naturally learn to read social cues, but has to learn them the way most people have to learn their times tables. Unfortunately, ASDs have become a fashionable way for MRAs to bash on women; you mysterious, game-playing cunts are picking on our disability. (Because, of course, there are no women with ASDs.)
Actually, Cara, I understand women quite well: some want to be wowed, some don’t, some want tea and crumpets, most don’t, and the best way to figure out is to ASK, because of this whole language thing. What I have is a certain set of challenges that for some reason mean–or appear to mean–I slip below EVERYONE’s radar, socially, even at my most open, relaxed, and extroverted. And that’s a different challenge than simply not being the best dancer in a club. This is a dynamic of the “It takes experience to get an entry-level job” or “It takes money to make money” sort, and a certain amount of pluck–which is going to read as entitlement to a woman who wasn’t planning on being approached at an open-air market, say–is called for.
You’re describing the “Women are Aliens Who Give Me a Stiffy” problem, which is pretty much a chicken-and-egg approach, blaming a resultant bitterness for difficulties that resulted from the initial mismatch of communication strategies anyway. Things don’t “just happen” in a male-initiation-dependent gender system, the trick is “making an offer” in a direct yet unobtrusive way that doesn’t have to be policed by an ideology.
I’ve actually dated a woman who was on the spectrum herself. Except that everything became Antioch Rules in an unbelievable-for-neurotypicals-way, such as “You are blushing, fidgeting with your coffee cup, and staring at my lips, would you like to be kissed?” at breakfast when we’d already been dating for SIX MONTHS, it was unremarkable.
Mythago, I wasn’t trying to diss people with Asperger’s or make nasty assumptions, just so you know; I’m certainly not pretending to have a lot of knowledge about it. I’m getting really sick of all the varied ways that MRA-sounding guys make excuses that all follow the same line: “No, you don’t understand, I’m special!!! I’m nothing like those other guys who SAY that women are fucking us over by having individuality, I really KNOW they are!!”
Things don’t “just happen†in a male-initiation-dependent gender system, the trick is “making an offer†in a direct yet unobtrusive way that doesn’t have to be policed by an ideology.
Child, what the hell are you talking about?
You say you’re angry and frustrated because the world (read: womankind) isn’t handing you what you want. I say quit waiting for it to hand you what you want and get on with your life, and you reply that you’re NOT waiting for the world to hand you what you want, it’s just that the world’s not noticing that you want something and it’s frustrating you, and that it’s NOT the same thing as being a guy who’s pissed off that pussy doesn’t fall from the sky. And then, just for a little extra flavor, you blame feminism, of all things, for the fact that there are all these rules in your head about What Women Want in Order to Give It Up, when it wasn’t feminism that created the whole Male Must Initiate bullshit paradigm in the first place!
Once again: Throw out the pick-up artist crap (which is REINFORCING the garbage) and make real friends. See a counselor, maybe. I’m not trying to mock you. I’m dead serious. QUIT making esoteric pronouncements about the male-initiation-based blah bullcrap and how unfair it is. Of course it’s unfair, it’s bad for EVERYONE; that’s why feminism is trying to eradicate it. THAT is the ideology that’s causing the trouble for people, not feminism.
Cara,
that it was possible to have a two-week conversation about this topic with a number of twists, turns, and interesting insights (not just for me, I suppose) was a direct consequence of everyone trying to get along *and take each other seriously*. Did you read all of it? If you didn’t, please do before running around shouting feminist buzzwords at people.
Taking this -
“Women are INDIVIDUALS. We’re PEOPLE. Just like men are. This is not. that. hard. What is so wrong with just being casually decent to everyone in the course of LIVING YOUR LIFE, and letting attractions happen naturally in their OWN time? They DO. REALLY. Just like friendships, which, quelle surprise!, are the basis for actual romantic relationsips.”
I can only say. Yes. Women are people. As are men. And attraction doesn’t necessarily happen “au naturelle”, if it did, feminist would not love to beat up nice guys for hoping for exactly that. So yes, occasionally, friendships are the basis for actual romantic relationships, but usually they aren’t. In *my* experience, and in the experience of pretty much everyone, female and male, that I know. You may have a different experience. Doesn’t make yours the only valid one.
You know Cara, I’ve had a couple of discussion with feminists who start out by screaming things like you do. It takes usually time to build a mutual understanding and then actual communication can happen. But right now, I don’t have the time.
“If you didn’t, please do before running around shouting feminist buzzwords at people.”
Sam,
This is a -feminist- blog. If you have a discussion on a feminist blog, you’re going to encounter feminist language. Cara has the right to use any language she damn well pleases, so long as it isn’t directly or unnecessarily insulting.
Deal with it.
What utter horseshit.
Gets me laid. You can argue with me, but you can’t argue with succcess; if I am wrong, I seem to be pretty adept at gaming a system that doesn’t exist.
Cara,
I’ve just got a little tut-tutting head-shaking anomie going. (BTW, love The Curvature, if you are in fact the same Cara.) You can always NOT reply, and Hugo can always delete, ban, edit as he wills. You are reducing the poverty of connection which is partly tied into late-capitalist society to a simple narrative of male entitlement, “get on with your life.” Well, in case you hadn’t noticed, what “life” offers the average man is a position of pure homo economicus, a cog in a machine, you can have anything you can pay for, and nothing you don’t, and frankly nothing quite as alluring as capital-W Woman. (I suppose women are alienated as well, but I only see the extremes: the starlet and the Third World immigrant. This is either a failure of reality or of my vision. I vote for reality, I am, in fact, infallible.)
The self-inflicted aspects of the male-initiation fetish of compulsory heterosexuality are covered very well by Figleaf at http://www.realadultsex.com (generally SFW, and everything NOT labeled as such and placed behind a jump as a matter of course.)
Sam, I thought feminism wasn’t beating up nice guys ™ for hoping it, but expecting it. That’s the same entitlement that Cara’s talking about.
On the other hand, Cara, saying “everything’s going to be alright” doesn’t seem all that realistic either, like in domains with severely skewed gender ratios (which happens with both males and females), and going somewhere else specifically to find a mate seems, well, problematic.
Mythago, I wasn’t trying to diss people with Asperger’s or make nasty assumptions, just so you know
Oh, I know. I’m just finding it very tiresome to see ASDs whipped out of the toolbag as the latest, trendiest way to argue that women aren’t being as sexually compliant as they are supposed to be.
Gonz, of course it works. Predatory social strategies work quite well; that’s why predators use them. I use some of those strategies all the time on a professional level (you’d be amazed at how well ‘loansharking’ works even on people who are being paid large sums of money to distrust me).
Jay – I think Sam might have been referring to criticism of seeking friendship as a “stepping stone” to a relationship, which I’ve seen criticised by both feminists and others (though not necessarily universally by the former). I think it’s a blurry area, since pursuing a friendship with someone you also find attractive doesn’t seem inherently bad, and whether or not you’re happy being “just friends” if there’s no chance of anything else is something it’s hard to judge until the situation arises. But relying exclusively on a “make friends and hope for the best” approach to relationships doesn’t sound ideal to me; I think it can often be the best use of everyone’s time to be upfront that friendship alone isn’t what you’re interested in.
Apropos of the “entitlement” idea, though not in response to any particular recent posts, there seem to be several things that get confusingly conflated under this description. I think the “Person X has a moral obligation to want to date me because of how nice I am” attitude is weird and creepy (and of course incorrect), but less common than is sometimes implied. What seems more common is the “Hey, I’m nice, *someone* should want to date me” which I think is also incorrect (on which more in a second) but really a statement about perceived odds (“I don’t expect a 6 on any given roll, but I expect to get one eventually”) rather than any imagined obligation on anyone’s part.
I think why it’s incorrect but people sometimes think otherwise ties in to the strange pseudo-meritocratic nature of dating. Attraction is obviously *related* to some more general idea of “merit” (most people wouldn’t want to date a lazy underachieving habitual liar) and we like to think that a) we have good qualities and others will see that and find us attractive and b) we are not superficial and find good qualities attractive in others. But both are only true to a limited extent – we exclude people as potential partners for a whole host of reasons that have nothing to do with merit (most obviously gender) and don’t feel guilty about doing so – it’s not a hiring process. And I think for reasons a) and b) people can overfocus on the “merit” aspects of attraction and disregard the more superficial stuff, leading to people with a sense of “Why can’t I get a date? I’m a GOOD PERSON!”, for whom advice like “Be honest” and “Treat people with respect” (while obviously good things to do) are of less use than, say, “Try shaving off your beard and wearing a different shirt”.
Mythago: The ASD tends to lead to a mulishness, a pig-headed adherence to the sort of excessive solicitousness that some Spectrum men have decided–through exposure to whatever media–means “caring” or “interest” in a properly feminist world. Terminal Besserwisser.
Jebedee, the problem with the analogy is that a die is a thing; a romantic/sexual partner is another human being. You occasionally might hear a person yelling “stupid dice, they never roll anything good,” but you’re not likely to find somebody who genuinely believes the dice are intelligent actors that refuse to roll 6 out of spite.
Whereas the Nice Guy ™ so often referred to is not merely somebody who is bewildered (“I’m nice, why aren’t I getting dates?”) or who has run into particularly nasty forms of rejection, but someone who does feel entitled to a positive result.
Eurosabra, there’s a number of self-described ASD sufferers who hang out on feminists blogs like Amp’s and claim that feminism is really anti-ASD discrimination. It is the kind of argument you see in people with spectrum disorders who don’t or won’t understand how neurotypicals think: “Here’s an argument that, superficially, sounds logical, but when put into the real world makes people think you are smoking crack.” It’s really just I-want-mine entitlement that they think is cleverly wrapped up in disability rights.
Personally, I’d think a less gender-restricted, open, safe dating culture would be good for people with ASDs. Instead of having to guess whether you are overriding a ‘pro forma’ objection rather than simply being a pushy guy who can’t take no from a female, you could simply express interest, or receive a clear expression of interest, and get a yes/no, then move on if one of you weren’t interested. As I’ve said before, gay men have this figured out.
Mythago: The problem you have with the ASD men on Amp’s blog, with which I’m familiar, is that they are right. Dating rituals used to be codified to the extent that someone with a diminished capacity to notice and interpret social cues that someone script-dependent could still have a functional relationship. Now the bias has shifted from rewarding competent execution of social ritual to rewarding competent reading of social cues, given the shift from stuff like the Jaycees to the singles bar, and men who wouldn’t have been “left behind” in a previous generation now are.
Attraction’s beginning for women is so particular to each individual that clear indications of interest and propositions “work” mainly because they are all married to a male libido on each side in the case of gay men. The whole POINT of the video was that the long spiel was needed to GET and KEEP the woman interested, and a direct approach–which works for some men, “I like you and want to get to know you?”–would have failed simply because of its lack of respect for context, and the shock value.
Eurosabra, and again, you and they are confusing the fantasy of a rigid, ritualistic dating system with a system that enforces female passivity. Traditional roles still require women to be mysterious, indirect and subtle – exactly the opposite of what someone with an ASD needs to determine interest.
And, like them, you prefer to ignore the existence of ASD women, who are absolutely disadvantaged by a system that requires them to send of subtle cues of interest, and to be hesitant and indirect in response to unwanted attention. But hey, they’re females, fuck ‘em, right?
A direct system (like ‘cruising’ in gay male urban culture) is very clear, direct, obvious and doesn’t require any subtle parsing of social cues at all. It doesn’t, however, set up men as hunters and women as hunted, and for antifeminist men hiding behind an ASD diagnosis, that may be the sticking point.
On the other hand, Cara, saying “everything’s going to be alright†doesn’t seem all that realistic either, like in domains with severely skewed gender ratios (which happens with both males and females), and going somewhere else specifically to find a mate seems, well, problematic.
Jay, from what these guys say, what they’re doing isn’t working for them. (With the exception of Gonzman, of course, but my objection was to his contemptuous, predatory characterization of womankind, not to his success at convincing women to sleep with him).
I submit that it doesn’t work because the *system* is gaming THEM, as it does everyone.
I submit that whether they want real, lasting love or just sex with a willing partner, it would behoove them to think differently.
That’s all.
Temple Grandin’s asides on dating and women with ASD indicate that women with ASD generally don’t date because of their inability to read and avoid “tells” of predatory or potentially-predatory behavior from men, the same way they can’t read non-coercive indications of interest. So that’s a definite case where the “bad” aspects of the opposite sex’s sexual expression are eliminating the possibility of a romantic life for a significant portion of humanity, the problem is there are no accounts of it in popularized science literature, other than Grandin’s “I don’t understand it and have never missed it a day in my life.” There is a good Feministing Community post titled On Gendered Expectations and Aspergers, by a woman who was confronting the expectation of being an Earth Mother type, empathy as duty, by an Aspie woman who just isn’t feeling it. One commenter, katemoore, described the total meltdown of her life because of the insistence on socialization in the work world, her isolation, depression, etc. Another, tkeli4, related it to dating, saying that she WAS approached but couldn’t keep men interested by appropriate signaling. No one was arch enough to point out that a sexual overture or actual initiation of romantic touch would have been interpreted as “appropriate signaling” and kept the man’s interest. aspie-bird.blogspot.com is also very good. I don’t know what a review of actual peer-reviewed papers will produce on MedLine, for example.
As I said above, Antioch Rules are very good for autistics. A direct system founders on the fact that women almost invariably say “No” to a direct offer, as the infamous campus volunteer psych experiment indicates.
So yes, occasionally, friendships are the basis for actual romantic relationships, but usually they aren’t. In *my* experience, and in the experience of pretty much everyone, female and male, that I know. You may have a different experience. Doesn’t make yours the only valid one.
Well, mine works, kiddo. And it works for good, ethical, morally sound reasons, not because I’m gaming (or trying and failing to game) a sick, fundamentally predatory system.
It works for ALL OF ME, and I don’t have to play some game to get laid. It works for the men I sleep with, too.
So. Once again. Instead of complaining about how things are in the places you hang out, why not try doing something different and just see how it works?
And, just maybe, start with seeing, again (sigh), that women are people and very few PEOPLE like being treated as walking orgasmatrons, even if all you really want from each other is sex. THAT’S where the being friends with NO expectations and being willing to adapt come in. It’s part of learning how to RELATE to people as individuals and treat them with that respect, even if *gasp* you have no interest in sleeping with them.
It doesn’t, however, set up men as hunters and women as hunted, and for antifeminist men hiding behind an ASD diagnosis, that may be the sticking point.
True, Mythago. I keep thinking some of these guys can be helped if they’re willing to do the work. I give the benefit of the doubt if they say they WANT to understand that women are people, not prey, not pussy.
But it seems often they really just want to complain and try to get women to say something like, “Yeah, I know, women are bitches, all of them.” It’s attention, I guess.
Gonz, the part of your comment that was horseshit wasn’t the part about men sometimes being able to succeed in getting laid by treating women’s objections as pro forma; it was the part where you argue that why men succeed in getting laid is that women deliberately make pro forma objections because this works oh so wonderfully well for women, because it sorts the men who are only interested in one night stands from the ones who will spend some time on you.
Now, I, personally, have never – precisely zero times – done anything involving nakedness or orgasms because I accepted a guy after he pushed past my objection as “pro forma.” (I’m not counting the few moments I stood stunned before fighting back when one guy followed me and tried to force himself on me after I’d directly said no to him three times.) I’ve made some lousy decisions in that regard, but they were all my mistakes, and had nothing to do with other people pushing past my objections.
However, I have, to my shame, when younger and less assertive, allowed myself to be pressured into a certain amount of clothed non-orgasmic making out that I didn’t really want, with guys who pushed on and treated my objections as pro forma. Only a couple of times, but it was enough. And, yes, that’s further evidence that, from their point of view, treating objections as pro forma “worked.” From my point of view, what I can say of those men is: 1) They weren’t particularly more interested in investing in me (as opposed to having no strings encounters) than men who didn’t treat my objections as pro forma, 2) They tended to be lousy lays, 3) It felt really icky giving in like that, 4) It felt really good drawing a line and putting a stop to it, before I got as far as nakedness or penetration or orgasms, and, 5) I am really glad I learned, after only a couple such encounters, to stop doing this, and instead to stick up for myself, let my no be no and my yes be yes (and occasionally my honest “maybe but I’m not quite sure yet” be an honest “maybe but I’m not quite sure yet”). So, no, putting out “pro forma” objections and waiting to see which men push past them is not a marvellously adaptive feminine strategy for sifting the guys who will treat you right from those who won’t.
And I think for reasons a) and b) people can overfocus on the “merit†aspects of attraction and disregard the more superficial stuff, leading to people with a sense of “Why can’t I get a date? I’m a GOOD PERSON!â€,
Part of this is circular. Once people get in that “Why can’t I get a date? I’m a GOOD PERSON!” mode, they tend to say things that suggest that women actively want guys who treat them ill and disrespect them. This, not unnaturally, leads women, who mostly don’t experience themselves as actively encouraging the guys who mistreat them and turning away from the guys who treat them well, to vigorously argue the opposite: the way to win us isn’t to throw us lines, or manipulate us, or to act as if we’re pussy dispensing machines that are broken, but to listen to us, treat us as individuals, etc., etc. Which, taken by itself, can feed the whole “merit” thing and isn’t the whole truth; with women as with men, if you’re a fine upstanding person who treats your preferred sex with respect and, say, never takes a bath, probably you’re out of the running. It’s still best to listen and treat people with respect, but not because doing so guarantees that you get laid.
women almost invariably say “No†to a direct offer, as the infamous campus volunteer psych experiment indicates.
That experiment involved a direct offer of sex from a total stranger. A majority of women not being immediately willing to hop into bed with someone who proposes sex minutes after meeting them is not the same thing as women invariably saying “No” to a direct offer.
I, for one, have said “yes” to multiple direct offers.
Lynn, I don’t think they’re interested.
I’m a broken record here. If women were people to these guys, they’d HEAR what was being said instead of hearing “wah wah wah” through their “lying bitches” translator.
Eurosabra, Temple Grandin is not ‘on the spectrum’ – she is fully autistic, albeit high-functioning, and has written that she abstains from relationships. That aside, I’m not really sure what your point is. How does a system where women are treated as passive targets, who are ball-breaking cunts if they are assertive, help anyone but predators?
Lynn’s already pointed out that you are confusing a direct offer of sex from a total stranger who walks up to them on campus with a direct expression of sexual interest in a venue where such expressions of interest are appropriate.
Cara,
thanks for the kiddo, sweetheart.
Well, ok. The weird thing is, while I think your reply reaks with condescendence I still have the feeling (against my rational judgment) that you’re actually trying to talk and not to preach “but what about the menz”. So I’m trusting that feeling and I’m replying in good faith.
“Well, mine works, kiddo. And it works for good, ethical, morally sound reasons, not because I’m gaming (or trying and failing to game) a sick, fundamentally predatory system.”
Well, again, I’d be really grateful if you actually did read the context if your’re commenting after 160-ish comments. I don’t have a problem, I *had* a problem, and my problem wasn’t women in general, it was *some* women who psychologically screwed me up when I was a kid/teenager. There’s a link to my story above in a reply to ahunt. Have a look if you’re interested. At this point in my life I am rather happy with my ability to interact with women. I’m doing so more successfully than ever. I’m not the worst person to be around, and once I got that, and I no longer hid my sexuality, women got that, too. So well, it works for *all of me*, too, and quite frankly, I don’t think we’d be disagreeing for more than five minutes if we had this discussion over a glass of wine.
“So. Once again. Instead of complaining about how things are in the places you hang out, why not try doing something different and just see how it works?”
Again, I’m happy with how things are. I only get complaints about not being sexually assertive enough, but I’m learning to deal with it by picking more assertive women. I mean, I think I even gave an example from last week in the thread above, or in the last one (I see this as a three-thread-series). But I’m not blind to the world around me. In fact, my personal experience gave me a certain advantage to see things other people don’t. You apparently don’t get the average male perspective, and you don’t seem to be interested in it, you’re just complaining about men who complain about their misfortunes and tell them what they have heard for their entire lives “treat women as people” and “be yourself”. That’s part, an important part, but it’s not the entire story of sexual attraction – and if someone, female or male, says that’s all there is, has probably not seen much of the current singles-jungle out there.
One thing – isn’t it funny all you do is talk about respect for other people yet there is nothing in the tone of your comment that suggests you’re actually respecting what other people, in this case me, have to say?
Lynn,
thanks for your thoughts from a while ago – maybe this is also interesting for late-comer Cara -
SamSeaborn: “Why do men say that a little bit of pushing, ignoring assumed pro-forma objections and avoidance of jumping through her hoops is yielding better “results†while women say this never worked for them.
I wish I knew; knowing that might give me a better idea of what women could do to get their genuine objections taken as more than pro-forma. I can speculate, I suppose.”
>>>”The “people believe what they’re told†theory…
I think there’s a bit to this, after all, this is how socialisation works. And it’s probably true for both sides – so if this is the standard modus operandi by everyone in the “game” it is assumed it would be useful to behave this way. In that case though, just reward men who are explicit about their intent – if “I find you very attractive. Would you like to go to bed with me” or “I like you, would you like to have dinner tonight” – but I know this is problematic – mostly because these things usually require a certain amount of trust and that trust needs to be built a lot more slowly. So we’re left with the ambiguity in early stages of getting to know each other, and I think we both know that testing the other person for their willingness to invest in the interaction, to take a certai amount of risk can be a part of that process.
>>> The “faint heart never won fair lady†theory:
I think there’s a certain truth to this as well. But I think the problem is in the word “routinely” – are women’s objections “routinely” pro forma, or are they occasionally “pro-forma” but occasionally not? I would suggest the latter, which is why communication cannot simply rely on verbalization alone if people don’t communicate that way.
With respect to the “different women want different things†theory – that’s a group dynamics thing that includes lots of unspoken things that will never become explicit between the two women. Should the guy have ignored the redhead’s come-on signs because her brunette friend seemed not as thrilled? Who gets to say?
>>>”The “people are often ambiguous†theory:”
I think this part of your statement is actually insightful –
(The difference between the “people are often ambiguous†reading and the “objections are often pro-forma†one is that the former is better at encouraging, when testing further, actual attention to what’s being said, and the latter’s more likely to lead to beliefs like “I’ll appear weak if I ask a stranger if it’s OK to sit down.â€)
- and could serve as a starting point for a real discussion about perceptions and behavior in these kinds of communications. And I think this goes hand-in-hand with the “men mistake passivity for welcome” theory. I’d say the latter is particularly true in a not-too-unlikely case in which women decide after a real objection that was interpreted as a pro-forma objection that she actually likes the guy and continues the conversation.
So I suppose we’d have to define “objection” with respect to what was there, and what was assumed to be there. It’s a bit like the difference between “entitlement” (and it’s a first that I think that concept is applied usefully) and “self-esteem” that Emily mentioned above -
“Self-esteem is believing that you are worthy of the time/attention of others, and that if any particular person is not interested, you respect their non-interest and go away and don’t take it personally.”
Sam, I called you “kiddo”, yes; frankly it wasn’t exactly condescending and more informal, because the conversation’s a little deeper than it normally gets when men on a feminist site are stubbornly insisting that women DO, YES THEY DO, try to manipulate men. It was more of a bantering thing because, yes, I’m trying to get through (despite your “oh you’re so mean” stuff), but I’m not willing to make myself terribly vulnerable to a populace that is stubbornly insisting that women are a conniving, think-with-their-eggs monolith and the system that’s hurting us all is one WOMEN created just to make men work for it.
Whether you, personally, now hold the entitlement attitude we’ve discussed, you’re defending it by insisting that we women just don’t understand how hard it is for guys to let it go, so I hope I can be forgiven for assuming you hold it.
You essentially told me, “Your experience is rare”. I don’t believe it is, and MY life experience and what I see around me back ME up. I believe it’s partly a function of personal, developmental growth to LEARN to just be decent to everyone (whether you hope to have sex with them or not), working on becoming a decent person and THEREBY, yes, NATURALLY attracting someone who one can have a friendly relationship that might NATURALLY develop into a sexual one.
Also, I think whether it’s typical or not doesn’t matter. Do we want the world to change or not?
What these guys say they want is being stalled by patriarchal horseshit, not by feminism. They’re firing in the wrong direction when they say feminism screwed up their game. If that’s what they believe, and they keep plodding on in that belief DESPITE women knocking ourselves out to explain what’s really going on for us, then their goal is NOT truly what they say it is, but merely to make women give it up.
Perhaps that’s confusing to them–I mean, here I say you CAN get laid, but then say if you want to get laid but have no immediate obvious redeeming qualities you can’t ONLY want to get laid. It’s a fine line, but it’s there, and it all hinges on changing their THINKING, AND thinking. of. women. as. human. beings.
The *game* is not giving you what you want, and it’s not meant to. It’s meant to keep you fighting with each other and hating us if we don’t like the game and don’t want to play. It’s meant to give you just enough reinforcement to keep playing.
We have every reason not to play–the game hurts us. If people of either sex are still trying to play, it’s simply because they don’t know any better yet. That’s why I’m typing books, here–to say the only way to win is not to play.
Short version: Instead of compulsively hunting out somebody to tolerate me for the ten minutes it takes me to orgasm, I can put that same energy into becoming someone worthy of being loved, and it will be much easier for someone to FIND me. And part of that is dropping the idea that women are inscrutable and it’s just too difficult to treat them like individual people instead of capricious slot machines.
Yes, it takes longer to do that, and it’s less immediately satisfying than blaming women and writing theses to say why it’s their fault they won’t give it up. But it’s well worth the effort in the long run.
Crap. In all that pre-coffee ramble, I didn’t realize that throughout this thread I’ve left out a very simple concept, it was so simple and basic I didn’t spell it out. Mea culpa. Here it is:
If you (general you, nobody in particular) don’t LIKE most women, as people; if you think they’re mostly dumb and boring and no fun to hang out with; if you’re disgusted with yourself for even wanting them, or resent the fact that you have to talk to them about non-sexual things to get them to drop their knickers; if you’d prefer that a woman turn into a sandwich after you sleep with her so that you don’t have to talk to her, then perhaps a Real Doll is your ideal solution.
If you simply don’t like women, then all the talk in the world about making friends with them is useless on my part.
“But it seems often they really just want to complain and try to get women to say something like, “Yeah, I know, women are bitches, all of them.†It’s attention, I guess.”
While I believe that very well may be part of it, I believe the goal is even more insidious. I believe the goal of men who complain in these discussions are – consciously or unconsciously – attempting to guilt women into submission and into having sex with them.
You may not agree with it, however, based on observable actions what Gonz said appears to be true. Men who are interested in one night stands might be likely more inclined to move on if a woman rejects them outright whereas men who are interested in more might stick around. That does not mean it necessarily works or works well. It probably results more in women pushing away men they would like rather than fending off unwanted attention. However, that does not mean it is not used.
That you as an individual do not do such things is anecdotal. It is whether women in general do such things that is the issue. Again, from what is observable, it appears that many women do use pro forma objections. The denial of this is somewhat odd in that it is actually a cultural norm for women to play “hard to get.” The general position is that women should not make themselves readily available and that men should work hard to earn women’s interest, regardless men’s social or economic status. In other words, women rejecting men outright coincides with existing social expectations. If you are arguing that no women do this or very few do it despite tremendous social pressure, it begs the question why women do not simply ignore other social demands that are just as common.
I think the issue is that few people view their own actions as part of the problem. Instead, people look at their inability to get the result they want and blame it on others. That leads to the complaints about women and the equally inane flip-side complaints about men like Cara’s statements. Neither of those resolve the problem. They may do more to exacerbate the situation than that correct it. Part of it is a lack of mutual respect, but I think the larger part is out society’s profound me-ism. Once one steps back and stops thinking everything is always about you, it is much easier to understand how one’s actions impact the way people respond to you. That does not mean that everyone will suddenly be nice to you, but it will help you determine whether it is your actions that are causing the problems or those of others.
However, it takes a lot to humble oneself in that way, so it is not likely many people will do it.
The denial of this is somewhat odd in that it is actually a cultural norm for women to play “hard to get.†… If you are arguing that no women do this or very few do it despite tremendous social pressure, it begs the question why women do not simply ignore other social demands that are just as common.
Not being a woman, Toy, you fail to understand how the “play hard to get” social pressure actually works. Men do get directly told by friends not to give up at the first “no.” Women do not get advised to always say no first, either to test a man’s interest or for any other reason. Women may exist who do this, but I guarantee that it doesn’t take unusual backbone or resistance to social pressure not to do it, because that kind of tremendous social pressure just isn’t there.
Rather, this is the sort of “play hard to get” advice that women get: Don’t phone a guy. Don’t ask a guy out. Absolutely don’t have sex with him on the first date, or you’re Slutty McSlut. Here’s how you can get a guy to propose to you via some series of coy hints, because of course it’s out of the question that you’d ever propose to him. Women aren’t so much advised to reject men they want (with the exception that if he asks for sex too soon, you should say no, but no, we usually won’t tell you how soon too soon is), as they’re advised to expect men to be mind readers, and, to paraphrase something mythago said, sit around trying to send out invisible “notice me” rays rather than directly letting men know they’re interested.
This in fact has a much lower success rate, in my experience, than directly asking the guy you like to sleep with you does, but it does give you some protection from being deemed a slut, and since, according to a whole bunch of other social messages, sluts are women who have lost the right to say no, there’s a big social incentive not to be deemed a slut. Add in all the messages about how men will treat you like used Kleenex if you don’t follow the rules and play hard to get, and, sure enough, no surprise, women often succumb to social pressure to play hard to get, and prefer sitting around sending out notice me rays to actually making a direct approach. (The fact that making a direct approach means you may get openly rejected, and no one likes being openly rejected, is of course also a factor.)
(And, by the way, these social messages to women come from both men and other women, just as the ones to men come from both women and other men.)
Again, from what is observable, it appears that many women do use pro forma objections. The denial of this is somewhat odd in that it is actually a cultural norm for women to play “hard to get.â€
Sigh.
Yes, of course you’re right, Toy. That’s what you want to hear, isn’t it?
You’re right, what you OBSERVE is correct, and what women SAY TO YOU about THEIR EXPERIENCE is a lie. Because lying bitches lie. They lie like that because they’re lying liars and they do it to make you dance.
There.
The problem, Mr. Debate Team, isn’t MEN. The problem is the refusal of a certain TYPE of man to listen to women’s experience of THEIR OWN LIVES, and instead to pontificate about what the poor little dears are REALLY doing and thinking based upon what Joe Cocksure told the guys in the locker room in high school.
A “no” APPEARS to be “pro forma” because she goes out with him later. The REALITY is that the “no” was because the guy was a damned stranger, but oh, no, it just meant the little airhead was playing hard to get. Or the REALITY was that she said no, she meant no, she had no interest in the guy, but societal pressure from him and from friends wha are still caught up in the game nudged her into ‘giving him a chance, because that’s THE RULE. You’re NICE. You don’t be direct,you don’t say, “No, I don’t sleep with strangers”, you say, “Oh, I have to wash my hair.”
And women who DON’T play the game are called atypical, patted on the head by the Brilliant Anthropologist Male, and told we don’t know what’s going on with the OTHER women, never mind that we actually LISTEN to what other women say to us when we ask, “Why are you going out with that guy if you’re not really interested?” WE LISTEN to them and believe them. Unlike a certain type of man, who shoots everything through the Universal Lying Bitch Translator before processing what a woman says.
Cara,
well, I would basically say everything you say in that last comment can be better explained using Lynn’s “people are often ambigous”-theory.
Of course it’s possible that a women goes out with a man even though she’s not really interested, but it’s just as well possible that she said “I’m busy” when he said “hi”, and that “I’m busy” was partly a “no, too busy for you *right now*, please come back later”, “no, I don’t know you, and I don’t think I want to get to know you, you’re blocking my sun”, “no, I don’t know you, and I’m not sure if I want to get to know you, but, well, let’s see how interested you really are in getting to know me”. There are probably 100 and more possibilities. Same the other way around: When he said “hi”, he may have thought “Hi, have you seen my friend, the beautiful girl with black hair”, “Hi, what time is it”, “Hi, I think you’re cute, I’d like to get to know you, maybe you could be my next girlfriend.”, or “Hi, I’m really horny tonight, you’re just my type and I’d really love you to jump me as soon as possible”. Which “hi?” is it? Which “I’m busy”? It’s not that easy…
The problem, of course, is, that in cases where initial objection is overcome, there’s a certain tendency to see it as pro-forme. On the other hand, *if* we do allow people (and that includes, as you correctly noted a couple of times, women) to change their minds, we have to accept that some objections that may not have been pro-forma will be seen as pro-forma even though what’s really happened is a genuine change of opinion regarding a certain person. From the outside, it will still often look the same, particularly for people who aren’t well versed in putting together verbal and non-verbal clues. And even if it didn’t, if changing one’s mind is a possibility, and one party is initially more excited about an interaction than the other, it’s impossible to draw a generalised line.
Not being a woman, Toy, you fail to understand how the “play hard to get†social pressure actually works.
Lynn, that tact is not very conducive to discussion. Of course as a man I will not understand what it is exactly like for women, just as you, as a woman, will not understand what it is exactly like for men. Nevertheless, we can both observe the situation around us and draw conclusions based on those observations, which is why you can state that I, as a man, cannot know how social pressures on women work and then in the next sentence, as a woman, tell me how social pressures on men work. Is it not possible that we are viewing the same thing from a different perspective and both our understandings could be true? Is it not often true that things that appear to be one way when one is on the receiving end of it may appear completely different to an outside observer?
I ask this because men’s explanation of their experiences and the social messages they receive have been resoundingly smacked down on all these threads as complete falsehoods. One would assume that men would know more about the social messages they receive, who they receive them from and the messages’ impact than any woman would, yet that does not appear to be the case. As I have said before, a lack a mutual respect is one of the key problems. It takes more effort to view things from the opposite perspective than it does to only be concerned with one’s own position.
Cara,
I find that hostile approaches are rarely successful, no matter how valid one considers them. The type of man you mention comes across more as a caricature and a stereotype than a real person. While that kind of straw man (double meaning intended) makes an effective target, he does not represent all men. Although you stated you were speaking about a “type of man,” it is difficult to believe that every man who complains about women sending out mixed messages or women being vague is doing so specifically because he feels entitled to her body. It is also difficult to believe that no women intentionally misleads men or that women are always trying to be nice when they respond with vague lines. This sort of zero-sum approach not only dehumanizes men, but it also infantilizes women as so helpless and frightened by social pressure that they incapable of engaging in direct conversation with men.
I think that the less one thinks the absolute worse about a group of people, the easier it will be to understand what the issues are and how to resolve them. The more hostile one is towards that group, not only is a resolution less likely to be discovered, but those of the other group will likely form the same negative opinion about you as one has of them.
That you as an individual do not do such things is anecdotal. It is whether women in general do such things that is the issue. Again, from what is observable, it appears that many women do use pro forma objections. The denial of this is somewhat odd in that it is actually a cultural norm for women to play “hard to get.â€
Toysoldier, which country are you writing from? I ask because in the United States, it is absolutely not the cultural norm for women to play “hard to get”. You don’t have to take my word for it—pick up any women’s or young women’s magazine and read the advice articles on how to get and keep a man’s interest. There’s a strong cultural trope about giving out one’s phone number and then waiting patiently for the man to call. (and I’ve had men tell me that their cultural message is to not call too soon and look desperate! wait a day or two, LOL!) Lots of pop cultural references regarding that pining by the phone. There’s a whole genre of “chick lit” now about looking for, finding, and then dressing/speaking/acting in just-the-right-way to “get that man”. That has morphed into what I call the “chick lit films” that revolve around how to shop your way into finding a man. The cultural messages here in the U.S. are such that the slightest hint of “hard to get” will cause a man to write you off, so that you have to make your interest obvious.
Obvious in the right way, of course, lest he see you a Slutty McSlut, as per Lynn’s comment:
Rather, this is the sort of “play hard to get†advice that women get: Don’t phone a guy. Don’t ask a guy out. Absolutely don’t have sex with him on the first date, or you’re Slutty McSlut. Here’s how you can get a guy to propose to you via some series of coy hints, because of course it’s out of the question that you’d ever propose to him. Women aren’t so much advised to reject men they want (with the exception that if he asks for sex too soon, you should say no, but no, we usually won’t tell you how soon too soon is), as they’re advised to expect men to be mind readers, and, to paraphrase something mythago said, sit around trying to send out invisible “notice me†rays rather than directly letting men know they’re interested.
@Toy: Lynn, that tact is not very conducive to discussion. Of course as a man I will not understand what it is exactly like for women, just as you, as a woman, will not understand what it is exactly like for men.
Well, the reason I took that particular tack with you in particular, Toy, was that your comment described the experience every darn woman in the thread gave as her own as “anecdotal evidence,” while you were only willing to take the em>men’s experience as “observable fact.” Don’t you see that, in a discussion in which we’re all describing our own experiences and not quoting studies, “anecdotal evidence” and “observed fact” are the same thing?
Nevertheless, we can both observe the situation around us and draw conclusions based on those observations, which is why you can state that I, as a man, cannot know how social pressures on women work and then in the next sentence, as a woman, tell me how social pressures on men work.
Well, in this case, when I said about men’s social pressure that men were often advised to take women’s objections as pro forma, and that they got that message from women as well as men, I was taking the men in this thread at their word. If I’ve misunderstood them, and those aren’t the social pressures men are getting, I’m willing to be corrected on that point.
We can all observe the social pressures on both sexes, but if a man insists there’s overwhelming social pressure on women to do something that women don’t report receiving overwhelming social pressure to do, then it’s likely the man has misunderstood the actual nature of the social pressure as women are experiencing it, because each sex gets what its own pressures are, and what its own moves and intentions are better than each sex gets the pressures and intentions of the other sex. The point where I start being difficult about believing men in these discussions is the point where a man starts insisting that he knows better than I and the other women in the thread what women intend, what women want, and what advantages women derive from their moves. Especially when those claims are made about women in general (even if all you particular women in the thread may think that you’re the exception), rather than about (what might be possible) some visible minority of women in clubs (who could easily not happen to be encountered as much by the women in the thread, just as street harrassment is done by a visible-to-women minority of men and less often seen by men than by women).
@Sam: The problem, of course, is, that in cases where initial objection is overcome, there’s a certain tendency to see it as pro-forme.
Yes, I think that this is true. The difference between a change of mind and an objection that was pro forma to begin with isn’t bound to be obvious from the point of view of the one who was pursuing. And, since people do change their minds, to some extent the meme about seeing women’s objections as sometimes pro forma may be an inherent result of a system where certain kinds of pursuit are supposed to be the role of men.
Lynn,
I stated “You may not agree with it, however, based on observable actions what Gonz said appears to be true.” What one intends and what one does is often incongruous. Just as this applies to men’s differently intended gestures coming across as sexual advances or potential threats, it applies to women’s differently intended gestures coming across as deliberately misleading and manipulative. The resolution is not to tell women to lower their guard or tell men to shut up, but to acknowledge their perspective and to encourage those coming across other than as they intend to change their behavior.
Likewise, I was responding directly to your statement that you do not use pro forma rejections. That you personally do not engage do it does not reflect whether other women engage use it. Yes, everyone’s experiences are anecdotal, but they are also valid. However, the position many have taken here is that only women’s experiences or men’s experiences can be true; both cannot be true. The obvious one got chosen, implying that either men are deliberately misrepresenting their experiences with women, they are being obtuse or both. More so, the women here stated — to no one’s objection — that they know more than men what men intend, what men want and what advantages men derive from their moves, and did so even as the men participating here stated those claims are inaccurate. One would similarly think a person would have fairly good understanding of why a group of people frequently treats that person a certain way, but does not appear to apply in regards to men’s understanding of women’s actions. Again I ask: Is it not possible that we are viewing the same thing from a different perspective and both our understandings could be true?
it is difficult to believe that every man who complains about women sending out mixed messages or women being vague is doing so specifically because he feels entitled to her body.
Perhaps that’s where the disconnect lies, Toy. I don’t see what other reason there could be. Otherwise, what possible business is it of a man’s how a woman conducts herself?
If you don’t like indirectness, then don’t reward it by giving women who are indirect your energy. Frankly, I think most of them will thank you for it.
Well, the reason I took that particular tack with you in particular, Toy, was that your comment described the experience every darn woman in the thread gave as her own as “anecdotal evidence,†while you were only willing to take the em>men’s experience as “observable fact.†Don’t you see that, in a discussion in which we’re all describing our own experiences and not quoting studies, “anecdotal evidence†and “observed fact†are the same thing?
Exactly, Lynn.
However, the position many have taken here is that only women’s experiences or men’s experiences can be true; both cannot be true
Women’s experiences are true for themselves. A certain type of man’s interpretation of women’s behavior is often pure self-serving horseshit.
Furthermore, that certain type of man is not made of straw, as evidenced in the very cultural attitudes we’ve been discussing in this thread; in fact, I submit that a tiny grain of this *certain type* exists in almost everyone due to cultural influences.
Women are painted as lying liars, lying not only about their OWN thoughts and feelings but about their OWN motives for the very behaviors that have been culturally forced down their throats. And, again, those women who don’t comply are as vilified as those who do.
From the outside, it will still often look the same, particularly for people who aren’t well versed in putting together verbal and non-verbal clues. And even if it didn’t, if changing one’s mind is a possibility, and one party is initially more excited about an interaction than the other, it’s impossible to draw a generalised line.
Sam, this is why I said, repeatedly, that getting to know people as individuals in the course of living your life generally works better (if your aim is knowing what they want) than just approaching random people on the basis of “Oh, she’s cute. I wonder if she would…” (fill in whatever blank you choose).
I mean, I don’t care if you do that, not at all, it’s your business. I’m just confused at why there’s so much complaining about the variety of women’s responses, when women are, in fact, individuals. I wonder why there’s so much frustration at the fact that you can’t KNOW WHY a woman says “no” if she’s a stranger to you. Getting to know her over time, as organically as possible, makes that kind of easier.
If she’s your friend, or a friendly acquaintance and not a stranger, and she has a gut sense that you’ll respect her humanity whether she’ll let you in her pants or not (and not tell everyone what a bitch she is for turning you down for no real reason, then (again, generally speaking) she’ll tell you the truth about why not. And it just might be as simple as, “You don’t do it for me”.
Again, I’m not suggesting YOU, Sam, or anyone else specifically, does this stuff. Lots of men DO. And if you’re a stranger to a woman (hell, sometimes a guy a woman thought was her friend might turn on her), she has no way of knowing whether you are, indeed, one of those who will accept her “no” and RESPECT it, instead of thinking, “Oh, she’s playing hard to get (women never tell the truth)”.
Do you see how the very “playing hard to get” idea is insulting, across the board? It implies that women are too stupid to know what they want and to express it (and/or that they LIE for the fun of it), and that men are some kind of enemy.
Therefore, instead of staying stuck in “Women lie! They do! They do!”, I’m advocating doing something different and fostering a culture where a woman has no REASON to lie. Or, alternatively, if you’re not sure of the message you’re getting, go on to the next woman instead of trying to decipher ambiguity (or if you get a “no”, respect it, period, under the respectful assumption that a woman is smart enough to know how she feels).
Cara,
“Getting to know her over time, as organically as possible, makes that kind of easier.”
Sure, but everything still starts with a “hi” and the possibility of a “no” for some reason and the fear that your own humanity may not be respected “for no real reason” (which means: a reason you can’t understand from your prespective). Of course, if women do it that’s the exact same thing. They just don’t do it that often, blame it on patriarchy or on biology or whatever you like – they just don’t do it that often. And that leaves a limited amount of actual – real life – strategies to pursue for actual – real – people who don’t want to write a dissertation about this but find a partner. Refusing to play when everyone else is playing is not a particularly useful strategy. So you can either not play and use “not playing” as a signaling strategy (which, in a meta sense, is – once again – playing) or you can play the first level game if your assessment of the target environment makes it more likely that the “not-playing” signaling won’t work.
“Therefore, instead of staying stuck in “Women lie! They do! They do!â€, I’m advocating doing something different and fostering a culture where a woman has no REASON to lie.”
You do realize that that’s actually saying that we live in a culture in which women DO lie (which I didn’t suggest in that way, I’m more inclined to think about this as an ambiguity advantage, as “keeping options while being on guard”, like Lynn suggested), and that, in return, would contradict pretty much everything you said before?
As for this -
“If she’s your friend, or a friendly acquaintance and not a
stranger, and she has a gut sense that you’ll respect her humanity whether she’ll let you in her pants or not (and not tell everyone what a bitch she is for turning you down for no real reason, then (again, generally speaking) she’ll tell you the truth about why not. And it just might be as simple as, “You don’t do it for meâ€.”
Doesn’t make it necessarily easier. Was out with a female friend yesterday, and while she’s the kind of woman that will cause increased saliva production in most men, I haven’t really thought about her that way for about two years now. I think there was a brief period then when we both were interested back then, but we’ve become friends since and everything was fine. So I was confused by a number of signals (or not) I got yesterday, longer, deeper glances than usual, dancing more closely. Did she want to tell me something? There are tons of reasons for that that have nothing to do with me, but it may also have been about me. I don’t know – (and I’m not sure I want to know) – but my point is: Knowing someone better doesn’t necessarily imply understanding all signals better, sometimes things become even more complicated – that’s all “When Harry met Sally”-territory, and if you remember, they needed a couple of years to sort of not really understand but still get along well enough to kiss at the end.