Pickup gurus write a lot about how to (allegedly) get sex, or how they (allegedly) got sex, but almost nothing about sex itself. It’s pretty clear that a lot of PUAs are more interested in the psychological manipulations and power games inherent in “game,” or in adding another notch to their score, than they are in the actual sex that sometimes results from all their efforts.
It goes without saying that most PUAs have little interest in their partners’ pleasure. In a post with the title It Doesn’t Matter If She Orgasms Or Not, pickup guru Roosh explained that once upon a time,
I used to try to last as long as possible in bed. I wanted to make sure the girl got hers before I got mine, and the reason I did that was because I thought she would be attracted to me more and want to see me again.
But, Roosh being the asshole he is, even this minimal level of consideration – which he extended to his partners for his own selfish reasons – turned out to be too much for him to keep up:
Gradually I just stopped caring, and soon everything I did in bed was for my pleasure only. The only reason I’d delay orgasm is to make mine better, and I pretended I don’t hear her the first time she told me to drill slower or not to go so deep. I did whatever I wanted because I came to value my orgasm as sacred, and her pleasure as second to mine.
Given that sex with him in was likely not such a great treat to begin with, he found that being completely selfish didn’t actually make the girls he was with like him any less.
Girls didn’t want to fuck me more, they didn’t want to fuck me less. Not caring about their sexual pleasure had no effect on repeat calls and repeat sex.
No wonder PUAs are so obsessed with very young women – they’re less likely to have experienced good sex, and more likely to be willing to put up with bad simply because they don’t yet realize how good sex can get.
Back in 2008 when he wrote that post, Roosh’s main sexual worry was coming too quickly; these days it seems he has trouble coming at all. Now, there are plenty of reasons why guys can’t orgasm – health conditions, prescription medicine side effects, everyday anxieties, decreased sensitivity with age, and so on. Guys shouldn’t pressure themselves into coming on demand, or feel bad if they can’t.
But Roosh actually seems to feel good about his inability to orgasm – because he’s learned to use this bit of sexual dysfuction as a handy tool to manipulate his partners further:
Not being able to orgasm is one of the best ways to make a girl feel anxious and insecure. When I’m unable to come, which often happens with condoms (raw dog for life), I simply stop sex and say, “I’m not going to make it.” I can almost see her hamster spinning…
Is he not attracted to me anymore?
Is there something wrong with my vagina?
Should I give him a blowjob even though I don’t want to?
These are not the sorts of questions any straight man who’s not an utter creep wants his partner asking herself.
Roosh continues, gloating that his inability to orgasm
also shapes the power structure of the relationship. She knows that a man who doesn’t orgasm is more likely to stray to get that orgasm. As a result, she tests you less and does more things to win your favor.
Or she finds someone else who’s not a complete asshole, and moves on.
Wait, where’s Steele, I’m surprised he hasn’t shown up complaining about the word creepy being thrown around as much as it is in this thread. Also I just love watching the banter between the regulars and the trolls, It’s sort of become my primary source of entertainment, I live a very uninteresting life.
Surely we’re not talking about porngraphy here, but addiction in general? There’s a massive difference between “uses X” and “is addicted to X”.
Oh, here’s the letter that escaped my post: o
Yeah, skeptifem said “chronic use”. I take ‘addiction’ from that. We don’t know if Roosh is, she’s thinking he might be. That’s what I gather. Or she’s saying he is, but… that would be just a guess on her part, so we have to take guesses for what they are worth.
Chronic or regular use is not the same thing as compulsive or addictive behaviors.
I’m not sure that he actually manages to support this thesis, since he offers no proof other then men who sought help for addictive behavior and the fact that the internet makes sex easier to find and less taboo to talk about.
I’m not arguing that pornography can’t be addictive. It clearly is in some cases. But a) you can’t diagnose that over the internet, and b) if it was THAT addictive most teenagers would be constantly on the internet, jonesing for their next fix.
“Chronic or regular use is not the same thing as compulsive or addictive behaviors.”
Ok, I thought chronic denoted something more serious than that.
Also, that whole book is not online, so we don’t know his citations at this point.
You saying “he offers no proof” from some excerpt is not exactly thorough. Not everything will be on the internet. Maybe the book is at a library and you can check the studies he’s citing. You don’t know if he offers “no proof” at this point, do you?
“if it was THAT addictive most teenagers would be constantly on the internet, jonesing for their next fix.”
Substitute any other substance you know is addictive here. Does that make sense?
Anyway I ain’t trying to disrespect you or get on your case.
If porn gives you ED, shouldn’t masturbating to fantasies give you the same problem? I mean, it’s not like “looking at something” is the real problem here, right?
…And if masturbating to fantasies gave you ED, there would be precious few erections left in the world.
I know Psychology Today is rubbish and obsessed with evopsych but the article below seems to have a lot of citations if anyone wants to investigate them.
I don’t find it an intuitively unbelievable claim and am mildly curious as to why so many people do (also I think “looking at something” pretty much is the problem, as far as I understand the hypothesis.)
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/cupids-poisoned-arrow/201107/porn-induced-sexual-dysfunction-is-growing-problem
Also did anyone else think that the finding quoted above that people are getting “increases in sexual knowledge” from internet pornography did NOT sound like a positive finding, even if the researchers labelled it as such? Learning about sex from internet porn is a recipe for badness. (I don’t really know what they meant by an “increase in attitudes towards sex” but that sounds okay, I guess. Maybe?)
I’ve heard the idea that porn leads to sexual dysfunction before. The reasoning I’ve heard is that pornographic images give a rush of dopamine (or whatever), so users come to expect that rush along with sexual stimulation, thus leading to an inability to sustain arousal during sexual encounters simply because real life lacks a lot of that visual stimulation. Or something.
This very muddy scientific explanation has been brought to you by the letter K.
Yes, Linds I agree with what you’ve stated there about addictions. I think that porn can be addictive and that some people might be rushing to get their fix, I thought you were suggesting that you knew that teens weren’t doing this or something.
I don’t want to read too much into what you’re implying based on my other experiences discussing this topic. I’ve had irritating experiences where a reasonable conjecture needs umpteen citations, while conjecture that it’s good for humanity, sparks discussion and only seems to have the magical property of being good and never negative needs no citation.
There are anecdotal bits here and there where teen girls talk about porn being in classrooms and popular with the boys and this didn’t spark discussion but a hostile environment and expectations for women that erased them from the equation. IMO mainstream het porn does this. I don’t believe it’s sex education. It’s also not the end of civilization or gender equality as we know it (Dines). I argue that It’s like any other media, meaning it can be put to the test and analyzed. When doing so however, scads of people get tons offended no matter how reasonable or benign the commentary. It gets hairy.
Back to OP though we have no idea what Roosh’s porn habits are. I would take skeptifem’s comments in the same category as the “Ella is not real” assertion. Might be true based on this or that but we don’t know.
The reason there’s a lot of resistance is usually because some of the people who are arguing that porn is addictive usually have an ulterior motive for it.
That’s not to say everyone does (I doubt that’s the case here), and obviously mental addiction is an actual issue, but people tend to be wary when porn gets brought up in a vacuum for a discussion of its addictiveness. And therefore artificially inflating its importance of how addictive it might be compared to other types of media, just because it’s a controversial topic in general.
Also I went to that Psychology Today post and this line stood out to me:
..heavy use of today’s Internet porn and increasing need for more extreme material.
That’s enough for me to ignore the entire thing, because i’ve seen that argument before.. more than once. People don’t get bored of one type of porn and then automatically go looking for more “extreme” material to try to get off.
That article, from what little I actually bothered to read, seems to be talking more about anxiety affecting performance.. and blaming it on the concept that people sometimes watch a lot of porn. Or that people use a lot of it become “numb” to the rewarding sensation and therefore don’t get as much out of it as before, and also the possibility that leads to under-performing during sex.
But what Cliff said applies: how is that something unique to porn? It seems like it could apply to masturbation in general even. It’s like people are trying to dress up “possibly doing something too much” as “addiction to a bad thing oh noes”.
This is how it looks to me anyway, someone will correct me if i’m wrong somewhere (because that’s not unlikely 😛 ).
Ok, so we’ve gone from discussing the article, to talking about underwear, to defending porn, why haven’t I had friends like you guys my whole life?
People don’t get bored of one type of porn and then automatically go looking for more “extreme” material to try to get off.
Well, you obviously don’t, and as it happens I don’t either, but even quickly skimming the article I saw at least one quote from a young man who was describing this exact pattern as playing a part in his ED. So… maybe some people do?
I didn’t notice the part about performance anxiety. The hypothesis seemed to me to be about overstimulation. In this case technology is allowing levels of visual overstimulation that someone couldn’t accomplish with their imagination alone.
idk though, I didn’t read the citations and maybe the studies were all conducted by religious groups or evolutionary psychologists. But the quoted self-descriptions of the young guys who were forming a kind of support group for this problem (on weightlifting forums and bro type forums, not religious circles where self flagellation about pron might be socially rewarded) were enough to convince me that it’s a real issue for some men.
I am curious about the weightlifting fora, because steroid use is not unknown (some have said it’s not uncommon. I never had the urge [or the physique] to lift, so I don’t know, other than knowing some Army guys who did use ‘roids), and one of the side effects of anabolic steroids is ED.
It might be correlative, not causitive, in that community.
@pecunium… that’s logical, but they were treating their ED effectively by giving up porn!
Well, when I was much younger I could get off on literally any porn that crossed my desktop, and as I’ve gotten older I’ve gotten more selective; however, once I figured out what I got off on, it stayed at roughly the same level of… extreme-ness.
I also want to deconstruct the idea of “extreme porn.” It’s not like there’s some objective ranking of sexual acts with hand-holding at one end and noncon incestuous macrophiliac vore clopping at the other and anal sex has 42.7 Extreme Points while ass-to-mouth has 73.5, you know?The stuff I get off on is fairly extreme, I guess; it’s also been my sexual fantasy as far back as I can remember having sexual fantasies. Can we distinguish “they need more and more extreme stuff to get off” from “they’re discovering what their actual fantasies are”?
Also, I’d like to point out that if your ED is treated by giving up porn, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Get down with your bad not-using-porn self.
The self-help industry is an outrageous FRAUD. And yes, this even applies to Pick-Up Artist “gurus” who are in fact, shameless self promoters. I always get a good laugh from reading PUA fora and PUA blogs. Approaching people and successfully seducing them involves carefully reading their body language and intuiting what they’re feeling and what is likely to make them respond in certain ways. Much of it is actually subconscious and involves deeper levels of the brain than the frontal lobe.
You’re the only one who brought up the words “offended” and “oppressive.” There are words that feel gross in the mouth, and there are words that dance off the tongue.
This message brought to you by the word CREEP. (See what I did there?)
Personally I can’t understand why you aren’t promoting PUAs? A PUA is a male version of a slut. A slut fucks whoever, pumps and dumps. She doesn’t care about that person other than whatever sex she can get and maybe a few drinks or whatever she can bleed outta them. A PUA is the same, of course he still has to foot the bill for the few drinks or whatever is bled outta him, but that’s the nature of the game. He pumps and dumps, she pumps and dumps. Maybe even have a parade for them? Call it a happy name like PUP, pick up parade.
Good grief, blitzgal! What else should we call wimminz underwear!? “unmentionables”???
Also, is there any word, phrase, or euphemism for masturbation that doesn’t make you butthurt? “Fap” is hardly a gross word. But if you happen to disagree, get over it.
Seduction is a complex process of intuition and reading body language? Man. And here I always thought I just talked to people I found attractive, saw if we got along, and then asked them if they were attracted to me too.