[LINK] Ethical Pick-Up Artistry (Clarisse Thorn)

KenChen

Clarisse Thorn recently posted a useful article about Ethical Pick-Up Artistry, bringing up a few basic critiques of traditional PUA and suggesting a few alternatives.

Here’s the thing: the current pickup artist subculture has a monopoly on effective advice for how to break down social interactions and talk to women. Not all of it works, but enough of it works that it draws guys in. As a pickup artist instructor once told me, “When I first found the community I was horrified by how sleazy and gross it is, but I had never had a girlfriend and I told myself: dude, if you don’t learn this stuff you’re gonna die alone.”

I’ve theorized that maybe feminists should provide good pickup advice, in an attempt to counterbalance some of the awfulness of the existing community. In the meantime, however, I figure the next best thing to do is to provide a list of less-misogynistic pickup artist instructors and sites, and a few very basic critiques.

~~A proposal to formalize this~~ Not the same thing, but a discussion on forming a community to practice social artistry in general has been brought up on LW before, but I'm not personally aware of anything coming out of that.

Clarisse Thorn recently posted a useful article about Ethical Pick-Up Artistry, bringing up a few basic critiques of traditional PUA and suggesting a few alternatives.

Here’s the thing: the current pickup artist subculture has a monopoly on effective advice for how to break down social interactions and talk to women. Not all of it works, but enough of it works that it draws guys in. As a pickup artist instructor once told me, “When I first found the community I was horrified by how sleazy and gross it is, but I had never had a girlfriend and I told myself: dude, if you don’t learn this stuff you’re gonna die alone.”

I’ve theorized that maybe feminists should provide good pickup advice, in an attempt to counterbalance some of the awfulness of the existing community. In the meantime, however, I figure the next best thing to do is to provide a list of less-misogynistic pickup artist instructors and sites, and a few very basic critiques.

I find this advice has a couple good points, but is mostly pretty bad.

Be Transparent. Show what you're feeling; say what you're thinking. Offer and accept communications at face value. Do this from the beginning, and the bad relationships will run from you like shadows from the light. Now, this doesn't mean you can't use non-verbal techniques to make people feel better -- but here is the test: If you were to explain everything you are doing and why, would the other person feel exploited, or honored?

This advice can be helpful if you have a relationship with strong gender roles, but it's not so useful for (a) people with substantial social difficulties, or (b) men in gender traditional relationships.

(a) If you have substantial insecurity or social anxiety, then if you "Show what you're feeling; say what you're thinking," you will just end up voicing your insecurity and anxiety. That's usually a bad idea in most dating situations.

(b) If you are a man dating a woman with gender traditional preferences, you must be careful about displaying vulnerability, because some women with those preferences find it unattractive.

Become Skilled at Being Single. Learn to make good food, pay your bills, motivate yourself, stay sane, and get sexual release, by yourself and with help from friends. Then why do you even need a partner? Exactly. But you might still appreciate a partner, which is a stronger position.

Not bad advice (though good luck getting your friends to help you get sexual release). The main problem this advice is that it fails to recognize how badly people's mental health gets trashed by lack of wanted relationships and intimacy.

Embrace the Friend Zone. Having friends is a good thing. The suffering of the "friend zone" is an illusion created by desire. Let go of desire and the prison becomes paradise -- or the false friendship is exposed. Of course, you might still fantasize about another kind of relationship. The key is that you are not holding tension between where you are and where you are not.

This is decent advice.

Broaden Your Standards. Typically, guys who complain that women are attracted to assholes, are themselves attracted to asshole women. (Actually, this explains a lot about pickup artist culture.) Remember that nice person who you rejected for not being sexy enough? That's karma: you must follow the rules you make. At the same time, nobody wants to be settled for. Practice valuing qualities that are valuable.

This could be good advice to someone who generally has narrow standards, but to assume that guys who complain that women are attracted to assholes have narrow standards (or go for asshole women) is baseless prejudice.

Be Like Water. Do not push anything, but move instantly to fill any opening. This will not generate nearly as much sex as aggressive seduction, but it will make it better, by filtering out sex for the sake of proving something, and leaving only sex based on strong mutual attraction.

Good advice.

Sex Is Not the Goal. There is no goal. There is only the process: be who you are, and engage with what you encounter on that road.

This advice is horrible for anyone who is expected to initiate sex. Good luck doing that without any sort of goal-directness.

0lsparrish15y

My impression is that two people who spend enough time together and are physically attracted to one another will tend to eventually have sex. It usually takes a lot of willpower for this not to be the case.

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[LINK] Ethical Pick-Up Artistry (Clarisse Thorn)

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[LINK] Ethical Pick-Up Artistry (Clarisse Thorn)

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