Commenter Archive

I think many conservatives’ objections to the notion of transgender people is because conservatives generally have a lot invested in the binary distinction between masculine and feminine roles.

Incorrect.

All conservatives’ objections to the notion of transgender people is because conservatives generally have a lot invested in the binary distinction between masculine and feminine roles. ;)

So I would agree with you that more and more conservatives will come around to accepting transgender people if they can do so in a way that doesn’t fundamentally disrupt their preconceived notions.

This would make sense in logic-world. In logic world, transpeople practically prove their point for them. You can even imagine them using it to attack the left with: 'How dare you say that men and women are identical? So I guess it doesn't matter to you what gender someone is? Are you saying trans* people should just be happy with who they are?'

Sadly, conservatives operate in emotion-world, and the thinking is more like this:

The entire goal of men (aka, 'real people') is supposed to be conquering the vagina. They'll maybe accept rules in this war to make it more civilized, hell, they've got their own vaginas (in daughters and mothers and sisters and wives) walking around they need to protect. So some rules, okay. Like they can accept some rules barring rape, they don't want their collection of vaginas raped...to some extent, maybe. But only if men aren't inconvenienced.

But transwomen, like gay men, are traitors to their own side. The right can't ever deal with that. They can't allow that at all. If they allow real people (Aka, men) to just switch sides like that, then that would demonstrate their side isn't the ultimatimate-ist side ever! That having penises doesn't make people awesome, and vaginas aren't the best goal ever! (Plus, a lot of transwomen don't have vaginas, and even if they do, they're not sure if they count...so they end up screwing up the score for men.)

OTOH, transmen, like lesbians, are kinda funny almost-people trying to con their way into real-peopleness. They're like dogs wearing sweaters. The right don't actually care about them. Hell, at some point it almost become 'You're a credit to your gender...you, unlike most women, have realized the entire goal of goal of life is to get as much vagina as possible and have the biggest penis.'

* I dislike the term 'trans*', because I always feel there's a missing footnote. Why does that need a wildcard. Can't it just be 'trans'? Who decides this stuff, and where do I file a complaint?

If we are going to talk biology, then we can very quickly see a certain hypocrisy in the conservative position. If you believe that human bodies and human brains are biologically gendered, (i.e. that people with biologically male bodies have biologically male brains and vice versa), then it logically follows that some percentage of people will be born with the opposite.

Yes. Objectively speaking, it's actually somewhat surreal that the same people who will swear day in and day out that there are differences between the genders besides the sexual characteristics, (including mental differences), fail to notice that this logically means that these differences could be out-of-sync with each other. I mean, we have plenty of evidence that can happen biologically, with intersex people and androgen insensitivity syndrome and whatnot. There's no reason it couldn't happen mentally.

And it can look somewhat surreal on the other side, too, with people insisting on one hand there's no real difference between the genders except the externals, and yet insisting some people are internally a different gender than they were born as. Except this actually makes sense...transgender people mostly are trying to fix how other people see them. It's like how we can stand around saying that looks don't matter and it's what inside that counts, but people with serious facial deformities would still like plastic surgery to fix that. (And, of course, no one on the left contends that hormones don't have an actual effect on thought, just that those hormones don't limit anyone's mental abilities.)

Of course, getting back the paradox of the right, what the right actually has always cared about, and the only thing they care about WRT sexuality, is 'traditional gender roles'. They don't like transsexuals simply because of that, and believe it or not, that's their entire objection to homosexuality also. Every single 'social' issue of theirs (Even abortion, although that has taken on a life of its own outside that.) can be understood in context of that.

Was “Some Kind Of Wonderful” a better story than “Pretty in Pink”?

Yes. The answer to that question is yes.

It's worth pointing out that Pretty in Pink originally ended the same as Some Kind Of Wonderful. (You know what I mean.) They were essentially mirror images of each other.

However, test audiences didn't like it Blane 'not getting the girl'. Interestingly, they seemed to have no problem with Some Kind Of Wonderful and Amanda 'not getting the boy'.

I've always thought it was an interesting comment on audience identification and sexism...in watching PiP, they want Blane to be happy, so they want him with the girl, whereas in SKoW, they want Keith to be happy, so they put him with the girl that clearly loves him the most. In both cases, it's the 'normal guy' who must win in the eyes of the audience, even when you completely reverse the context of the situation. (The 'normal girl' in SKoW, OTOH, can just learn a valuable lesson and leave a little wiser and possibly now a social outcast.)

...I've spent why too much time thinking about this.

The friend zone is a useful idea for conceptualizing relationships to some extent. However, it does tend to show up as an explanation for guys to use that to explain how they have 'failed at obtaining sex', which, ugh. 'Obtaining sex' is not the point of male interaction with women.

Anyway, 'the Ladder Theory' lays it out a bit better. The language is, uh, a bit silly, and claiming that men can't have female friends they don't want to have sex with is just wrong. As is the fact that men do know what ladder they're on, or at least they should. (If they have never made a romantic advance, and she's never made one either, they're on the friend ladder.)

It's explained in a somewhat sexist way, but it's better men read that, and understand that become a romantic interest actually requires an action on their part. Otherwise, they can become 'nice guys' who pose as friends for years and become bitter about how she keeps 'overlooking' them.

Someone needs to find an actual good article that explains to men that 'Friendships with women do not generally evolve into romantic relationships or sexual relationships without actions on the part of men'. But without the dumb sexism of 'The Ladder Theory'.

The disagreement here seems to be that j-r is entirely focused on one certain aspect of 'The Game'. Namely, how to approach the opposite gender, how to create and read social cues, how to make witty small talk, how make yourselves stand out from the crowd, to stop being passive and actively make your interests known, etc, etc. (Most of this 'training', it must be pointed out, that women tend to receive in adolescence. Ironically, for the gender that society expects to be the initiator in relationships, it often is really poorly explained to men just how that should work. It's almost oral knowledge passed down by high school boys, and nothing could go wrong with that!)

This is, indeed, how the PUA universe represents itself when talking about itself. The PUA books do teach that. And no one would have a problem with any of those tips.

But this is nonsense. It's deliberately ignoring a large aspect of the community. And the actual 'leaders' of the community, when talking internally to their PUA followers, present a completely different picture. There's a reason so many different PUA writers seem to be a hairsbreadth away from encouraging rape, or step right across that line.

The PUA community is completely broken. It's one of those communities that is completely overrun with a specific horribleness. Yes, we can imagine the community without that, but, uh, it's not without it. And, in fact, that horribleness we build in to start with. (It's sorta like the militia movement and racism.)

Although some people are getting a bit silly. It is not sociopathic to interact with someone with a specific goal in mind. Otherwise, no one could check out at the grocery store. It's sociopathic to completely ignore what your interactions were doing to someone, as if they were not a person.

But I suspect this doesn't apply to most PUAs, simply because they've constructed elaborate mental models as to this is how women want them act, or that women don't care, or that the female gender is so manipulative that they deserve whatever they get...which is exactly how you expect to see non- sociopaths dehumanize people. It's the same way that soldiers in a war start dehumanizing the enemy.

Thinking 'I know my actions are hurting people so I must internally rationalize those actions' is pretty much the opposite of being a sociopath. Sociopaths don't need to do that in the first place.

Of course, this rather hints at the large problem in PUA culture: Women are the enemy.

@kim
No, he’s actually talking more about getting someone into a state where “sex is inevitable and ones body gets hot because “oh shit, don’t get really hurt”" [wrap a cat in a blanket, and they turn really passive because 'there's nothing they can do'. they'll kill you later.]

I do not even vaguely understand this paragraph.

How often do our lefties make neutral claims like “The language is being drained of its meaning by immoderate rhetoric!” and then blame only righties? It seems to me lefties critique righties here for believing the wrong things substantively.

And when we do complain about hyperbolic rhetoric, we're not complaining about the word choice.

What we complain about is that the right then proceeds to take it literally.

I mean, look, if the right really wants to compare a government exchange to purchase health insurance on to Nazi Germany, they're free to do it. (Well, as free as any person is to compare things to the Nazis, which is, not actually that free. But that's not 'the left' that complains about that, it's pretty much all people.)

But, uh, the right then proceeds to act as if they literally believe that to be true. And incorporate all sorts of misinformation in order to make it look true.

Likewise, if someone wants to write an article asserting that Obama has been the worst president ever at foreign policy, that's hyperbole. (No matter how bad you want to interpret his actions, there have been worst presidents.) But that hyperbole would be fine.

Except that hyperbole isn't hyperbole. Along with it will be numerous false claims making a completely insane case, and the actual conclusion people are supposed to get from such an article is that president has literally destroyed the country.

That's...not hyperbole. That is not how hyperbole works. Hyperbole is not 'making insanely over the top lies in hopes your audience will believe them'.

Nobody who says “War on women” in America thinks there’s a bunch of soldiers assaulting women, attempting to force them to surrender or conquer their land. Because we’re not stupid, and we understand context and imagery and analogy and metaphor and all that crap.

There aren't that even in the countries where women get acid thrown in their face, either.

And, actually, 'war' is not actually a metaphor, or an analogy. The actual definition of war not only includes 'a state of usually open and declared armed hostile conflict between states or nations ' but 'a struggle or competition between opposing forces or for a particular end'.

It's not a metaphoric 'war', it's an actual, literal, 100% the-actual-definition, 'war'. That is one of the real, current, meanings of the word 'war'.

Now, of course, the name 'The Republican war on women' could be debated, but wars have often been named for propagandize purposes. Although, really, that name is pretty neutral, objectively speaking. It sounds bad, but, uh, waging an offensive war on specific people who've done nothing to you always sounds bad. And it's the only name we have. If the Republicans have some other name for it, they should present it. (The women's war on Republicans?)

You realize the article 'Taxpayers Paid $5.6 Million for Climate Change Games' does not actually say what it thinks it's saying.

There is indeed a grant of 5.6 million. But there is absolutely no evidence that these somewhat dumb voicemails cost any significant amount of that.

You can't (probably) hypnotize someone into doing things they don't want to do at some level. At least, that's one of the theories. (How hypnosis works is poorly understood.) But people generally agree you can't, at least you can't using simple, one-time hypnosis, get someone to go out and actively do something they would not consider doing. At best, you can lower their inhibitions to some extent.

However, what you can do is make them very passive while hypnotized. In fact, 'very passive' is one of the best descriptions of being under hypnosis I can think of.

Hypnotizing someone to do something later requires them, to some extent, to be on board with it. Having someone currently under hypnosis is something else entirely. Being under hypnosis makes it very hard to care about doing anything.

People under hypnosis have been known to put up with all sorts of stuff. They can be physically injured and don't seem to care. In fact, hypnosis has been seriously proposed as a painkiller method during surgery.

And while they probably wouldn't 'have sex' with people unless they want to at some level, it would be pretty easy to get them to lie there quietly. And then forget it afterwards.

Ross Jeffries is less talking about 'hypnotize them into wanting to have sex with you' (Which is something that would maybe sometimes work, sometimes not.), and more 'manipulate them into a half-awake state and proceed to use their body for sex'.

@zic
I think there’s a difference between someone who’s awkward and shy and someone who thinks he’s entitled to as much sex as they can scam.

And there's a difference between someone who's awkward and shy in general, and someone who's awkward and shy, but only around women.

I'm in the former camp. It takes me a while to get comfortable with people, or to talk to them if I don't have some clearly defined reason to do so. At parties, I tend to wander from group of people I know to another group of people I know, and back. If I end up sitting with other people, I have to remind myself to introduce myself and ask the name of other people. But that's just me being an introvert.

Someone in the later camp, someone who is only shy around women, probably has some sort of...'mistraining' about women. I'm not going to say they're misogynist per se, but they're viewing men and women different for some reason, and it might be a good idea for them to examine why.

There's been a lot of comment about 'Men afraid of talking of to women should just start talking to women', but there are really two different problems going on:

1) Men who are afraid of rejection, so don't want to make their interest known in a woman.
2) Men who don't see any reason to interaction with a woman besides being interested in them.

Men who are shy and awkward around only women are both those. PUA tries to remove problem #1 while leaving #2 intact. Hell, PUA can add problem #2 if the guys don't already have it.

A much better plan is to remove #2 first. This can result in 'Nice Guy-ism' or whatever, but that's still a smaller problem than having both problems. And Nice Guy-ism is just so utterly stupid and can easily be avoid with a tiny bit of education about how it demonstrable doesn't solve the problem they have:

Specifically, at some point, they will have to make an indisputable romantic offer, and will risk rejection.(1) And now they're trying to make it on a friend, and, uh, the possible rejection is a million times worse. If they can't manage to ask some random woman in a bar out due to fear of rejection, there's no way they'll manage it with a friend. It's like they're afraid of heights, but need to get across a tightrope, and the problem they come up with is demanding that the tightrope be raised higher and higher so it takes longer to climb to. That's...not a particularly clever plan.

1) At a risk of putting myself on the same side as 'the manosphere', I actually think we would be a lot better off if we didn't have a society where 90% of women didn't leave it up to men to make the 'romantic offer' and risk rejection. We'd be better off if both genders were expected to make their interests known. (Of course, unlike the delusional 'manosphere', I understand this isn't women trying to control things, but is in fact due to societal constraints on women.)

I read George Mason about civil power and see that the control of militia are neither state, nor federal holdings.

I don't actually know if you're disagreeing with me or not, but actually I was rather sloppy with my statement 'the terms have always referred to groups operated by the government'. That rather depends on what you consider 'the government' to be. ;)

Often time, in places with nobility, noblemen were granted the right by the crown to raise a militia, which was under their control. Now, in theory, that militia was under control of 'the government'. In practice, however, things often were a little dodgy. So in practice, militias sometimes wandered off and did their own thing. They were famous for being more loyal to their community than the people they were supposedly working for.

...you know, this probably ties into the whole wack-a-doodle nonsense about 'sheriffs are the ultimate authority' nonsense somehow. Which is delusional stupidity...sheriffs have always been under the control of someone else. The word comes from 'shire reeve', and a 'reeve' is just an appointed royal officer.

But, then again, these are the same sort of nutjobs that have convinced themselves that 'squire' on a business card is a title of nobility, so who knows what they think 'sheriff' means.

Bah, now you've got me doing it.

'The 10th amendment specifically grants powers to the states and to the people.'

@dave
I don’t agree with your interpretation either. The Constitution does not grant the people the power. The people of the United States, a sovereign entity, ordained and established the Constitution and vested those powers to a federal government.

I don't understand what you think my interpretation is.

The 10th amendment specifically grants rights to the states and to the people. Me and James Hanley both agree that 'the people', in this instance, means 'the people as a collective'. (I.e, 'the people' in this sense really means 'whatever local government'.) It really can't be read any other way...'the people' in the sense of 'that guy over there' can't possibly have any powers of the government.

My assertion is that this is the only sense 'the people' is ever used in the constitution or bill of rights...in the collective sense. (And hence that's what it means in the second amendment.) James is asserting that 'the people' can mean different things based on context.

I think you’re reading too much into the Tenth Amendment here. If the federal government can not prohibit political speech and such prohibitions are outlawed by a state constitution, then the people, individually and collectively, have a right to express themselves through political speech without the interference of government. That’s all it is for the most part.

No, those are 'rights', not 'powers'. Governments have powers. The tenth amendment says that any powers that governments have which the Federal government has not claimed fall onto the States. Unless the Constitution says the state can't have them, in which case the people get them.

Rights are literally the absence of the ability for the government to do something, so it's easy to think that the absence of a power is the same as rights. They are not. The Federal government, for example, has no power to issue titles of nobility, which generally is a power of government. Thus, lacking that power, such a power falls to the states. (None of which do so, but they could.)

Issuing titles of nobility is not, in any sense, a 'right' of anyone.

The right to assembly is exercised individually by a number of people. You can say that’s a collective unit but the collective unit doesn’t exist without the acts of individuals.

The right to assembly is not exercised individually. By the definition of the word 'assemble', you need at least two people to do it.

Now, obviously, if you need at least two people to do something, both of them, individually, must act to do it. Likewise, the government interfering with one of them has inferred with said assembly.

But let's divert for a second to ask a rather obvious question: If freedom of assembly is an individual right, than how the hell does that differ from freedom of speech, and why would we need both of those in the same amendment? We wouldn't, clearly.

There is an individual right to speech, usually called 'freedom of speech'. And there is a collective right for many people to come together while exercising 'freedom of speech', and that right is called 'freedom of assembly'.

And, while we're at it, there is an individual right to write things (Freedom of press), and a collective right to agree with such a statement (Freedom of petition.) It's basically the same two concepts, except with print. (And freedom of religion also combines with freedom of assembly, too.)

Please notice that I am in no way asserting that this lessens the right to freedom of assembly, or freedom to petition. I am not saying the government should have the power to interfere any more there, and in fact I say they interfere too much. Collective rights are still rights. Hell, I'd argue that collective rights need even more protection...the government shouldn't be allowed to invade peaceable groups and spy on them for no reason. Even if no individual rights are harmed, the collective right to assemble without government meddling is harmed.

I'm asserting it's a collective right as part of an attempt to explain that the phrases 'the people' and 'the right of the people' are used in a very specific collective manner in the bill of rights and constitution, and the second amendment should be understood in the context of that.

yes, one could make the case that if you wanted to own a gun, you should be in the Guard.

If you read the constitution, the states are supposed to have militias and train them, and the Federal government is supposed to provide for 'organizing, arming, and disciplining' them. And call them out during an invasion.

The argument that I've always made is that the 2nd amendment is intended to keep the Federal government (Which, after all, is all it applied to when it was enacted.) from restricting the rights of states to operate their militia. The Federal government has the duty to arm militias, but it can't disarm them, or the people in them.

So the argument actually isn't 'if you wanted to own a gun, you should be in the Guard'. The argument is more 'The Federal government cannot disarm militias, which means it actually can't enact any gun control laws the states do not like. States get to decide who is in their own militia, and hence who the Federal government cannot meddle with the gun ownership of.'.

Of course, this also means, as I have always argued, that states should be free to set whatever gun control laws they want. (And the Federal government should too, with the knowledge that the state, if it wishes, can just declare a person part of their 'militia' and override any such Federal laws.)

Incidentally, I think I should make damn clear at this point that random yahoos running around in groups calling themselves militias are not militias. The right has been, for decades, advancing the idea that the 'military' are armed forces working for the government, and 'militias' are armed forced not working for a government. This is a complete and total lie.

A 'military' is composed of professional soldiers, and a 'militia' is composed of amateur soldiers. Both of them are operated by governments, and the terms have always referred to groups operated by the government. There is no historical context that would support a random group of people just asserting they were in a militia without any governmental backing.

@james-hanley
No, they are individual rights. They can be individually enforced, and those deprived can be individually compensated.

I'd like to see some evidence that anyone has ever won a court case due to being barred an individual right to assembly. Here's a fun question for you: Is that right explicitly stripped when someone is convicted of a crime? If not, why do prisoners not appear to have it? Heck, they don't appear to have that right immediately after getting arrested and not convicted.

And, of course, there's the inconvenient fact it's 'the right of the people', not 'the rights of the people'.

Same argument as above, except I’d argue even less defensible. Nobody claims that the police have violated “our” rights when they search John Doe without a warrant, but that John Doe’s rights were violated. I’ve read quite a few 4th Amendment rulings, and I’ve yet to see it described as anything but an individual right.

There is an individual right in the fourth amendment: 'no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.'

That clause, the second clause, is an individual right. The first clause is a collective right. There's another fairly strong clue in the first part:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated

The first part of the fourth amendment does not ban any specific thing at all! It asserts a general right society has to be secure. It even talks about searches and seizures in general. (And, once again, the 'right', not 'rights'.)

Despite the way you seem to think it looks, the fourth amendment is actually phrased somewhat identically to the first amendment. It doesn't 'give people rights', per se, it just outlaws specific behaviors of the government....namely, issuing certain kinds of warrants. Just, for example, like the first amendment doesn't give 'a right to free speech', it just outlaws the government making rules about speech.

These places are exercises of power, not a reference to rights. That’s categorically different, and has to be unless you want to completely wipe away the concept that the Constitution protects any individual rights, or at least wipe away any clear principle that would enable us to distinguish between collective and individual rights.

So you're saying that when the constitution grants 'the people' powers, it means 'the people collectively', but when it grants 'the people' rights, it means 'each of the people'. That interpretation is, uh, somewhat unsupported by anything at all.

The fact that it's talking about something different is not the point. The fact is, the constitution is saying X is something 'the people' have. You can't say 'the people' mean something different because X is different.

To put the explanatory language of the 2nd Amendment into play, or to deny that “the people” creates an individual right, is to apply a unique and idiosyncratic interpretation to the 2nd Amendment, one that is not applied to any other portion of the document.

Did you really just assert that the right to assemble is an individual right? Because that's just silly. Obviously the right to assemble is a collective right...how could one person assemble? Or 'petition'? (In the strict sense of 'writing a list of complaints down and having people sign it'. Nowadays we use the word 'petition' looser, but that's what it really means.)

Did you notice that the right to assemble and petition are actually the sole collective rights in the first amendment, and the sole things the 'the people' have the right to do?

Likewise, the 4th amendment actually states: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

While that is perhaps the strongest case you have, that can indeed be read as a collective right. The people, collectively, have a right not to have their persons, individually, searched.

Meanwhile, there are several other places where 'the people' only makes sense collectively:

Senators are elected by 'the people', as are the representatives in Congress from the original constitution.

Powers not delegated to the Federal government are delegated to the states, or the people. Aka, local communities. For an example, the Federal government was given no power to regulate speech, so that power would be delegated to the state (before incorporation), or a local community, not 'every person'.

And, perhaps most importantly, it is 'We the People of the United States' who are doing the entire thing, and it's really difficult to read that 'the people' in anything but the collective sense.

Berger completely rejected incorporation of the Bill of Rights and would have rejected Epstein’s views given that he criticized the Supreme Court for meddling in the economic affairs of the states.

I always thought it was amazing how many people on the right seem to have a problem with incorporation.

Uh, guys? You do realize that without incorporation, there's no second amendment restricting the states? They could just completely and utterly outlaw all guns.

Some of the right will point out state constitutions often protect gun rights, except, uh, state constitutions are often trivial to change. So good luck with that protection hanging around.

And they're often making too many assumptions about state constitutions anyway. My state of Georgia, for example, says 'The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, but the General Assembly shall have power to prescribe the manner in which arms may be borne.'. So, uh, there's not actually a right to bear arms...there is one in theory, but the legislature can make up any rules it wants about it. (I.e., you can only bear arms unloaded and disassembled, locked inside gun cabinets. Or, more likely, just not letting people bear them in public except in designated areas.)

Of course, I've made the argument that the second amendment shouldn't be subject to incorporation anyway, as the purpose of it actually is to stop the Federal government from disarming the state militias, and hence it's entirely nonsensical to try to apply it to states. But that's an entirely different subject.

But it's funny to see the right just completely overlook how the second amendment works, and ignore the fact that most proposed gun laws they have issues with are state laws.

@veronica-dire
It doesn’t seem hard for me to understand: PUA culture, like most of MRA culture, is homosocial, meaning it is a subculture largely by and for men. It is also a fundamentally misogynistic culture. Thus the actual relationship with women, whether for one night or one lifetime, is strictly secondary. Their relationships with the other men, under the completely broken social system these fuckheads have constructed for themselves, are what matters.

You stating it like that (and probably the word homosocial) made me suddenly notice something: The PUA culture actually looks somewhat like the culture that gay men used to be (And sometimes still are) stereotyped as having, except obviously swapping out 'sex with as many men as possible' for 'sex with as many women as possible'.

It's the same basic misogynistic idea: Once you remove women as gatekeepers to sex (Either by magically having secrets to get them in bed, or just not involving women at all) the ideal universe is one where you run around having sex with as many people as possible.

So misogynists assume that's what's going on with gay men. And here they're have managed to delude themselves into actually setting up the system.

Which is...I would call it 'juvenile', but, like I said, even frickin juvenile boys would be happy with just one sexual partner. There are fully grown men managing to be more objectifying of women than thirteen year old boys.

To them, the sex is not the payoff. Instead, it is their status gained among other men.

I think this is one of the clearest examples of how misogyny is harmful to men that there can be. In fact, the direct effects are probably more harmful to men than women. The women probably were not expecting much more anyway. The men are just completely screwed up, though.

I'm suddenly wondering how many women are just playing along with these tools. They want a one-night stand, so while they clearly see what's going on, they just sorta shrug and say 'Eh, he's hot enough, despite being an idiot PAU.'.

I know no PAUs are reading this, but in case they are: Guys, if a woman goes to a singles bar and leaves with you to have sex...uh, she was probably planning on that from the start, at least as one possible outcome of the night. Not with you specifically, of course, but that woman probably was not sitting there minding her own business with no intent to have sex, and you suddenly changed her mind with your clever trickery. She was already planning on sex, and found you an acceptable choice for sexual partner. (As others have pointed out, waiting until closing time will vastly decrease her choices, making you more acceptable without having to do anything at all.) So all you're really saying by relying on PAU 'techniques' is that you actually were not an acceptable choice without said techniques. Which is actually kinda sad.

@veronica-dire
Let me add also, if you read between the lines in the MRA/PUA circles, you quickly see these guys aren’t actually looking for a girl they will personally like, who will be cool and like them and be liked in return, a proper girlfriend. That is not their goal. Instead, they are looking for women who will mark their status among men.

The thing that always freaks me out about the PUA people is that they don't actually seem to be in it for the sex. I mean, they aren't looking for girlfriends, okay, I get that, but they aren't even looking for someone willing to sleep with them, no strings attached.

I mean, men, think back to when you were sex obsessed, at the start of puberty, and probably not having sex. Let's say you managed to find some girl who would have sex with you, and you had sex. Would you just have sex with her once, and then wander around trying to find other women to have sex with? Instead of, duh, trying with her again? (Don't know how much this applies to you, Veronica.)

I mean, I can understand the guys who are not looking for relationships, who want to find a woman to have sex with, but don't want anything serious. I'm not that way now, but I think most men, or rather most teenage males, were that way at one time. But the things, if we'd actually found someone like that, we'd, duh, have kept her.

The PUA people, OTOH, are an entirely different breed of men. The point is not the sex. If the point was the sex, they wouldn't create a system where the entire point is to keep churning through women, creating a culture where how many women you have sex with seems more important than how much actual sex you have.

I understand a culture where the status of a man is defined how attractive his girlfriend is, or if he has one. (Understand != approve.)

But the PUA culture is this weird one, it's almost one of those cultures where you deliberately waste food or destroy your own stuff, just to show up affluent you are. 'Oh, my super-expensive car got a scratch, so I sold it. That's not important, I have another in back'. (This sounds strange to most people in western cultures, but it is a real status indicator that has show up in history.)

Except here, 'your own stuff' seems to be 'a woman'. 'Oh, I don't need that woman to have sex with, even though she was perfectly willing to have sex last night and probably would be good for providing sex a few more times. I'm getting rid of her, I'll just go out and get another woman, I'm that good'.

Which is just disturbing on so many different levels. I think I've said he before, but at least men who use women as objects normally value them as objects. They might not be 'real people', but they're an expensive car, or at least a nice vacuum cleaner. I mean, in the actual real world, men rent women, they're at least that valuable. (Please do not take the hypothetical asshat thoughts I present here as my own thoughts.)

PUA culture thinks women are objects...that have no value. Or objects that exist to collect and then discard, to show their social status. PUAs have managed to find something more misogynist than normal misogyny.

@kazzy
There is some research that says the words are problematic. Plus the fact that we weren’t given what previous and future generations were given in terms of better ways of developing self-confidence means we weren’t able to develop it as well (I’m saying this on a collective level… obviously individuals will vary).

I can't dispute that, mainly because you've given no information there to dispute.

Children do not get self confidence from words. But they also do not get lack of self confidence from words. (At least, not from positive words.)

You want to argue that, due the 'self esteem' nonsense, that other things were neglected, that's a reasonable premise, but at the very least, you're going to have to explain what those other things specifically *are*, not just waving your hand and asserting that everyone stopped doing 'those unnamed things' when they started talking about self esteem.

There actually are newish problems that have developed. As I said, parents refusing to let their child interact with the outside world, which, surprise, makes them completely unprepared to interact with the outside world.

However, these are not 'generational' problems...they only affect kids cursed with such parents. Trying to generalize that at all is nonsense. And, in fact, they're something that has always existed...just now it's spread to the middle class. (Of course, we've also seen a much larger increase in the amount of homeless children, and somehow that's not a generational issue defining everyone of the same age.)

I’m not projecting. Again, I am part of this generation. I saw these things happen. And I see how things are done nowadays with children through my work as a teacher.

Saying that you're 'part of this generation' means nothing at all. In fact, it means the opposite of nothing...of course younger people are going to be less able to cope on their own, of course they're more entitled then current Gen Xers or Baby Boomers. They're younger.

And Generation Z, or whatever we call it, is shaping up to be a bunch of people unable to use the bathroom or read, I guess.

The comparison is to how they acted compared to previous generations at the same age.

I'm 35. I saw the Gen-X grow up. And I saw Millennials grow up. I can't speak as much to the problems of people who grew up in the 80s (Although perhaps I should make a Gordon Gecko comparison instead of an Alex P. Keaton.), but I lived the 90s, and when I call it infected with 'cynical nihilism', I am vastly understating things.

People forget we literally call them Generation X because they didn't know what they were doing with their life. That's the origin of the name, the 'unknown and poorly defined' generation. And, I remind you, we named them that halfway through the generation, talking about people who graduated in the 80s...much too early for any of this 'self esteem' nonsense to do whatever strange thing you're attributing to it.

Likewise, I also saw media about them, which made them look even more useless. Of course, what people forget is that modern portrayals of teenagers come not from teenagers, but the generation before them.

But the general trend during this particular time frame is backed up by tons of study and evidence. I’m happy to link to it if need be but hope I can be taken at my word at this point.

Yes, I am entirely aware that the words 'self esteem' entered, full tilt, the educational experience in the 80s and 90s.(The 80s and 90s were not when we actually solved problems. The 80s and 90s were when we pretended to solve problems with words.)

My dispute is because the basic fact is that this means nothing. Kids are not any different nowadays than they used to be. As you just pointed out, research failed to make them any better off...but what you have missed is there's no research this did anything negative either. It didn't. It's empty words kids were forced to mouth.

If anything, the generations are getting less entitled. The Boomers were absurdly entitled, and still are. Gen X came of age in affluence, and either ended up entitled 80s Alex P. Keaton knockoffs, or 90s idiotically cynical nihilists, the people I wish I had a time machine so I could popularize the term 'white people problems' about and see if they cared.

The Millennials are actually capable of self-reflection. They work together to solve problems. They vote. They care about the world. They, somehow, have managed to get over the asshattery of previous generations, probably by being bluntly hit in the face with hardship as soon as they became adults and started looking for jobs. (What's the percentage of college graduate Millennials that can't afford to move out of their parent's house? 1/3rd?)

Every single generational problem that people talk about is them projecting their generation's issues onto the next generation. Every. Single. Problem. It's always projection. It's always been projection. It will always been projection.

As someone the same age as @saul-degraw, I also have no idea what anyone is talking about with this 'self-esteem' nonsense.

It seems like I've been hearing every single generation complain that the 'younger generation' was suffering some sort of imaginary affliction of 'being told they were special and unique', and it would harm them in some unknown way. Every generation after the Boomers, of course, despite the fact that they actually were that generation, and it actually was pretty harmful to the world at large.

But the critizism just flails around randomly, attempting to latch on to any random thing, like here, where's it's latched onto the fact that extreme competitiveness in small children is a stupid thing to encourage, so we decided to back off on that. And also people are telling kids they're special!

In actuality, in the universe I grew up in, 'self-esteem' seemed to be basically be presented as just a way to resist peer pressure and deal with bullying. All these complaints about how 'everyone got a trophy' are complete nonsense from top to bottom.

There are a bunch of entitled idiots in every generation, and that has nothing to do with 'trophies' or 'self esteem'...it has to do with idiot parents hovering over them and handling their every interaction with the outside world. That sort of horrible upbringing *used* to be the domain of the very rich, but has now managed to escape to the middle-class. (And the middle-class parents can't run around buying off people when their idiot children 'grow up' and roam free, like the rich parents do.)

And this probably doesn't have a damn thing to do with this shooting at all. This idiot had problems, but they were entirely different problems.

I think that the basic PUA skills can be very helpful for awkward men, the basic ideas of talking to women, letting them know you are interested, showing confidence, all of that — those are useful skills.

What would probably help people more is basically any book on salesmanship. The tips are almost the same. Act confident. Act like you're offering something of value, which you are.

Or, as I keep saying, you aren't asking women to 'have a date with you', you're asking if both of you should have a mutually enjoyable date together. You aren't asking her to do you a favor, and if you act like you are, the answer will be no. You're proposing that both of you do something fun. (The PUA books, of course, go way too far, and try to assert you should act like you're doing her a favor, which is also nonsense.)

A book on 'How to sell things' would probably have 90% of the useful dating tips that PUAs books have.

There are some additional rules about dating that don't apply to sales (How to flirt and understand when someone is flirting), but they'd probably fit in a pamphlet.

@brandon-berg pointed this out in another response, and he's right...there are even some PUA 'sales techniques' that do work that are fairly assholic behaviors. Because those sales techniques work in sales a lot of situations also.

We should probably not encourage them, though. It's one thing have a car salesmen act jerky to sell someone a car. When a man acts like that towards women to get them into bed, though, it's about a millimeter from turning into general misogamy, and always does.

I.e., it's less the psychological manipulation I object to, per se, than the fact that a) The PUA is already in a universe where women are objects, and b) deliberately treating them poorly. Yeah, you can kinda see where that story is going.

This feels like an internet feedback loop taken to a very tragic conclusion.

Indeed.

His starting premise seems to be that if men follow specific sets of rules they will earn sex. Relationships are a video game that is relatively simple to beat.

Then he apparently realized the 'specific set of rules' was a lie (Which it is.), and that in fact you can't reach sex like that, at least not regularly. (Successful PUAs are either fairly attractive to start with, or have found very specific locations where women are, indeed, just standing around waiting to hook up with someone, and would sleep with any reasonable confident man who asked. Or, more likely, 'successful PUAs' are lying about their success rates.)

However, while he realized the rules were a lie, he did this without also learning that sex is not something you 'earn', or learning that sex is not particularly important in the grand scheme of things. No, he learned the game was infinitely more impossible than he'd been taught, that most people will actually go their entire life without a one night stand. And that no matter how much he 'played nice', he still presumably came off as an asshole. (Women are not idiots, and can see what 'nice guys' are doing.)

And he 'rage quit' the game.