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SilasBarta comments on Of Exclusionary Speech and Gender Politics - Less Wrong
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Those are some good points about the attractiveness/ fashionability distinction, and I made similar remarks to a different end. I'll have to think about that.
However, I can't but refer back to simple comparisons of the social reactions to advice, such as this:
"If you want to appear more attractive to men, show cleavage and arch your back." --> "Duh, already know that, of course that's how men are."
vs.
"If you want to appear more attractive to women, act dominant by ordering her around, thinking of her like a disobedient child, and generally making yourself appear scarce and unavailable." --> "Shut up!!! Shut up, you F***ING terrorist! Women are NOT like that, you worthless misogynist! You should be RESPECTFUL and DEFERENTIAL and give them lots of gifts. That's what we want, chauvanist. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go meet my boyfriend, who is such a jerk to me. I hope he's not late ... again."
Disclaimer: I'm not advocating the advice I paraphrased for men, but actual successful PUAs -- who would know what they're talking about -- seem to believe it, and the refusal to discuss such cases seriously is inexcusable.
Your comparison isn't fair -- compare mental manipulations vs. physical ones, and notice that "The Rules" were almost as controversial as "The Game". Conversely, you're not going to be declared evil if you tell men they should work out to get a certain chest-waist or shoulder-waist ratio that women find attractive.
Nobody cares that much about what men and women do to emphasize their physical attractiveness, or change in superficial behaviors to be more attractive. It's things that involve direct effect on the attractee's mind, or direct alteration to the attractor's body (e.g. implants, lifts, hair plugs) that produce the most impression of deception and manipulation, and thus the most excoriation.
Also, phrasing is very important. I could rephrase your controversial advice in a much-less offensive way thus:
"Women prefer men who are confident and know what they want. So be clear about what you want, and don't be afraid to tell them. They don't like it when men come across as needy or uncomfortable around women, so it can be helpful to think of how you might interact with your kid sister -- playful and teasing, rather than reverent or worshipful. Similarly, if you seem to have nothing to do but hang around with her, then you might seem like a loser with no other options. Cultivate other interests, including ones that don't involve her."
I just gave essentially the exact same advice, but in a harder-to-object to form. Most women I know would not only agree with the correctness of this advice, but would express their wish that more guys understood these things, and advocate educating men in this fashion -- since it emphasizes the benefits of these behaviors for women. (i.e., confidence, relatability, and independence)
The problem is that men and women do not always use the same (connotational) language for behaviors. To a low-attractive male, any action taken by a high-attractive male is suspect. Thus, an initially low-status PUA is more likely to describe high-status behaviors in negative terms (e.g. "ordering her around") rather than the terms women would use to describe the behavior they find attractive ("a man who knows what he wants, and isn't afraid to say it").
A PUA trying to teach others is also likely to use this negative language because his target audience of other low-attractive males will relate to it better, and it will also provide an outlet for their frustrations. However, this isn't the best language to use for an objective discussion or to use with people who are, well, not sexually and socially frustrated to misogynistic or near-misogynistic levels.
I actually think your formulation is the better way to teach it, as well. This variety of bitter misogyny tends to leak out in a man's interactions with women even if he knows the right things to say. And women won't find it attractive. People aren't resentful toward their kid sister. A PUA's target audience might like hearing the objectionable version more but it won't be as helpful to them.
In other words, you listed G as well as G*.
I mention this explicitly because I think this actually renders your wording importantly different from SilasBarta's. In the specific context of men-seeking-women that this advice was written for, a man who lies about what times he's free can make himself seem scarce and unavailable, whereas a man who actually has a crowded schedule will seem scarce and unavailable ... but only the latter has (or might have) the actual desired property.
Yep, that pretty much sums it up. Higher-status PU gurus advocate approaching G as much as possible, rather than faking G*. It's easier and more beneficial to your life to have more of a "life", than it is to fake having one in order to play hard to get. It's also substantially more beneficial to actually be confident, than to learn a zillion and one tiny behaviors that signal confidence, etc.
That's only true if you view unavailability as a positive, rather than over-availability as a negative. A man who can simply avoid doing things that turn women off is still far ahead of the average man in attractiveness, regardless of the reasons or means by which he avoids doing those things.
As it happens, unavailability is one of those characteristics women may deny finding attractive, because it's not actually enjoyable. (Note that we often behave as if we "want" things we don't actually like "having".) Yet, over-availability is a negative criterion that women don't deny is unattractive.
It seems, though, that the thing that makes something "manipulative" or "deceitful" is whether the behavior is described in terms of things the subject agrees he or she would like, using "far" language, or things the "manipulator" would like, in "near" language.
The objectionable PUA advice is very specific "near" instruction about how to behave in such a way as to meet the PUA's goals; my version was a mostly "far" description of "what women like/dislike". Similarly, I could take "The Rules" and attempt to recast them in a positive-to-men light, by saying that men don't want to be in a relationship with women who are clingy, desperate, or might be sleeping with other men... so if you're looking for a man who wants a relationship, do these things to avoid putting them off.
(Of course, the truth is that both the Game and the Rules are pushing evolutionary buttons in the opposite sex that can hijack conscious intentions, AND contain elements that are consciously considered desirable. The "hijacking" elements tend to be seen as objectionable no matter which sex is targeted.)
I don't think we have any substantive disagreement.
This is a really good point. Think like reality! Behavior that pleases others and benefits yourself is virtuous!
All manipulations under discussion pass through the mind, so I don't understand the distinction mental vs physical. And, "The Rules" certainly hasn't gotten near the attention as "The Game", nor does it commit the sin of breaking from advice women already get. ("Hold off on having sex with a man" -- gee, I'm sure women aren't taught that, right?) So there parallel isn't nearly as strong as you claim.
But that's not advice of remotely similar effectiveness: a) women rank looks as relatively unimportant beyond a certain point, and b) for a man, simply looking good is not attractive in that it does not, er, attract. You won't get approached by women just for looking good; women, OTOH, will be approached by men mainly on their looks.
(ETA:) I'm not alleging deception or hypocrisy in those standards and judgments. What I criticize is the attempt to suppress and disparage truthful information about what criteria women are actually using. What goes on now would be like if men adamantly denied that breast implants have any effect whatsoever on female attractiveness, and that they're immoral, and pursued women with implants almost exclusively. (I know you disagree that this accurately characterizes what goes on, and my responses to that are elsewhere in this post. I just want to clarify what specific behavior I'm criticizing.)
Not for "ordering them around", you didn't; there was no parallel in the advice you gave for that. More importantly, the good advice you claim women agree with is given side by side with the stuff that's completely ineffective and countereffective (gifts, admiration, letting her make choices -- which by the way does not contradict "knowing what you want"). How are men supposed to know which advice is deception and which isn't (or perhaps more politely, which advice reveals a lack of self-understanding / luminosity / going along with what one's expected to say)?
Sure, but like above, they say the same thing about men doing the counterproductive stuff. A clock is broken even when it's right twice a day.
It sounds like you're saying women are truthful as long as you stick to euphemisms and politician-speak("a man saying what he wants") and stay away from practical implications ("a man ordering a woman to use a different fashion" [1]). Am I supposed to be thankful for this?
[1] Which counts as sexual harassment, btw (unless you're really hot).
I believe I was in college when "The Rules" came out, so a bit younger than its target demographic, but I recall that there was quite an uproar about it at the time. There was a lot of criticism about the advice being manipulative of men, but also somewhat anti-feminist and representing a step backward for women.
Heck, I even remember a series of Cathy cartoons dedicated to "The Rules," with the takeaway being part horror (I seem to recall Cathy's Aaaak!) , part fascination, part willingness to try it out because it just might work, or something like that. . . . and, ok, Cathy may not display perfect insight into the American woman's psyche, but it tends to get the big trends right, or at least did so in that era
So, yeah, The Rules aren't the hip new thing right now, but in its heyday, the book got a lot of attention and a lot of criticism, and it also sold a lot of copies. I think it's a pretty fair comparison.
Oh come now. It'll get you AIs and IOIs (Approach Invitations and Indicators of Interest), which are the female equivalent. (Of course, "looking good" includes dressing well and being well-groomed.)
Yes there was -- be clear about what you want, and say it. This is merely one of the ways a woman would positively describe what you're calling "ordering them around".
Both descriptions carry subjective connotations, without being a truly accurate low-level description of "confident leadership" behaviors -- and are equally biased.
A truly neutral description of the behaviors in question would be much longer to write, since it would need to describe behavioral guidelines in much more detail.
WTF does that have to do with this discussion? I didn't say men should try to learn PUA from women; there's a clear and obvious advantage to learning them from men (for the most part).
(I'm skipping replying to the rest of your comment, because it's just more down the same sinkhole.)
You seem to have confused me with the "PUA=bad" crowd, but nothing I said can't be found in PUA materials. I'm also not in favor of banning PUA discussion on LW.
What I disagree with you on is the assertion of asymmetrical bias and social pressures for men and women regarding the "venusian arts". Most of the asymmetry you assert disappears when you control for physical vs. mental, male vs. female goals, etc.
AFAICT, you are so stuck in anger about women, that you can't see just how symmetrical the situation actually is for them. Men don't give women good advice for what we want in long-term relationships, being just as likely to say we want one thing, but actually commit to another. And men are just as likely to be irritated when women point this out, as the reverse.
ISTM that one reason you don't see this is that you keep talking about "beauty" techniques as the appropriate parallel to PUA, when that would only make sense if women's evolutionarily-assigned mating goals had to do with short-term sexual interest, vs. long term bonding.
I also don't get why you seem to keep making arguments about the culture at large, vs. rationalist culture and LessWrong. The two are different enough that you can hardly import the outside world here, and expect some sort of redress for wrongs that might be occurring elsewhere. That would be equivalent to a woman coming here and saying that we all should use "she" in our examples to make up for an excessive use of "he" in the world at large.
I will start from your more personal remarks:
What? Where are you getting you this? I've long known you were not part of the "PUA = bad" crowd, and that you're not in favor of banning. I would counterpropose that you're interpreting my disagreement and occasional impatience as hostility, and assuming it carries over to other areas.
I'm going to delete the unhelpful psychoanalysis from the rest of these excerpts; they have nothing to do with the validity of my points and only serve to insult. If I'm wrong, let it be for some reason other than "Silas is a nut".
Don't speak for me; I've never been asked, and, on principle, I would refuse to give advice if I knew it would be skewed.
Again, speak for yourself -- if I feel social pressures that keep me from being truthful, I say so rather than perpetuate what I know to be wrong. I imagine that if I were a woman, I'd adhere to the same standard and expect no less out of others, male or female.
Not really. I accept quite well that women usually aren't going to be drawing men in for short-term sexual interest. Nevertheless, part of the necessary steps in getting "shortlisted" for a long-term relationship is looks, which is why I claim the parallel holds.
'Cause it's a critical example of bias and poor specification of values, maybe?
Now, for the rest:
Female AI/IOIs, by design, have plausible deniability. One can only take them as definitive at one's own risk -- that breaks the equivalence.
"I want beer" --> being clear about what I want, but not giving orders
"Bring me beer" --> being clear AND giving orders
I'll accept that full specification of which is okay and which isn't, is going to be difficult. Point taken, and I'll stop bringing it up. But on this issue, at least, you're going two far in blurring very different concepts.
Especially since:
"I want beer" (with a strong voice and expectant eye contact) --> Being clear about what I want and communicating that my mere wishes should implicitly be interpreted as orders. "Bring me beer" (lowered eyes, end of the sentence raised slightly in pitch) --> Making an uncertain claim about what I want, with a supplicating request for action.
A potential asymmetry that is of some interest is a difference in (typical) ability to separate 'far mode' signalling beliefs and 'near mode' actions.
Now I'm curious. What do men say we want in long-term relationships and what do we actually commit to? I think I know what I want but when it comes to related areas (what I want from work life) I have atypical preferences so I am not comfortable generalising from a sample of me.
Certainly, it's easier to make anything more palatable if you talk about in "far" -- which of course is the whole point of "far" thinking in the first place. ;-)
Maybe you should ask a woman that question -- honestly, I'm not sure how comfortable I am with trying to answer it in any detail.
Actually, contemplating just how uncomfortable I am with trying to say what I know, makes me considerably more sympathetic to why women don't often give guys good advice. No matter how true or useful the information might be to the opposite sex, there is considerable social stigma (from one's own sex) attached to telling the truth.
(Imagine the social consequences if a woman said she wanted guys to boss her around, or a guy said he wanted a woman who wasn't always interested in sex when he was. And that assumes that either the man or the woman are able to notice this not-necessarily-conscious preference in themselves, and admit to it, before the social stigma issue can even come up!)
(A different tangent to where mine lead but:) No, some things are much more palatable in 'near', particularly when talking to those who believe they have correlated interests.
I know women who say that, particularly to other women and do so without losing status and while maintaining rapport. They are less inclined to say it around guys but if, to give an example, I said 'you love it' they would take girlish pleasure and agree. One of the messages communicated is 'Oh, great, he doesn't believe in Santa Claus. We don't need to lie to him'.
Really? Guys actually act like they want to commit to a woman who is not always interested in sex when he is? With the aforementioned caveat that I do not generalise from me I have extremely strong evidence that this doesn't apply in my case. (And thanks for giving your answer without answering.)
Why do you think women are advised not to have sex on the first date, and not to be a man's "booty call", if they want a relationship?
Why do you think men routinely have affairs with women who'll have sex with them, while remaining married to a woman who's not?
I'm not saying guys like this -- I'm saying that this is an example of controversial mating advice that works for "women's goals", in the same way that PUA does for "men's goals".
(Both phrases being in quotes because not all men and women have the same goals.)
That is good evidence.
That I do not find nearly persuasive. Men are less likely to have affairs when their sex life within the marriage is healthy. They are also less likely to end the marriage.
That's what I was allowing for when I said 'act like' (economic 'want').
Do you believe that 'be less interested in sex' would be helpful advice for maintaining a long term relationship that has already formed? I don't deny the possibility, just assert that (concrete evidence indicates) this is definitely not works with me.
A relevant quote:
The quote is rather tongue in cheek but I would not rule out an element of truth (to the suggestion that without the externally enforced obligation more sex is required for maintenance and to secure marriage). In fact, high quality sources of dating advice often give suggestions on how manage such dynamics for the benefit of both parties.
I think you're misinterpreting the scope of what I said. I didn't say that lack of interest in sex was attractive - it isn't.
I said, "isn't always interested" - i.e., variable reinforcement. I think it's the case that a man will be most satisfied in a relationship when his partner expresses sexual interest and attraction on an ongoing basis, but nonetheless does not say "yes" to all requests to do something about it, or has variability in how far that interaction proceeds. Having sex whenever a guy wants to is potentially as damaging to a relationship as never having sex at all, in the same way that too-difficult and too-easy tasks don't lead to a "flow" state.
I've seen relationship advice for women that actually described a relationship in terms of a video game, advising that there always be new challenges and levels to unlock, so to speak, so that things don't get too predictable. For that matter, I've seen relationship advice for men that was basically the same, although I find it amusing that it was the advice for women that used the videogame analogy. (And written by a female author, at that.)
(OTOH, men are stereotypically interested in videogames, so I guess explaining that you need to be like a videogame to keep a man interested would make more sense than the reverse analogy.)
Or maybe the really effective thing to do is to know which type of behavior to exhibit when (so much of social skill is about context-sensitivity); all-out dominant behavior is more effective in some cases than all-out the other direction ('submissive' seems like the wrong term) or ham-fisted attempts at variation, so advice to adopt all-out dominant behavior, combined with the idea that the other sort of behavior is completely ineffective, persists among men who are less skilled and interested in those cases; and women introspecting on what they want get that they want both but don't get the context-dependence, or don't realize it needs to be said.
I don't disagree with any of that, but note that this failure of introspection on the part of (influential) women on this matter is exactly what my thesis has been all along. And I wouldn't tolerate that from myself, or from men either, especially if such advice had the impact that the widely-taught (and wrong) male-to-female engagement rules has.
No, but you are definitely not supposed to be bitter about it. ~1,000 times on OvercomingBias:
Sorry if I'm piling on.
I don't think anyone here is saying: "listen to the women, they always know what is best". Rather people are saying: "Hey men who know what women find attractive, you don't need to phrase your true advice in such objectionable language."
Not to bring this back to object level but I'm not sure "ordering them around" actually communicates good advice. There are circumstances where taking charge is attractive but it isn't nearly as simple as "order them around" and I suspect whatever good advice is here can be phrased in a similarly unobjectionable way.
Really? Are we looking at the same forum? Because of all criticisms of PUA discussion, I never saw anything of that form -- most importantly, I don't remember acknowledgement that it is true (just as society in general won't admit it). Those who found it objectionable, like this characteristic poster, demanded much more serious straitjackets:
That's way beyond, "hey, use less objectionable language when making these true claims about what women find attractive". Don't you think so?
Agree With What You Are Saying But Good Pickup Advice Would Recommend Ignoring That Frame Rather Than Validating It. (AWWYASBGPAWRITFRTVI?)
Sorry, "here" is ambiguous. I meant in the discussion presently occurring, perhaps I should have just said pjeby is only saying that but I felt like my statement applied to everyone who replied to your comments recently.
My position is here. But yes, past discussions involved broader disagreement. I mostly meant that I didn't think your interpretation of pjeby's comment was accurate.
(ETA: I'm sympathetic to a lot of what she says but I'm not sure I'd agree alicorn was "characteristic" in that particular discussion.)
I wouldn't go as far as to support the (absolute part of the) first claim but I certainly support the second.
I disagree. Naturally things aren't simple (simple isn't a Nash equilibrium in the dating game!) but 'ordering them around' is good advice, particularly to those who most need dating advice. That class of guys tends to associate receiving orders with resentment and so tends to have a failure of empathy when it comes to their expectations of how women will react to similar assertions. "Order them around" is what they need to hear while the more abstract "taking charge" crosses too much of an inferential gap.
I've seen more than one bit of PUA literature cross this gap by carefully pointing out how behavior X might seem asshole-ish among men, but is in fact perceived as positive quality Y when received by women from men, and further pointing out that it's an error to assume this means one should act like an asshole in general.
Certainly, I don't think teaching material should do any less. It's likely that a properly framed discussion here relating the venusian arts to, say the Dark Arts, advertising, consent, consistent decision theories, etc. would also need to discuss both sides of that perceptual gap, at least in passing. (Albeit without so much detailed how-to info in between.)
That is a good way to teach it, even though it is somewhat of a lie (similar to teaching Newtonian physics). It usually isn't healthy to teach about things that are actually perceived as a negative quality by women can also give desired results to men. That darker truth is best left until after people have developed their social skills and let go of their tendency to bury their frustration behind a façade of righteous indignation.
Huh? I don't see the connection between this and what I was talking about.
More explicit:
There are two messages to convey:
The first of these (and the one that you mention) is a better subject of education. The second is a recipe for excuses, passive aggression and bitterness for people who don't already have an appreciation for the first point.
Yeah, the absolute part made it too strong.
We're probably being too vague to evaluate this question. I read "order them around" and I picture men doing a lot of things that women probably won't find very attractive. I suspect it might lead to the audience just trying to be mean to women thinking that will make them attractive. If I knew less about the subject that advice would lead me to do counterproductive things, I think. Language often needs to be tweaked for audiences that don't understand right away. I might be in the minority when it comes to my interpretation of "ordering them around" but it really isn't clear to me exactly what behaviors it recommends.
"Order them around" seems to be evocative of "Bitch, make me a sandwich!"
I actually have success (ie we both have fun and build attraction) when using such orders. But I do it playfully and there is a distinct element of counter-signalling involved (we both know I am not a controlling asshole) so how that data point relates to the topic is non-trivial.
Same here. But this is so context based I sort of doubt a bitter near-misogynist who just started reading attraction advice would be able to implement it correctly. In any case if this is the behavior that "order them around" recommends why not say "Women find it attractive when men can confidently joke and be ironic about traditional gender roles without worrying about being offensive." And then give examples of this behavior and explain the counter-signaling going on.
Yes, counter-signaling is fun.
When orders are given sincerely, they are usually more subtle:
The purpose of such orders is not to control the other person, it is to signal status.
Another use of orders (and other forms of dominance) is a reactive one, specifically reacting to "bad" or "naughty" female behavior. I put those words in quotes because perception of what is "bad" or "naughty" is somewhat subjective. Anyone experienced with young women (at least in Western culture) knows that some female personality types sometimes engage in behavior with men that could be considered "bratty" or "naughty," by the standard of general cultural norms. PUAs hypothesize that these women do so consciously or unconsciously as a "test."
What many people reading about PUA techniques (either critics or newbies) don't realize is that a lot of the more controversial techniques such as dominance and status tactics are used in a highly contextual way. So these behaviors that wouldn't be justifiable if dropped out of the blue would be justifiable if done in context, such as the context of responding to a "test."
I am not completely wedded to the PUA view of when a woman is "testing" or not, and I recognize that false positives in that area could lead to a woman's perspective being disregarded incorrectly. Yet I do think there are many examples of female "bad", "bratty", or "naughty" behavior that are correctly described by the PUA model of testing, and which do require a response. And one type of response can be behavior that would be unacceptable (or "assholish") in other contexts, such as giving orders or strong negs.
For instance, if a woman has spent the last 10 minutes poking him and the joke has worn off, then a PUA might give her an order like "Hey, stop being such a brat."
The ethics of dominance behaviors is context-dependent, and one factor in context is whether the other person is engaging in behavior that would be culturally considered to justify that response. Here is an example with neg-like behavior, where Monday night I ended up negging a woman kind of hard, because I perceived it as justified (even though I don't believe in negging out of the blue):
Her: I'm trying to find N... I am going to tell him something that will make him happy...
Me: You're the bearer of good news, huh?
Her: Yeah, I'm going to hang out for him with a whole day this weekend! He's been wanting me to for ages.
[Now, by cultural norms, her behavior is a bit of arrogant. She was signalling that she has higher status that N. Social circles have status hierarchies, but it's still a bit arrogant to practically come out and say that you are higher status than someone. What she communicated was "I am so much higher status and attractive that another guy in our social circle is lucky to hang out with me... and what's more, I am so high status and attractive that I can get away with this self-enhancement with you!" So she was indirectly asserting status over me, also. I couldn't let this assertion of higher status from her go unchallenged.]
Me: Ok, so that's the bad news you're bearing... but what's the good news?
Her: (it took her a sec to get that the joke was on her, then she replied slightly haughtily and petulantly) Hey, I bet you'd be stoked if I spent a day hanging out at your house! [We both know this is true, from our previous interaction, but it's a status ploy for her to explicitly point this out. My perception that I was seeing a "test" was confirmed. I think her behavior would be intersubjectively considered a bit immature, even by feminists how would normally be skeptical of many male claims of female "bad behavior."]
Me: That depends... are you tidy?
Her: Yeah, I'm tidy...
Me: Great! Then I would in fact be stoked about you coming over to my house... you could help me tidy up my laundry
Her: You're a jerk, you know...
Me: Yeah, I know!
Her: (reaches over and rubs my arm. This was a signal of attraction that let me know that I was calibrated correctly, and that she had enjoyed my response to her test. If I had detected that I had actually hurt her feelings by calling her "bad news," then I would have instead taken steps to make her feel better or even apologized if I was miscalibrated.)
I signalled: "I don't agree with your assertion of status over our mutual friend N. In fact, I think you are violating the norm of ostensible equality between friends by so nakedly attempting to assert your status. I assert that my status is high enough that I am justified in calling you on this behavior and making fun of you for it by joking that you are "bad news" and lowering your status. I am so high status that I find your attempts at elevating your status above N amusing, implying that I actually view myself as at least as high status as you, not merely trying to act as high status as you. I am not threatened by your status imposition, which is why I feel no need to explicitly call you on it. I am not afraid of your potential negative reaction to my enforcement of this norm; I expect you to take this tease and accept it as a justified response from me. Since you tried to violate the norm and claim status you don't actually have, you actually lowered your own status, which is why I am justified in raising my status above yours at this time and delivering the status-deflation you deserve. I can tell that you are testing me by seeing if I will let you get away with your status assertion, and the answer is that I won't. If you attempt such a norm-violating level of self-enhancement in the future, I will quickly and immediately burst your bubble."
...or something like those things. I consider this a defensive use of status games; I wouldn't neg a woman this hard if she wasn't violating a norm and attempting to inflate her status. If I had let her get away with that behavior, then she would think that I thought that she deserved that level of status. She would engage in similar behavior in the future, and keep attempting to raise her status until she eventually considered her status higher than mine. If that happened, then not only would it destroy her attraction to me, but it would also destroy any chance of us having a quality friendship. Soon she would be referring to me as yet another of the guys who would be lucky to hang out with her.
Counter-intuitively, the way to maintain equality in my interaction with her was to engage in a status game, and deflate her status in a way that would not be justified in another context, such as out of the blue. In context, my lowering of her status was a deflation of the excess status that she was trying to claim, which is morally different from attempting to lower someone's status unprovoked. Notice also that my goal wasn't to "lower her self-esteem" it was to lower her level of narcissism and illegitimate status assertion.
It is by understanding power that I can achieve equality. Remember, as I mentioned before, a typical mode of social interaction is to try to increase your status incrementally until people stop you (like i stopped her). Unless you confine yourself to a nerd ghetto where people don't play this sort of status games (and status is decided more by competence than by what you can get away with), you will need to engage in social power dynamics, if only as a defensive measure.
Status behavior (which may include giving orders) in a defensive context is in a different moral category from status behavior in other contexts. I hope this lengthy analysis is useful to someone, and opens their eyes to the fun world of subcommunication. Questions or disagreement is invited.
I wouldn't give this advice to a bitter near-misogynist (and don't have a special interest in advising bitter near-misogynists, that doesn't usually work all that well anyway). I would give it to 'good boys' who are still under the impression that the polite supplication that sometimes works for keeping mommy happy is attractive to female peers. It opens up a whole new world to them.
Because I consider this tangent distinctly different from the original 'order them around' discussion. In particular, I don't think 'order them around' implies 'refer to them as bitches'.
(I didn't reject ChronoS' claimed evocation because the tangent is interesting and had no inclination to invalidate his contribution. For the purpose of your attempt to build upon that evocation as a shared premise I do reject it.)
I'm wondering about this "taking charge" thing. Does it just apply when the woman isn't very sure about what she wants? Or also when the male overrides a clear desire of hers? What if the man takes charge and turns out to be wrong about the outcome?
The main context it's discussed in is situations where no-one has expressed a strong preference. In the case of conflicting preferences, men are advised to be clear and non-deferential regarding their preferences, without necessarily "overriding" anything. The point is to show initiative and non-wishiwashiness, not to push people around.
Then how he handles that is the next test. ;-)
I saw an interesting discussion of the movie "300" that sort of relates to this. Someone said that in almost every action movie, there is a woman who wants the man to stay with her and not go do the dangerous thing that's his mission in life. But, if he were the sort of man who would stay - who'd, before going off to war against the Persians, would say, "you're right honey, I should just stay here with you and the kids" - then she wouldn't have been attracted to him in the first place.
And, if he did change his mind and stay, the attraction and romance in the relationship would pretty much die right away.
So the advice to "take charge" is really just to be the sort of man who doesn't let a woman talk him into things for the sake of immediate pleasure (or lack of immediate conflict), at the expense of long-term interests. Such a man may be too easily convinced to leave or to cheat by a different woman, and be a lousy protector who won't do difficult or painful things in his family's interest.
So, the function of taking charge is that the man must demonstrate that he can tell the difference between what a woman says she wants and what's actually best in a given situation, as well as his nature as a man of constancy, certainty, and initiative. It's not really about making decisions, per se.
(For example, some "chivalrous" gestures like opening a door, pulling out a chair, or giving your arm to someone can be forms of "taking charge" in the sense that they show purpose and initiative, even though no decision is really being made, nor are any orders being given.)
That's fictional evidence-- that is, not evidence at all. All I'm sure of is it's harder to make a movie about the guy who stayed home, though you could do it if trouble came looking for him.
It's not evidence but it is a good illustration that helps point people to intuitive understanding that they already have.
The person who wrote that was pointing to the fiction to give a point of common reference for his observation of the dynamics between men and women, not using the movie as his evidence.
The author's observation (and mine) was that women tend to lose respect (and thus attraction) for a man who they can talk into delaying or abandoning things the man says are important to him. The movie version is just that idea writ large.
The initiative and non-wishiwashiness is the most important factor but sometimes the actual override/push people around part is a useful signal in its own right too, if done skillfully.
That's the part that's really hard to communicate in a soundbite, or really to communicate verbally at all.
Especially since 'do exactly the same thing but be two inches taller' can completely change the outcome.
Sometimes it is best to just suggest 'err to the other side to what you are used to'. That makes the difference between what works and what doesn't much easier to spot so the countless subtle differences in context can be learned more readily.
With trivial desires it probably applies. With significant desires not so much. The line between the two is probably fuzzy but has obvious extremes. How strongly the woman holds the desire matters too, I suppose. I don't know if I can say more without context: I don' t teach people how to be attractive so I'm not good at spelling all the intricacies out. I just know enough to make it work for me.
You'd have to be more specific but I suspect the outcome usually doesn't matter.
[1] Which counts as sexual harassment, btw (unless you're really hot).
Only in specific environments. And then, yes, the offence is mostly 'making sexual advances without being hot enough to get away with it'. Outside of a place where sexual harassment claims are an option it would instead just get demeaning looks.
The negative reactions may have to do with the fact that such advice -- and indeed, a comment like the above -- amounts to accusing half the audience of a very blatant form of hypocrisy. Obviously one should exercise extreme caution when making such an accusation, and it had better be backed up with some pretty solid evidence -- to say nothing of the pragmatic considerations of whether there is much to be gained by voicing such truths (if they are in fact true).
Yes, lots of people probably don't tell the truth about what is sexually attractive to them. But if you go around saying "women are such hypocrites", it's understandable for a woman hearing this to take it as a personal insult. (If you didn't mean for her to be insulted, you wouldn't say it that way.)
What if you go around saying "almost everyone, whatever their gender, has poor insight into their preferences and responses"?
I summarized some of the research on stated vs. actual preferences here. It seems to show that both men and women are often wrong about what they go for, but women may well be more wrong. However, I've only found a few studies like this so far, and I want to see more to feel confident about that conclusion.
By the way: Welcome to Less Wrong!
An important clarification: it's not the hypocrisy per se that I object to, but its institutionalization, the massive failure to recognize the unqualification to give advice, and the tremendous benefits accruing to those who are "wise" enough to ignore women. See why that might be objectionable?
Okay. How about my life history, plus that of pretty much everyone joining the PUA crowd or identifying with its message?
I'm sure you can see that exactly one of those pieces of advice is ambiguous, and easily disambiguated as advice to engage in genuinely wrong behavior. I think that some sorts of people, which I would expect to overlap with the sorts of people opposed to pickup, tend to directly leap from a statement being potentially harmful to express, to that statement and its speaker being Bad. (Another example: statements about the basis of intelligence and race/sex correlations, with their genuine usefulness to bigots.) I don't think that this is entirely incorrect of them, either instrumentally or epistemically — such statements are Bayesian evidence of bad character, for both direct and signaling reasons.
PS: Don't be so sarcastic.
I accept that the advice I listed can be ambiguous. I also claim that a very large class of men has been so horribly misled by the official line on male-to-female interaction rules, that even the above advice, in its crude form, in its rank misogyny, would actually cause them to be more attractive to women -- which just goes to show the depths of their deception.
Btw, what was sarcastic? Men who present the plain truth on this are the target of severe vitriol from women (even and especially those for whom it is true) and men who recognize its truth, but want to appear part of the "reasonable" crowd. My illustration of the vitriol is exaggerated, but not by much. And the misleading advice women promote does in fact mirror the official line (in mainstream books, advice from women, behavior taught in schools, etc.). What are you objecting to?
And yet, you seem to object to framing the truth in terms that women usually like and respond positively to... which makes me wonder WTF your actual goals are here.
Oh noes, people don't like language they don't like, and I am being forced to use the language of the oppressors in order to talk with them about anything. Help, I'm being oppressed!
Damn, dude, this is like saying you ought to have the right to describe people using racial epithets, simply because the epithets are included in statements that are true, like "That [epithet] is wearing blue jeans."
In NLP there's a saying that the meaning of a communication is the response you get. If you want a different response, try a different communication already, and stop bothering everyone with this low-status whining. It's a disgrace to everyone you claim to be speaking for, and everything you claim to be standing for.
Where are you getting that? I'm not objecting to framing the truth in a professional, reasoned tone. I'm objecting to your attempt to claim that two phrasings mean the same thing, when they really don't, thereby promoting a sort of uninformative politician-speak, as I explained here (and which you didn't address):
You seem to really be taking the concept of "ordering a woman around" to mean so freaking many benign things that the term no longer has any meaning. Doing so voids the usefulness of words and cripples the ability to clearly communicate on the issues.
"A man who knows what he wants, and isn't afraid to say it" does not, as you claim, equate to giving orders. And yet, PUAs do advise "giving orders", while an uninformed man who was simply told to "know what you want, and don't be afraid to say it" would not at all see how this means giving orders ... because the concept thereof isn't entailed by that advice!
While a professional, uninflammatory tone is preferable, it should never delete the substance of the claim, but that's exactly what your supposed rephrasings do.
The meaning of the communication is the response you get, and the intended response to the behavior described as "ordering around" is that the woman feel that she is with a man who "knows what he wants and isn't afraid to say it".
By omitting the intended response from the discussion, it is you who are distorting the communication.
So, why does it then surprise you if women feel excluded, when you are systematically excluding their goals and values from the discussion?
You are insisting that your particular selection of concepts is "the truth", when it is also the truth that women describe the benefits of these behavioral patterns in ways you deride as "uninformative politician-speak".
But clearly, it is NOT uninformative to women! They know what they like, but have difficulty breaking it into smaller chunks because they have evolved recognition machinery for it. And that is not their fault.
And just because at one time you didn't understand what this woman-speak means in men-speak, does not entitle you to claim that all women are therefore deluded, unhelpful liars and hypocrites, engaging in a campaign of mass deception to keep oppressed low-status men in their place with the conspiratorial assistance of the mass media.
This entire post was because of "exclusionary speech" -- talking about women in a way that excludes their goals and values from consideration. That's exactly what you're doing -- not just omitting those goals and values from your own statements, but actually objecting when anybody else brings them up.
Are you really not noticing this?
No, by casually equating means ("give orders") with ends ("a woman who feels she is with a confident man who knows what he wants") -- an equation you just now revealed you are using! -- it's you who's distorting communication.
No, I'm systematically using words by their standard meanings; the discussion of the ends is not, like you claim, being excluded; it's just that you need to identify it as such. Don't say "X and Y are the same instruction because they would, in the best case scenario, get the same reaction." That's wrong, and a misuse of language.
No, I'm calling it uninformative when it uses the wrong terms and acts surprised that I didn't read minds for the real intended meantings.
No, like I said before, even if you can claim specific instances of women giving advice that (by hidden transformations) is true and useful, it's still drowned out in the sea of advice that is ineffective and countereffective. How should I have known that this advice is reliable, but the (far more numerous) instances of "oh, be deferential to her, make sure not to cross these six trillion feminist lines" isn't? How should the majority of men have known it?
Just women, or women and men? I make a genuine effort to convert my "recognition machinery" into something communicable. I don't tolerate "you wouldn't understand" as a curiousity-stopper from anyone, not me, not men. Why do you (seem to) think women are so frail and stupid that they shouldn't be expected to carry out this introspection?
This is the part where the problem is: you aren't separating "words that make sense to me" from "real intended meanings"... which then leads to an exclusionary result.
How should you have known that the world is round, when all of the immediately-available evidence is that it's flat... unless you specifically go looking for obscure and "hidden" information?
Reality is not under any obligation to be comprehensible to human beings, so what makes you think you have a moral right to have comprehension handed to you on a silver platter?
Because, being a human, I'm too "frail and stupid" to carry out the reverse introspection in response to a casual inquiry. I also don't expect the average person of either sex to have the degree of intellectual rigor required to refrain from confabulating, when asked.
(My own experience shows me that it is hard to get people to not confabulate, about any topic. Non-confabulation is unnatural to most humans and requires sometimes-difficult training, even if you're highly motivated to learn... and people who think they already understand confabulation and the need to refrain from it are usually the ones who have the most difficulty learning not to.)
There are points in here that have value but they are not a reasonable (or particularly relevant) as a reply to the objection that Silas has made. Silas makes enough of a target of himself. You need not pad him out with straw.
No. The intended response to the behaviour is not that. Or, at least, it is not just that. You can not demand that Silas use language that does not express what he is trying to say just because it happens to fit neatly into your own model.
More generally, it is unreasonable to expect people to comply to the quote from the NLP guru, regarding the meaning of a communication, least of all on a site that emphasises epistemic rationality. Yes, it is a useful concept but your appeal to 'the meaning is the response' to try to reverse a claim of who is distorting the communication is 'clever' but far from sound.
Your words do not convey the information (to women, or anyone else) that Silas was trying to convey. Don't insist that he use them.
You are taking significant liberty in applying negative spin to Silas's claims here. More liberty than that which you presume to deny Silas in his claims. Be consistent.
But omitting the part of the behavior that women do say they value, is the part that makes the language exclusionary, and provokes the objections and social stigma that SilasBarta claims to be arguing against.
His thesis appears to be, "Most women (and some men) don't like it when people say truth X" - I am saying, "Most women (and some men) are generally fine with it when you also give sufficient information for them to connect truth X with their goal or value Y, and I see no reason to exclude that connective information... since it does in fact produce the negative reaction described."
Agree, some of the suggested replacements destroy the communication. pjeby is naturally trying to force your words into a nice sounding (mostly true) framework that does not necessarily have room for your actual position. That's just what pjeby does in general. But in this instance do consider HughRistik's comment:
You know what I think replacing 'ordering her around' with 'give orders' does? It gets rid of politician-speak. You are trying to embed a message in there, and it obfuscates the advice. (And this is just an example from a trend!)
I don't know what trend you mean or if there's a chain of things I've been doing wrong; I do admit that I didn't even notice that "order her around" and "give orders" were different phrases to begin with, since I kept lumping them together. Your distinction between the two is noted, and appreciated.
Consider the suggested trend to be "not being hyper-vigilant about differences like 'order her around' vs 'give orders' when the political context makes nearly anything an invitation to umbrage".
So, ignoring your caricature...
On one hand we have advice that is about body posture, and on the other hand we have advice that is about persuading yourself of things that are not true, such as thinking of an adult human as if they were a child.
And your question is why people react differently to either kind of advice, have I got that right?
So, ignoring your classification of cleavage as "body posture" ...
On one hand, we have advice for male-to-female engagement that has a solid history of enhancing male attractiveness and which is enjoyed by females, and on the other hand we have advice that is about manipulating men's hardwired judgment mechanisms, thereby subverting their better long-term interests.
And your question is why people condemn the first kind of advice, have I got that right?
Just because your objection parallels my comment in form doesn't automatically make its content a correct refutation; and someone other than me has warned you that the tactic doesn't serve you particularly well.
Do you or do you not agree that "think of her as a child" involves changing your mental state, while "show cleavage and arch your back" does not?
Your reply above directs attention away from this difference and toward the supposed "history of success" of the first form of advice.
This is shifting the goalposts, if your intent is still to understand why the first form is more often objected to. Whether the advice is sound or not is a separate matter.
Not sticking to one query is a classic reason why threads go out of hand (as this one has, once again).
I'm aware of how people get angry when their own argument methods are turned around and force them to think critically about the basis for their own beliefs -- though I don't think that's happening in your case. (The anger on your part isn't happening, I mean -- I do believe you are reflecting critically on your own beliefs, or at least are making a genuine effort.)
The point of me mimicking your form was not to be cute (although that was a neat side effect), but rather, to show that a simple reframing of the issue -- by highlighting different salient aspects -- would reverse the "obvious" answer to your question.
You claim advice about body posture to be benign, while believing false, offensive things is obviously bad by comparison. (The latter is a strawman of course: the advice is to, like an actor, go into a different mindset in order to have a generating function for your actions, which turns out to be preferable by the "target" of it. The advice is not to believe that adult women are disobedient children as if it were some more objective or universal aspect of reality.)
Of course I agree, but this is a poor metric. Isn't it more important what the advice causes in the other party's mind? If "think of her as a child" generates actions, on my part, that the woman deems preferable, what does it matter that my mental state is changed? If a woman uses attire and posture that causes me to "think below the waist", isn't the impact on my mental state more important -- because of the diminishing of informed consent [1] -- than the impact on the woman's mental state?
Because, as explained above, it's not apparent how that's a relevant metric or difference.
If the advice actually benefits women, that should negate any objectionability of the advice that is grounded on harm to women. Failure to speak frankly about the commonality of the kind of woman benefitting, while instead giving full weight to the supposedly-universal preferences of the most vocal feminists ... to me, that looks like a social failing.
[1] Yes, yes, I lose status by mentioning that this can happen, &c. C'est la vie.
It isn't usually a successful tactic, which is somewhat of a shame, given that it can serve to demonstrate how a particular (mis)use of argument is flawed. People on average don't have the respect for consistency that I would prefer.
OK, we're at least getting closer to something concrete:
It seems to me that "think of her as a child" is objectionable for the same reason that "think of the moon as being made of green cheese" would be: the proposition in question is false.
Whereas showing cleavage and arching your back have no comparable epistemic content. There is no "true shape of the breasts" or "true posture of the body", no facts of the matter that warrant a comparison as in the other case.
If it takes an essay to state where you stand on those, I'm happy to wait until later. But if you can briefly state your objection, I'd be interested to hear it.
In the grandparent here I merely allude to the claim that humans cannot change their body language, particularly sexual body language without it being about changing their mental state. Body and mind are just too linked, such that advice about 'thoughts' is often intended to work by changing posture and vise versa. But this is tangential and not related to the actual disagreement I have with your argument.
See earlier reply. You misunderstand the suggestion. Replace 'think' with 'treat her as though' (and don't leave out the 'disobedient' in either case) and I would expect the same (or a worse) reaction even though it completely avoids your technical epistemic objection.
ETA: I deleted the grandparent before Morendil replied. Not because I don't support it but because I decided it would just be distracting. It was. ;)
"Treat her as if she were a disobedient child" still strikes me as predictably objectionable, because the statement is being made about an adult woman, which should screen off obedience being an issue; obedience isn't expected of adults.
The specific bit of PUA advice we're discussing here amounts to paternalism. Showing cleavage doesn't. This is why people - men and women - object to the former more readily than to the latter. (Some men may approve of paternalism, but they are just wrong.)
What's so outlandish about all that?
I don't reject 'all that'. I did rejected a specific straw man you presented for the reasons I have already mentioned and. I don't feel obliged to suggest that your claims here are outlandish since I am not particularly opposed to your overall position. That is, I think both you and Silas have valid points but I would not support either position as they stand, preferring a different emphasis (and a whole heap less moral judgement).
(Allow me to engage in the obedience/paternalism subject in a different comment, since that moves us to a somewhat different claim, where the lines are not already drawn in the sand.)
This is my view also. I agree with practically all your commentary on their discussion.
It is expected by sexy adults. It is also often given to those same adults ;)
No it doesn't. Someone would have to think of a different pejorative term. If they were into that sort of thing.
People in general don't object to the former more readily than the latter. It varies drastically with personality type, sex and subculture. The people that most object to paternalism are male nerds while the people that (I expect to) most approve of paternalism are conservative religious women. I have seen each of those classes of advice condemned to different degrees in different communities that I have been involved in.
Ouch. That sounds like just the sort of ideal that provoke outrage in the face of practical advice.
I am not a huge fan of paternalism myself. In fact, I have in the past ended a relationship with a woman because I just wasn't willing to be as paternalistic as she desired. I don't begrudge her that preference and certainly don't think she is just wrong for preferring a more paternalistic dynamic than I do.
Why those groups in particular? They are toward those ends, but I think I would have (maybe superficially/naively) said "radical feminists" and "conservative religious men", respectively. Don't necessarily disagree, but I'm very curious.
This leaves out whether you mean adults who like sex or adults who you consider attractive, not to mention whether it's true of everyone in either of those categories, or whether it's just some proportion.
You've got this backwards. Manipulating a man's perception of attractiveness in order to secure short-term mating is in a man's (evolutionary) interest. Manipulating a woman's perception of attractiveness to secure short-term mating, on the other hand, is not in a woman's (evolutionary) interest.
(Also, you conveniently ignored the bit where both manipulations are enjoyed by the recipients. If I weren't so certain you sincerely believe in your biased perspective, I'd have to conclude you were deliberately trolling at this point.)
pjeby said:
Nope, this is outdated. I'll try to return to it, but there are actually a lot of hypotheses that suggest that some types of short-term mating were adaptive for females. See the good genes hypothesis, sexy son hypothesis, and Hrdy's work on female choice.
(Practically everything else you've said in this discussion is gold, btw, so I hope you'll forgive me for being brusque.)
Why would men have evolved to have perceptions of attractiveness that don't track (are more conservative, when not manipulated, than would be in) their evolutionary interest?
Also, I thought we were talking about normative interests, what's actually good for someone. Why are you bringing up evolutionary interests in the first place?
This. Also the bit where both manipulations affect hardwired judgment mechanisms, of course.
You're filling in things that aren't there. A woman can use her looks to get non-sexual favors out of men, and the advice that gets her to that level of looks is widely and unashamedly given (though not of course the suggestion to use it for bad manipulation).
The advice that would get men to a comparable level of attractiveness (i.e. even using non-sexual manipulation goals as the standard), by contrast, is not widely and unashamedly given.
The parallel therefore holds, despite the difference in goals.
Unless you're talking about non-sexual mating goals, you've now broken the symmetry yourself.
Why don't you spell out the mapping? Because everything looks parallel to me. Let's start from the beginning. I reversed Morendil's characterization of male vs. female attractiveness advice to cast the latter in a bad light:
On what basis do you dispute that this accurately describes effective female-sexiness-enhancing advice? Sure, men would enjoy it if she used it get sexual favors ... but they wouldn't enjoy it if she used it to get them to do non-sexual favors (with a false hint of the chance for sex).
So, the quoted advice most certainly does count as being "against men's long-term interests", like I claimed. And (to tie it back in to the original topic), women can easily get accurate information about how to get to this attractiveness state. Men? Not so much. (Sorry for the cliche.)
Are you saying that even known-false sexual attention from attractive females isn't enjoyed by men? Men pay for this at strip clubs and other places all day long.
I still don't see the symmetry here. If you're looking at things from the POV of mating goals, there is no bias -- women have just as much difficulty getting accurate information, if not more, since there isn't nearly as large a reverse-PUA industry for getting men to commit to long-term relationships.
If you're discussing non-mating goals, then materials like "How To Marry A Rich Man" are just as socially-denigrated as pickup.
Last -- and utterly devastating to your claims -- there are widely available materials that explain how to be attractive to women, but which do not aim at sex as their goal, and these materials do not suffer from the same social stigma (because, as with women's beauty materials, they are about improving the attractor rather than manipulating the attractee).
Specifically, plenty of books and other materials are available to teach men how to be stylish, sociable, and confident, quite well enough to improve their chances of being able to get sex from women with the "false hint" of a chance for a relationship or good genes.
The only way in which you can force an asymmetry to exist here, is if you either deliberately compare materials with asymmetric goals in areas where men and women are symmetric in inclination, or compare materials with symmetric goals in areas where men and women are asymmetric in inclination. This makes yours a tortured argument and extremely limited evidence of your position.
In contrast, under every other way of comparing the situation for men and women, we see:
Similar social stigma for things that state as their goal the manipulation of the opposite sex as an object to achieve the target audience's goals
Similar lack of stigma for things that state as their goal the improved attractiveness of the target audience for the benefit of themselves and the opposite sex, and
Similar stigma for either admitting to true-things-that-work but are socially repugnan, with the expected relative lack of available advice concerning such socially-stigmatized truths.
The only way I can see to claim asymmetry under these conditions is to start from a premise of asymmetry, and then torture the facts until they give in.
I must emphasise that "but do not have sex as the goal" is a completely different issue to "they are about improving the attractor rather than manipulating the attractee". Having sex as a goal isn't manipulative. In fact, acknowledging that sex is a goal can make the approach far less manipulative than if a façade of political correctness is maintained but sex is still sought after.
No, that clearly isn't what Silas is saying there. He is talking about hints that actually give a deceptive indication that sex is likely to be granted if favours are done. (To which I would always add a 'shame on you if she fools you twice' emphasis.)
Well, it wasn't clear to me -- especially since that would make it equivalent to men's false declarations of love or resources to get sex... and the information allowing men to do that is just as available as the information that allows women to know they could false-promise sex to get resources.
And in both cases, the behavior is looked down on by society.
So, it would've been an odd interpretation for me to read into what he said, given that I was trying to interpret his evidence in the best possible light, not the worst one. ;-)
(i.e., refute your opponent's strong points, not the weak ones)
No, you clearly haven't. The caricature you use in your dichotomy is absurd.
If people men are literally persuading themselves that women they wish to attract are children and then seducing them then they are acting, by intent, as paedophiles. Clearly the message trying to be sandwiched into 'think of her as a disobedient child' means something different. Something a lot more analogous to cleavage presentation in terms of the role played in attraction.
It's a good thing the English language has a milder word for the milder fallacy: "paternalism". It's still a fallacy, though.
No. Someone seducing someone they believe is a child then it isn't anything to do with paternalism.
Again, your dichotomy is absurd. 'Thinking of her like a disobedient child' does not mean 'persuading yourself of things that are not true'. Dating advisors don't recommend that men seduce females that they believe are children but still sometimes give this advice. They do not mean ''persuading yourself of things that are not true'.
Right, they mean "acting as if." By the way, Silas summary of that advice is a tiny bit extreme. I do hear "be dominant," and I sometimes hear "give orders," but "ordering her around" in general is not something I hear so commonly. I do hear "treat her like your bratty little sister" sometimes.
Agree. "Give orders" is both a more accurate and useful advice and less provocative. That more balanced description would have saved rather a lot of hassle, even though there would still be disagreement.
The bit about the terrorists was also a little exaggerated. Amusing though.
It's not very precise, though. The part that actually makes the difference isn't having the orders, it's knowing what to "order".
Which is one reason that I think leaving out, "knowing what you want" is actually losing an important piece. Without being sufficiently clear as to what you want and why -- preferably a why that is good for the woman as well as you -- you don't have anything to "back up" your status bid.
I have seen much better ways of describing this than "give orders", but they all take more than a couple of words.
And so I think it's better, if we have to be imprecise in a discussion of this here, to err on the side of being imprecise in a way that doesn't omit women's goals and values, since that's the whole bloody point of this comment thread... to discuss ways to avoid exclusionary language.
No pj. There is a difference between 'not very precise' and 'saying something different to what I want him to be saying'.
'Knowing what you want' is important. But it is not what the subject of the expression is about. The advice "give orders" and applies even independently of knowing what you want.
That you are continuing to insist that Silas refine his words with words that don't mean the same thing is both poor communication and outright rude. Desist.
I see here three different concepts to track:
It seems the Silas and PJ both think that 2 and 3 are the same or very close (the PUA's are right), but they disagree on what that is.
So I don't think PJ is trying to tell Silas to say the thing Silas believes 2 and 3 are in a different way, so much as disagreeing with Silas about what 2 and 3 are. It is a challenge to Silas' assertion that the thing PUA's say that provokes offense is actually right.
If you don't know the desired end result, how can you possibly modulate your "giving orders" in a way that will produce that result, vs. another way that will produce the result of "creepy", "bossy", "socially inept", etc.? Merely saying to "give orders" without any indication of what you're trying to accomplish doesn't strike me as particularly informative.
If someone had told me to "give orders" without the other context, there is no way I could possibly have gotten it right -- which is why I'm saying it's imprecise, and missing important information. For me, it is.
In other words, her point of view isn't relevant-- it's a power relationship.
Power, yes. Her point of view not being relevant? I don't know, I guess it depends on how you treat your sister.
Remember, the claim of PUAs (who advocate such techniques; not all do) is that a large enough percentage of women responds well to such treatment and enjoy it. You may well be skeptical of that claim. I am skeptical that the percentage is as high as some PUAs make it sound.
If you disagree with the tactic, I suggest that you follow it down to the root and look at the premises, and what reasons PUAs have to believe that women are reasonably likely to enjoy this kind of treatment. If the woman's sexual preference is to be treated that way, then it's not treating her point of view as not "revelant," it the opposite: the PUA is taking into account the woman's point of view by giving her what she enjoys. Whenever we look at weird and wacky PUA tactics, we really need to be thinking about what responses PUAs have got from women that make them think (correctly or incorrectly) that such behavior is viable and reasonable. We cannot assume that such behavior is primarily driven by their own preferences, or that it merely a jerk-like imposition on the part of PUAs.
The fact that PUAs advocate a certain behavior as attractive to women is sufficient to locate the hypothesis that they might actually be correct, and we should consider that hypothesis along with the hypothesis that PUAs are biased, or that such behavior is an imposition of their own preferences rather than women's.
I have my own objections to the "bratty little sister" frame, primarily because I want to be dating someone who is an equal. A little teasing is always great, but if I wouldn't want an interaction with a woman where I persistently felt that my role was too close to the role of a big brother, while her role was too close to that of a bratty little sister. Moreover, I think that many men have this same preference, and so would be best served by forms of seduction that promote equality.
Note that my objection is from my own preferences (and the preferences that I think more people should hold); I think the effectiveness and ethics of such behavior is less clear-cut.
You say "power relationship" like it's a bad thing. My own preference may be similar to yours in that I dislike persistent and overarching power dynamics in my relationships (and I think that a lot of power dynamics are actively harmful), but lots of people, male and female, really do like relationships with gendered power dynamics, and seem to do just fine in them. As long as these relationships are chosen freely, I don't have a sufficient basis to say that there is something wrong with the preferences of those people, or with satisfying those preferences.
Tentatively offered, but it's possible that if PUAs framed their recommended behavior in terms of "some women" or "many women" rather than implying that what they're doing works well with all women, there'd be a lot less social friction.
This may or may not be something you want, but part of this conversation is why there are so few women at LW.
I would also like to see more rigor in describing the responses of different subsets of women. When PUAs talk among themselves, qualifiers do get to be a drag, even if a PUA has more complex views. I think more rigor would be worth it, and I find the tendency of PUAs to use language with negative implications annoying and socially unintelligent ("social intelligence" is a buzzword in the community).
I rather doubt that. It is my impression that there are more female commenters on popular PUA blogs than there are here.
Is that how you treat your bratty little sister?
The dynamic actually being referred to is a loving relationship where neither party takes the other too seriously, and where "big bro" is expected to look out for and protect "little sis", including at times possibly taking more care for her safety or long-term goals than she is, while not being moved by the occasional pout or tantrum. It's also a dynamic where "big bro" tries to live up to his sister's possibly-idealized image of him as the big strong guy looking out for her.
The purpose of the advice is to evoke an area of a man's life where he may already have an experience of being a leader/protector to a loved female who he didn't put on a distant pedestal of awe and fear. Not to put down women.
I'm an older sister. My sister wasn't a brat, and I wasn't a bully. I did take a little advantage on housework, and I think she's still angry about it. However, I never tried to break down her self-respect.
How flexible is the "bratty little sister" model for coverinig situations where the sister is right?
What does bullying have to do with it?
I've never seen anyone advocate breaking down a woman's self-respect, so I'm not clear on the relevance here either.
Brothers and sisters can disagree, can they not? Sister isn't required to agree with brother, nor vice versa.
Think of it this way: right now, you appear to think that the problem is that if the guy pushes one way, then she has to go along with that.
Now, reverse the model: pretend that if she pushes one way, the guy has to go along with that.
That's the mental model most men (AFC's or Average Frustrated Chumps in PUA lingo) have about relationships.
By default, "nice guys" think they have to agree with everything a woman says. This is especially the case if the woman is attractive to them, and they really want her to like him.
You might not think this is most men's model... but that's because most men don't approach the women they're attracted to in the first place! And the ones that do, tend to get written off as unattractive or not relationship material, precisely because they're too eager to please, doing too much, "well, what do you want to do?", etc.
PUA appears biased the other way, because it's trying to train AFCs that they need to actually have an opinion of their own, and be able to maintain that opinion even when a woman they're positively infatuated with disagrees.
Unfortunately, availability bias on the part of women means that you are going to think men are already too far biased this way, because the majority of the ones who come and hit on you in the first place are towards the further end of the wimpy-nice-confident-aggressive-asshole spectrum. PUA training is aimed at moving people at the low end of that scale towards the middle, not the high end off the scale.
In my view, there isn't enough explicitly stated material on how to detect when the sister is in the right in PUA materials; some of my own thought processes on this subject is shown here. I do think that many experienced PUAs do figure out better intuition about when the sister is being genuinely bratty, whether she is deliberately testing him or simply displaying her natural personality, or if she has some other motive, such as displaying serious objections or resistance to how the interaction is proceeding that require him to adjust his approach or back off entirely.
This process of adjusting one's behavior based on the woman's responses is called "calibration," and it is hard to teach through explicit description (which is why experienced PUAs often roll their eyes at how beginners go through phases of weird or otherwise undesirable behavior until they learn the correct calibration and how to interpret the teachings of the community). Some experienced PUAs will apologize to women if they judge that they have badly "miscalibrated."