what to say about "aggressive" approches at women, ie pickup

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AEmer
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Re: what to say about "aggressive" approches at women, ie pi

Post by AEmer »

Exhibit A:
http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2009/ ... ng-a-slut/

This is the story of a picture of meghan mccain which she put on twitter a couple of years ago. Yes, she's former US Presidential contender John Mccains daughter.

Do you see what's going on with that? The media - and society at large - slut shames women like Meghan when she dares to do anything other than cover up her bosoms.

I realize you're not a proponent of shaming, sticks and carrots and all that, but I'd argue that if you treat Meghan any differently for putting a picture like that (vs. one without cleavage) on twitter...any difference what so ever...you're making her body and what she does with it your business.

And...well, I kindof have a problem with that which we can get into depending on what you think of this part of the argument.
DDL
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Re: what to say about "aggressive" approches at women, ie pi

Post by DDL »

I don't think anyone would argue that the media DOESN'T treat women incredibly objectifyingly. At any level.

"Senator Jim Anglesmith today said..."

"Senator Rose Hammerstien (43), dressed snappily in a knee length blue dress, today said..."

And yeah, it's pretty terrible.
AEmer
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Re: what to say about "aggressive" approches at women, ie pi

Post by AEmer »

Right, but this is fundamentally the issue right there. A woman is given value based upon how she leverages herself by a lot of people.
If you say, well, a woman who sleeps with a lot of men is more detrimental to society than one who is monogamous, how is that any different?

Even if you recognize that acting upon it would be messed up, the fundamental evaluation is a central part of the issue, because if you accept that this evaluation is ok to some extent, then it is up to peoples views on how proactive they can be to determine how to treat 'sluts' (of both genders).

I can't accept that. I can't accept that it is ever alright to do this, even if you are the most proactive person in the world, so to me it feels like it's the underlying appreciation that is at stake.
DDL
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Re: what to say about "aggressive" approches at women, ie pi

Post by DDL »

There are huge fundamental differences in the potential biological consequences, for a start.

Impregnating someone is easy to walk away from, being impregnated by someone is...not.
As a result, men biologically are more driven to mate widely, women are not. This is true of a great many species, not just ours.
(as a corrollary, a woman who wants to sleep with lots of people will generally have an easier time of it than a man, all else being equal -men are easy)

All of which misses the point. It's not sleeping with tons of people that is really the issue, here: it's the decision to make this somehow a "desirable goal, do this at any cost". If lying and treating women like shit gets you laid more ZOMG DO THAT. FUCK TEH COSNQUENSNCES!

If both parties are equally complicit ("she knows he's probably lying, so "), then why are they lying in the first place?

"Sex?"
"Sure."
"W00t"

That produces exactly the same outcome but with absolutely zero deception. It's less dickish behaviour, basically.

And if you're desperate to tie it back into "male/female doublestandards", then I could add that, since (all else being equal) it's easier for women to get hooked up than it is men, the reason I'm not likely to be all up in arms slut-shaming (or whatever? srsly how did we get onto this) is that there is vastly less likelihood of deception there. Men almost never need to be lied to to get into bed.


More generally, I'm not even really sure what you're arguing anymore. You seem to adopt certain positions that (for me to fully address) serve to progressively pull me away from the actual issue at hand. I'm not sure if this is deliberate or not.
AEmer
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Re: what to say about "aggressive" approches at women, ie pi

Post by AEmer »

Ok, I'll take a step back then.

I knew your position on this before Hashi even made this thread. You knew my position on it.
It's not like we're arguing in a vacuum here.

In so far as we are to have a discussion that is going to get anywhere, we can't just look at the issue itself. We've done that, it doesn't make sense to do so again.

The only way either of us are going to get anything out of reading each others opinions on dating is if we talk about derivatives, or abstractions. If you don't feel like what I'm bringing up is relevant, then I'm sorry. I'll try to communicate _why_ I think I am developing an abstraction by getting into that better.

I try to ask questions and get all up in your business because I don't want to talk at you. I want to talk with you. I want to hear what you have to say, and how you make sense of what you say, but in a broader context.

Concretely, I brought up slut shaming because of this:
Ultimately what is wrong with not wanting a relationship but many one night stands?
If I were to be truly blunt about it, it's bad because it negatively affects everything about us as a species.
This is said in really general terms. I know you're being blunt, and thank you for that because it really helps with the communication, but I read this and I immediately think, is there are counter example here? You know, I'm trying to use falsification to evaluate what your statement means. If this is at the core of your objection to one night stands, then even if it's a simplification, it's still a pretty crucial issue to explore.

Having you relate it to slut shaming is key to my counterexample here. See, I'm off the opinion that slut shaming is, for both genders in so far as it happens, a destructive and controlling impulse. So, if you're judging people by that yardstick you found forward - one night stands affect everything negatively about us as a species - then I want to know why that doesn't relate to the women in question. Why aren't the women doing something bad here.

I'm using women because your argument ought to abstract seamlessly to include them (in my opinion), but I'm not sure you'd be ready to agree to that abstraction readily. The idea is hopefully to resolve the counter example - either by having you include it as a kind of 'yeah, I really mean what I said' or by reformulating what you wrote in such a fashion so as to make it more precise.

Currently, we're apparently discussing how to best resolve the counterexample. Does my method make sense now?
I'm sorry if it seems like I'm all over the place. Honestly, I was just following up on a hunch.
DDL
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Re: what to say about "aggressive" approches at women, ie pi

Post by DDL »

Well there is the fact that a woman sleeping around runs the risk of "an unwanted preganancy", whereas a man sleeping around runs the risk of "a lot of unwanted pregnancies".

So if we're considering unwanted pregnancies as being detrimental to our species (which I would, personally -it's unarguably true that children raised by two loving parents on average do better than those raised by one, or by none), then the former is vastly less problematic than the latter. And of course, the former is also less commonplace than the latter (for exactly the same reasons: an unwanted pregnancy is not something you can just skip town to escape, if you're female).

So to hone it down to raw statements, there are two issues I'm generally against in this thread: dickishness, and unwanted children.

Dickishness is pretty much exemplified by the whole "game" approach to mating, and unwanted children are a vastly more likely consequence of "dudes sleeping with anything they can find" than they are of "chicks sleeping with anything they can find".

'Slut-shaming' (dear fucking god that is a terrible term) is not equivalent to "not wishing to endorse 'game' approaches" in any respect. For a start it's actively negative, rather than simply not actively positive. It's being dickish, rather than "not wishing to encourage dickishness". And of course (as your example of Ms McCain demonstrates) it's usually just a broadstrokes tactic for demeaning women who don't fit some sort of weird virginal chaste stereotype. OMG YOU CAN SEE CLEAVAGE! BURN HER

Secondly, "being a slut" (even if accurately applied -see above) isn't really even a problem. As noted above, the risks of societal detriment are lower, and it's much rarer ANYWAY. And finally, it's almost never touted as a desirable thing to be. There are (presumably) a fuckton of youtube vids dedicated to "strategies for getting teh laydeees" via various dickish routes, because 'having a load of sexual partners (if you are a man)' is viewed by many as being a laudable goal. I'm going to hazard a guess that there are vastly fewer videos aimed at women.

If a woman wants to be promiscuous, that's just fine. It's biologically less likely, but still: fine.
If a man wants to be promiscuous, again, fine. Not least because essentially all men secretly want to be promiscuous, and because desire is not commensurate with success anyway.

If a man wants to develop a strategy of calculated dickishness and dishonesty to mislead women into facilitating his promiscuity, and indeed teach other men this strategy, I'm.....kinda against that.


You're trying to argue that "criticising men for being promiscuous" should be equivalent to "criticising women for being promiscuous", whereas what I'm arguing is that "encouraging men to go out and be dickish to women to get laid" is as bad as "criticising women for being allegedly promiscuous".
Less dickishness, moar honesty. Also, moar wanted children, obviously.
AEmer
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Re: what to say about "aggressive" approches at women, ie pi

Post by AEmer »

You're trying to argue that "criticising men for being promiscuous" should be equivalent to "criticising women for being promiscuous"
I don't think I am. I explained exactly what I was trying to do:
Getting you to include women in your theory of blame for unwanted babies. By having you abstract that theory to include both genders, I don't need to presume anything. I don't need to suppose anything. I can just look at it, and try to appreciate it.

I do that not out of some mens rights crusade. I do it because I have a hunch that abstracting in such a fashion will reveal something about your theory of blame for unwanted babies.

I'm not attacking your arguments on promiscuity, or your arguments on dickishness directly because you explained an underlying concept:

On night stands are bad because babies.

Since there is on average exactly the same amount of men and women who have children resulting from one night stands, it makes sense to contextualize that in regards to both women and men.

I also really take issue with that argument, in a lot of ways, but I'm not trying to pigeonhole you here. I don't want to be presumptious, and I don't want to use anything that even whiffs of socratic method. For all I know, you might be on to something, and I'm trying to keep an open mind.

It's just so bloody hard to square this circle for me. If one night stands are fundamentally a problem of some kind, that just rubs off really poorly on women. Precisely because men aren't physically bonded to a potential pregnancy, women are much more affected by one night stands than men. If you're going to be on the ass of a man doing 10 one night stands a year, a woman doing a mere 5 will necessarily feel whatever judgement you make on him much harder, because to her, it suddenly becomes self destructive behaviour rather than merely irresponsible behaviour.

The distributions of one night stands are also pretty important here. A lot of women likely have a few here and there, to make up for the gluttonous males who have many. Even if you could argue that the few males have more individual blame than the many females who boink them, the sum total blame is the same on either gender, and that's a problem in and of itself. It seems to dictate that women should try to rein one night stands in as much as possible.

The very idea that there is a problem with one night stands in the first place simply affects women much worse than men. And that is a crucial problem; female sexuality has been repressed for a long time, and without accepting that one night stands simply aren't an issue, I don't see how to move beyond that.
DDL
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Re: what to say about "aggressive" approches at women, ie pi

Post by DDL »

The fact that the whole issue we're debating here involves men lying to women to get one night stands.

So the blame is not the same on either gender, as one uses deception, the other does not.
Why is this so difficult to grasp?

Like I said, honest one-night-stands are not a problem, since both parties go in with full knowledge of what is involved. Plus, they're usually less likely to result in unwanted children, since both parties are being honest about what they are there for. If he wants sex, she wants sex, neither want babies: bam! Birth control is a given. hell, less stigmatising of sex for sex's sake would be great. Sex is awesome, after all.

However, when you have a situation where a man is deliberately employing 'tactics' to ensure he gets to have moar sex lol (and who is purely in this for the sex, consequences be damned), then there is dishonesty from the start, and the likelihood that he's the kind of douche who would refuse to use a condom increases commensurately. And of course if two parties enter an arrangement honestly, you're not going to have one of them feeling betrayed and hurt at the end, while the other jumps out the window saying "you were like..what, a 6 at best. Seeya!"
And it's clear that 'obtaining sex through deception' is a strategy that works, hence: "game".

Plus accidents happen. If both parties are honest from the start, unwanted fertilisation is more likely to be handled in a mature adult fashion. If he's a serial fuckmonster and she's thick enough to fall for serial fuckmonster's game tactics, then unwanted fertilisation is less likely to be handled in a mature adult fashion.

And finally, you seem to be generally implying that as consenting adults, women are every bit as much to blame because hey: "they should know what they're getting into, rite?" Which I think is where you and I will never see eye to eye.
I cannot accept the idea that, given a situation where you have a deceiver and a deceivee, both are somehow at fault.


If a con-artist cons someone, the fault, blame, and guilt lies with the con-artist. The conned victim may indeed feel stupid, and feel betrayed, and feel gullible, but they should never, EVER feel like it was in any way their fault.

Being gullible is not offensive to me. Exploiting the gullible IS.


And bringing it back to 'game' etc: regarding game as fucking stupid, destructive behaviour does not equate to "saving women". That would be like taking the above example and leaping in front of every gullible person shouting IT'S A TRAP.
Instead, I would discourage the con-artists, because they're the ones I fucking object to. Everyone should be entitled to be as gullible as they like. It's not necessarily a great survival trait, sure, but it's not actively exploitative. At the very least, curing the world of gullibility would be far lower on a hypothetical DDL priorities list than "stopping people exploiting the gullible for personal gain".
AEmer
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Re: what to say about "aggressive" approches at women, ie pi

Post by AEmer »

Alright. Ok. I actually get where you're coming from now; it's because of how you frame it.

It is hard to grasp because what you're saying is that there is dishonest one night stands and honest one night stands, and that only the dishonest ones are a problem due to unwanted babies. So the baby argument gets isolated rather than abstracted. I guess I needed to name the concepts to properly work with them.

But...that's mainly a rhetorical device isn't it. I mean, how big do you think the difference is? We're not talking about women who are incapable of grasping risk here, or alcorape, or some other kind of scenario, we're talking women who have simply been seduced for the evening, yeah?

How do you know that more babies result from women who were seduced with 'game' than from women who were seduced with 'oi how about some no strings attached one-time-only sexy times' ?

The lynchpin of the argument is still those bastard babies that keep popping out. Suppose it's twice as likely with seduction. Suppose it's 4 times as likely. The baby argument will _still_ rub off on the no-subtext scenario. I don't see how it can be used as an important piece in one argument and stay isolated away from the other.

Also, I'd just interject that deception is a loaded term. I'm pretty sure if we're talking something I'd describe as outright deception or manipulation rather than seduction, that changes things. Same thing with gullibility. There's a big difference between being deceived into thinking you're striking out with a billionaire, and being seduced because OMG look at those sideburns. Clearly, not all underhanded tactics are equally underhanded. But all of this relates to the ethics of deception - not the ethics of babies, so it's a different argument than the one I'm trying to focus on here.
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Re: what to say about "aggressive" approches at women, ie pi

Post by G-Flex »

AEmer wrote:Also, I'd just interject that deception is a loaded term. I'm pretty sure if we're talking something I'd describe as outright deception or manipulation rather than seduction, that changes things.
Dude, have you seen any PUA/"seduction community" websites or instructional things? It's very, very much about outright manipulation. It doesn't even try to be anything but. The entire purpose is to treat sex with a woman as a goal that must be achieved, with little regard for what the target actually would reasonably want. It's hard-sell tactics, applied to sex, and in the worst possible way. It is, by its very design, predatory and manipulative.
DDL
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Re: what to say about "aggressive" approches at women, ie pi

Post by DDL »

AEmer: I'm pretty sure I never actually said "one night stands bad because babies", that was simply one aspect of the whole melange of things that negatively affect everything about us as a species. We ended up on that one because I guess you prefer to have very clear, incredibly specific argument propositions, whereas I clearly don't. It's the lynchpin to an argument I didn't even realise I was apparently making.

Even if we were to restrict ourselves to the baby argument, there's a mass of issues beyond just "YEPPERS: THERE BE SOME BABIES", such as termination, and the concommitant guilt and health risks that can accompany that. If it's the consequence of an honestly entered sexual encounter the emotional baggage is bad enough, but it's vastly less comprehensive than if it's the consequence of some lying scumbag squirming his way into your pants and then leaving town. For a start you're own your own in the second scenario.

Beyond the "EVERYTHING IS ABOUT BABIES" argument, general encouragement of dickishness is another negative aspect. Mistreatment of people is another. Encouragement to be ruthless in search of stupid goals is another. Creating a culture of double-standards is another. Objectification of women is another. Reinforcing negative stereotypes about women is another. Reinforcing negative stereotypes about men is another. I could go on. These things all work toward undermining the increasingly liberal, honest, egalitarian and intellegent cooperative society that one would hope we're progressively working toward.

Deception, manipulation, dishonesty and general dickery are highly successful tactics, but that doesn't mean they are any less horrible, nor any more laudible.
AEmer
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Re: what to say about "aggressive" approches at women, ie pi

Post by AEmer »

It's not so much that I prefer it, as it's what set me off this time. My brain litteral went 'hrm, there's an argument to be had here'. This is the (abbreviated) exchange between you and hashi that set me off:
Ultimately what is wrong with not wanting a relationship but many one night stands?
Who says that everyone should always strive for a relationship and not just want one night stands for a while?
Why can't this be a legitimate pursuit?
Would you rather have

1)two loving, committed parents, or
2)an unknown father and a mother with a penchant for getting knocked up by douchebags?

GOD I JUST DON'T KNOW THEY BOTH SEEM LIKE GOOD CHOICES

If I were to be truly blunt about it, it's bad because it negatively affects everything about us as a species.

Basically it's stupid, self-destructive behaviour that detrimentally affects our entire species. It may be strongly engrained, sure, but that doesn't mean we should actively endorse it, or that I should somehow encourage you to actively pursue this mindset.
So I know you only write about non-ecouragement. And I know you only write about douchebags. Of course it's a false duality (which we both know, and which is fine), but if I were to sum up, this is the argument of one-night-stands are bad because babies. Perhaps you can see how it all relates together now; if one night stands have a stamp of disapproval on them, that is a very negative thing for women in particular. It specifically chains female sexuality.

Even if you just figure, there's no discouragement, even if you just figure, the dishonest seductions are a bigger problem than the honest ones, the rub of the argument will still seep through to ordinary casual encounters because of how broad it is. So if this were the lynchpin of why dishonest one night stands shouldn't be encouraged, well that just has negative implications in a broader context which I wanted to point out.

Also, I do draw a distinction between outright lying and seduction - but one of my big problems with 'game' criticism is how it seems to remove agency from women. I get the clear cut argument against outright deceit (your mom is on fire and you can only put it out if you bob m'dong), but there's a big leap from that and then to simple seduction (the linked youtube video mainly contains non-deceitful seduction, though there's also stuff I'd class as deceit).
AEmer
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Re: what to say about "aggressive" approches at women, ie pi

Post by AEmer »

@ G-flex:
"
To tamper with or falsify for personal gain
Synonyms: exploit
"

Manipulation is a poor choice of words on my part, I apologize. I used it in the sense 'lying for personal gain'. That's taking things much further than simply trying to maximize success using less deceitful means.
DDL
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Re: what to say about "aggressive" approches at women, ie pi

Post by DDL »

Wow. Ok, well that was...totally not the argument I was intending anyone to take home from that. That was like..."this negatively affects everything about us as a species plus here: have a comedy example"

Plus even if taken at face value, my two comedy options leave a fuckton of space for an excluded middle. It's just that the bottom one is the sort of shit game approaches can produce.

I am also totally at a loss as to how "one night stands: disapproval of" could be a massive chain for women specifically. I thought your whole argument was that I wasn't somehow applying negativity to both sexes, and now you're lumping all the negative connotations on the women anyway.

I R TEH CONFUSED
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