or at least, the version of #4 that relates to my goals for relationships.

This is an interesting point. I think that a factor in whether or not a discussion of the venusian arts is perceived as offensive, is whether the goals it claims (or is perceived) to achieve aligns with the goals of the target.

The inclusion of your #3, while being inclusive in its own right, also serves to signal the alignment of goals.

Thanks, I'm glad you found my comments useful.

Similarly, I would suspect that a significant number of the women who post or consider posting here may also be closer in many ways to the 130 IQ thing-oriented male introverts. And not only would these women find objectionable some of the statements by some PUAs (of the sort you highlighted in the quoted paragraph, or even somewhat less extreme examples), but they would find this portion of some PUA terminology/attitudes particularly off-putting in that its portrayal of women appears to not line up at all with many of the traits of these Lesswrong-type women. Indeed a lot of what I have read does not appear to even acknowledge that women of other types exist.

Exactly. We are seeing two relevant categories of women that I will give the following labels to:

1. "Atypical women." This category of women has a combination of the following traits: gender-nonconforming, thing-oriented, introverted, non-neurotypical. Highly intelligent people of both genders also tend to be gender-atypical. Women likely to be interested in posting on LW are likely to fall into this category. Feminists, queer women, polyamorous women, kinky women, artists, and nerds also tend to fall into this category. (Feel free to ask why I would group any of those categories of women together.)

2. "Typical women." This category of women is more gender-typical and people-oriented.

This division is inspired by Gangestad et al.'s finding that people fit into two taxa: a majority taxon of gender typical people (85%+ of people), and a minority taxon of gender of atypical people (queer people were mostly in this taxon). If anyone is bothered by terms like "atypical women" or "typical women," bring it up and we'll talk about the stats.

I would categorize the relationship of these two taxa of females as follows:

1. The model PUAs have of women in the gender-atypical minority taxon sucks.
2. The model that many women in the gender-atypical taxon have of other women in the gender-typical taxon, also sucks.

As a result, PUAs and women in the minority taxon often miss each other like ships in the dark, and have fundamentally different experiences in heterosexual interaction, even they have a lot of psychological similarities.

Yet I've actually met plenty of women who would fall into the minority gender-atypical taxon who do understand typical women, experience difficulties interacting with them, and are sympathetic to male difficulties interacting with these women. A female friend of my mine in college insists that "women are evil." Another female friend (highly introverted and thing-oriented) once told me that she doesn't like most women and can't relate to them; she considers them annoying and full of drama.

I think that controversy about pickup would diminish if PUAs promoted a better model of atypical women, and in turn, atypical women had a better model of the more typical types of women that PUAs encounter most often and base most of their theories on. Women in the minority taxon have a valid complaint that PUAs do not correctly categorize their preferences and persistently overgeneralize. Not only is this bad communication on the part of PUAs and a marginalization of the perspective of these women, it is also PUAs shooting themselves in the foot by failing to understand a group of women that potentially contains compatible long-term mates for them.

PUAs also have a valid complaint that many women in the minority taxon who criticize pickup simply don't understand what men are dealing with when interacting with gender-typical women. These women are engaging in the "typical mind fallacy," which marginalizes the perspectives of PUAs on their interactions with most women. It also marginalizes the perspectives of gender-typical women, particularly extraverts, who are less motivated to engage in this sort of discussion on the internet. Ironically, women with majority preferences are probably the least likely to engage in arguments about female preferences on the internet, while women with minority preferences are probably most likely to be interested in such discussions.

When I posted more on PUA forum years ago, I argued for better models of different female personalities, with mixed success. I have a lot more field experience and research now, I am pretty much the only person who has put it all together.

While most PUAs are going out to clubs and meeting women they often have trouble relating to, I almost exclusively date women who would fall into the gender atypical taxon (since I do, too). While intellectually I would like to see PUAs expand their models, it is nice that I experience very little competition in my niche.

For anyone who prefers equal relationships (and I've seen some happy marriages which look pretty equal), even the experienced PUAs have awful defaults (it takes experience to learn to apologize at all, only some PUAs do it, and it's only for bad mistakes), and it's scary to think about the men who haven't done that much work.

Yes, it takes newbie PUAs time to learn to recognize when they have made social errors, and to learn which errors are bad enough that they should apologize for. But in this regard, PUAs are just the same as everyone else. They are just learning these social lessons later in life, while most people learned them through their normal socialization in childhood and adolescence.

Trust me, PUAs don't want to be going through trial-and-error to learn during adulthood what everyone else learned during puberty, but it's really not their fault that they have to do this. The typical reasons that they have ended up in this situation is because they got locked out of a normal social development by exclusion, bullying, or abuse by peers or parents during their formative development.

Sociologist Brian Gilmartin did a study of men with debilitating shyness in heterosexual interactions in the late 80's, and found a high rate of peer and/or family victimization experienced by these men during their formative years. Furthermore, he found a high rate of gender-atypical traits in his sample. "Love-shy" men were disproportionately introverted, prone to anxiety, and non-neurotypical. Gilmartin argues that males with those traits may be capable of a positive social development in the right environment, but that American culture is unfriendly to males with these traits:

p. 46-47 of his book (available as PDF here ):

Let me illustrate with some insights derived from findings reported in various parts of this book. In American society there is an irrational albeit near ubiquitous learned tendency on the part of most young adults to associate the very thought of "boy" with the thought of a natural, inborn enthusiasm for baseball, football, and basketball. Thus my find- ings clearly show that those boys who best fit this stereotyped expec- tation quickly come to possess the strongest interpersonal skills and the lowest incidence of love-shyness. On the other hand, my data also show that those boys who fit this stereotype least well include among their members the highest incidence of intractable love-shyness combined with a history of inadequate socialization for interpersonal skills and social self-confidence. Girls without a natural enthusiasm for such rough, contact sports do not suffer negative outcomes as a result. A liking for such sports is considered (at best) optional for them, and it is not nor- matively prescribed as it is for boys.

It is through the cumulative tenor of the responses of others, par- ticularly parents and peers, that a child decides whether it is intelligent or stupid, attractive or homely, lovable or unlovable, competent or incom- petent, worthy of social companionship or worthless in this regard. If a male child is born in America with an innate temperament that places him high up in the melancholic quadrant (quadrant #1) of the Eysenck Cross, and if this native temperament with its concomitants of very low pain and anxiety thresholds, nervousness and inhibition/introversion, cause him to constantly avoid the rough and tumble play of the all-male peer group (and not physically defend himself against its assaults), that child is highly likely to develop a very low social self-image along with a case of intractable shyness.

Such a development is NEVER a necessary consequence of such an inborn temperament. There is nothing intrinsically "unhealthy" about being an emotional introvert per se. But insofar as within the American social context such a temperament is likely to serve as a stimulus for consistent and continual bullying, ignoring and rejection on the part of the peer group and expressed disappointment and disapproval on the part of parents (especially fathers), shyness together with a low self- esteem, a "people-phobia", and poor interpersonal skills are all highly likely to develop.

p. 82:

And so it is with the little boy who is high on inborn introversion/ inhibition and high on inborn emotionality. If left alone to the ravages of the conventional all-boy peer group he will almost certainly become love-shy and lonely without the interpersonal skills that are indispensable for effective, happy survival. If, on the other hand, that little boy is introduced to an alternative peer group composed of little boys and girls who are reasonably similar to himself in native temperament and if that little boy is introduced to games and sports that will not frighten him or inspire any sort of bullying, then the chances are exceedingly good that he will be headed for psychoemotional and social adjustment. In fact, as Alexander Thomas has shown, such a little boy's chances for success will actually be about as good as those of children who had been born with more advantaged inborn temperaments.

The social problems described by Gilmartin's work are on the more extreme end of what many PUAs describe. Yet what it shows is that many PUAs are essentially abuse survivors of various sorts who are currently trying to learn the social skills that they could have learned in adolescence if they hadn't spent their adolescence being abused, excluded, or isolated due to having non-stereotypically masculine traits or being non-neurotypical.

Does that mean that anything goes in their attempts to "catch up" socially? Of course not. These men should still exercise common sense, and people who are teaching them should encourage it. Yet since the social intuitions of these men are under-developed due their negative developmental experiences, it is inevitable that they will make mistakes. If they played completely safe, they might lower the amount of mistakes they made, but they would miss out on important developmental lessons.