MRAs, forever exploring new frontiers in victimology! The latest revelation: Apparently men are being intimidated into hitting on women in bars due to the mysterious, malevolent power of their femaleness.
Here’s Howsmydirktaste, putting this theory before the good folks in the Men’s Rights subreddit for some “peer review.”
[S]eduction aims to use a man’s desire against him by giving him the possibly false impression that he may have sexual relations with the seducer. By doing so he may make decisions that he might not otherwise make (buying a drink at a bar, paying for a purse, etc.)
So women are engaged in some vast conspiracy to extort drinks and purses from men they don’t want to have sex with?
I’m pretty sure that unless a woman is holding a sign that reads “I’ll have sex with you for a drink,” that you really shouldn’t assume that she’ll have sex with you for a drink.
Intimidation does the same; the prospect of physical, monetary or emotional pain subjects the subordinate into doing things they might not otherwise do. Both of these options result in the same consequence of the dominant one convincing the subordinate that it is in their best interest to do something that is not in their best interest.
So a woman sitting in a bar looking pretty is the equivalent of a mob enforcer.
Now morally: the main claim against male intimidation is that men, on average bigger and stronger, are being unjust by asserting a natural superiority. By doing so they have an unfair disadvantage.
Well, the claim is that when men act in an intimidating way towards women, they’re intimidating. Merely being larger than a woman isn’t a crime.
But sexually, don’t women have that same power? Men are genetically predisposed to look for mating opportunities in all women, and when a woman presents that opportunity, even the most iron-willed man could fall prey.
Apparently, we men are all at the mercy of our penises, and our penises are at the mercy of ladies looking sexy in our general vicinity.
Women don’t face that same situation; their requisite near-monogamy (because they can only have one child at a time, they are more selective in their sexual selections) means that male seduction does not hold the same sway.
Actually, the problem is that many traditional methods of “male seduction” actually involve real intimidation. And today there are a vast array of PUA sites out there offering updated versions of the old intimidating ways, teaching “pickup” techniques that are basically guides to date rape.
I think everyone here can identify a situation in which they or others have given undue attention or favor to a woman who seems a possible sexual partner. Doesn’t that result in the same affect as intimidation?
I’m going to step out on a limb here and say “no.”
Just a note for An Inconvenient Truth – “Last Minute Resistance” is a woman voicing non-consent for sex. Trying to manipulate your way around is, by definition, rape.
Also, if talking about sex with your partners before you have sex with them kills your boner, you’re probably a rapist.
I’m beginning to think that LMR/ASD is an ideological claim by PUAs, in the Althusserian sense. It’s something one believes to make sense of the world, in the sense that noting that persistent men really do get laid more than begging men is an observation, and the error lies in using it as a catch-all guide for interpersonal interaction. I don’t know why PUAs like Fingerman use meta-discourse and implicit messages to back away from their ideologically totalizing discourse when it would be easiest and less dangerous not to make blanket claims about female behavior and issue dangerous prescriptive instructions, but it is probably tied to the guru role.. This is also partly a function of age since I’m old enough that the PUA scene was amused by its own novelty and ambivalent about missed opportunities rather than being in “Beast Mode” and ideologically constructing “Beast Mode” as a form of sociosexuality as Real Social Dynamics LLC now does. The claims about masculinity enclosed in those two words make my brain and nads hurt.
I think you may be envisioning a scenario such as in [TW for rape, sexual assault, coercive isolation, assault] Amnesty International Norway’s “Nei er nei” video. (No link here because WHOA) as the default, where it’s pretty clear the dude is a rapist. Also Israel seems to have had 3rd-party submission of criminal complaints on behalf of the victim (“hagashat t’loonah plilit”) in the case above and bloggers such as Richard Silverstein are pretty thorough in publicizing alleged rapists.
Wait, was Eurosabra just reasonably sensible if incredibly prolix, except for the little bit about how “PUA ain’t what it used to be”? Wasn’t zie one of our most boring trolls?
I think Eurosabra is hoping that if he posts meandering, pointless comments filled with obfuscating pseudo-academia, we’ll forget about all the times he described how he manipulates and coerces women.
It’s not manipulation if you have no power over her at all, and it’s not coercion as long as there’s an open door she can walk through at any time to step out of your life. I really don’t see my rap as anything more than a more sophisticated type of asking. Perhaps my past partners view me with less of a jaundiced view than you hyenas, however.
It’s not abuse if you don’t hit her or scream. It’s not rape if she didn’t say no. It’s not a crime if I’m not convicted. I’m not a bad person if I don’t believe I did anything wrong.
God damn you are creepy as fuck. That “open door” sounds more like an escape hatch for your conscience. “Of course she consented! She knew she could have left any time.”
You are disgusting.
“If you have no power over her at all” – are you willfully ignoring how much stronger a man, almost any man, is than almost any woman? How frightening it is when a woman doesn’t know if she CAN safely say no? And if you’re playing mind games with anyone to get them into bed you’re pressuring them and coercing them.
Ah, yes, imagine scenarios that do not take place, and attribute actions to me that I do not take. I can understand why women can be afraid of the strength of other men, but I have a few interesting intersectional issues that prevent me from being a credible threat to anyone, although women may occasionally hallucinate such a threat while walking past me at night if they misread me as able-bodied. And mind games such as false partnering and the double-bind of asking someone to prove her adventurousness by sleeping with you are pretty weak and don’t even have the power of a street con. But most men’s presence and presentation are a credible threat, and opaque to any observer, which is why Schrödinger’s Rapist is such a valuable post.
Dude.
“It’s not manipulation if you have no power over her at all, and it’s not coercion as long as there’s an open door she can walk through at any time.”
“I have a few interesting intersectional issues that prevent me from being a credible threat to anyone, although women may occasionally hallucinate such a threat while walking past me at night if they misread me as able-bodied.”
Do you understand that these are contradictory?
The law in Israel and California, the systems with which I’m familiar, are pretty explicit that an isolated speech act alone that results in consent to intercourse can only be coercion or “rape by deception” under a fairly limited range of circumstances, most of which involve abuse of institutional power or (in CA) fraud as to the nature of the act. MA and Israel criminalize fraud in the inducement as to identity, or a fraudulent promise of material benefits from participation in the act. So I don’t see how PUA stuff like “Prove you’re adventurous, sleep with me” can be anything but laughable when uttered to a legally-competent adult person in a normal social situation. And I think anyone who cares enough to not be a raging a$$ho7e would be careful not to block the exit, not to corner someone, not to hold someone down, not to trap someone’s hands against her sides, without explicit consent and a safeword. But yes, there was regrettable ambiguity in my previous post.
@Eurosabra
I love to go down to the park and tell children that Santa Claus doesn’t exist so that I can watch them cry their delicious little tears.
I also like to torture cephalopods. While an octopus is probably considerably more intelligent than a lizard or a mouse, no invertebrates are considered “animals” for the purposes of animal cruelty laws in the US, so, that’s not against the law either. The fact that they’re sentient makes it so much more fun!
Oh, wait, no, I don’t, because I’m not a moral imbecile who believes that right and wrong come through statute.
Ew, Eurosabra is back. Why do you feel so compelled to keep repeating your icky scenarios here only to get the same predictable “you’re horrible, go away” response, over and over again? I feel like therapy would help more with whatever underlying issues compel you to do this than having the commenters here tell you how disgusting they find you. Unless maybe having women tell you how repugnant they find you is your kink.
If that’s the case, go hire a domme.
Therapy costs money I don’t currently have, and wasn’t effective anyway when I did have it. Dommes are another female way of monetizing male sexuality and issues. Remember, I think of the whole world *as a clip joint* to a certain extent. I just keep popping up to remind you that PUA is safe, legal, and consensual when properly done whenever ManBoobz goes off on a “PUA=Rape” tangent.
hahahahahahaha, oh my god, dude, do you listen to yourself? Seriously, do yourself a favour and read your posts out loud before putting them up. Even you can’t be so dense as to go through with a statement like that once you realize how fucking ridiculous you sound.
If that’s true, you’re wasting your time, since we already know you’re, at best, a wannabe rapist. It’s not like we’re gonna suddenly go “Oh shit, a rape apologist and admitted manipulative asshole says PUA isn’t rape, guess we were wrong!”
Also, if that were true, you’d fucking leave after popping in to drop your apologist load, instead of sticking around to bore us all with your inconsistent justifications and your faux-intellectual jargon.
@Eurosabra
If you can’t afford therapy, then you also can’t afford funny hats and nightclubs, so I’m not sure what you’re getting at there.
Also, therapy actually helps people, while PUA teaches them to avoid personal responsibility and be manipulative douches. What you’re saying is kind of like a diabetic saying “I can’t afford insulin, but I can afford gallons of high-grade maple syrup, so that means the syrup is good for me.”
And this is just one of the many reasons why you need therapy.
Responding to this
and this
I didn’t say a damn thing about y’all’s inner lives nor about my intellectual superiority. Like Ozymandias, I know that many theists are awesome people and smarter than me about many things, but basically just think they’re wrong about the whole existence of god thing. And of course, not all theists subscribe to the platitude that faith is a virtue.
Anyway, it’s a fucking fact that faith is a cognitive error, not a “virtue” of any sort (I’m talking about the believing-in-the-face-of-contradictory-or-nonexistent-evidence kind of faith, not the kind of faith that’s a synonym for earned trust). If thinking that makes me intellectually superior to those who don’t agree, well, you said it, not me.
Gah, sorry, wrong thread.
David-Thank you very much for creating this website. Thanks for being a real man and showing the public what these insane Mra’s are really about. Ok-my opinion on your article-Wow just because a guy pays for a drink for a woman does NOT mean she is obligated to have sex with him. Gee-what times are these guys living in?! Some men in bars use alcohol and drugs as a weapon. They want to get the woman as drunk as hell to see if they can have her let her guard down and let him take her home. This is a very dangerous situation for the lady. Now the scumbag guy has all of the power and could rape her if she decides to say no once they are alone. Most people know this game but stupid mra’s want to turn this truth around and blame the woman. And… women are really ok buying their OWN FUCKIN’ drinks in the year 2013!!