[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 should also say a word about consent. Body language and other implicit cues can only take you so far; before you hit the bedroom, you'd better make sure your partner is enthusiastic about the prospect, and that requires verbal communication.

If you said that verbal communication was one of the most effective ways to communicate enthusiastic consent, I would agree. But is it really required? That notion seems to counter-intuitive to me, because I can think up some ways to nonverbally communicate enthusiastic consent that don't seem ambiguous (to me). What if your partner tries something like the following:

Waves a condom at you while pointing at their crotch.
Slowly physically guides you with their hands into initiating sex.

I can understand the reluctance to admit nonverbal ways of communicating, since so many of those methods are indeed ambiguous. But saying that verbal communication is required seems to either miss out on the possibility of non-ambiguous nonverbal communication like the above, or be some sort of noble lie.

Okay, so it's not a fundamental necessity, but it's not a noble lie either; it's a matter of ethics. The consequences of misunderstanding, probabilistically weighted, are still serious enough that it's ethically better to maintain a habit of making a bit of sexy talk before hopping in bed with any new partner.

For the record, I have indeed misinterpreted what I thought were totally unambiguous "go" signals. Fortunately things did not progress far, but it was a big wake-up call for me.

2wedrifid15y

That one made me laugh. Reading the quote you provided prompted me to think of all sorts of body language and non-verbal cues that are more than sufficient in communicating physical consent. Such as him to the bedroom herself, tearing off his clothes or touching him on the penis. But waving a condom at you while pointing at her crotch takes the prize.

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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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