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HughRistik comments on Of Exclusionary Speech and Gender Politics - Less Wrong
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We both think it’s a good thing if men want to learn about how to be more considerate, more confident, and more comfortable around women – you were right to assume I agree here. I have no problem with your examples; in fact, I can tell you now I would probably respond well if a guy started a conversation with me about salad in a confident way. :D
You and I disagree about the extent to which the PUAs are teaching people that. You say that they are, and I believe your examples, but most of the sites I can find are all about sequences, “running game”, tricks, mind games, strategies, etc. They rank women from 1 to 10 and advise different techniques. So many of the websites I am seeing talk about women as though they're objects, not people - and simplistic, easily hackable objects at that. Press button X, the man is assured, and she is likely to respond with Y. I went back to look at them for the purposes at this discussion and I feel revolted all over again. The Mystery Method for example explicitly advises stimulating positive AND negative emotions in a woman, specifically jealousy and frustration, because that makes her emotionally vulnerable to male advances! Do you agree this is highly objectionable?
We also disagree about the touching example. This isn’t about touching in a “courteous way”, this is about touching in a strategic way in order to get her to let her guard down, and to trust you, or even to subconsciously conform to your wishes (ie firm hand on the small of the back). That’s a hack.
The third thing I want to address is your public speaking example. As I said before, this differs from PUA because everyone realises what is going on. The artifice is on the surface – if a public speaker convinces me of something, it is with my permission. The PUArtist intends to hide the artifice, to convince a woman to sleep with him or lust after him without her realising he is using mind tricks to do it. The hiding of the artifice is not always successful, but that doesn’t matter: the problem here is the intention to deceive, the intention to trick a woman into feeling something. That’s why the PUA tricks have more mind-hacking power than asking an audience how they’re feeling or to raise their hands: the participant is not supposed to be aware they’re being played, so their guard against it is unlikely to be as strong.
Yes. The rating system is controversial in the community, and many PUAs refuse to use it exactly because they see it as objectifying. The reason that it probably sticks around is that it happens to be useful: a woman's conventional attractiveness is a factor in how she has been treated by men, and the physiological effect she has on the PUA, both of which are highly relevant.
Do women not realize what is going on when a strange guy approaches them?
Are you against all hidden artifices in dating (including female artifices)? Or just some particular types of artifice? If the latter, what distinguishes the artifices that you find objectionable? The moral standards you are advocating seem potentially over-broad to me.
The problem I have with the term "mind tricks" is that a lot of these behaviors are isomorphic to social behaviors shown by men who are naturally successful with women (which is not to say that I don't have a problem with some techniques, see below). The neg, and cocky/funny for instance. It seems counter-intuitive to hold that these behaviors are OK if you don't realize you are doing them, but not OK if you know how they work. Of course, you might see the neg as bad either way, in which case it sounds like the main problem you have is with the effects of the technique, not its covert nature.
And indeed, I also have a problem with the neg. I think that the potential benefits it provides don't outweigh the potential discomfort or insult it can cause to the woman. Or though it might in some contexts, there are better ways to get the same interest without risking hurting her feelings. I think the seduction community as a whole is coming around to this view. Mystery had them believing that negs were practically necessary on highly attractive women in clubs, but eventually people discovered that there were other ways to get their foot in the door, so the neg could no longer be justified on the grounds of virtual necessity.
The neg can simply be more on the teasing side than on the insulting side. I don't think teasing is all that objectionable.
Part of the issue is that, even when the hurt is minimal, it's a decision that one's own self-interest outweighs the harm to someone else, and as humans we're not very good at making that calculation objectively.
Hi jfpbookworm, long time no see. I agree with skepticism when making decisions over whether one's self-interest outweighs harm to someone else, which is why in this post I advocated weighing in the potential benefit to the other party also (emphasis added):
I think I came by this way of thinking from reading Mane Hajdin's The Law of Sexual Harassment. He wrote an article in this book that has some relevant comments (read page 297-299, though we don't get 298 in the preview):
He then sets up three hypothetical advances:
10% chance of success, 88% chance of mild annoyance, 2% chance of offense
10% success, 89% mild annoyance, 1% offense
11% success, 69% mild annoyance, 20% offense
He says that advances #2 is obvious preferable to advance #1. As for advance #3, the relevant question to ask is:
When pickup artists think about ethics, I suspect this is the kind of implicit moral framework they are using. Of course, all of these calculations have subjective factors, but they are better than nothing.
Exactly, thank you.
I'm glad to hear the 1-10 scale is out of favour. I don't care how useful it is. :)
“Do women not realize what is going on when a strange guy approaches them?”
When a guy comes up to me, no, I don’t know how to instantly differentiate a nice guy who wants to make conversation with me from a “nice” guy who wants to subtly insult me to make me emotionally vulnerable.
“Are you against all hidden artifices in dating (including female artifices)? Or just some particular types of artifice? If the latter, what distinguishes the artifices that you find objectionable? The moral standards you are advocating seem potentially over-broad to me.”
On reflection, I’m not against all hidden artifice – as I said in my other reply to you, and this I think is also clear from the comment you're responding to now, what I don’t like is the hidden attempt to directly influence the other person. If a person chooses to act such that the other person is completely unaware that actions are being performed on them, and these actions can substantially influence their behaviour, I think that is morally problematic.
So, Ido see the neg as bad either way! That behaviour is wrong whether you are taught to do it by Mystery, or you were just born with the innate ability to put women down to further your own gratification. It’s also covert either way, the only way I would consider it non-convert is if a guy came up to a woman and said “would you mind if I subtly put you down?”. Other seduction techniques are overt: “Can I buy you a drink?” “Can we go somewhere more private?”. Those are fine. I'm not asking for super awkward overtness - there's a set of social conventions people have in place to avoid that (ie "do you want to come up for coffee") and the conventions are common knowledge. But I definitely find the clear harm more objectionable than the covertness - I do still object to the covertness, as I explained in the previous paragraph.
Possibly it would be easier if we had one thread going so either in your next reply or my next reply perhaps we could try to combine both.