Social Commentary

Commenting on “What to Do When a Girl Won’t Go Home with You”, Blogster asks about what women’s responsibilities are in the mating game and where a man must “draw the line” when it comes to trying to make a girl his:

“Do take your point on this one. However, at what point does all the game advice for men cross into the territory of a woman’s jurisdiction?

With each piece of advice about how to handle situations and tighten your game, it sees more and more of the woman’s responsibility being transferred over to men.

One of the admirable traits of men generally is that we are self-motivated and proactive and take charge. We look for our own mistakes and correct. However I feel the manosphere and valuable dating advice sources such as girlschase makes the mistake of swinging too far with the attitude of ‘if it didn’t go well, you the man did something wrong, or should of done something better’. Accountability is good, assuming complete agency is ridiculous and unrealistic, as it assumes the man has the capacity to control all relevant circumstances affecting a pickup and that by improving and fine tuning technique results will come.

The implications for this are obvious – women are just automatons and have no individual preference, attraction will occur reasonably successfully if you master the right techniques smoothly and ultimately, that women have no agency as adults.

It also plays into and reinforces current societies frame regarding relationships – that the man must do all the work and its the man’s fault if something goes wrong or the seduction doesn’t occur.

Increasingly also I see double standards in advice being doled out. For example, a recent post spoke about how to deal with judgement. It says its crucial not to judge women, yet women are by far the more judgemental sex and constantly do so on a broader range of factors.

A man is expected to skilfully disarm a woman’s judgements, but a woman is not expected too because otherwise she ‘won’t open up’. Does it occur to you that maybe men don’t open up because of female judgement and thus lose out? Yet the onus seems always on the man. Put it this way, if your friend was constantly dodging responsibility and being unnecessarily judgemental would you pander to him?

A man is expected to overcome his approach anxiety by himself. Is there any advice anywhere that says about how women should ‘help the man through his approach anxiety’? Of course not, yet there is plenty of expectation that a man should smooth and ease the women in the last moments before seduction.

In this instance, I feel it pushes the ‘responsibility balance’ of game even further towards the man. Soon all the woman will have to do is show up!”

This comment no doubt reflects a lot of men’s frustrations over the travails of mating – I’ve heard them the world over, in any number of different cultures, and if you read back through history you can read of men from all ages complaining of the same things.

So what are women’s responsibilities in dating and mating? Do they serve as just passive recipients of men’s advances? And if at first you don’t succeed – how many times should you really try and try again?

A few weeks back, in the comments section of “Real Empiricists Test”, a reader asked the following question regarding the gulf between mainstream dating advice and what’s taught on this site:

“Is there an article on this, or maybe someone can answer this outright. But why is it that mainstream dating advice is so contrary to the dating advice given on this site ? Why is it that there is almost no agreement ?”

The short answer, of course, is that what we focus on here is entirely techniques and strategies that:

1. Achieve efficient, effective, reproducible results

2. Are tested out and balanced against alternatives and discarded if found ineffective
   

3. Are coming from people who’ve devoted a large chunk of time specifically to this field

... whereas most mainstream dating advice is coming from regular folk with limited experience dating and even less time spent studying and analyzing dating and sex and relationships and social dynamics both in the field and with other likeminded folk.

But the fact of that matter is, it goes a lot deeper than this. There’s more to this clash of ideologies than simply field experience vs. non, and it mainly has to do with who’s giving the advice, and what their objectives are in giving it.

In response to my statement in “Real Empiricists Test”, uForia asked a follow up question on how you can tell the difference between something not working because you’re not getting right, and something not working because it simply doesn’t work:

“I think for most new guys, skepticism comes up when they follow your instructions but it blew up anyways, which questions your legitimacy. It is uncertain for many beginners like myself whether your method needs more practice or it’s just random PUA junk. Again, I didn’t say this to offend you or anything (I think you’re probably mature enough to not be offended anyways), as I’m sure you had difficulties finding what works and what doesn’t as well.”

In other words, when should you give up?

This is a non-trivial question, and it’s one that’s pretty necessary to have some sort of an answer to. Because if you can’t tell when you’ve been tossing your time away on something that just doesn’t work, well... you can end up being that guy who goes and does 5000 approaches and still can’t get laid.

And you don’t want to be that guy.

The good news is that most people have a limit where they reach where they just give up without anyone having to tell them to do so... the bad news is that for most people that limit comes far too early, and for some it comes far too late.

Few things capture the mind’s attention as much as naughty girls do. Those female celebrities we deem “naughty” get more press than anybody else in Hollywood. The girls in your social circle who come with the “naughty girl” label attached get talked about, competed for and with, and debated more than any other male or female. And everyone has a strong opinion on them – love them, hate them, or both at the same time.

What you may not realize, though, is why people are so obsessed with the naughty girls around them and in their media. Why is that saucy, spicy, naughty women command us to pay attention so?

The reason – the real, core reason – is because ALL girls are naughty girls... and deep down each of us knows this.

Some men hope that by sharing opinions unfavorable toward naughty behavior, they’ll encourage girls to keep a lid on it and be the “good wives”, as it were; other men hope that by praising naughtiness, they’ll open up a world of naughty, slutty, sexually liberated women for their own enjoyment.

And women? Women are a constant mess of trying to decide if they should banish their naughty side to the hinterlands, or switch it on full throttle and enjoy the ride.

What’s this mean for you? Well, if you’re a man, and you’re trying to act like that cute, sweet little angel you’re dating doesn’t have a nasty, naughty nymph lurking deep within her, you’re doing her a great disservice by leaving an important part of her unsatisfied. And failing to satisfy women creates problems for you, both in sleeping with new women, and in hanging onto the ones you’ve already got.

If you’re a woman, and you’ve been keeping your naughty side under lock-and-key, even with your boyfriends, well... you should probably think about reconsidering that... before you explode. There is great seductive power in naughtiness, and a woman who knows how to tap into her naughty, steer it, and control it is one who knows how to work men with the best of them, and consistently get what she wants.

Yet, in case you are not yet convinced, I’ve compiled a list of the seven (7) key reasons why all girls are naughty girls... and you should find each of these seven reasons every part fun, and informative. Here’s each reason, in no particular order.

I’ve been relistening to Nassim Taleb’s wonderful book Fooled by Randomness, which is a probabalist’s dream read. And if there’s one thing that picking up girls turns you into, it’s a probabalist.

Reading it (or listening to it on audio, as I am), you see a great many parallels between stock trading and seduction. And you also come to understand why some men succeed at picking up lots of different pretty girls, and why most men never will.

In many things in life, but especially in trading and in pickup, there is what you’d call an asymmetric distribution of returns. And that means that by participating in trading for stocks or picking up girls or anything else with an asymmetric distribution, you’re opening yourself up to asymmetric returns.

But the mind does not take well naturally to asymmetric returns. It doesn’t grasp them. It isn’t built to work that way.

And the result of this is, an endless abundance of great returns for those few souls willing to go against the grain, fight the emotions that go with it, and chase down their asymmetric returns in spite of their struggling and fearful or frustrated brains... and an endless source of frustration and disappointment for the majority of souls who just go with the flow.

At the start of the new year, there was a thread on the boards with suggestions for new articles this year. Zac suggested one on the tendency of women to always have men in their lives... and that this should never be an obstacle for you when meeting new women.

It’s a curious thing for me to think about. This concept is one I spend zero thought cycles on myself, and it always strikes me as a little odd and funny when I see men talking about it now... mostly guys on the boards talking about their concerns about approaching: but what if she has a boyfriend?

Not just boyfriend, though; but what about that guy she’s talking to? Or, yeah, I see her by herself right now – but what if there’s someone else nearby? What if she has a lover and I don’t know it?

The fact is, EVERY woman you meet is going to have SOME guy in her life, in SOME capacity. There is some man who is important to her who is “limiting” her choices in men in some way.

The thing about approaching though is this: you’ve got to learn to disregard these men as abstractions and approach away, anyway.

340Breeze poses an intriguing “What if?” scenario over on the article about astrology:

“An interesting question is how do you think women would behave in general toward men (in terms of their attitude, expectations, submissiveness, physical attributes (caring about being fat vs slim), etc) if the vast majority of available men were completely unwilling to trade (access to resources, money, etc )for hopes of sex? I know this is unrealistic since clearly women have choice in men because: (1) men are the agressive sex meaning women have lots of suitors just by being a woman; and (2) men seem to want women’s vjs more than women want what men have to offer.”

I think this one’s worth addressing because I see a lot of frustration from guys on various corners of the Internet about desperate men trading their time and energy to women in exchange for the hope of a chance to maybe possibly someday if they’re lucky have a shot at entering said women’s vaginas.

The talk is that these desperate men make it harder for everyone else to get laid, and/or that women are becoming overly entitled as a result of it.

And to some extent... there’s a nugget of truth in there, yeah.

But to a larger extent, this is looking at the problem all wrong, with blinders on to the real setup – and the real solution.