Yes. Let's start by explictly stating my position: There are man who get into PUA and develop skills that make it easy to get laid. Those aren't the majority. There are other man who get damanged by PUA and get hold back in their development.
Before I continue: Have you read HughRistik's writing here on Less Wrong?
A bit of what he actually wrote on LW but I don't think the majority of the linked articles. But let's take one http://www.feministcritics.org/blog/2008/04/26/do-women-know-what-they-want/
That post basically argues that woman don't know what they want.The evidence that it brings is that the mating preferences that woman give out when you give them a questionaire don't match what other studies found in a controlled experiment.
That's a bad belief to have. It prevents guys from having deep conversations with women about their desires. If you look at the Tucker Max and Geoffrey Miller point of view as articulated on http://thematinggrounds.com/ one of the aspects that a guy can learn by actually listening to woman is woman's desire for safety. When a guy goes on a date his biggest fear is getting rejected. Often for woman a big fear is getting physically violated.
That's not something that the mating priorities questionaire that HughRistik cites or even gathers data on.
In some sense you could argue that Mating Grounds is PUA material but Tucker Max would take that as an insult as he consider PUA to do more harm than good. I think a guy who wants to get layed will do better by taking that book than by taking one about 2008 PUA.
We believe that most “Pick-up Artists” are sociopathic, bullshit scammers. The PUA scene is not transformational, it’s transactional. Its not about getting to know women, it’s about getting over on them. We believe Mating Grounds is the answer to the PUA strategy for all those men who have nothing meaningful to show for their efforts.
Other more substantial things that are wrong about PUA from my perspective:
The language. Terms like k-close and f-close serve to disassociate emotions. Just because a word like sex is charged with emotions doesn't mean that it should be avoided. If man feel uneasy about speaking those words they should explore their relationship with those words instead of replacing it with more constructed language.
Treaing woman as numbers. It prevent deeper relating.
The PUA theory of physical escalation. I consider it much better to feel into what feels good to both parties of the interaction than to focus on an interlectual ladder of physical escalation. If you have a group of people who actually feel into what's right, you can have events where men and women dance naked together. Those events suffer greatly from people who operate with the PUA mindset.
Terms like k-close and f-close serve to disassociate emotions. Just because a word like sex is charged with emotions doesn't mean that it should be avoided. If man feel uneasy about speaking those words they should explore their relationship with those words instead of replacing it with more constructed language.
I agree that many men in the PUA community use jargon such as "k-close" and "f-close" as a technique for disassociating emotions. Where we differ is that you're condemning this method whereas I believe it's a crucial tool to ...
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