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

27 [deleted] 10 April 2013 07:54PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (472)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: someonewrongonthenet 11 April 2013 02:12:01AM *  1 point [-]

No...women do not like people who are assholes and play on people's insecurities. No healthy person likes that.

Social "dominance" is about being charismatic and influential within a group.

It's not about over-riding people's preferences. It's not about playing on insecurities. Rather, it's about making people comfortable and helping them to achieve their ends.

Women like what they like, and I'm not going to blame men who cater to those likes. If you don't approve of what women like, take it up with them.

In the least convenient universe where women did like that, are you really willing to endorse unethical actions in pursuit of mating?

Comment author: Desrtopa 11 April 2013 03:16:25PM *  4 points [-]

No...women do not like people who are assholes and play on people's insecurities. No healthy person likes that.

I think that many branches of PUA contain some fairly toxic memes, but I think this claim is only true under a rather narrow and exclusionary definition of "healthy."

I've certainly known women who were attracted to men who were assholes and played on others' insecurities. I never became bitter about it, because they weren't women I would have wanted to be attracted to me instead, but I don't think that means it's fair to label them as psychologically unhealthy. Plenty of women also play on others' insecurities to attain social dominance (ex. queen bees.) Whether this helps make them attractive to men, I couldn't say, but it certainly doesn't seem to prohibit their receiving attraction.

Comment author: someonewrongonthenet 11 April 2013 05:54:57PM *  1 point [-]

Fair point. I was conceptualizing psychological health as a dichotomous spectrum. It's not about falling over or under the line of psychologically unhealthy - one set of behaviors is simply more healthy than another.

Most people have at least a few "unhealthy" behaviors. I know I have one or two.