Today’s column is up at the Good Men Project: Dude, Don’t ‘Neg’. It looks at “negging”, a much-vaunted technique used by game players and PUAs (pick-up artists.) Excerpt:
If there’s one technique in the pick-up artist (PUA) repertoire about which I hear more often than anything else, it’s “negging.” The urban dictionary helpfully defines negging as “the offering of low-grade insults meant to undermine the self-confidence of a woman so she might be more vulnerable to your advances.” The idea is simple: women, particularly beautiful ones, are so accustomed to compliments that they’ve grown immune to their power. But make a “hot” woman think you don’t think she’s all that, and she’ll be eating out of your hand. Or so the peddlers of seduction wisdom would have their customers believe.
Though I’m suspicious of most of what the professional PUAs are selling, I do appreciate that they’re meeting a very real need. We live in a culture where heterosexual men are still frequently expected to be the initiators, to make the first move. For many men who lack the requisite self-confidence and self-esteem to approach a woman in a way that won’t annoy or unnerve her, the PUAs teach valuable techniques. Some of those techniques are solid common sense; others are soaked in misogyny. Some men who pay significant sums to be coached in “game” are happy with the results, some aren’t. But almost all are, at one point or another, taught to “neg.”
The problem with negging (whether it’s done as part of formal PUA technique or not) is that it’s rooted in men’s suspicion that too many women think too highly of themselves. Listen to PUAs and Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs), and you’ll hear a familiar litany: most women expect too much. Blame romance novels or television shows, pop psychology or feminism (the MRAs are especially fond of pinning all their woes on the last of these), but 21st century American women are too demanding—or so these lads claim. They want hot bods and fat wallets and empathy, like some perfect fusion of Johnny Depp, Mark Zuckerberg, and Dr. Drew.
Good God. If anybody’s ever tried to pick me up via “negging,” I guarantee it hasn’t worked.
What a great way to make me flee as quickly and thoroughly as possible, making me feel like I’m not awesome! Does this really work on enough women to make it statistically worthwhile..?
I’ll say it again, Hugo. It’s too easy for you to criticize game when you have it naturally. So you didn’t take a class to be a PUA, and you never negged, but you had other qualities you were able to use. You put down men who lack what you had naturally. It’s like LeBron James saying “I don’t understand why so many men can’t dunk, it comes natural to me.”
Negging is more positive than you suggest. It’s about differentiating yourself from other men in a world where women are sexual gatekeepers, not about cruelly manipulating them. That Urban Dictionary definition is awful.
All the “negging” examples I’ve read have been, frankly, shitty things to say. Manipulative, too. I do agree that attractive women often assume (correctly) that the man approaching them is a bit intimidated, and so something LIKE negging is a good way for a man to show his self-confidence, that the understands that he, too, is attractive. I love to tease women I’m attracted to about what they’re wearing/saying/doing, but I do the same to my friends and I have a self-deprecating sense of humor. This shows that I’m self-confident and builds rapport with whomever I’m flirting with. Negging, on the other hand, is designed to cut women down and is never OK. It is a “negative” behavior by definition.
BTW, this is coming from someone with ZERO natural game.
So I went and read your article at TGMP and there’s one part that really rubbed me the wrong way:
“Wanting a guy to be well-groomed and equipped with a basic vocabulary for his own emotional terrain are not unreasonable desires. In most cases, the problem isn’t women expecting too much: it’s men offering too little.”
This strikes me as super-speculative and uncharitable to the lonely man. Otherwise, a great post.
You know, if I’ve learned anything from GMP, it’s that game proponents are even more insufferably self-righteous and allegedly persecuted than libertarians, and I didn’t think that was possible.
Hugo,
PUAs teach guys to believe in their own value to shed “limiting beliefs” and consider themselves “the price”. In that context the “value reduction” concept of negging really doesn’t make sense.
The problem is, though, in my opinion, that mutually agreeable teasing (about something one noted because one has perceived) is not always readily discernible from “negging” from the outside – intent matters, at that point.
Which brings us to the problematic points in your post:
“the problem isn’t women expecting too much: it’s men offering too little.”
If so, then negging is probably their best shot, right? If so, there’s not much you can do about it. If so, it doesn’t matter if women are expecting too much and men are offering too little or the other way around, if so, there’s simply no equilibrium for minds and bodies to meet. So that’s a bad point to make to support your argument.
But then, all can become good, since “Guys can do better than that.” Except… you didn’t really mention how. So in the end, all you say is that a) negging works, but b) you shouldn’t use it, because it’s coming from a questionable point of view and you can do better.
I honestly appreciate your effort to integrate your blindspot into your philosophy, but in this case efficiency is a moral category. Most women will prefer negging to non-negging if leads to happy results. Merely saying something doesn’t smell good because of certain criteria doesn’t suffice in this case: the bullying and threats of violence will rarely lead to *mutually* happy results, so they fail on every level.
So doing what you do here, criticizing without even attempting to offer an alternative, seems rather questionable as well. You can say about Amanda Marcotte’s attempt to give *actual* dating advice whatever you want, she probably tried her best.
You may not want to contribute to that discussion after “unlearning flirting” yourself, but even so, I find it problematic to end such a post with “guys can do better” and leave them hanging there.
Hugo,
I wanted to leave this comment here, as opposed to GMP (which unfortunately, has become increasingly hostile to women – not your fault). Thanks so much for continuing to write these things. I promise, I really appreciate it.
Negging is more positive than you suggest.
Negging is a predatory social strategy that’s designed to manipulate. Period.
In The Gift of Fear, de Becker refers to this strategy as “typecasting”. You offer the other person a compliment with a slight insult; the insult is designed to get the other person to rise to the bait and try to prove you wrong.
“But it works, Hugo, how dare you!” Of course it does. The whole point of predatory social strategies is that they are effective.
Momentarily de-lurking to thank you for this article.
My feelings about negging are simple: I think it’s a terrible thing to do, to anyone, for pretty much any reason. I wouldn’t neg a guy I was interested in, and I expect to receive the same courtesy. I suppose this is partly because I don’t look at sex and dating as a “game”; I don’t feel that I’m there to win anything/one, or that I’m meant to be won. Sex and dating are activities that I enjoy, not competitions, and negging isn’t something I do to people I respect. If you approach me that way, I will run away as fast as I possibly can.
However, I’ve also dealt with disordered eating since I was twelve, and I used to be incredibly susceptible to negging. I remember when I was about 20, sitting in a bar/restaurant alone (I was meeting friends) and contemplating breaking a fast. I hadn’t eaten anything for 48 hours and I could barely think straight. Some PUA-in-training approached me, neggingly (I don’t remember exactly what he said, just that it was body-related), and it sent me into a panic attack that left me unable to eat, so I extended the fast another day.
My point here is not that everyone needs to tiptoe around my EDNOS, but that negging can cause real harm–because women are people, and they deserve to be treated as such. I’ve had boyfriends who negged constantly (yes, the dynamic is different when you’re actually dating that person, but many of the lines used were the same), and looking back I realize it was emotional abuse.
Of course negging can be effective, but it works best with people who are vulnerable and already have low self-esteem. Personally, that’s not the kind of person I want to date/sleep with–and if I did, I’d have to wonder what’s wrong with ME, that I’d rather take advantage of someone’s insecurities than treat him with basic dignity and respect.
Mythago,
“the insult is designed to get the other person to rise to the bait and try to prove you wrong.”
I don’t care for negging, but I don’t really understand what’s “predatory” about what you say in the quote…
And “manipulative” is a very sloppy term that can entail every kind of strategic communication except a direct order that’s supposed to help one person get another person to do something and in my opinion it’s a term that shouldn’t be used without clarification of what it’s supposed to mean in the specific context.
PM, to a complete stranger, deprecation in any spirit shows that the deprecator is jejeune at best. It isn’t any more palatable when it’s used to wrap a “compliment.”
I’m sorry the lonely man suffers, but we all have our crosses to bear. The socio-sexual universe may well be as Michel Houellebecq describes it (it may well not be thgat dire). That’s not license to neg women.
“But it works, Hugo, how dare you!” Of course it does. The whole point of predatory social strategies is that they are effective.
The point of “negging” is to weed out women who have healthy self-esteem and who recognize manipulative strategies and boundary-pushing. A woman with a healthy level of self-esteem isn’t going to respond to “negging”—she’s going to view it as rude and insulting, and is likely going to be suspicious of a man who is being impolite from the start. Maybe he’s just rude or socially unskilled. But maybe, he’s verbally abusive (and this is his “best face forward”). Maybe not just verbally. In any case, it’s a strong signal that he doesn’t treat others well.
But that isn’t to say that the technique doesn’t work. It can—on specific targets—people who are already predisposed to be…overly-trusting, nonconfrontational, and eager to please.
Read up on PUA, then read up on various personality disorders…and you’ll see a lot in common.
Negging, it’s like nagging. Just don’t do it, guys.
Heh. Well, that must explain at least part of the reason I have never had any experience at all with any “PUA” type. I got weeded out every time by the lack of “negging” efficacy.
You know, it’s not that I have such a huge level of self-esteem…I am absolutely riddled with faults and I know all about each and every one of ‘em far more thoroughly than I would sometimes like. It’s that I simply can’t be around a man sexually who makes me feel bad about myself; there would never be any sex. Hell, there wouldn’t even be any nudity. And there sure wouldn’t be any emotional vulnerability! I need lots of positive input to even begin to take off my clothes, whether we are talking my actual, physical clothes or my emotional, psychological clothes, and for the process to continue, I need to see some reciprocal stripping-nekkid, both physical and emotional/psychological.
It makes me extremely sad that making some women feel bad about themselves works as a way to get them to make themselves physically and/or emotionally/psychologically vulnerable. And kind of sick to my stomach.
I don’t care for negging, but I don’t really understand what’s “predatory” about what you say in the quote…
It might help if you look at the examples of “typecasting” in The Gift of Fear; the way this technique works is that it gets people to rise to the bait and try to prove you wrong even when they feel uncomfortable about it and don’t want to. For instance, Gavin De Becker shows how in one real life incident “typecasting” is used by a rapist to get a woman who’s uneasy about him but can’t explain to herself why to let him help her with her groceries and get into her apartment where he’s able to rape her.
If you’re a woman and learn to recognize “negging”; it really is a good idea to run from it, as responding to this technique makes you way less safe. People who approach you in this way are people likely to ignore your boundaries in other ways.
The difference between this and “mutually agreeable teasing” is that mutually agreeable teasing takes place in a context where both parties know the words aren’t meant literally, and knowing that is part of the fun. For instance, my husband and I have a game where I’ll make an over the top boast and he’ll say “Yes, and modesty is one of your best qualities.” We both know our lines, and we both know it’s a game.
Lynn,
I don’t know. All knowledge is dual use. All knowledge about human psychology can be abused by predators. That doesn’t make the knowledge or the use thereof predatory in itself. As I said I don’t care for negging (and as I said, I think it’s an oxymoron in the SC-thinking), but I don’t see the “predatory” point unless the intent is actually predatory, which is difficult to impossible to tell ex-ante.
“For instance, my husband and I have a game where I’ll make an over the top boast and he’ll say “Yes, and modesty is one of your best qualities.” We both know our lines, and we both know it’s a game.”
Sorry, but that’s a rather bad example for the case at hand because you’re talking about teasing with a person *you know very well and who knows you very well*. But when you’re *meeting someone*, when you don’t know the other person, what’s mutual agreeable teasing to one person could sound like negging to another. There’s just no definable difference, because people can only *assume* their lines. Another important aspect is “performance” – what you refer to when you say you know “it’s a game” with your husband – which is of utmost importance here, because the way something is said, the body language with which it is presented, are, at that point, the only way to communicate the intent. I’m rather sure that the same approach could be read as mutually agreeable teasing, negging, or an outright insult, depending on the performance of the intiator.
My point is, there’s just no clear way to tell from the outside.
wait, being fit, buying a nice car, dressing well, being charming, etc., aren’t manipulative and predatory? since when? these things are done to elicit an involuntary response of desire from people one wants to engage romantically. negging does sound icky, but aren’t garden variety courting strategies also ways of drawing attention to yourself? and isn’t drawing attention to yourself and eliciting attraction manipulative by definition?
Ereinion, these things are manipulative only if the bar is set so low that toe fungus is declared the summit of Mt. Everest.
Hugo, I made a proposal at Jezabelle, and I want your opinion here too…
I won’t argue and debate the usual topic of why guys who neg suck, and why guys shouldn’t do xyz.
Also, I don’t thinks its constructive to spend years deconstructing why men do xyz, and why women do abc.
I think we’re all wasting a lot of time arguing the ‘why” there is a problem instead of arguing the WHAT of the solution.
I’ve personally converted and de-brainwashed a lot more PUAs then feminists ever will. Simply because I knew many of them personally – and today I have them on a MUCH different track.
Here’s the solution I offer to the whole mess of the current problems… And what I personally practice and offer to other men, successfully. As an alternative to this PUACRAP.
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My personal solution to this whole mess is for men to never EVER hit on women, ever initiate with women, ever assume a woman is interested or wants to be pursued.
You might think I’m extreme, but I really do think this is the best way to solve the whole issue. I think we need to go through a period where men pause and stop hitting on women and put themselves in the role of the pursued so they can see what its like from the other side.
I personally never ever ever so much as have the thought of a woman being or not being interested in me, or ever even communicate with a woman from that frame. I only ever talk to women in the exact same way I talk to everyone else in the room. I never ever flirt with women, I only ever “socialize”.
I make sure to communicate friendliness, approachability in every context and that I am completely liberal and non-judgemental. This is to allow for whoever is in that context and is interested in me, to know they can feel free to approach me and pursue me, should she be interested.
Women take my number, ask me out, and I let them do all the initiating. This is also what I share with and teach other men.
If I bond with a woman, and we hit off, and I like her as a person I share contact information. “Note, I never ever see women sexually unless they’ve specifically initiated something with me” —> But if we hit it off as PEOPLE, I share my contact information with her, just as I would share with a gay men for networking purposes, or a heterosexual man, or a lesbian woman, or whatever.
Might seem extreme, but it has to be done. And there is currently NO alternative to PUA-crap for guys who need it. All there is are critique bashing them about what they shouldn’t do, yet there is no alternate plan.
Your thoughts?
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Negging was a stategy promoted by a woman hating talk show host. He told men to undermine women’s self-esteem as a strategy to “pump ‘em and dump ‘em.” This was on a mainstream radio talk show that ran for years. So women need to know that these pick up lines are tired, that men seem to think they work, and that women don’t have to tolerate any abuse verbally by these “strangers.” I always wondered why men were so addicted to scripts for everything… the memorized pattern that goes with third rate sales presentations, to the clueless “lines” they come up with in bars. One would think the clearest way to communicate would be not insulting or degrading, but elevanting and treating in a serious and humane way.
catullus,
i think being charming is just as duplicitous as “negging”. it’s basically being nicer than you want to be and engaging a person on topics that you don’t care a whit about, all for your own advantage. the better you are at it, the less people are able to notice that you don’t like them and can’t wait to go home and talk to your cat, who is not annoying. we reward the people who are best at it with popularity and political office!
Which, ereinion, is one helluva defense for negging, isn’t it.
@Sam: Yes, all knowledge of psychology can be used by predators, but some things lend themselves more specifically to predatory purposes than others. It’s all described in de Becker’s book. In the case of “typecasting,” the technique he describes that’s most similar to “negging,” one of the things that shows up in some of his examples is that often the small negative is one that suggests that the woman’s natural sense of self-preservation is a negative, so that she’s being challenged to disprove that she’s too wary, or thinks too much of herself, or whatever.
On “mutually agreeable teasing” between people who don’t know each other well, obviously, if you don’t know the other person well, you can’t know in advance that the teasing is mutually agreeable. But in general, one of the things that makes teasing of the variety that involves saying something that’s literally negative agreeable is when the subject of the teasing is totally confident that the negative isn’t meant; if there’s any sense that it’s actually “kidding on the square,” it’s not likely to be agreeable.
Imagine a pair who don’t know each other well, and an interaction where the man makes some over the top sexist remark, and gives the woman an “OK, now you can punish me” look, and the woman pretends to be about to give the man a huge punch in the arm, but ends instead in a light tap with her fist. This is not necessarily recommended as a flirting technique; a lot of women would bail at the over the top sexist remark. But when it works (in the sense that both people involved actually enjoy themselves), it works because the two, even if only slightly acquainted, have just enough knowledge of each other not to take it literally, and are giving each other cues that it’s a game.
Part of it is body language, but another part is selecting something that you know won’t likely be believed. If you tease someone you don’t know well about a supposed negative, and it’s something she’s actually insecure about, you don’t get “mutually agreeable”; either you get blown off, or you get a woman unhappily trying to prove you wrong. If it “works,” it probably only “works” in the sense that you get what you want out of her, not in the sense that you’re both enjoying it. On the other hand, if the pretend negative is about someone’s area of obvious strength, well, it may still not be her cup of tea (not everyone likes that sort of teasing), but it’s not so likely to get unhappy compliance.
So, something like “you have a pretty face, but you should get rid of those bangs” isn’t “mutually agreeable teasing”; it’s not over the top enough to cue anyone to see it as play. Pretending never to have heard of Harvard, and to think it’s a small, no name school, when someone mentions soon after meeting you that he or she went to Harvard, is friendly teasing, because no one would literally believe that you don’t know what Harvard is.
And the guy in my example who is trying to tease with the pretend sexist remark will likely find that his effort falls flat if the remark he tries is one that the woman has heard all too often in dead earnest.
I’m glad Mythago and Lynn already brought up the examples of “typecasting” in The Gift of Fear; and the way this technique works. Excellent book.
Sam–
As far as manipulation goes check out Dealing with Manipulative People on the rickross.com website. There is an excerpt from George K. Simon’s excellent book called, In Sheep’s Clothing. He makes a distinction between covert and overt aggression, the former typically being the type of manipulative behaviors most often used in interpersonal relationships.
I agree that employing a strategy of negging sounds manipulative, destructive and emotionally abusive. I’ve been a target of plenty of people who have tried to use them with me. Woman can behave in a similar way, but for different reasons.
Manipulative behaviors tends to suck out all the emotional safety in relationships and “emotional safety” is what is necessary for healthy relationships. Predators are not seeking healthy relationships based on reciprocity. They seek control and to exploit the vulnerable. The only thing they care about is getting their way and needs met at the expense of other human beings. I’d RUN and seek to get away from them as fast as you can.
AlekNovy– a very good set of ideas that all men could follow. Just stop the pursuit… wait… just let women be. Just think of how liberating it would be for het women to be able to go out to places, socialize and never have to deal with “PULs” or “being hit on” (Hit– an interesting term). I’m sure it would take a lot of pressure off of socially incompetant men as well.
It would create a whole new power dynamic. Good for you for coming up with this program!!
Lynn,
in a hurry, I agree on most of what you say, possible everything, will have to reread after I get back – as for this -
“Part of it is body language, but another part is selecting something that you know won’t likely be believed.”
Absolutely. Interestingly though, as I read/remember, it’s been a while, what Neil Strauss writes about “negging” in “the game” it is precisely that. He says “don’t neg a woman on something you think she may be *actually* insecure about” and he also mentions that not all beautiful women will be HSE people, and not all of them will be entirely confident about their visual appearance, a lot will actually be split HSE/LSE people, have a HSE shell and an LSE inside, which makes this particularly difficult to perceive, which, in turn, given people who don’t know each other well, pretty much reduces the possible appropriate range of application to what you call “over the top negative”.
When the stated purpose of the technique is to ‘take a hot woman down a notch,’ Sam, I don’t think we need to get into jargonistic analysis to figure out that the technique is not a neutral, benevolent one.
Certainly a lot of predatory social techniques have their ‘good’ versions. For example, doing favors for people unasked; this can be something you do to be kind, figuring that it will come back to you someday. Or it can be “loansharking” – something you do unasked to make people feel like they now “owe you” and therefore will be more likely to do you a favor they otherwise wouldn’t do. (An extreme version of this is the guy who buys a woman a drink unasked and then gets angry if she doesn’t reciprocate by allowing him to monopolize her attention.)
I don’t understand your reflexive need to defend everything in the PUA canon. Some of it – like self-confidence – is indeed beneficial and neutral. Negging isn’t in that category. What is the purpose of negging, if not (as PUAs cheerfully admit) to try and tell a woman “you’re not all that, so you should let me fuck you”?
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Apologies to hugo for double-comment. I pressed submit pre-maturely. Below comment is final comment.
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@SheillaG
Thanks… Though honestly, the reason I’m promoting my strategy is because it works the best for men. It only happens to also be great for women too.
Sure, what I shared works the best for women too (win/win) – but I’m honest here. If pickup-crap worked, I’d actually be promoting it. The truth is, I’ve been involved with and dealt with PUAs and gamers for almost a decade – through other work (self-help industry) I was always near them.
I never liked the PUA-crap, but in the first 3-4-5 years I thought of it as either harmless or that it probably maybe works for some people meeting some women.
Eventually I learned that its a complete scam. So not only does all this PUA-crap annoy the heck out of women – not only is not harmless, but extremely damaging to both the man and the woman – it also doesn’t even bring any of the “short-term” results either. The actual truth is most “Puas” are spending their nights alone too.
Not that I’m saying that PUA-crap would be justifiable if it got them short-term gains but hurt women. What I’m saying is its a lose/lose – it neither gets them the shallow result they seek, yet it hurts women too. A complete lose/lose strategy.
PUA/game is a severe lose/lose
The old mating scripts are a mild lose/lose
What I’m suggesting is a strong win/win
A question to you Sheila:
I’m curious, why do you think everyone is still so obsessed with arguing what not to do, insulting and shaming guys who don’t naturally do what I laid out.
I know its fun to mock, shame, ridicule and tell people what they’re doing wrong. But all these topics turn into 500 comment flame-wars with people calling each other idiots and talking at each other. Why is nobody offering an alternative? So far I’m the only one offering anything tangible in “guy-speak” that women agree with too.
The saddest part about PUA-crap isn’t just that it exists. The saddest part about pua-crap is that its the ONLY thing that exists.
Vulnerable guys have nowhere else to turn. They have a choice of reading websites that say vague stuff like “If youdon’t have a girlfriend you’re an idiot who sucks and you don’t get it, just be a cool guy” – and then there’s the PUA selling you a concrete solution. -> Who are vulnerable guys gonna choose?
All these topics are turning into over-analyzing the WHY of the problem – and very little is done or said about the “how”. Why don’t we just focus on finding the solution much more. Most people just wanna point fingers and argue who’s fault is it (its the women’s fault – no it’s the men’s fault – no patriarchy is to blame – no its those unrealistic women bla bla bla)
I honestly think we can fix it first, and later analyze why it was broken.
AlekNovy, I don’t think anyone disagrees that the “how” is contained in those parts of PUA that aren’t toxic or about ‘the game’. That is, teaching men to have self-confidence and self-respect, basic social skills, and ways to deal with conversations with strangers. These are, unlike the ‘game’ end, things that are also helpful in other areas of life (like work).
Negging is without a doubt the most misunderstood concept, both in terms of execution and purpose, in modern seduction technique. There’s a very fine that one can easily step across in taking something too far or hitting the wrong button the wrong way and that risk comes from viewing a neg purely as a sublimated insult, which is only going to inspire (even assuming it isn’t picked up on) a genuine hit to self-confidence and hatred for the negger. Like anything else, if it looks fake, calculated, or scripted, it’s going to go over like a lead balloon. If the first thing out of a guy’s mouth to a woman he’s never met is a neg, he needs to spend a few months, at least, learning how to be social without trying to get laid before he starts working the “Shag Fu” into his repertoire. Not hardly every woman ought to be negged in every circumstance: it’s for those times you need to cut through the ego of a woman who is (or thinks she is) an 8+ and distinguish yourself among starstruck suitors standing around (the “it only works on vulnerable, low self-esteem women” cant is 180 degrees wrong: those are the ones who need to be negged less or not at all). The ideal “cold” neg is one that comes across as almost perfectly balanced between compliment and critique, and offers the promise to the target that whatever incidental thing you’re picking up on isn’t horrible, and maybe is kind of cute or positive. (Example from personal experience: woman compares herself in appearance to particular Hollywood actress whose career happens to have cooled out a little over the last few years, Me: “Hmm, you’re holding up better than she is.”) For that matter, the ideal neg ought to hit on something that’s so subtle and actually, objectively difficult for a woman to gauge or identify (contra the bangs in her face) that it keeps her wondering what you were actually even talking about, and can everyone else see it too? (That’s the purpose of a neg, not just to cut into “bitch shielding” but at least as much or more to create uncertainty and doubt to move women off of their pedestal.) It’s also very possible, in fact often a lot safer and more effective, to aim a neg at something other than personal appearance that you get from the target as a point of vulnerability (e.g.: letting an ambitious student looking to impress know how well you think her work is “coming along”).
Like a lot of other things, especially in this area, there’s a kernel of insight into psychology in negging that’s gotten buried in a pile of assumptions, clumsy attempts, and trying to find hammy Charles Atlas-type “in just seven days, I can make you a sex god” solutions into something that might boost your chances a few percentage points. Is negging, or any other game/seduction/PUA thing manipulative? No more than makeup or underwire bras. Human social interactions are laden at all levels with efforts to persuade or manipulate other people or to communicate (and usually inflate) relative status.
@Alek: I’m not sure what women you know, but I have never seen or heard it to be the case (at least not for any guy who wasn’t either rich or famous or both) that actually, really not initiating at all with women leads to anything. I haven’t seen many women who aren’t either desperate or jarringly lacking in self-awareness willing to take that plunge of completely flipping the entire social script and hanging themselves that far out there on a regular basis. (The ones I have seen take that approach generally haven’t been anyone I wanted to spend much time with, which is maybe the point highlighting the high shoot-down ratio men have long had to contend with). Most women seem to take a lack of apparent interest as a lack of interest, period. I get putting yourself out there and showing yourself off and then watching for women who might indicate interest, but that doesn’t sound like what your talking about.
Mythago,
“I don’t understand your reflexive need to defend everything in the PUA canon.”
not my intention, sorry if it comes across like that. Also sorry I’m not actually replying right now, but I’m floating on a dopamine high after a great date with wonderful woman and I don’t want to ruin my could-I-be-falling-in-love-?-mood by thinking critically about anything gender related before I go to bed. Will reply tomorrow.
Sam – enjoy
Tom: I’m not sure what you thought that was supposed to refute. As you explain it, the neg is indeed a calculated bit of game-playing meant to take a woman down a notch if she thinks she all that, and to give you the upper hand. Call it ‘typecasting’ or ‘negging’ – it’s meant to push the other person off-balance and get them to try to prove that your negative opinion of them as wrong.
The comparison to makeup is silly, but obviously meant to be a “bitches do it too, so there”. An actual comparison would be to a manipulative, game-playing technique used by women ‘playing the game’ – say, pretending not to be as interested as she is. Makeup on women is more analogous to, say, the guy who uses hair gel or carefully gives himself the Rugged Stubble Indiana Jones look.
Conflating persuasion and presentation with manipulative social techniques is really not much more than an attempt to pretend that predatory social strategies are something other than just that. Everybody does it, it gets results, they do it too – are these really supposed to be anything other than excuses?
Negging is a strange beast. But the basis for it’s effectiveness doesn’t so much lie in the “tearing her down” part, but that it demonstrates an ability to compliment without being blind to faults. That’s a hell of a lot more honest than the legions of men who just baste on the compliments like they’re cranberry sauce on a thanksgiving day turkey.
The example you use in the article “You have a pretty face, but you’d be even prettier if you’d lose the bangs,’ is akin to stuff I hear all the time and most of that stuff works. Why? Not because it ruins her self esteem, but because the woman was complimented yet also acknowledged as a normal person with normal people imperfections. Of course you don’t go “hey girl nice hair, but loordy you need to lay off the ho-hos.” That’s just mean. Besides, the idea isn’t to make her feel undesirable but to show that you see her for who she is. That’s the basis of all romantic attraction when you get down to it, the ability to want someone while knowing their flaws. A comment like that works to establish those two things from the beginning. I fail to see how that honesty is suddenly another tool in patriarchy’s arsenal of dirty deeds.
But oh no, heaven forbid we put a little snark in our mating rituals, better to restrict it to joyless adventures like square dances and online dating. If that’s the case, I think I’ll take my cyanide pill now instead of later.
@mythago: you say tomato.
- Actually, all the PUA HOW that we do agree on is very VAGUE and not applicable. (be confident, be a better person)
- All the concrete, specific PUA-crap is toxic. ((for example: go around picking targets and trying to get laid, and then do xyz until you get the woman and bother her until she caves in() –> 99% of pickup methods have the “pressure a woman until she either says yes or no” – even the so called less-toxic ones. They might use sweeter words, but they’re all still predatory.
Nobody is offering an alternative plan of SPECIFICS. Nobody is offering an alternative to the “walk around and pressure women into either saying yes or no”. There might be 50 PUA schools, but the basic frame in all is that you’re a hunter and the woman is a pray to be won. No matter how much they talk about confidence or inner game.
I’m not rich, I’m ugly, and when I started this stuff I was chubby. But then again you’re misunderstanding what I’m saying. I’m not doing the opposite of the old-dating-scripts. You didn’t read what I said. Women aren’t calling me and asking me out on dates… They call me with social excuses or to socialize, and then when we’re out they start touching or being sexually upfront in some way or even verbally.
The thing is, women have NO problem pursuing, and in fact, the highest-quality women are most likely to pursue. They just need the right SAFE framework to do it in. Where she feels she won’t be judged etc…
Did you read my strategy carefully. Seems you haven’t. I didn’t say never TALK to women. I said never “hit on” women or pursue women. As in, never see them as a target or sexual object. I talk to maybe 10-20-30 new women on most days – but I also talk to 10-20-30 new men too. The point is I “socialize” and talk with everyone.
Again, you haven’t *read* what I said. Nowhere did I say that women need to flip the script. You’re trying to fit things in the old frame.
Which is why an important part of what I said (pay careful attention) -> whenever I bond with a person, we exchange contact information. Sometimes that person happens to be female.
The thing is-when you share your contact information with women as *persons* for non-sexual reasons and you have NO agenda. Women find it a lot easier to do pursuing. They’re calling for social/networking reasons after all – not to ask me “men” out.
Women CANT WAIT to pursue, they’re just not given a way or a chance to do it.
Again, you didn’t read or understand what I explained. I don’t (we don’t) show DISINTEREST in women.
We show interest in humans as human beings and we BOND with people as PERSONS. So if the person I happen to talk to is a woman, she’ll see me being interested in her as a PERSON (just like the guy I was talking to before).
Its a complete lie invented by society that you need to show women sexual-interest for them to pursue you. That’s BS. The trouble with showing sexual-interest is that if you show it to the wrong woman (and most do) – just contributes to a scary culture for women where they feel pressured and cornered all day long.
What I’m talking bout isn’t being DISINTERESTED in women. Its being interested in women as HUMAN beings. Its about allowing women to be interested, instead of “I” the guy deciding I have a “target” and now I need to “get” her.
Well, in a way it is “waiting for women to indicate interest” – except framing it that way still puts a man in a predatory mindset.
Coz, if you go around and go “ok, which chicks is interested in me” – you’re still creating the atmosphere that the old scripts do. A little less, but you still create that atmosphere.
This is about
1) Bonding with and making a better life for tons of people, and many women
2) Allowing and creating an atmosphere where women can show interest in you
Tom, that was a mighty impressive example of “mansplaining”. See this:
the ideal neg ought to hit on something that’s so subtle and actually, objectively difficult for a woman to gauge or identify (contra the bangs in her face) that it keeps her wondering what you were actually even talking about, and can everyone else see it too? (That’s the purpose of a neg, not just to cut into “bitch shielding” but at least as much or more to create uncertainty and doubt to move women off of their pedestal.)
That questioning, wondering if everyone else can see it too? That isn’t how emotionally healthy people think. Emotionally healthy people aren’t vulnerable to critique on their appearance or abilities by some random stranger who is hitting on them. They don’t stress (“uncertainty and doubt”) over some schmo’s assessment.
You also make the mistake of assuming that one’s physical appearance is a good, let alone reliable indicator of one’s mental state. It isn’t. Being physically attractive is, for the most part, an accident of birth. It offers no protection against emotional, physical, verbal or sexual abuse—which “pretty” people also suffer. Conversely, “homely” people can have excellent self-esteem.
So again, with your own words, you clearly indicated the purpose of negging–to weed out the emotionally healthy, and zone in on the emotionally vulnerable by playing on their insecurities. Sure, everyone has insecurities—but most folks’ aren’t that easy to get to; there has to be a pre-existing relationship with some level of intimacy before they care that much (enough to have uncertainty and self-doubt). Negging identifies which people have their vulnerabilities on their sleeve.
“You have a pretty face, but you’d be even prettier if you’d lose the bangs,’
Gaah. My instant assumption from comments like that: he has a Pygmalion complex, and would never be satisfied with my appearance unless it was under his complete direction. He’d whine, moan, groan, insult, cajole, bargain, bring it up apropos of nothing, mention to others his ideas for “improvements” (in the hopes they would join in his Campaign for Change), and generally harass the crap out of me until I gave in. Not interested. It may not be a direct insult (it’s indirect—”I know better than you how you ought to present yourself”; the reality is that whether or not the bangs look good—or better than another style—is purely a matter of opinion for everyone, not an objective fact), but it’s indicative of a man’s behavior and character if he starts in on your appearance right off the bat. For me, it’s the equivalent of being rude to the waitstaff—a total dealbreaker. If you don’t dig my appearance, I’m already wrong for you.
@La Lubu: “You also make the mistake of assuming that one’s physical appearance is a good, let alone reliable indicator of one’s mental state. It isn’t. Being physically attractive is, for the most part, an accident of birth. It offers no protection against emotional, physical, verbal or sexual abuse—which “pretty” people also suffer. Conversely, “homely” people can have excellent self-esteem.” You can add the qualifier “all else being equal” if it helps. Are there personally insecure 9′s and 10′s out there? Plenty. Are they as likely to be as insecure, specifically in regards to appearance and social situations as someone less attractive? Nope. They’ve been the way they are, accident of birth or not, for their entire lives and people have been treating them accordingly.
Beyond that, everyone has insecurities and emotional hangups about something. If they don’t, they’re probably off meditating on a mountaintop somewhere. The notional “emotionally healthy” person deserves something equivalent to Jung’s riposte “show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.”
Mythago,
thanks. I slept well
“When the stated purpose of the technique is to ‘take a hot woman down a notch,’ Sam, I don’t think we need to get into jargonistic analysis to figure out that the technique is not a neutral, benevolent one.”
Well, my main point is that something like intended mutually agreeable teasing can easily be confused for malevolent behaviour, both from the outside and from the person at which it is directed. In that case, the intent is good but the “execution” and the result are bad. I think that covers most cases of assumed negging.
But I’d also disagree that “taking down a notch” is *necessarily* a bad thing. I know a couple of superficially arrogant people who’re actually really nice and relaxed and not arrogant at all once they let go of their protective shell. So, someone who can figure that out quickly could use something like negging to get to their real self, which would probably be mutually agreeable – who likes to act when they can be themselves? – if she/he wanted to. The problem isn’t the technique itself, in my opinion, it’s most people’s inability to make the correct guesses “in the field”. As a consequence, using it will often result in “accidents”, but that’s differnent from “predatory” applications.
“Certainly a lot of predatory social techniques have their ‘good’ versions.”
Maybe this is mainly a matter of perspective. If you’re putting it this way, you’re assuming the bad version as default, the good one being a positive surprise. I’m suppose looking at it the other way around.
They’ve been the way they are, accident of birth or not, for their entire lives and people have been treating them accordingly.
Bullshit, Tom. Physically attractive people still end up spending their lives in dysfunctional homes during their formative years at the same rate as not-so-physically-attractive people. And that has a huge impact on self-esteem. That’s even setting aside the impacts that race, class, and sex have on how folks get treated.
(you do realize you’re reading a blog written by a man who has had umpteen advantages (race, sex, class, education, employment, physical health, good looks, yadda yadda), yet those advantages still weren’t enough to keep him free from mental health and substance abuse issues, right?)
Beyond that, everyone has insecurities and emotional hangups about something
Yes, and I said that. I just added the reminder that emotionally healthy people aren’t subject to stressing the critiques from random strangers—because they aren’t. It isn’t a standard response for someone to experience “uncertainty and doubt” from some stranger’s commentary. An emotionally healthy person isn’t going to experience that—they’ll shrug it off and forget about it. Those who “neg” know this, and rapidly move on if they don’t get the desired response. They are seeking those they feel will be easily controlled—people who are insecure and eager to please, those who need more than the usual amount of outside validation because they don’t possess self-confidence.
It hardly makes one a guru on a mountaintop to be immune to negging or other blatant forms of emotional manipulation.
Maybe this is mainly a matter of perspective.
No, it’s really not. You’re trying to salvage a predatory social technique by saying, hey, there are situations where this could be OK! Sure there could; and they are all situations that aren’t between strangers, one of whom is trying to get the other to put out.
I mean, look at your arguments. “Mutually agreeable teasing”? What is ‘mutually agreeable’ about approaching a stranger and making a negative remark, the stated purpose of which is to put the stranger off-balance and attack their self-opinion in order to make them more malleable to your advances? Or penetrating somebody’s “protective shell” – bullshit again, because the stated purpose of the neg is not to help an overly defensive person become more relaxed, and in any case, outside of the context of a pass I can’t imagine you justifying going around trying to fix the “protective shells” of perfect strangers.
Predatory social techniques have a ‘good’ version, and the way you tell the difference is how they are used and the motivation of the person using them. When the motivation is “to persuade a complete stranger to fuck me” I don’t really think we’re in Selfless Benevolence territory.
If we were talking about using these techniques in reference to selling cars, or closing home loans, Sam, I don’t think you’d be pretzeling around so much defending them.
Mythago,
my point was that “mutually agreeable teasing” can easily be confused with negging in your definition from the outside.
You’re right that much of this is only relevant with respect to strategic communication. But something that’s not selflessly benevolent isn’t necessarily predatory in my understanding, there’s a lot of shades of grey between the two.
To me it sounds a little like you’re saying that the idea “to persuade a complete stranger to fuck me” is predatory in itself, which I would have to disagree with.
Your reference to cars, and loans, well. No and yes, I reckon. I do consider it socially suboptimal to instill needs in people which they would not have had otherwise, but morality is a difficult subject in this matter. I see a nice SuperDuperPhone smartphone advertisement and I want one – is that *my preference*? I’m at Carphone Warehouse and a clever salesman tells me how my phone is really nice, but how I could improve my personality display and get both more clients and get laid if I owned a SuperDuperPhone smartphone and I do buy one – is that *not my preference*?
This gets philosophically very tricky very quickly, and there’s not really a lot of simple answers, except that you either define people’s agency as a given or you don’t. And cannot really *not* do that, as it’s a prerequisite for *this* discussion as well.
I’ve had it. I usually avoid these PUA discussions, bc, as Ren says, “it’s like shooting fish in a barrel, except there’s no water and the fish are already dead.”
But they’ve gone too far this time. So THIS is why I’ve been in so many verbal conflicts that nearly turned physical over the last few years?!? This is why men say and do these things in my presence?!?
I’m warning you, boys. Don’t even attempt this. It’s a good way to get yourself hurt if you try it on the wrong lady. These PUA fucks are exploiting you too. Don’t be stupid enough to hand your cash over to them.
I hear these assholes claim to be helping autistics with their social skills. BULLSHIT!! I’m speaking especially to you gentlemen with ASD. My son has Aspergers, and I stress myself all the time about the number of brutal attacks on neuroatypicals in my area. 2 have been lynched and burned alive in the last 5 years. Many more have been badly beaten. Assailants who do this sort of thing often try to justify it by accusing the neuroatypical assault victim of being a creep or a child molester.
I’m not saying PUA had anything to do with these lynchings in particular, but treating the wrong lady the wrong way when her boyfriend may be watching is dangerous! At best, the lady herself may well turn around and beat you for your rudeness. I’m apalled by this scam. This is truly disgusting, and possibly CRIMINAL product misrepresentation.
ASD or not, you gentlemen are adults who can choose to spend your time and money on fools if you wish. You will listen to me, or you won’t. I say you’re better off building social skills with a licensed therapist.
But my son is still my son. If any greedy lying PUA fuck ever tries to sell him this crap, there will be serious consequences for the scam artist!
Hugo? What happened to my comment?
Ok, it’s back up. Yes it’s a little salty. I’m glad it wasn’t too salty. I’m addressing some very real possible dangers to people who go around insulting strangers.
Telling ‘beta’ males they’ll score more often if they walk up to hot women and try to make them feel insecure! That’s the stuff frat boy pranks are made of! Have y’all seen The Toxic Avenger? Melvin the Mopboy? Honestly…
mythago – while it sounds like some PUA-types consider the criticism inaccurate or exaggerated, there seems to be a reasonable argument against “negging” in terms of its potential to be insulting and hurtful.
But, in the above, you seem to be raising *motivation* as an important element in making “negging” a bad thing. In which case, “to persuade a complete stranger to fuck me” (which you seem to be saying is the motivation that stops their behaviour from being good) sounds awfully venal, but what kind of behaviour aimed at appearing attractive to a stranger do you think couldn’t be characterised that way?
If someone puts on clothes they think they look hot in, goes out to a bar, walks up to a stranger they find attractive, smiles and says “Hi”, and wouldn’t have done *any* of those things if they were 100% sure there was no chance of a sexual relationship resulting, are they doing them all to persuade a complete stranger to fuck them?
I have a couple of friends that got really into PUA/FS philosophy and I have spent years struggling to get them out of it with very limited success. The “strategies” and “philosophies” are destructive to no end because they measure success based on whether or not a pickup occured, with little thought to the actual nature of the woman involved (with the exception of superficial physical appraisal). As a result, any happiness is transitory, and fulfillment is nonexistant.
Perhaps my experiences are unique and unrepresentative, but based upon them, it seems that Hugo has fundamentally mis-analyzed who PUA appeal to.
Amoung people I know, those who turned to PUA advice were NOT the no-confidence-never-leaves-the-basement crowd. Instead they were men who recently got out of terrible (and in at least one case seriously controlling) relationshps.
To me this always made sense: the idea that women “need to be taken down a notch” is going to be most appealing to those who feel they have been used and taken advantage of by women in the past.
This would further explain why the most spirited defenders of “negging” seem to offer variations on the argument “Hey, women are dishonest too!” Again, it’s simply a reflection on feelings of bitterness and disatisfaction from past bad relationships. Men who buy into PUA techniques feel that women have lied to and used them in the past, so they are comfortable lying to, and using, women in the future.
Given this, Hugo’s argument that “Wanting a guy to be well-groomed and equipped with a basic vocabulary for his own emotional terrain are not unreasonable desires. In most cases, the problem isn’t women expecting too much: it’s men offering too little.” seems to totally miss the mark.
Telling a man who was used and lied to by his last girlfriend(s) that he’s “offering too little” is not going to help how he feels about women.
I watched my friends waste literally years of their lives over this garbage because the alternative was a much harder sell: when someone has been hurt they’re much more willing to buy into hate than the hard work necessary to be ready to trust again. Telling them that they were only hurt because they “offered too little” will just come across as insulting and has zero chance of changing their mind.
So the thing that should be pissed of is that society offers NO solution to your son.
The thing you should be pissed off is that girls harshly rejected and put down your son if he dares so much as say hello.
The thing you should be pissed off the most about isn’t just that PUA exists – the thing you should be pissed off about even more is that society doesn’t offer your son any alternatives. In fact society will tell your son that if women treat him like garbage, its probably his fault and he’s “good enough” and he’s somehow earned it “by being creepy”
When women will call your son creepy, remember that a lot of feminist work has been done to empower creep-shaming and justify it.
“”"”ASD or not, you gentlemen are adults who can choose to spend your time and money on fools if you wish. You will listen to me, or you won’t. I say you’re better off building social skills with a licensed therapist.”"”
Except… Social skills are not flirting skills. Many are the guys like your son who have gone to 20-30-40 therapists (ussually women) who just shamed them and had no understanding for what its like to be the guy in the mating-script.
Its a common misconception women have that “oh, you just like, have social skills, and like, you have a great love life” -> which is pure BS, because even now in 2011 women wait for men to do physical escalation.
A part of autism/asperger is not reading social cues, and that includes SEXUAL cues and romantic cues. The thing is, women are taught that if a guy makes a move when you’re not interested – that he’s a male-privileged pig.
When your son comes home crying after a woman brutally humiliated him in public – please tell him “oh don’t worry, she had a right, you made a move when she wasn’t interested’ – and we teach women that so we can prevent a rape culture you see…
Women bash men who don’t make a move when she shows interest as well – and autism/aspergers also does that. And guess what, no therapist will teach you those things. And feminist websites and books have BASHED and criticized books teaching sexual interest/sexual cues as somehow supportive of rape-culture.
My question to you – what’s your alternative for PUA-crap. I personally think its bad not just because it annoys and hurts women, but it hurts the men in it a lot more too. But the traditional dating scripts don’t work either for most men, and especially autistic/asperger men.
So what’s your ALTERNATIVE?
Xena,
wow, lynchings? People burnt? Where do you live?
“But my son is still my son.”
Sounds like you’re a great mother.
My mother is also a great mother, yet her feminism (along with religion and OCD) gave me the feeling my touch was toxic and led to me completely hiding my sexuality. It took me years of working through this, partly with psychological help, through academic research, and self-help books. Among the latter, I cannot deny that the “change is possible”-narrative of Neil Strauss’ “the game” had an important impact on me. I think it is this narrative more than any specific social technology that makes the Seduction Community so successful – it’s “yes, you can, too!” It *is* an empowering narrative. And, in conjunction with all the other stuff it helped. A part of that is probably just right timing – I had done all the other work before reading the book – but still.
What I’m saying is – if you’re afraid of your son falling for some “psycho-babble”, it *may* actually help him deal with whatever possible issues he may have without compromising his ability to pick from the offers what’s good and useful and leave what’s bad and ugly.
But what’s even more important, in my opinion, again speaking from my perspective and nothing else, would be to help, to the extent that that is possible for a mother, your son have a healthy sexual persona, by allowing him to believe that his sexuality is valuable and not toxic. By allowing him to never loose what I had to work hard to get back. In my experience, feminists don’t seem to particularly care about how this kind of psychological collateral damage in not just a few boys, when they generalize about male sexual sociopathy. In my case, as I mentioned, there was also religious shame and OCD, which was a particularly bad blend, but even one can be bad enough.
AlexNovy–
“I said never “hit on” women or pursue women. As in, never see them as a target or sexual object.”
“The thing is-when you share your contact information with women as *persons* for non-sexual reasons and you have NO agenda.”
“We show interest in humans as human beings and we BOND with people as PERSONS. So if the person I happen to talk to is a woman, she’ll see me being interested in her as a PERSON (just like the guy I was talking to before).”
“The trouble with showing sexual-interest is that if you show it to the wrong woman (and most do) – just contributes to a scary culture for women where they feel pressured and cornered all day long.”
“Its being interested in women as HUMAN beings. Its about allowing women to be interested, instead of “I” the guy deciding I have a “target” and now I need to “get” her.”
This is about
1) Bonding with and making a better life for tons of people, and many women
All of this is true–bonding with human beings who happen to be women. The fact is treating people in a caring, respectful way distinguishes you from others, so for many women even if you define yourself as, “I’m not rich, I’m ugly, and when I started this stuff I was chubby,” what will stand out is how you treat them and that opens the door to all kinds of possibilities or as you would say, “Bonding with and making a better life for tons of people, and many women”
@Karen
I know you quoted a lot of what I said, but I’m not sure exactly what your comment or feedback is?
We are? I must have been out of class that day. When are women taught this? And by whom, the Shadowy Masters of the Feminist Conspiracy?
Jebedee: you’re taking my comment out of context. Sam was trying to excuse negging on the grounds that ‘mutually-agreeable teasing’ and ‘getting somebody out of their shell’ can be good things; I was observating that we’re talking about the context of a pickup, not a therapy session or a heart-to-heart between close friends. Persuading a stranger to have sex with you? I’m all about that (or, at least, was in my younger days). Pretending that persuading a stranger to have sex with you is something other than it is? Not so much.
Sam: from the outside of what? We’re talking about something everybody agrees is exactly what it appears to be: a PUA using the neg to ‘take her down a notch’ so that the target of his advances is more receptive to them.
You keep dithering and throwing up distractions about how in other situations, something akin to a neg might actually be OK. Well, spiffy. But that doesn’t explain why you keep trying to justify PUAs using the neg.
“observating”, for crissakes. It’s too early.
@SamSeaborn
I once listened to a group of PUAs having some conference or something. Among most of the crap said on the call, one thing they did notice, and most of the attendees on the recording confirmed was “Hey, did anyone notice we all come from families with strong overbearing mothers?” – “maybe this is why we’ve had so many problems with women, bla bla”.
It might be true or not – but the vast majority of them concluded this-and quite a lot of guys talked about having feminist-activist mothers, and quite a couple mentioned having mothers that teach women’s studies.
It might be a coincidence, or maybe they were exaggerating (i.e. the guys who didn’t fit the pattern just didn’t speak up)… But still, it was an interesting thing to hear. Also, if you go into MRA circles, you will be surprised how many of them have had feminist mothers and even prominent women’s studies professors as their mother.
I don’t think he’s trying to justify negs-he’s trying to explain how incredibly vague and mixed things are for men. In that the lines between the bad things and what some women find good (flirting) are so blurry and so undefinable.
I don’t know what Sam’s solution is. But mine is simple. Just don’t flirt… Ever. Leave flirting to women. Give women a frame and a chance to flirt. Just be the guy who allows women the safe space to show interest and flirt.
That way the problem of “is it flirting or not” is solved…
Alek – no, Sam is trying to justify negging. There is nothing “blurry” or confusing about negging.
Having known more than a few men who got the ugly mixed messages about male sexuality Sam describes, I’m all for teaching our sons that aggression and selfishness are no more integral to men’s sexuality than to any other part of human emotion, and that sexual interest is not automatically predatory. Part of that is getting away from the idea that sex is a zero-sum game where men are supposed to trick sex out of women, and anything that gets you there (like ‘negging’) is A-OK.
To get a bit digressional and soapboxy: I think there are good reasons to be sceptical of the efficacy of PUA tactics, given that a) the evidence for them is mostly anecdotal and b) some (though by no means all) of those touting their effectiveness are trying to sell something. But a lot of the criticism seems to be based on claiming, with little evidence, some combination of:
1) PUA tactics don’t work.
2) If they do work, it’s only on shallow/dumb/insecure/emotionally-damaged people.
3) Any PUA tactic that works is a form of social manipulation that long predates PUA-dom.
4) Any tactic that works and is ethical is either part of, or no more effective than, existing dating advice like “be confident”.
YMMV, but I think the accumulated anecdotal evidence is strong enough to contradict 1). 3) , true or not, doesn’t seem a very strong criticism, except insofar as those paying for advice could maybe get it cheaper from Dale Carnegie. 4) seems rather dubious given how much more *specific* PUA tactics seem to be than the more generic advice, but it will probably depend on what you consider ethical, on which more in a second. 2) is hard to assess but I’m sceptical of it since it seems to fit so closely with the reflexive human response to the idea of being effectively manipulated – maybe it would work on other, dumber, people, but never me! “Ending prices with .99 to make them seem lower? Only a complete idiot would fall for that!” And yet stores keep doing it.
What does seem like a good criticism is that someone using PUA tactics may offend/annoy/upset a lot of people in the process of finding someone who responds well to them, although this is probably very tactic- and context-dependent (something that’s intrusive in a supermarket may not be in a “meat market” bar.) What seems arguably the strongest criticism, but one of the hardest to pin down, is the general “ew” factor of the idea of being manipulated. There is, I think, something very creepy about the idea that someone who appears to be having a friendly, flirtatious conversation is mentally running through a rehearsed algorithm with “SEX” at the end of it. And yet the borderline is a little blurry; we probably accept the idea of someone in such a conversation nervously thinking “Must remember to smile! Must remember not to talk too much!”. And, paradoxically, someone so into PUA behaviour that such an algorithm has become second nature probably *isn’t* much thinking about it any more.
IIRC there’s an interesting Stephen King short story entitled “I know what you need”, where a guy supernaturally (and unbeknownst to her) acquires the means to know precisely what behaviour the POV-character (with whom he’s obsessed) will view most favourably at any given time. She needs a compliment, he compliments. She needs a hug, he hugs. She needs to be alone, he leaves. I always found it a bit of a shame that (mild spoilers) he ends up doing other, unambiguously evil things, rather than the story just exploring the ethics and creepiness of the original premise.
Mythago,
“Sam: from the outside of what?”
From not being a part of the specific conversation.
“We’re talking about something everybody agrees is exactly what it appears to be: a PUA using the neg to ‘take her down a notch’ so that the target of his advances is more receptive to them.”
Well, ok, taking your definition of neg (“take her down a notch” as the primary motivation), I’m talking about these things:
a) I think the idea of “taking her down a noth” contradicts the rest of the SC’s “you’re the price”-thought structure.
b) again, it’s really hard to conclude from the outside what the motivation of one person saying something is and how it is perceived by the other party in the conversation. Depending on situation and performance, something very similar may be a neg according to your definition, mutually agreeable teasing, or merely friendly banter. The content of what’s being said is not sufficient to identify a “neg” according to your definition, the motivation “take her down a notch” is a necessary element.
c) I don’t think that *every* motivation to take someone “down a noth” is necessarily predatory. If the idea behind it is to identify psychologically weaker personalities because they are easier to “impress”, then, sure, that’s predatory. But I personally have been in conversations where I have been taken down a notch, also by women, and it was occasionally deserved and improved the conversation, and altruism isn’t even a required component thereof. I mean, half of the feminist discourse around male privilege is about taking guys down a notch when they’re saying something. Is that ‘predatory’?a
You keep dithering and throwing up distractions about how in other situations, something akin to a neg might actually be OK. Well, spiffy. But that doesn’t explain why you keep trying to justify PUAs using the neg.
Ooops. Accidentally pressed return. That last paragraph in my reply above is a quote from Mythago.
AlekNovy,
I don’t know enough PUAs to be able to comment on that. I would be surprised though, especially to the extent that PUA has become synonymous with main stream dating advice for men in many respects. Maybe that’s an earlier observation? Something you noted before the book popularized “the game”? I’d be more inclined to believe it then. “Classic Freudian”
@Sam: Sounds like your mother’s brand of feminism was the toxic thing in both of your lives. Her religion sounds pretty toxic too. My feminism doesn’t allow me to contradict myself with Patriarchal Monotheism. I’m not fond of pointless self deprivation rituals either. I never force them on my kids. Never. I’ve caught both of them masturbating at the dinner table when they were little. I told them both to do that in their rooms so some weirdo doesn’t see them through the window and try to break in and hurt them for it. I told them that’s a private thing that everybody does, like pooping. It’s healthy, but the dinnertable is the wrong place for it. They were both fine with that.
My mom’s mental functioning was off too. She has CNS Lupus. I can’t blame women for that because I am one. I can’t blame Catholics, Protestants or Anarchists for that because I’ve lived with all of the above, all family members, and all of them functioned better than my mom. I sure as shit couldn’t blame myself or believe the awful things she said about me. My elementary school teachers said exactly the opposite. But only my elementary school teachers. And that was my first lesson in flawed pecking orders based on hearsay and nepotism. Everybody but the people who graded my schoolwork believed my crackpot mother over me.
So I set about throwing away most of the rules and cramming self help books like you did, some based on valuable psych theory. The question on my mind as I read was not so much “why am I fucked up?” as “why is everybody else so fucked up?” I ditched Xtianity by the time I was 17. I tried Amway at 21. Sorely disappointed. Hopelessly incompatible with my intuitions. Wicca worked well for me. I like Jungian feminism. Jean Shinoda Bolen, author of my bibles, Gods In Everyman and Goddesses In Everywoman is still my favourite self help guru. I’m still a little at odds with some facets of Wicca. Not enough to ditch the underlying worldview, but enough to question the rituals and the reworking of the ancient godforms.
The ethical and relationship framework that I built from the insanity that was my childhood is mine alone, and that experience demanded that I study social sciences and humanities. I hated accounting and economics. I walked out of those classes wanting to blow up my frikkin profs ala Marx and his merry little followers, and went on to study more social science. (Yes I still kinda like Chomsky)
I’ve done the best for my son that any non-specialist could. I broke my bones to protect him during his autistic meltdowns. He didn’t speak when he was 3. Now his social skills are about on par with an extremely polite 7 year old(he’s 11). He moves and speaks like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man. He’s a wonderful boy. I think he may have a musical savant bc he likes to dance and rap.
The problem that torments ASD people is that they have such a hard time reading body language, and they don’t grasp subtle vocal inflections like irony and sarcasm. They say what they say in earnest, and they believe that everybody that they deal with is speaking in concrete absolutes and total earnestness as well. They are often social outcasts and want badly to be liked. This can make them easy targets for scam artists, no matter how well mothered they are.
I knew a woman whose daughter had ASD. Her stepfather abused her. The poor little girl couldn’t function for years afterward. They experience that type of trauma tenfold, compared to neurotypicals.
My son’s problems are not the same problems you dealt with, Sam. I will quietly worry about him for the rest of my life, even tho I know I’ve done more than my best.
And maybe ‘lynchings’ is a bit of an exaggeration. Textbook examples of lynchings included help from crooked sheriffs and a mob of dozens or thousands. The 2 boys who were attacked in Sarnia and Hamilton were assaulted by 4 and 5-8 assailants respectively. The details of both cases were not released because the first victim was 14, and his assailants were all juveniles. I lived in Sarnia, a town of 80 000 at the time, and everybody knew somebody who knew the boy. The unofficial word was that he was burned to death.
The second victim in Hamilton was only described as being held by a group of young men, one of whom was underage. They tortured him so badly that his blood toxicity levels were at near fatal levels. He was not drugged. Fire and rusty weapons are the only things I can think of that would change the chemical composition of a boy’s blood in the 2 weeks that they held him. But I’m not a doctor. I never did find out if the Hamilton boy lived or died, or whether the other suspects (that’s why I said 5-8–the whole report was very vague–charges still pending) were ever charged. The boy was only 22.
I lived in Hamilton long enough to know the politic well. The poorer areas of that town are pretty mean. Everybody was itchin to pick a fight. I walked with a crowbar in the basket under my baby carriage, just in case. Nobody ever bothered me. But I did see 3 or 4 people walk by and smirk at the weapon sticking out under my diaper bag.
Your guess is correct. I despise them too much right now to even listen in on most of their stuff out of curiosity.
This (what I described) was back in the oldie days, before “the game”. Back then I saw them as just harmless fools and I hang out in similar circles to them so got to know a lot about them.
The problem is (this is my belief) things today are so screwed up that it is un-salvageable.
I honestly believe that if guys show sexual interest first, no matter how they do it, things are so messed up, that many women will feel offended, hurt, violated – no matter how un-predatory the sexual interest was. This in turn makes more women misandric and cynical and harsh to men, which makes more men misogynist, which makes them justify predatory behavior even more – its bad loop. I think it has gone too far to be solved.
I know I might seem extreme, but I genuinely believe we must go through a phase where men just don’t show sexual interest in women first – AT ALL. This means that until SHE shows it first, men should treat any woman as just a person, and nothing more (no sexuality).
A lot of people misunderstand to mean that I’m suggesting that men shouldn’t be interested or talk to women – not at all. I think men should talk to and get to know and bond with a TON of women – but only as people – not as sexual “things”.
Also, it should be men’s responsibility to communicate non-judgment-ability, and a liberal attitude so more women can be freer to show sexual interest or flirt first.
@Alex
My comment is that I was basically agreeing with you–the part about bonding with human beings and seeing women as human beings first rather than a target–someone to get and be had. I know I’m a woman and they know it too, but I wonder if they ever see me as a human being. I never felt that way given the incessant focus on sex and showing that interest too soon that made me feel unsafe and basically invisible as a human being.
It’s hard to describe and maybe it is just me and my own personal history and experiences. I may not be saying any of this well tonight either, but it is a subject that has cropped up repeatedly with a male friend of mine who has commented on my rigourous evaluation assessments of males. He’s also commented on all the levels of security I have as well.
Feeling pressured and corned all day long can do that to a woman. Feeling like the most innocent gesture will be misconstrued as evidence that you’re inviting their inappropriate sexual advances takes all the fun out of showing interest in a man. I stopped smiling at men altogether as I didn’t want that misconstrued and blow all out of proportion.
I was just basically agreeing with your observation about bonding. I think people forget just how to socialize in ways that don’t create so much pressure and that isn’t all about their agenda’s.
taking your definition of neg (“take her down a notch” as the primary motivation)
Sam: it’s very difficult to have a respectful conversation with you when you’re being dishonest. Please cut it out.
This isn’t my definition. It is the PUA definition. We are talking about a tactic that the PUA is explicitly identifying as such: a mild insult (sometimes bundled with a compliment) that is meant to “take her down a notch” to improve the PUA’s chances of convincing her to have sex with him.
In response to this, you keep arguing that maybe we should pretend that something else is going on other than what the PUA using the neg explicitly says is going on.
Of course there are situations where “taking somebody down a notch” is a positive thing. If I say something racist and you call me on it, your honest, clear motivation is to change my racist attitude, which may hurt my ego in the process (which you characterize as ‘taking one down a notch’). But again and again, you keep making this bullshit argument that if [social technique] can be used in some other situation in a neutral or benevolent manner, then we are not allowed to point out that is it being used in a predatory manner in the PUA context.
Mythago,
I wasn’t aware there’s supposed to be a canonical definition of PUA acronyms, and I’m still not sure there is – at least in this case the content of “neg” depends on the source of the definition.
Google gave this at:
http://www.fastseduction.com/acronyms.shtml (emphasis mine)
this site -http://www.pualingo.com/pua-definitions/neg-hit/ (possibly nsfw) – uses the “bring her down a notch” formulation in the “quick definition”, but says, among other things, below
“It is important to note that a neg hit IS NOT AN INSULT. Rather, it is an often humorous comment used to communicate active disinterest. New guys often make the MISTAKE OF INSULTING WOMEN, OR BEING MEAN to them. That is NOT THE POINT OF NEGS, and they SHOULD NEVER BE USED TO MAKE WOMEN FEEL BAD ABOUT THEMSELVES.
Matador: The appropriate response from a girl after a neg is laughter.”
The search result also show “sniper-negs” and “shotgun-negs” that seem defined more explicitly in the predatory sense – as for “sniper neg” -
Again, I’m not sure to which extent these definition are canonical definitions. But whether they are or not, “neg” doesn’t appear to be as negatively/predatorily defined as you are suggesting.
If you change the last part to
“then we are not allowed to point out *IF IT* is being used in a predatory manner in the PUA context.”
then we’re in total agreement. Our main difference seems to be that you see the use of [social technique] in a pua context by definition as sufficient for the label “predatory” whereas I say that the use of [social technique] is not *in itself* sufficent to assign that label if the intent is not predatory.
Does that make sense to you?
Sam, if you move those goalposts around any faster you’re going to get dizzy. First you say that negging isn’t a bad thing because there are situations where neg-like techniques can be neutral or positive, then you accuse me of inventing a particular definition of negging, and now you’re saying that it isn’t by definition predatory because some PUA sites say that it’s not really meant to be, like, an actual insult.
Whew. I think *I* need a lie-down after trying to follow all that. You did catch that ‘neg’ is a contraction of ‘negative’, yes?
By the way, you were awfully selective with your quotes there. The “pualingo” site specifically says, among other things: “Second, it creates a bit of a challenge, so if the woman is at all interested, she will start chasing the PUA, and trying to win his approval.” That is precisely what typecasting is: throwing out a negative remark to get the other person to rise to the bait and prove your negative opinion is incorrect. Here’s from another PUA site that cites Neil Strauss:
In other words, the reason a neg is not a flat-out blatant insult is not that the PUA is a kind person; it’s that a too-overt insult doesn’t work. The whole point of typecasting, or negging, is that you use such a subtle and challenge-able putdown that the other person thinks “No I’m not, let me show you” instead of “Oh yeah? Well fuck you, buddy.”
So no, Sam, our main difference seems to be that, over and over again, the way PUAs describe the use and purpose of the ‘neg’ puts it into the category of a predatory social technique. Whereas you, over and over again, try to find some way to salvage the neg as a positive social tool.
mythago – what’s your definition in this context (and by “your definition” I mean “what you mean when you use the word”, which is not an accusation of your having *invented* the definition, any more than I think Sam’s use of “your definition” was) of “predatory”?
Is behaviour predatory by definition when its purpose is to get someone to have sex with you? Is predatory behaviour inherently bad?
Since you earlier agreed that behaviour intended to get someone to have sex with you need not be bad, I assume the answer to the above isn’t “yes” in both cases. But your initial comment labelling negging as “predatory … period.” seemed to imply “and therefore bad.” So my best guess is that you don’t define all sex-seeking behaviour as predatory, in which case I’m curious to know what your definition is.
(Unrelated bit just because I want to know what tags the commenting system supports: bold
italic Link)
Mythago,
“The whole point of typecasting, or negging, is that you use such a subtle and challenge-able putdown that the other person thinks “No I’m not, let me show you” instead of “Oh yeah? Well fuck you, buddy.””
Well, again, a) I don’t think *that* is the *only* point of negging. If that is the only point of “typecasting”, then “typecasting” is a subset of “negging”, in my opinion. b) I just cannot see why making someone think “No; I’m not let me show you” is *in itself* predatory. I agree that this *CAN BE USED* in a predatory way, as explained over and over, but I cannot see why it is *inherently* predatory (which was my initial question).
It’s a technique that is likely to produce conversational accidents, but I just cannot understand the argument that it is *inherently* predatory. I agree with Hugo in saying “Dude, don’t neg”, for a lot of reasons, but I still don’t understand why you’re saying it is *inherently* predatory, not merely *potentially*, if coupled with predatory intent. I don’t think that using the technique is a sufficient indicator to assume predatory intent.
Maybe that’s because you’ve read that book “The Gift of Fear” and I haven’t.
Jebedee, repeating myself is getting tiresome, so let’s try it this way. There are any number of interactions where one might use a predatory social strategy; I’ve already given the example of a used-car salesperson. The reason a strategy is predatory is that it involves a deceptive technique intended to manipulate another person’s behavior.
I really can’t recommend enough that you pick up a copy of The Gift of Fear if you’re interested in the subject.
So my best guess is that you don’t define all sex-seeking behaviour as predatory
I’m wondering if that is what’s driving all the defensive reactions here; the fear that criticism of certain PUA techniques equates to criticism of “all sex-seeking behavior”. I don’t really know where you’re getting this from.
Perhaps because that is often true in the feminist-sphere. Its not true here, but some of these PUA-defenders are used to actually seeing tons of feminist spaces where ANY sex-seeking is seen as predatory.
Kate Harding for example defines pretty much any sex-seeking and even any communication-seeking as being part of rape culture, even innocent flirting when initiated by the man. If you follow Kate Harding’s recommendations, the only way to not be a predator is to never EVER talk to a woman unless she specifically says “hey you, come here and talk to me” or only if you’re introduced to her. That’s pretty much it – everything else by Shakesvile and Harding standards would qualify as predatory.
I find it rather hard to believe that PUAs spend time in “tons of feminist spaces”; as someone who has spent time in those spaces, sorry, the ‘you can’t even approach a woman’ is what I have seen over and over as an angry overreaction. “Oh, it’s not OK for me to tell a woman on the street that she’s pretty, well FINE then I guess I shouldn’t EVER talk to a woman AGAIN because YOU THINK ALL MEN ARE RAPISTS”. Whatever.
Or perhaps you’re thinking of the discussion (wasn’t it at Shakesville or Pandagon?) about how women are going to be wary of strangers approaching them, and that is because it is a safety issue, not because all men are rapists or any man approaching a woman is evil. But no, then again we got “OMG YOU FEMBITCHES HATE MEN”.
@Sam: I’m with Mythago. Even if it’s not an outright insult, but a little smear designed to bring out the lady’s competetive spirit, it’s bullshit. I had a philosophy prof who tried that tack on me, because I couldn’t stand him and I sat in his class all year arguing and refusing to hand in my assignments.
If somebody I had a romantic interest in tried that it would be SO OVER! Relationships aren’t supposed to be Reality tv gameshows. I can’t speak for other women, but I can’t stand competition in my home. I’ve never played the dunce caps and stars and whoever does the best job gets a special prize game with my kids, either. The jobs that need to be done around the house need to be done so we can all live, eat, and function without getting sick. THAT is the reward in the game of life. Fettishizing baubles–or worse, people–to get people to compete and try to outperform each other is everything that’s wrong with our culture.
No way will I ever jump through hoops for some dood who wants to armchair BF Skinner my ass. I don’t dance for pellets!
Mythago,
“The reason a strategy is predatory is that it involves a deceptive technique intended to manipulate another person’s behavior.”
Maybe the problems is really different understandings of the terms involved. Over on dictionary.com, “predatory” is defined in a number of ways:
I think 2./5. are relevant in this respect, and, as I said above, with respect to negging these motives *can* be present, but I don’t see how the use of the technique is *in itself* exploitative or necessarily motivated by *overly selfish* motives. To the extent that it is supposed to have an effect, it is certainly strategic, and all strategic communication is certainly “selfish” to the extent that it has an idea of where the conversation is supposed/hoped to go, but that is equally true for both mutually agreeable communication and particularly exploitative communication.
Here’s deceptive -
I’d agree that it is deceptive to the extent that it’s not overt communication of the intent. But there’s a fundamental problem: people, women an men alike, often aren’t aware of their actual intent, and what they consider their intent is changing over time, and that is particularly true in the early stages of a conversation: Imagine you being confronted with someone you think you like who would suddenly start negging you – your opinion of the person would change instantly. So, in that respect, pretty much *all* communication is deceptive to a degree, because it is not only designed to convey information, but also to keep options open, to allow for credible deniability. Is using a “taking one down a noth” and “qualify yourself to me”-technique *inherently* more deceptive? I can’t really see why.
and manipulate -
Mythago, AlekNovy,
I think most of the discussions you’re talking about are suffering from a significant audience mismatch. Feminists addressing street harassment are usually talking to guys who are already not doing that and feel they’re told they’re not supposed to say hello to a woman they like at a bus stop. Both parties are right in their complaints, but their venting to each other isn’t going to help anyone, it’s making the problem worse. And if you add the online factor, something that would be easily sorted out between most people over a bottle of beer turns into a screamfest online because of both the nature of online discusssions. It’s really hard to find productive discussions about this stuff.
@Mythago… Respectfully…
I said:
some of these PUA-defenders are used to [..] in tons feminist spaces
You say:
Its an honest mistake, but still. I never said it.
Agreed.
1) Except, that’s not what was said. It was said, and Kate Harding has specifically spelled out that a man should NEVER EVER approach a woman unless he’s 100000% certain she’s interested. Which, is the equivalent of saying “never talk to women”, because the only 100000% certain way is telepathy.
2) Its not limited to “men shouldn’t tell women on the street they’re pretty”. It was about men commencing any interactions with women in non-social contexts.
Read Norah Vincent’s book if you’d like. She was the lesbian journalist who lived a life as man. The single most-frustrating experience she had was trying to meet women. What she discovered that its virtually impossible to know whom to approach and when. From a woman’s perspective it seems like women are clear if they want to be approached. From a man’s perspective it doesn’t exist. It’s always Russian roulette.
More importantly – this isn’t what I was talking about
I am speaking of the huge rants, and stories whereby a feminist will subjectively retell a story of a man who made a move on her, or a friend of hers (be it at work, with friends, etc).
And she will ascribe all sorts of the foulest, evilest motives to everything the man did with no objective evidence. If he made a move when she wasn’t interested, she will ascribe the worst and most demonizing rape-culture and predatory explanations possible – whereas objectively it could be 10 other things, such as simple missunderstanding, low social calibration, social akwardness etc.. etc…
The truth is. As a man, the only 100% surefire way to never ever be accused of predatory behavior is to never initiate anything with women first. Either that or developing telepathy, but I don’t think that’s coming soon.
As a man you always run the risk of being falsely-accused of predatory behaviour. Heck, if you have aspergers or autism, you’re not that unlikely to get falsely accused of predatory behaviour even if you’re simply in the same room with women you have no interest in.
It is the responsibility of a good communicator to make sure the message comes across as intended.
If you say “apple”, but 1 person hears “orange”-then that one person is a FOOL. But if you say “apple”, and 100 people hear “orange” – then you suck as a communicator.
If feminist messages are always interpreted as “never talk to women” by 99.9% of men reading them – this is a fault of the communicator. In communication training we’re for example taught to take responsibility, and stop blaming our audience if our message isn’t coming across.
You know what’s funny? I actually say the same things that feminists are trying to say, but when I say it, men hear it. I’ve successfully de-brainwashed a ton of PUAs and had them leave the cult.
On Audience Mismatch
On top of the fact that the message is badly communicated, is the asinine insanity that the “right” audience would even read it. Psychopathic cat-callers and harassers would never in a billion years stumble on a feminist blog, let alone read it or take advice from it.
So blaming it on the male readers not getting it, and that its not about them – is just poor form. Its like me walking through spain, shouting slogans in greek, and whining why italians in new york didn’t get what I’m saying.
Xena,
“My son’s problems are not the same problems you dealt with, Sam. I will quietly worry about him for the rest of my life, even tho I know I’ve done more than my best.”
good luck to both of you
“The problem that torments ASD people is that they have such a hard time reading body language, and they don’t grasp subtle vocal inflections like irony and sarcasm.”
I’m sure you’ve heard about this, but just in case, I’ve recently heard about therapeutic robot-dolls designed specifically to help people suffering from Asperger and Autism to learn how to processs facial expressions and body language. Apparently, reduced amount of features in the dolls’ faces allow them to understand the structure of meaning better than being confronted with too much complexity in actual facial structures.
“Sounds like your mother’s brand of feminism was the toxic thing in both of your lives. Her religion sounds pretty toxic too.”
I think her feminism worked well for her, and I’m not sure she was really aware of how hard it was for me. I’ve mentioned it briefly recently now that I’ve been able to largely deal with it, but this stuff is complex, and it’s too easy to randomly cause people to feel guilty without getting anything for it. The religion wasn’t really hers, it was my school’s. And the OCD is probably my granny’s, who probably also laid the ground work for my mother’s feminism with protestant puritanism.
@La Lubu: (sorry about the delay getting back, been busy) “Physically attractive people still end up spending their lives in dysfunctional homes during their formative years at the same rate as not-so-physically-attractive people. And that has a huge impact on self-esteem. That’s even setting aside the impacts that race, class, and sex have on how folks get treated.” Again, note my qualifiers concerning “all else being equal” and “social situations.” Isolated contrary examples don’t negate a general trend, or as Damon Runyon put it: “The fight’s not always to the strongest nor the race to the swiftest, but that’s the way to bet.” Who’s likely to have more social confidence and confidence in how other people feel about their appearance: an attractive person who grew up in a dysfunctional home or an unattractive person?
Assuming that this is true, Kate Harding != “tons of feminist spaces”. That would be like me saying that The Spearhead = “tons of PUA spaces”.
The clearest message in the world can’t get through to somebody who wants to hear a different message entirely.
You know what’s funny? That you don’t understand that PUAs are listening to you because you’re not oneathem fembitches.
With all due respect – I wasn’t saying that tons of feminist spaces say exactly what KateHarding did.
I said it more in the tone of “tons of feminist spaces say this one thing, and then Kate Harding takes it even further by saying this even more extreme thing here”
I specifically stand by this, that in a ton (that means a sizeable percentage) of feminist spaces, any and all stories involving male-female interaction or a man ever offering or seeking sex are described as predatory and part of rape culture with NO caveat given.
Its not “he was predatory because he sought sex in this manner”, but its phrased as “this evil monster was interested in having sex with me” or “this idiot dared be interested in sex with me” – its not given with qualifications and there are no positive stories to counterbalance it.
Or, maybe because I don’t package the message as “here’s how to stop being an evil monster who does bad things on purpose”. If you accuse someone of evil, of course they’re going to be defensive and not listen to anything you say afterwards.
I come from the frame of PUAs being deluded, confused idiots, which though not entirely positive, works better than seeing them as evil monster-like predators. Oddly enough, accusing them of being idiots, who are confused and scammed by the cult – works better at getting them to leave the cult and starting to see why its so damaging.
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