In chasing the pickup artist, Clarisse Thorn learns that playing with fire … is hot.
This is an abridged excerpt from the brand-new ebook, Confessions of a Pickup Artist Chaser: Long Interviews with Hideous Men, by the feminist S&M writer Clarisse Thorn. The book is by turns analytical and autobiographical. Clarisse tells a lot of stories and develops a lot of theories. The book is available for only $2.99 (U.S. dollars) until March 17, when the price will go up… so buy it now at Amazon! Note that if you don’t have a Kindle, you can download the free Kindle app for your computer or smartphone and read it there. Also note: you can become a fan of Confessions on Facebook.
Most of the PUAs departed the club around 1 AM, except for David, still hilariously out of place in his sparkly suit. We hit the dance floor again until David asked, “Want to go get something to eat?”
“Sure,” I said, and left the club with him. On our way out we ran into one of my non-PUA friends, who gave David a sharp look. “You get her home safe,” said my friend.
“Of course,” David said amiably.
We jumped into David’s car, and within ten minutes we were driving through an area that was definitely not the 24-hour-diner district. “Where are we going to eat?” I asked, and then my circumstances caught up to me. “Are you taking me to your apartment?” I demanded.
“Yep,” he said, and laughed.
I couldn’t help it… I laughed too. “I’ve read that you guys do stuff like this,” I said, “but I can’t believe you decided to take me to your apartment without even asking. You know that I read PUA materials, right? Look, I’m not going to have sex with you, okay?”
David waved one hand airily. “There are so many different definitions of ‘sex,'” he said.
“Seriously,” I insisted, “I’m not going to have sex with you.”
He changed the subject. I took a quick mental inventory: I felt alert and not-drugged. One of my friends had seen me leave with David. David seemed pushy, but I didn’t feel threatened. My internal safety warning bells weren’t going off, even though he was a pickup artist. Still… “I don’t know if I should trust you,” I said aloud.
“You were referred to me by a good friend,” he pointed out. “I wouldn’t mess with you.”
David is reminding me that he’s trusted by someone I already know… and, well, that does happen to be true, I concluded. Let’s go home with him and see how he acts. I felt like an old-time anthropologist venturing into the jungle.
David’s apartment was a masterpiece of PUA layout. “We can’t sit in the living room,” he said as soon as we got there, “because my roommate’s asleep and if we talk, we’ll wake him up.” Of course, the only other available room was his bedroom. Where there was nowhere to sit except the king-size bed.
“I thought we were going to eat something,” I said.
“Oh, yeah,” said David, and rummaged around until he found a half-eaten chocolate bar.
Seriously? I thought. It was so sleazy, but I was more entertained than appalled. David sprawled on one side of the bed. I perched on the other edge, as far away from him as possible, and kept my spine ramrod-straight.
“Tell me PUA stories?” I said, and he did.
My personal favorite anecdote involved his roommate. Apparently, at one point the roommate brought home a girl and had sex with her. Afterwards, the roommate decided to leave the apartment for a cigarette, so he and the girl came out into the living room and chatted with David. Five minutes into the conversation, the roommate addressed David in German (which they knew she didn’t speak): “Dude, I think she’s into you.”
“Do you mind?” David asked in the same language.
“Not at all,” said the roommate, and departed to smoke his cigarette, leaving David to seduce the girl.
“It didn’t take much effort,” David told me cheerfully. “She was totally into it.”
I complimented him on some candles. “Oh, do you like them?” he asked. “I have a giant box of them. You can have some! This one girl followed me home one night, and she had this big box of candles. She accidentally left them behind in the morning.”
“Why didn’t you call her to give them back?”
“I didn’t have her number.” In a more serious tone, he added, “I never take a girl’s number unless I plan to call her.”
I got the impression that this was an ethical boundary for him. In one way, it made sense: taking a girl’s number without the intent to call could be seen as leading her on. On the other hand, sleeping with someone and then never speaking to them again seemed harsh. I wondered if this girl had left the candles behind in an attempt to get him to track her down. (Yes, I took some candles home with me. My mom loved them.)
Then there was the tale of the girl who attended a PUA lecture and slept with three PUAs the same night. I had to admit, David was fun to talk to. Within an hour, I was tired of sitting up on the edge of the mattress, so I took the chance of lying down… still keeping three feet of real estate between us. Regardless, he was on me in a moment.
“Stop that,” I said, and he pulled back. “Look,” I said, “I really am not going to have sex with you. I just want to talk. Also,” I added, “I should go home soon. It’s late.”
“You’re totally sleeping over,” David said firmly. “I’ll drive you home in the morning.”
“No, I’m going home tonight,” I said.
Again, he changed the subject. I wondered if it was wise to let him do that, but it didn’t seem like I could say any words he would take seriously.
We talked until 5 or 6 AM. He continued lying next to me. I continued to rebuff his advances. Every time I said I would go home, he said I should sleep over. Finally I said, “I’m just going to walk.”
“That’ll take you hours!” he protested.
“Watch me,” I said. “I’m pretty sure I know how to get there from here. Plus, we can’t be far from public transit.”
“No, okay, I’ll take you home.”
The sun came up as we drove across the city. The conversation shifted to my writing and my thoughts about sex and sexuality. I talk about sex a lot in a cerebral, non-hot way; I’m used to discussing my own sexual desires that way, too. This is what we do in the S&M subculture, and sex writers do it a lot, too.
But David made it clear that for him, the conversation was extremely hot. I hadn’t meant to tease him—really—but as we pulled up to the corner near my apartment, I looked at David thoughtfully. His voice had gone husky. He gazed at me meaningfully.
I didn’t feel attracted to him. I had no intention of having sex with him. If he hadn’t been a PUA, I would have continued to keep him at arm’s length. But there was something so incredibly hot about pickup artistry in general…
… I leaned over and kissed him, and he groaned.
I realized that the thrill I felt was a power trip. I’m the first to admit that I fetishize power; and I knew, in that moment, that my feelings about interacting with PUAs really were similar to S&M feelings. Except that the difference was this: if I were playing S&M mind games, I’d discuss it explicitly. I would try to respect everyone’s emotions. If I were looking for a real relationship, then I would try very hard to be honest and honorable.
In contrast, I stepped out of David’s car without a word. In that moment, I felt zero compunctions about messing with his head in a completely non-negotiated way.
He was a PUA, right? He’d spent the whole night pushing my boundaries and trying to manipulate me. I dreaded to imagine how well his tactics could have worked on a younger, more naive, more insecure version of myself.
This was war.
And besides, it wasn’t like PUAs had feelings or anything.
This may have been my first omen that learning about PUAs was making me more cynical and manipulative, and encouraging negative attitudes about men. Alas, I paid it no mind.
—Photo jasonbolonski/Flickr
It sure seems like Clarisse Thorn’s article has everyone in an uproar. I wont’ bother to read it because I suspect that it will toy with my emotions. She’s a crazy girl who kissed a PUA just to f*ck with him. Here is a crazy notion. Wouldn’t it be insane if you could go into a bookstore and find a single book that offered men advice about how to pick up women for any reason and it wasn’t written by a PUA? Wouldn’t there be something uncanny about that experience? Dare I say surreal? It isn’t as if men want… Read more »
“Therefore in keeping with this social norm, if a man wants sex then he must “trick” a woman into giving it to him, because the women’s natural state is assumed to be a-sexual.” Chicago–You hit the nail on the head with what bothers me about the PUA movement. There’s nothing wrong with using techniques and strategies to ‘pick up’ women, especially if you’re naturally shy and awkward, but what’s with the assumption that women need to be coerced? Most men seem to love it when women actually WANT to have sex with them and get really turned on when women… Read more »
I gotta go with Alek and others on this one. This whole “women are shamed if they initiate” stuff is a pretty thin excuse. Men were shamed for doing “women’s work” yet feminists still expected men to do it. The difference here is that, for once, women are being asked to change *their* behavior. Apparently that’s too much to ask. “men don’t like it when women initiate” Is a load of BS too. Every time I hear this being spouted one of three things occurred either A) a woman attempted to initiate ONCE, got rejected and never tried it again… Read more »
I should point out I’m responding to one of the first comments way up top. I’m sort of jumping in at the end here, so excuse me if I’m re-hashing something that has already been discussed. I take issue with the idea that PUA is all about “manipulating women” into having sex with a man. I will admit that PUA is somewhat if not entirely misguided. I am also sure that many PUAs are not the most caring people in the world. But by claiming that PUAs are “manipulating women” just seems to perpetuate the stereotype. If a woman is… Read more »
I also wanted to clarify, forcing someone to do something they don’t want is never acceptable. I don’t condone for a minute randomly taking a women back to your house with out here knowledge or consent, I do however, still maintain that if society has more respect for male sexuality men might not be driven to such great and bazaar extremes.
Wait what? Would you please clarify that? Men are driven to extremes such as taking a woman back to their homes (for sex hopefully) without the woman’s consent because their sexuality isn’t respected? Will you please explain how and what that respect should look like, the outcomes, and how anyone (speaking of agency) is driven to do things that are knowingly unethical.
And I realize the question probably sounds snarky, but I’d really like to understand your POV.
No, I don’t believe that taking women back to your house without consent is ever right. But I don’t believe that the majority of men in PUA do those extreme things. What i saw when I was still involved in PUA is that most of the men there like myself don’t hate women, they are just frustrated lonely and shy. The point I want to make is twofold that, barring anything resembling rape, men should not be labeled as manipulators for attempting to make themselves more attractive to women and educate themselves about flirting, and two that women who have… Read more »
I never said women having sex with PUAs were necessarily victims. Nor have I said that learning to flirt and become more attractive is a bad thing. It’s a good thing. I was asking about the “driven” to extremes thing (taking someone to your house without consent) and what that world that respected male sexuality would look like. Because just as women having willing sex with PUAs doesn’t mean they are victims, not getting sex doesn’t mean you should use non-con tactics to get that sex.
My personal opinion about the terminology is literally that the men who created it were highly naive. But PUA is predicated on our cultural standard. Our cultural standard is this, men want sex, women don’t. Therefore in keeping with this social norm, if a man wants sex then he must “trick” a woman into giving it to him, because the women’s natural state is assumed to be a-sexual. I don’t agree with this sentiment, I believe that women are just as sexual if not more sexual then men. But in our culture that believe is the exception not the rule.… Read more »
Chicago, I think it does, but it is mostly situated in alt/sexual communities so if you aren’t involved there (poly/swing/kink) you might not find it. Also, I have a good friend, Charlie Nox, here in Austin who is a feminist PUA and does coaching and training.
Hello Julie,
Yes, I’ve been doing a bit of research on this socalled “FPUA” phenomenon, and ran across Ms. Nox’s handiwork. Would love to chat with you about it.
O.
Feel free to email me at [email protected]
but PUA isnt only about sex. It is about improving yourself to become succesfull in dating and or with your relation to women. All the tecniques, trix, negs ect, are opener so you can connect with her. After a while, you wont need them anymore. PUA is a selfimprovement work, all the work you do is not for getting laid, but (again) to get confident with women. Then sex become a welcome side effect. Surely you can encounter manipulative psychos or imbecilles in the P.U.A community. But you do encounter this kind of guys and gals everywhere, from school to… Read more »
I agree that male sexual desire, like all sexual desire in the human animal, is an important thing. I don’t think that in general it should be belittled. Nor do I think female sexual desire should be belittled. But I see both belittled all the time. If you read some of the most aggressive PUA such as Roissy, I’d say female sexuality and male sexuality is belittled. The terms used to describe women who sleep with me are not very kind. And the pov suggested to the men reading doesn’t seem to truly flatter men. So….how do we square men… Read more »
Kind of hating this comment system, my reply to this is right above it for some reason!
Julie,
Why are you focusing so much on Roissy, instead of say, Mystery? Or Style? Or Matador?
Please explain?
Thanks!
O.
“Once again I must stress that I do agree PUA is stupid, but it’s not “manipulation” we should have more faith both in the men and in the woman to make the right judgments and do what they want. I guess the core of what I am saying is this: if a woman meets is attracted to and eventually has sex with a PUA, we ought to give her more respect than to just proclaim her “Naive” and a victim of “manipulation”. ” why is PUA stupid? if it can transform a 20, 30, 40 something creep in a appetible… Read more »
@The Blurpo PUA is stupid because it perpetuates the same social situations men have had to deal with for ever. PUA is the height of the traditional ethic, put simply our society says when a man is born he is born wrong in some way. If the boy becomes a creative introvert he’s declared creepy, or nerdy. If a boy is emotional, he’s weak, if a boy is strong he’s labeled as abusive, or manipulative. Basically, no matter what, in our culture men are wrong until they improve themselves someway, eg: by becoming socially better/PUA. On the other hand a… Read more »
“PUA is stupid because it perpetuates the same social situations men have had to deal with for ever. ” No, PUA helps lonely guys to survive in this social contex. Therefore it cant be stupid, since it is a tool for survival. What you do with it, on the other hand may be stupid. But then it require that you (general you) are already stupid. “n the end, sure self improvement is good, if your doing it for yourself, for me self improvement does not have anything to do with women and if it did then it would not be… Read more »
Hi Heather, Replies below: “Alright I’m about to get a little snarky here for a moment: Firstly, male commenters are using anecdotes as well. Maybe you’re just noticing it more with the women. Secondly…I have no idea why you feel the need to capitalize ‘men’ and ‘women,’ but it really isn’t necessary.” O: It’s a stylistic difference. Pay it no mind. As for my noticing your anecdotes moreso than the Mens’ – that’s easy. It’s because they’re more in line with what the research and data says; yours, is not. “Objectivity is all well and good, but it’s also COMPLETELY… Read more »
I am very familiar with Ms. Thorn, and was aware of her writing a book on PUAs. I’ve written a piece about her, Mr. Neil “Style” Strauss, and another blogger who goes by the name of Ferdinand Bardamu:
Keeping It Real: The Game, Neil Strauss, The (Sexual) Politics Of Fear, & Why Both Clarisse Thorn AND Ferdinand Bardamu Got It All Wrong
http://obsidianraw.bravejournal.com/entry/65015
I look forward to expounding on Game and PUAs much more in the very near future…stay tuned…
O.
Wow. This post reads like porn for women who hate men. There’s the title and then that part with Clarisse kissing David for the power trip. Eww.
Love and hate, sex and aggression, are well documented for the closeness between the two extremes. This is nothing new.
O.
Nope it’s not new, but when one considers this storyteller’s well know political stances then her actions, storytelling and marketing all come as a big surprise.
Allowing your personal interactions with individual members of another group to color your thinking about that whole group may be quite human, but it is also the source of all bigotry. Despite feminist ideology to the contrary, most misogynists aren’t bigoted because of rape culture or the fact that we live in a sexist society, but because of individual interactions with women. They hate women because their mothers had borderline personal disorders, or because some girl they really liked uses that affection to manipulate them in college, or because an overbearing teacher decided to ‘even the score’ by favoring women… Read more »
So Clarisse, what’s the latest news on your promotion of female laziness?
As you know, the PUA cult has mostly had success because we live in a society where
–> most women are lazy and wait for men to make all the moves
–> most boys are never told what to do, only shamed for what “not” to do
So a lot of these boys end up as prey for the PUA cult. Do you plan on making your part in reforming female laziness or are you still going to make up endless lists of excuses for female laziness?
“Most women are lazy and wait for men to make all the moves” Um….no. Most women are told that it is not lady-like to make the first move. We’re actually told that we’re not supposed to make the first move. There are all sorts of pop-psych articles about whether men like women who are more forward or not…with the idea being that you don’t want to scare them away by being too obvious. I’ve had plenty of conversations with my straight friends where I’ll try to convince a woman to ask a guy out if she’s interested…and she’ll be so… Read more »
Alex is right. It’s lazy. You are rationalizing.
This is NOT about the rules for relationships. We are talking about casual sex. Men don’t refuse women sex for being too forward, so stop the nonsense. When it comes to casual sex women are indeed lazy.
“Men don’t refuse women sex for being too forward.” It’s not about the reality of what men like, it’s about the social narrative that is told about what men like. Women are told that being too forward can make you seem desperate, which isn’t attractive. Or, even worse…being too forward will make you look like a slut, which is also unattractive. Good girls aren’t supposed to be sluts. And good girls aren’t supposed to want to have sex with men who would want to have sex with sluts. Let me try to break it down. 1. Good girls don’t sleep… Read more »
Once again you are using a bunch of “good girl” narratives to explain the actions (or in this case inaction ) of women sleeping around… which makes no sense, since the 1st narrative was “good girls don’t sleep around.” It is an absurd rationalization to declare that the hoards of half naked women I run into every Friday night don’t make an effort to approach guys because these women don’t wanna be seen as slutty. They rely on guys to do the heavy lifting simply because het women have that luxury. Lesbians don’t have the option of depending on the… Read more »
I’d like to turn you to my reply to typhon’s comment, because perhaps I wasn’t clear in explaining I’m not saying ALL women adhere to that idea. I am saying that when you look at a behaviour like this you have to look a multiple cultural influences, as well as human agency. All women who don’t make the first move aren’t consciously (or even subconsciously) being lazy. And again what I’m telling you is that list is part of the way women are encultured to view promiscuity. Not all women agree with this; and not everyone was socialized with this… Read more »
Wow that is one big rationalization. The pool of married men who leave their socks on the floor do so because they are a combination of lazy and sloppy and have the luxury of a woman around to pick them up for him. These men do not purposely miss the hamper because they are afraid of being judged as less than a real man. You got that? Likewise the larger pool of women seeking hooks ups who sit and wait do so because they have the luxury of men approaching, and thus can afford to be lazy, not PRIMARILY because… Read more »
Heather, you’re doing exactly the same thing you correctly identified Michelle doing on the ‘X shades of grey thread.’ Removing women’s agency.
There are social pressures on women not to deviate from the ‘good girl script’ but women are still choosing to act the way they do.
And one motivation to not approach *is* laziness and a desire to avoid overt rejection.
Sure, typhon yes…that is one motivation for some women. But even with human agency, our decisions are culturally informed. A woman who decides to be forward or not is making that decision within a cultural framework that tells her she shouldn’t. That is what I am saying. You can’t just say – oh women are just really lazy; that’s why they don’t approach guys. I’m all for human agency, but many of the actions and decisions we make aren’t done on a conscious level, and I think this sort of behaviour can be put into that category. The difference between… Read more »
Alrighty I’ll try to explain what I mean with a different example. In the article I just wrote here I talk about a bunch of reasons why I chose to stay closeted for a summer while working in northern California. Part of it was human agency – I consciously made the decision to remain closeted after weighing the pros and cons. But part that decision was culturally informed – the pros and cons of coming out were all created by the culture in which I live. Even some of my assumptions about how my co-workers would react were culturally informed.… Read more »
1. Good girls don’t sleep around. 2. If you do want casual sex, you should still have it with a good guy. 3. Good guys don’t sleep with sluts. 4. If you make the first move, you might seem like a slut. 5. If you appear to be a slut, you’ll be attracting the “wrong” kind of guy. 6. Therefore, the type of guys you should want to sleep with, will not sleep with you if you make the first move. Let me point out a blindspot in your list… Of those things, 5 are broken by a sizeable part… Read more »
Lazy? or just not as interested as you are?
The reason I use the word lazy when I talk to feminists about this subject, is because you feminists CLAIM to dismantle and want to dismantle gender roles and that all gender roles need to be dismantled, yet you conveniently keep explaining away women acting like it’s the 12th century when it comes to courtship. I know of no other area where this is done. Do I call every day women “lazy”? No! When I talk about this subject with everyday women, I do not call them lazy, since everyday women are not feminists, nor do they buy the theory… Read more »
*- I’m using the feminist’s definition of the word “misogynist” in this sentence, not because I agree with it, but to make a point.
The contortions to which feminists go to in order to rationalize away the fact women don’t do much in mating -> follow the exact same patterns as those of what you guys refer to as a “misogynist”.
Where, in all of that, did you get the idea that I think this socialized idea of how women and men should behave with regards to hooking up should stay that way? I don’t. Actually, like I said, I tell my friends all the time to make a move if they’re interested, regardless of their gender identity. There is a difference between trying to explain where a behaviour stems (which is what I was doing), and trying to make excuses so that behaviour can continue (which is not what I was doing). Now then…in your original post you said ‘women’… Read more »
HeatherN, The problem I am having with you (and a number of, Women commenters quite frankly), is that much of your views seem to be informed by personal experiences and anecdote; I find this to be terribly limiting, and doesn’t promote problem solving. Objective research and data culled from studies, surveys and the like, is a much more efficient, and effective, way to go. Data culled from studies and surveys clearly indicate that Women by and large do NOT want to initiate dates, pay for them, etc. And they are not the result of “social conditioning”; they are the result… Read more »
Alright I’m about to get a little snarky here for a moment: Firstly, male commenters are using anecdotes as well. Maybe you’re just noticing it more with the women. Secondly…I have no idea why you feel the need to capitalize ‘men’ and ‘women,’ but it really isn’t necessary. Objectivity is all well and good, but it’s also COMPLETELY impossible when you’re trying to understand human behavior. We can get wicked close, and we can collect data…but the moment we try to interpret that data our own socio-cultural paradigm comes into play. So statistical data has it’s own limits and it’s… Read more »
Hi Heather, Replies below: “Alright I’m about to get a little snarky here for a moment: Firstly, male commenters are using anecdotes as well. Maybe you’re just noticing it more with the women. Secondly…I have no idea why you feel the need to capitalize ‘men’ and ‘women,’ but it really isn’t necessary.” O: It’s a stylistic difference. Pay it no mind. As for my noticing your anecdotes moreso than the Mens’ – that’s easy. It’s because they’re more in line with what the research and data says; yours, is not. “Objectivity is all well and good, but it’s also COMPLETELY… Read more »
“You cannot prove that any trend along in human behaviour along gender lines is biological in nature. ” You say this but its totally wrong and fairly convenient for those who believe everything is culturally conditioned. First of all there is no way to prove anything. But you can have better and worse arguments for things. There is a simple way to provide strong evidence that something is biological. Observe that characteristic across DIFFERENT cultures. If its invariant, its a cultural invariant which means that its strongly possible there is a biological component. Its not that difficult and you don’t… Read more »
And they are not the result of “social conditioning”; they are the result of biological hardwiring. Why this is so hard for Women/feminists to accept is baffling to me; so much energy and time is wasted quibbling over what should be to anyone with ears to hear and eyes to see as painfully obvious. The problem feminists have here is that they’re put into a double bind. —> If they admit that women waiting for the man to initiate has a biological component to it, then their main premise breaks. Their entire cult is based on always asking for more… Read more »
Alek, Excellent point!-and goes right to the heart of the matter, doesn’t it? I mean, if indeed Women can throw off the shackles of “gender norms” everywhere else, why not in the case of sexual relations? I mean, why don’t they demand to pay for that first date (or any date for that matter)? Why don’t they insist on dating the shortest Man they can find? Why don’t get with Mr. Mom from the get go (NOT later on in the relationship when the guy decides to become a stay at home dad-I mean, getting with a guy who’s amibition… Read more »
“One logical explanation – laziness”
Or social anxiety….
The answer that “women are told to x or told to y”, just comes off as an excuse.
I find it so funny that when men do ‘bad’ things that society expects of them, they are held fully accountable for those actions by feminists, but when a woman does something that society expects of them her agency is completely removed and he has not responsibility for it.
I will say this again, How can women ever expect to be treated equally by society if we constantly find excuses for our bad behaviour.
No he’s saying that men have adapted to women, by becoming assertive and smooth. Women are lazy and do not try to adapt to men but constantly try and change them, and end up hating their creation. Women say they want nice guys (wimps) but crave bad boys. If you want men to respect you then stop putting good men in the friend zone and dating that junky who slaps you.
I think you’ll find answers to these points if you buy and read Clarisse’s book. Especially on things like “women’s game”, “emotional escalation vs sexual escalation” and so on. Turns out you only think women are being lazy.
No i don’t only think.
I am fully aware of “female effort” which involves nothing more hinting and signalling and “creating opportunities”.
They still don’t make OVERT moves where one puts their EGO and reputation on the LINE overtly.
i.e. lazy
Wish gmp had edit function. —> What I mean to say is… I’ve been discussing this topic with female friends and “dates” for quite a while. Yes, I actually discuss these things in real life too, they fascinate me. So I’m fully aware of all the BS that women come up with and define as “effort”. -> Things like ensuring she’s in the same room as him so she gives him a chance to make a -> move. Making an effort to dress “sexy” so that she gets him to initiate sex.* -> Ensuring she gets her friends to “accidentally”… Read more »
“They all have in common that they’re just elaborate version of “get the GUY to make a move on me”. And they all have in common that they place all the overt RISK on the man, and they all put the overt REJECTION potential on men. Sorry, that’s just bullcrap, and yes, it’s freaking lazy, so don’t give me this crap about “female effort” nonsense.” its cultural, men have the direct way, women have the indirect way. We see it also in relationship and sometimes in social circles. I dont think women are lazy, but its more related to anxiety,… Read more »
In academese, I’m assuming you’re refering to something like the following: Givens’ (1978) five-stage model on courting explains how it is that women make the first move. According to Givens, the first stage is the attention phase, where women typically use primping, object caressing (see below) and using quick glances at and then away from the male. In the second phase, the recognition phase, flirting behaviour consists of head cocking, pouting, primping, eyebrow flashes (see also below) and smiling. Givens suggests that interaction does not occur until the third stage, where conversation is initiated. During this stage, participants appear highly… Read more »
And there is one thing you leave out. Women often reject men even when they are interested and they have created the opportunity for men to ask them out!! I remember being in a car with a girl where I wanted to kiss her. She asked me what I was thinking. I said: “I want to kiss you”. She said no you shouldn’t…lets take things slow. I didn’t care because I knew things were going extremely well and by the end of the date I was definitely going to kiss her. At the end of the date she again asks… Read more »
“Except that the difference was this: if I were playing S&M mind games, I’d discuss it explicitly.”
After reading this, my first thought was how screwed up it is that BDSM culture is still frowned on, and yet PUAs are accepted. Apparently it’s better to play power games without explicitly negotiating them first…wouldn’t want to be honest about our sexual desires and interactions.
HeatherN: where do you get the idea that pua is accepted in our culture any more than bdsm is?
Perhaps it would have been better for me to have said ‘more’ accepted. I say this, because PUAs are seen as an extension of the cultural norm that places value on a man if he can have seduce women. And regardless of the reality, BDSM is viewed by the mainstream as something that exists completely outside the norm.
Because, sex is much harder to get for Men than it is for Women. Again, read your David Buss, please.
O.
Well done on revealing your views on sex as a commodity (sex is harder to “get”?) and using those views to justify the acceptance of a community that systematically devalues and manipulates people.
HeatherN:
That’s a fair assessment, I think. But I think you’ve also answered your own question, for the most part. As far as I can tell, PUA is in large part a formalization of many of the scripts our culture already sells us about attraction and dating.
Next thing you’ll be arguing that alien abduction theories are accepted more than 9/11 conspiracy theories :d
Fascinating analogy. It’s too bad it doesn’t work, though, seeing as BDSM is fully open and consensual and PUA is a cheat guide for coercive rape.
David is cringe-worthy…I’m glad you got out of that okay…!
I feel degraded for having read that. This guy is on the verge of sub-human status. May he run into a female black belt who after subduing his face into the floor invites the cops over for a conversation about false imprisonment and attempted sexual assault.
I read this. Walked outside my shop to my yard, looked around at the empty, snow covered ground, then up at the stars, which I can actually see because we’re _that_ far from a city.
And I thanked gaia that I’m a fucking hermit.
Actually, my husband says everyone else is the hermit. Because they’re pathologically incapable of connecting to anyone.
There is much I find objectionable, mostly the focus on sex as a power game (without the power negotiations). And yes, someone younger and more naive might not have handled the situation so well. Fascinating look into the world.
I’m excited to see your panel tomorrow at SXSWi!
There are a number of things that I would like to say and ask. The first thing is that some of those actions are clearly sleazy and unethical. The only thing I really found truly objectionable was the driving you to his house without telling you or asking you until you were already in the car. Overall, I would say that seems to be the only thing that isn’t in the same league as, say, flirting with a man just to get a free drink, or going on dates for free dinner. You also say that he was really fun… Read more »
“I would say that seems to be the only thing that isn’t in the same league as, say, flirting with a man just to get a free drink, or going on dates for free dinner.”
Wow. Really? Laying on top of her without her consent and changing the subject when she asks to leave is the same as a man offering to buy someone a drink? Get a grip.
I enjoyed your article Clarisse. And I was keeping my fingers crossed all the way through that you wouldn’t fall for the games. 🙂 And I am in complete agreement with your last line, When men have tried to push and manipulate me into sex, even in what they think is playful and all in good fun, It’s left me a little more negative and cynical about men.