buybuydandavis comments on LW Women Submissions: On Misogyny - Less Wrong

27 [deleted] 10 April 2013 07:54PM

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Comment author: roland 10 April 2013 10:22:21PM *  1 point [-]

I don't get all the criticism of PUAs, submitter B mentions them but doesn't provide any elaborate arguments and I don't think it's fair to compare them to gay converters(gay converters want to change other people PUAs don't, on the contrary they accept woman exactly how they are). In effect PU is understanding how women work and adjusting your behavior to become attractive to them. Could you be more specific in what exactly is wrong with them?

Comment author: crazy88 11 April 2013 12:30:59AM *  20 points [-]

If the sole determining factor of whether an interaction with a women is desirable is whether they end up attracted to you then, yes, even the most extreme sort of pick up artistry would be unproblematic.

However, if you think that there are other factors that determine whether such an interaction is desirable (such as whether the woman is treated with respect, is not made to feel unpleasant etc) then certain sorts of pick up artistry are extremely distasteful.

For example, let's hypothetically imagine that women are more attracted to people who make them feel insecure (I take no position on the accuracy of this claim). Sure, it would just be "understanding how women work and adjusting your behaviour to be more attractive to them" if you deliberately made them feel insecure. And sure, this would be no problem if being attractive was the sole determining factor of whether the interaction was desirable. However, if you think women deserve to be treated with respect and not made to feel horrible (presuming not because they are women but just because all humans deserve this) then this interaction is extremely undesirable.

Some discussions of pick up artistry don't just blur this line but fail to even realise there is a line. To those who think women should be treated with respect, this is extremely concerning.

Comment author: buybuydandavis 11 April 2013 01:38:46AM 1 point [-]

If the sole determining factor of whether an interaction with a women is desirable is whether they end up attracted to you then, yes, even the most extreme sort of pick up artistry would be unproblematic.

However, if you think that there are other factors that determine whether such an interaction is desirable (such as whether the woman is treated with respect, is not made to feel unpleasant etc) then certain sorts of pick up artistry are extremely distasteful.

That's the issue. Some people have an ideology that some women's tastes are distasteful.

Comment author: crazy88 11 April 2013 01:49:33AM *  4 points [-]

That's the issue. Some people have an ideology that some women's tastes are distasteful.

It's a clever line but doesn't really interact with what I said (which may perhaps have been because I was unclear: I don't intend to suggest this fact is your fault).

We can think of it another way: what do we think constitutes the welfare of a woman? Presumably we don't think that it is just that she is attracted to the person she is currently conversing with.

However, if this is the case and if we care about how our interaction with people effect their welfare then the fact that a person's interaction with a woman makes the woman attracted to them doesn't entail that the interaction was desirable (because we care about their welfare which is more than just their extent of current attraction).

Note that this need not be a condescending attempt to institute an objective conception of welfare on an unwilling recipient. For example, we might think that a person's welfare is determined by their own subjective, personally decided upon preferences. Now perhaps a woman has preferences to be attracted to the person they're talking to (or perhaps not) but presumably they also have preferences to feel good about themselves and a number of other things. Again, then, even taking their self-identified welfare, we can't presume that an interaction is benefiting a woman's welfare just because they are attracted to their current conversation partner.

To put it another other way: just because a woman finds herself attracted to a person following an interaction, it doesn't mean she doesn't wish that the interaction had been different. So the conversation may fulfill the man's interests in being attractive but it doesn't follow from the fact that the woman is attracted to him that it fulfulls the woman's interests.

Of course, if you think a woman's welfare is her own problem and an interested man's only responsibility is to be attractive to the woman then you won't find this compelling but that attitude is precisely what the problem is (many people think that one should be concerned about the effects of one's interactions on others' welfare).

ETA: So to clarify: the claim was not that some women's tastes are distasteful but rather that a woman's tastes don't entirely determine her welfare so we can't move from a claim that something is in accordance with her tastes to a claim that something is in accordance with her welfare (or, for that matter, her desires, because her tastes in men don't fully define her desires either)