Thomas Pluck reflects on how economic security affects the dating game.
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Maybe it was my early exposure to the Leisure Suit Larry games, but I’ve always found Pick-Up Artists to be kind of pathetic. I feel the same way about women who have tried to ‘vamp’ me to get what they want. I take it as a personal insult that it’s assumed that I can’t control my throbbing hormonal urges. In Katie J.M. Baker’s article in Dissent, she has a lot of fun skewering Pick-Up Artist ‘Roosh’ after his attempted sex tour of Denmark left him shot down in flames. Roosh blamed it on the country’s strong social safety net.
In Denmark, women get a year of maternity leave, and more if the father takes time off as well. You get university and health care paid by your taxes, and no one sees the need to marry for financial reasons. The taxes are the highest in the world, but they have low unemployment and steady economic growth. I visited Denmark several years ago. Like Vincent says in Pulp Fiction, it’s the little differences.
The country has a deep egalitarian streak, so much that as an American, I thought my waiters were slow. Actually it’s because people are more relaxed and there’s no tipping, so there’s no reason to rush and kiss my ass for an extra 5%. My fried eel arrived piping hot, and no one died. It’s a bit of a culture shock, being among people who aren’t terrified of losing their job, but things still get done. The trains were on time, and very clean and cheap. The roads were in good shape, and there were punks squatting in a building and rioting with the police who were trying to eject them. It’s not utopia, it’s reality.
How much of what we perceive as “the natural order” is an artificial construct imposed by our economics and culture?
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According to his book Don’t Bang Denmark, Roost found the women very “unfeminine” because they didn’t see him as a possible financial benefactor. That really struck me, and it reminded me of the woman gifted with a hot body who thinks it entitles her to anything. When I wrote about engagement rings, a lot of guys liked when I said that men are “objectified as a breadwinner.” Many of us don’t like being looked at as Mister Moneybags, though apparently some do. I don’t see a problem with having pride in your career and ability to provide, but once you start thinking you deserve better treatment than everyone else, the temptation from the dark side gets stronger.
Just like the hot woman at the office who tries to baby-talk you into helping her move from a fifth floor walk up after suddenly acknowledging your existence, the successful guy who thinks his money clip should work like Funky Cold Medina and get him respect from strange women has an attitude problem. And it comes to light in countries like Denmark, where few citizens lose sleep over waking up without a job, or going hungry or homeless if they do lose their job. While there is certainly still a class system in Denmark, and plenty of billionaires poking their yachts around, the working class isn’t stressed out and on edge thanks to their safety net. And the effect on the dating pool is apparently profound.
Roosh’s alpha male schtick flops like the scam it is. He claims to have bedded an 18-year old to “save” his trip, which puts the so-called alpha on par with the old creep parking his Corvette outside the high school. There’s a sense of schadenfreude, there. Same as when the woman who can’t remember your name asks you to move her out of that apartment, and has to hire movers. Because they are furthering their own objectification. You can call this blaming the victim if you like, and perhaps it is. I don’t hate anyone because they are beautiful, or if they are successful. But I do hate if they’re a jerk, and think their looks or money makes up for it, or in fact matters more than how they treat other people. It goes to show how much of what we perceive as “the natural order” is an artificial construct imposed by our economics and culture.
–Photo Ran Yaniv Hartstein/Flickr
I think that it is because the norms around dating are totally different in Scandinavian countries.
The normal way of asking for a kiss is to just ask for one, and if you want to have sex, then just ask directly. There is no shame in saying yes or no, or hearing yes and no. It is a totally different way of handling dating. It results in far fewer teenage pregnancies, a much higher age for losing one’s virginity, and less reported rape.
I think that the Scandinavian girls just didn’t realise that he was interested in them sexually.
Kudos for using “Funky Cold Medina” in a sentence. I enjoy all references to the sounds of my misspent youth. : – )
These are very good discussions about pickup: http://www.feministcritics.org/blog/about/seduction-communitypickup-artists/
“He claims to have bedded an 18-year old ”
Most women Rooshs age would gladly have sex with and 18 year old. Most pornstars are 18-22 because that is the age most men find women to be the most attractive at.
This is a misrepresentation that Roosh has refuted on his own blog. It is based on a very dishonest reading of his book. I am from Norway and Norway has probably the largest pickup community relative to its population size of any country and PUA theories work just as well here as elsewhere. You can notice this also through the fact that there is a disproportionate number of Scandinavian men at international PUA boards, in the manosphere in general and at Rooshs own forum. Hypergamy is very much alive in Scandinavia. What might have confused Roosh a bit is that… Read more »
I find it a bit ironic that the article and the PUA in question chooses Denmark, among the Scandinavian countries, to “debunk” PUA theory, since Denmark itself often prides itself as having much less equality, feminism and Jante-law than the others. 🙂
Hello Iben.You are well,I trust?It is difficult to imagine that your culture,considering it’s maturity,would not be more advanced socially than American culture. You have tried and experienced more than we have. You are also not burdened with the expectations of being the leaders of the free world.That expectation is a cumbersome load to bear and presents more problems to the bearer than it does comforts.I am always cautious of simple solutions for complex problems.In any event,it would take years of intense,openminded,study to understand a culture well enough to know it.
The most relevant reason PUA is delusional is this:ultimately,it is the woman who chooses to be with said guy.
I find it amusing that the author and commenters are so scornful of this Roosh, yet take him seriously enough to bother to attack him.
I think it is worth noting that this sad creep (and that is the first time in my life I’ve used that word) Roosh is not actually a pickup artist. Just like most men who go by that label these days he just THINK he is. It’s a delusion. It’s like a woman who thinks passionately hating all men makes her a progressive feminist. They give the real thing a bad name. That being said, the reason why I steer clear of PUAs altogether is that (as Neil Strauss nicely demonstrated) even at its very best, pickup artistry is unhealthy,… Read more »
Check out Juggler (Wayne Elise), this guy: http://socialcoach.com/, Chase Amante, Teevster, Blackdragon, Morten Hake, Zan. THose are all very happy PUAs. They have all had great success with PUA material themselves and teach good though very different ways of attracting women.
Paul you have some interesting things to say. I might quibble with you in your descripition of this sitaation as originating as fundamentally hetereo mormative.This doesn’t sufficiently explain how the same system,with a few differences,existed in the Roman and Grecian Empires.Neither was hetereo normative as we are yet money, power, looks,and disparity among citizens were central to how these cultures functioned. .I would like to believe that utopia is just a major tax overhaul waiting to happen, but I am not certain it is that easy to subdue our darker nature.Certainly, how a society is structured has a major impact… Read more »
Hi ogwriter – Well, it (the old dating/mating dance) is certainly fundamentally hetero-normative in our society. And it really does reflect the matrix that feminists have dubbed the PATRIARCHY, which has dominated western civilization and eastern civilization both. That said, I agree with you that any upward shift has to come from a post-feminist perspective. The idea that men “should” be feminists – which gets pushed here on GMP, and over on Huffpo – is not compelling at all. Feminism is riddled with a ton of shadow at this point, and my experience of feminists is that most of them… Read more »
hi ogwriter
you have a good question. Are Scandinavians like that because they have their needs met?
Culture,values, ideology and our model for development of a society is so fundamentally different from the American one.I wish I could answer you question, but i can not.
Hi Thomas Interesting article. I am delighted PUA don’t find a marked in Denmark. The analyses here about why this is so ,can be discussed but the fact is that Roosh did not succeed in selling his crap. Great! Thank you for the link; Here is some quotes about Roosh. ✺for example, he attacks government-funded higher education because the universities “destroy a woman’s femininity. The more years she spends in them, the less likely she will be able to please you, physically and emotionally.”….. Roosh writes. Therefore, when it comes to getting laid, your American attitude and belief system will… Read more »
Denmark has a large pickup community that has successfully applied PUA theories for many years. Rooshs own forum has several Danish posters.
I lived in Copenhagen for 6 months while I was very much involved in PUA. I’m not familiar with this guy’s approach, and based on what you’ve written here I probably wouldn’t like him much, and in my experience I had no problem with the things I had learned from the PUA while I was there. What he says about the Jante Law is meh kind of true, but he’s exaggerating. An approach more akiin to the old cocky funny approach, but toned down more on the cocky works well. I also encourage the “inner game” approach, which is less… Read more »
What Roosh said about his failed experience was really telling: There are no HYPERGAMOUS women in Denmark, in his observation. That’s why his GAME didn’t work. GAME works – with HYPERGAMOUS women. Let’s explode that out a bit, to really make sense of it: Roosh – and PUA’s like him – thrive in the world of the old hetero-normativity. This is the world we’ve been living in pretty much forever. It’s a world where worth and status are determined by looks, power and money. It’s the world we’ve inherited from our genetic forefathers – the same world you see when… Read more »
I find it very interesting that your observations and explanation neatly elaborate my intuition when I read Covey’s “The 7 Habits of Highly-Effective People,” which was this: America still hasn’t made the step up from independence to interdependence.
That’s absolutely correct. Individualism is so deeply baked into our social DNA, and has been the cause of so much of our success, that we are having a hard time realizing that it doesn’t really serve us well anymore.