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HughRistik comments on Scientific Self-Help: The State of Our Knowledge - Less Wrong
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Actually, “pretending to be sexy,” aka projecting confidence, social dominance, good looks, etc., doesn’t bother me in the slightest. I know a lot of PUA focuses on stuff like that, and I think that’s great; I’ve seen it have a positive influence on friends of mine, and vastly improve their lives, without compromising their ethics. I think this sort of training falls under "self-improvement," and I think it's an unalloyed good thing, and from what I can tell, this is exactly what you've been teaching and promoting.
I’m bothered by what I think of as “compliance tricks,” which I’ve also seen recommended in a PUA context.
That is, when you get someone to do things that she doesn’t want or like, using commitment effects and manipulating her own guilt, awkwardness, and desire to please. Or playing on her insecurities so she doesn't feel she deserves to refuse. I’ve been on the receiving end of a mild version of this: it’s possible to make me do things that are bad for me just by being “dominating” and making me feel too awkward to refuse a favor. This is similar to the Milgram Experiment. People can be remarkably unwilling to say “No” to someone who expects to be obeyed, and people can be willing to harm others or themselves just to avoid a reprimand, a stern look, or social awkwardness.
A man who understands this can get sex just by using compliance tricks (especially if he uses them on an especially timid or docile woman.) He doesn’t necessarily have to be cool or charming – he can be unattractive and creepy – but he can make a woman feel bad about saying “No” very effectively if he’s good at psychology, and he can make her life worse. I think this is why there’s a lot of feminist talk about “No means no” and consent and so on – because women are socialized to try to please people and go along with others’ desires, and can be put in harmful situations by people who take advantage of their reluctance to give a direct “No.”
Maybe that in itself isn’t a crime; maybe unfulfilling, not-quite-desired sex isn’t the worst thing in the world; but as a general rule, I think compliance tricks are pretty disturbing. People have permitted genocide and tyranny -- and, less dramatically, ruined their own lives -- because they were too awkward or meek to say “No,” and someone took advantage of their meekness. The victim of a compliance trick bears responsibility for his/her weakness, but the instigator of a compliance trick is still doing wrong, in my opinion.
Continued from previous post...
I'm raising lots of questions, and I don't necessarily expect answers... most of them are rhetorical, because I know there isn't an easy answer. In ethics, it's easy to prohibit things, but it's hard to show the distinctions between what's prohibited and what's permitted.
It's correct that it's costly to someone if you destroy their ability to say "no." It's also costly to them if you destroy their ability to say "yes." Those costs aren't symmetrical, though the latter cost needs to be considered when calculating the expected value of advances. "Choice" doesn't just mean the ability to say "no," it also means the ability to say "yes."
Lots of mainstream mating behavior by both genders has elements of compliance (e.g. "call me") that people are not always aware of. What if the initiator is genuinely unaware that their behavior might induce unenthusiastic (or unwanted) compliance? Check out this body language TV program where the expert remarks that women's accepting and rejecting behavior sometimes looks the same due to politeness.
How ethical responsibility should be divided is a good question. Clearly there is a responsibility that an initiating partner consider the other person's boundaries and ability to assert them, but there is also a responsibility of the receptive partner to assert their boundaries, since initiators don't have perfect knowledge of the other person's boundaries. The division of responsibility would depend on the sort of activity, and the context.
Given that women's boundaries and preferences have wide variation and conflicts, while men are expected to initiate under conditions of uncertainty, there's only so much that men can do to ensure that they initiate in a way that is both attractive and easy to say "no" to. This is not a system that we opted-into. Nobody came and said "please check this box if you would like to date a population of people who have a high rate or trouble saying 'yes,' and a high rate of trouble saying 'no'... and who typically expect you to initiate."
Men can be cautious, or attempt to read women's minds, and it's a good thing if they do. It's quite feasible to avoid running over women's boundaries... if you treat women like frail porcelain statues. Yet what percentage of women actually finds such behavior attractive? Does the possibility of a woman complying with an unwanted advance, without the guy knowing, mean that men need to treat women like frail porcelain statues by default?
At what point does men's caution turn into infantilization towards women, and at what point do we ask them to help with cultural change? At what point do we hold women responsible to assert their boundaries (particularly for advances that aren't aggressive, and where the guy might never know that she was just going along with it out of people-pleasing)? If less women had trouble saying "no," then men wouldn't have to initiate so conservatively. If less women had trouble saying "yes," then men could initiate cautiously without worry of being rejected because their advance was considered "wimpy" or otherwise unattractive.
I hadn't realized that the fear of harming women could actually be that paralyzing in real life that it actually scares men away from getting dates at all. There's no reason men should have to bear that whole cost as some kind of precautionary principle. There are some ways in which the deck really is stacked against men, and I agree that it's unfair.
You have to understand, like Robert Hand "I have come up from a lower world and I am filled with astonishment when I find that people have any redeeming virtue at all." I'm used to my male friends talking about bedding unconscious girls and planning to screw my teenage little sister. The idea that someone could be so scrupulous that it hurts his dating prospects simply didn't occur to me.
And definitely I believe in putting more pressure on adult women to be more straightforward: say yes when you mean yes and no when you mean no. That takes character, though, and character takes time, and most women who hear something about "assertiveness" never really grok that this means "Yes, you should self-modify!" I'm in the process of trying to be more assertive -- and the trouble is, I get positive reinforcement every time I'm meek and deferent! Even people who verbally encourage assertiveness respond positively to self-effacing, timid people. So even this is a two-way street. If women want respect for our boundaries, we have to be more assertive. If it would be good for women to be more assertive, then everyone has to actually behave as though they prefer to be around assertive people.
It's hard to figure out where to draw the line ethically, when it comes to the compliance stuff. The David X tactic doesn't seem obviously immoral to me; I'm not sure I would mind if my male friends tried it on a woman; I can imagine some women falling for it and feeling really shitty in the morning, though. Is a man doing wrong if he makes a woman feel really shitty? I'm not sure -- it's just feelings, after all.
One way of looking at it: if a sleazy come-on is followed by a healthy relationship, who wouldn't forgive the sleazy come-on? If a man just does sleaze, all the time, and there's never any underlying goodwill, then I'm afraid I'm going to judge him negatively. Such people exist; you are obviously not one of them; but yes, they exist, and even despite the unfair structure of society, I'm going to judge them.
To make matters worse, there is also the case of appearing to harm women. Even a false accusation of rape is a terrifying prospect for any man who isn't like the specified male friends you mentioned.
For some social environments, the cost of a false positive (you determine 'yes' when actually 'no') is way higher than the cost of false negatives. For many other situations, the cost is potentially lower. I don't see it here, but the failure mode in almost all social discussions I've had the misfortune of having on this topic has been to try and generalise a single behaviour for women or men over both situations.
?? As opposed to what?
Or is this sarcastic?
SarahC said:
I'm glad that I've been able to minimize the inferential distance. This feeling of anxiety is one reason why some men get sensitive or defensive in discussions about consent.
Ah, it looks like we are talking about different areas of the moral spectrum. Since we were talking about manipulation and compliance tactics, I thought we were talking about something a bit more subtle. Can someone give a concrete example of objectionable "manipulation" or "compliance tricks" that they have in mind?
I do think it's a good thing if women are encouraged to be straightforward. Also, I would like to see women consider whether men following their preferences would be a good thing for other women. For instance, if you (general "you") are a woman who likes men to initiate when they could only be 70% sure you are consenting... is that really a good practice to encourage men towards? How will other women feel if guys act this way?
Yes. And it's unfortunate that even women who like to communicate verbally about what they want are likely to run into men who have been trained by other women to guess rather than ask. Similarly, women who prefer to do most of the initiating themselves will often run into men who've been trained by other women to do most of the initiating.
As I've mentioned before, women's responses to men are like votes in a democracy. Some women are running a tyranny of the majority over other women in determining men's default dating behavior.
That's my reaction, also. I think if a man knowingly does something that reliably makes women feel shitty, that's problematic. In this case, I guess we have to weigh the possibility of her feeling shitty with the possibility of her having a good time. I'm not sure what the correct weights are, or how to do that calculation.
My intuition is against this particular tactic, because I believe that there are ways to have women leave bars with you that are just as good, but which don't have potential downsides.
As SilasBarta has pointed out, it's conceivable for men to use "sleaze" to get in the door with a woman, but then be scrupulous in gaining consent before actually having sex.
It's difficult to excuse a "sleazy" come-on ex post facto because it happened to result in a healthy relationship. Yet if the come-on has that result, that could be evidence that the come-on actually wasn't sleazy: the positive outcome is evidence (at least, weak evidence) against the potential harmfulness of the come-on.
Sure. It's not them I'm trying to protect. I'm worried about the more scrupulous guys who might get caught by the sweeping language that is commonly used to criticize the sleazy guys.
Try reading NON-PU online tip sites for dating/romance and the like. The quite men do not make too many noteworthy appearances in real life.
I wonder how that would work out.
I think these are all worthy questions, but I can't agree with the implication that this lessens (if that is the implication - my apologies if I have misread you) our concerns over compliance tricks. In particular I think the metaphor of "dividing ethical responsibility" is very bad framing: it allows discussions like these to turn into cheering or booing various possibly responsible groups, and moreover it doesn't even make sense outside of a punitive or compensatory context. What one should do is identify what's normative for every actor in the situation.
Removing someone's ability to say "yes" is bad; I don't think anyone disputes this. And one of the great ethical advances of the past half-century has been to increase people's, especially women's, ability to say "yes" in the sexual field. But I don't see any respect in which curtailing compliance tricks will seriously compromise anyone's ability to say yes. (I'm sure one could come up with particular side examples.) I'm not sure if this would be reading you correctly, but you might be saying that by respecting boundaries men make themselves unsexy, which curtails women's ability to say yes. I think that if this is what you're saying it's deeply incorrect; if men are making themselves unsexy, for whatever reason, that results in lost opportunities, but it's not actually curtailing anyone's ability to say yes that in fact wants to.
It's also true that compliance tricks are used unconsciously. If this is the case (which it is) we should critically examine our "autopilot" modes of interaction to see where we are in fact using confidence tricks, so we can eliminate them where possible and appropriate. (It may not always be appropriate: society depends on a great deal of soft coercion. Sexuality is one of the few areas I'd be a total absolutist about freedom, but that may be a question of terminal values.) Of course the fact that (at least some elements of) PUA openly rather than subconsciously use compliance tricks means the first half of the battle is won, and we just have to move on to making them (more) socially unacceptable (than they already are.)
If the choice really is between treating women as porcelain statues and accidentally raping someone, how could anyone treat this as a serious dilemma? As you note, forgoing a yes and forgoing a no have highly asymmetric costs. But SarahC is correct to say that confidence is not the same thing as manipulation. A confident, high-affect, charismatic &c. person can sedulously respect boundaries. Perhaps we're running into a purely semantic confusion and what I label "respecting boundaries" is not actually the same thing as what you label "treating women like porcelain statues" - perhaps you could operationalize the latter?
I agree that continuing the secular increase in women's (and for that matter, men's) ability to say yes or no, as is their wont, is an important social goal that will continue to benefit all parties (other than date rapists.) How to ensure that is a sometimes very complicated and sometimes very simple (don't engage in slut-shaming, don't use compliance tricks, &c) question, but one that's been addressed at length elsewhere.
Oligopsony said:
Thanks for helping me nail down what it is I am saying. I really appreciate it when people ask me to clarify, rather than jump to conclusions (and down my throat).
I actually don't know whether we should have less worry about compliance tricks or not, because I'm still not exactly clear about what "compliance tricks" means (same with "manipulation"). If any sort of mundane request falls under that heading, then perhaps we shouldn't be so concerned about all sorts of compliance tricks, because some of them are innocent. If "compliance tricks" refers to something more narrow and extreme, then we should be concerned.
My intuition is that there are problematic behaviors that could fall under "manipulation" or "compliance tricks," but I'm really not sure what other people mean by those terms in this discussion. No concrete examples have been given. I proposed one to SarahC (David X's "I thought you were adventurous"), but she didn't seem to think it was manipulative.
Not explicitly, at least.
That depends on what "compliance tricks" means. Any request could induce compliance. If you curtail requests, then it becomes harder for people to say "yes" if you don't ask. What distinguishes a "compliance trick" from a request that is not a "compliance trick?"
If a man respects a woman's actual boundaries, that's highly unlikely to be unsexy. The problem is that a man doesn't know where her actual boundaries are, at least not early on. Here's a concrete example of some women's potential preferences and boundaries around a kiss at the end of a date:
Now, imagine that you are a man going on date. The problem is that you don't know whether you are dating Sally, Jane, or Roxanne. Well, you know the name of the person you are dating, but you don't know their preference set. You can guess, but it's, well... a guess. Early in dating, you don't know who the person in front of you truly is: you must aim your behavior towards a probability distribution of who that person might be.
Respecting Sally's boundaries isn't a turn-off if you are on a date with Sally. Sally won't be turned off by you asking for a kiss goodbye, but Jane and Roxanne will. In fact, they might find it unconfident, inept, or wimpy.
So, what should you do? With all the talk you've heard about vulnerability, people-pleasing, consent, etc... you might make the following conclusion (of course, I have no idea whether anyone would actually advocate such a conclusion):
It's more costly to a woman to attempt to kiss her without asking if she prefers being asked, than to fail to kiss a woman who wants you to kiss her without asking. You don't know which set of preferences she has. Therefore, as a precautionary principle (to use SarahC's term), you should treat all women as if they are Sally, and always ask.
This ethical argument is compelling, but it runs into major practical problems if women like Sally are in the minority.
Ah, but whether someone someone wants to say "yes" can often depend on how the request was made. Making a request in an unsexy way makes it harder to say "yes" to. Getting concrete again, let's consider two ways of asking for a kiss goodnight at the end of a date:
The second is probably harder to say "no" to. It induces more compliance, regardless of whether it is phrased as a question or an imperative. Yet the first way is probably harder to say "yes" to, for women who don't find that way of asking attractive.
That's correct. It's frustrating for me to watch people condemn PUAs for engaging in behavior that people in the mainstream do on autopilot. There should be more investigation into what sorts of social influence are ethical, but I am very pessimistic about getting mainstream people to disarm. A much more practical solution is to arm everyone with the tools to influence others, and resist influence. As you perceptively point out, even discussion of pickup is a step towards this goal.
Of course, I will suggest that there are plenty of commonly-used influence behaviors (including compliance-inducing ones) that would pass inspection. And I would question whether "soft coercion" always deserves to be called coercion.
Confidence isn't the same thing as manipulation, but there could be an overlap in the consequences. If our ethical principle is to avoid making advances that someone might unenthusiastically comply with, then avoiding confident behavior might well be better!
I'm sure that most people who advocate concern about female sexual vulnerability and people-pleasing don't want to imply that men have to relinquish confident behavior. But what exactly are the practical implications of that concern?
I agree that these semantic questions are getting to the crux of this discussion.
A behavior that Sally might perceive as respectful of her boundaries (e.g. asking for a kiss) might leave Jane or Roxeanne feeling like you are treating her as a porcelain statue. Here are some other potential behaviors that lower the chances of unenthusiastic compliance:
I hypothesize that many women will find these sorts of inhibitions to result in stilted and unattractive behavior that makes them feel treated like porcelain statues (or conclude that the guy is wimpy, unconfident, or unperceptive of her nonverbal signals). Yet such behaviors do maximize the ease of women saying "no." So why shouldn't men be good little consequentialists and act like this? What percentage of women actually find such behavior attractive in men they are dating?