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

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

That is good, but it's basically a more extended version of the "women are not vending machines" thing (a version of which I've just seen attributed to Sylvia Plath -- uh, no, I don't think so, but at least they didn't say Mark Twain).

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.

[jinasphinx.livejournal.com]

That is such a great summing-up paragraph. As a nerd, I find the algorithms/testing/feedback/gamification aspect to be fascinating. There's also stuff in there about marketing (social proof). But then there's the creepy stuff -- obviously, the consent issue is number one, and the focus on intercourse is another. Another thing I noticed in Strauss' _The Game_ is that these are men who are not conventionally attractive and obsessed on sleeping with a "10". What makes a woman a 10? Her looks, of course.

I've been wondering for a while why there's no PUA for women. Obviously there are socially awkward/spectrumy women out there too. Or is it that PUA for women already exists in magazines and teen movies (get a makeover and that cute boy will notice you)?

PUA for women

[walkitout]

_The Rules_, presumably? And everything like it: _He's Just Not That Into You_. There are more. I'm sure people will come up with more examples. I suppose if you want something comparably offensive, than dating strategies designed to attract extremely wealthy men would be an example, altho I'm so good at avoiding that stuff that I can't come up with an example, beyond parody/entertainment stuff like the Monroe/Bacall excellence that was "How to Marry a Millionaire".

I think you are right, that it is more "normalized" for women. But I would point out that for all the attacks directed by neurotypical people at PUA (hey, I'm not saying they aren't _justified_ attacks), there are plenty of attacks directed by neurotypical people at dating "rules" for women that strike people as artificial or manipulative or whatever.

The big issue I have with people directing shame based attacks at stuff like PUA or "The Rules" or whatever is that they don't distinguish between "hey, this _particular_ rule is a really fucking bad idea and here's why" and "you shouldn't need rules for this; normal people just get it". I think critiques based on "this rule is bad" are fine. I think critiques that are saying, don't use rules for this task are NOT FINE, and I think they are not fine because people only resort to rules for this kind of task when they have a developmental deficit. Rules are a compensatory strategy. If you don't _like_ a particular compensatory strategy someone is using (like, person with diminished hearing demanding that everyone yell), then it is mean to make fun of them for having diminished hearing and if you think they should be using some other compensatory strategy, maybe suggesting one would be constructive, otherwise just go somewhere else.

Re: PUA for women

[jinasphinx.livejournal.com]

Oh, I had forgotten about _The Rules_! Good point; I remember there was something in there about never accepting a Friday date after Wednesday (creating a perception of limited availability, a marketing tactic similar to the PUA approach of "I'm gonna hang out with you for 10 minutes but then I have to go"). And now that I think about it, there's that Steve Harvey book for women on how to get a man, including rules like don't sleep with him for some number of days (60? 90?). I need to re-watch "How to Marry a Millionaire."

Re: PUA for women

[walkitout]

Thanks for reminding me of the Steve Harvey book. I could not for the life of me bring the title or author to mind and it was really bugging me.

ETA: That 90 days thing is kind of nuts. There are so many assumptions embedded in it that I dislike. For all that PUA is only about intercourse, dating rules for women are only about LTRs (and, really, het monogamous marriage, as near as I can tell). I feel like PUA and The Rules were invented to parody Hugh Hefner's critique of mid 20th century transactional het relationships.