Possibly Glenn Fleishman's best article ever

[walkitout]

How did I miss this? Well, I'm glad I found it now.

http://boingboing.net/2013/06/22/kickstop-how-a-sleazebag-slip.html

"PUAs are nearly exclusively men focused on soliciting women for the purposes of sex without resorting to payment. The PUA world applies algorithms, testing and feedback, and gamification to human interaction, turning women into not just sexual objects but essentially treating that cisgendered biological configuration as a Turing-complete machine in which specifying the right sequence of inputs results in access to specific ports and protocols."

Wow. Just. Wow.

Comments

I _think_ that is a misreading of Glenn's main point

[walkitout]

However, I haven't read what you may or may not be referring to, so I don't know -- your summary is too short to be sure.

In any event, the interesting part from my perspective is that Glenn notes what I have seen in PUA: these are a bunch of spectrumy people who are missing all the usual non-verbals and trying to replace them with rules and it isn't going well at all. Glenn is not using autism as an explanation -- that's on me. But it is right there in this:

"It all has to do with the social ineptness ... and how their inability to have the empathy and understanding of those they wish to attract also prevents them from understanding why this book could possibly be seen as a guide to escalating contact all the way to sexual assault.

The author does not believe or understand that he advocates sexual assault, and is thoroughly confused as to why his writing has been interpreted this way. It is also clear that many, many of the PUAs who post on boards do not see the suggested behavior or their own (ostensible, reported) behavior along those lines."

It's all well and good to condemn the advice, but until we figure out who is going for this advice and why, it's gonna be hard to devise an appropriate replacement activity for the people attracted to PUA.

I actually think there are two, sometimes overlapping, groups attracted to PUA. There's the social ineptness crowd that I think of as being on the spectrum, and there's the attachment disorder crowd, which is probably where Glenn is thinking about sociopathy. But neither one is going to go away if you just condemn the behavior and advice. They are still trying to fix a problem either in their attempts to interact (the inept/spectrum crowd) or in themselves (the attachment disorder crowd). And that needs to be addressed other than through shaming.

Re: I _think_ that is a misreading of Glenn's main point

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

I just meant that the metaphor was not entirely original. There's been a thing going around since at least 2010 (not sure where it originated) that basically says women are not vending machines, you don't get to put Nice Guy coins in and have sex fall out.

Re: I _think_ that is a misreading of Glenn's main point

[walkitout]

I still can't tell if we are talking at cross purposes here.

Yes, the metaphor is not new.

Glenn is pointing out the kind of head that the metaphor feels at home in. _THAT_, I think, is new. It's all well and good to say, eww yuck PUA, but that's not going to rehabilitate the subculture. At all.

the kind of head that the metaphor feels at home in

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

I don't think that part is new either. I think of PUA as being like a cult, and naturally people who are most attracted to cults are people who have trouble getting along with life-as-it-is, for reasons that may not necessarily be dishonorable. But that doesn't mean the cult isn't full of shameful, mockable ideas. It's WORSE if a cult messes up people who would otherwise have had a decent chance at being honorable.

I'm with Dr. Nerdlove on this: http://www.doctornerdlove.com/2014/03/socially-awkward-isnt-an-excuse/ .

Re: the kind of head that the metaphor feels at home in

[walkitout]

Neither Glenn nor I was using socially awkward/missing social cues as an excuse. I was using it as a point of intervention. Glenn was using it as an explanation.

We've come to a sorry point in time if excellent writing, excellent analysis and well-expressed compassion while maintaining the importance of effective justice for victims are dismissed because some of the points within the analysis have been made in some related form elsewhere.