Re: Vagina Clicker, weirdly enough I figured that out by working for an extremely aggressive attorney. They’d chase potential clients hard, take ethically suspect shortcuts to close the sale (e.g. only ask for an $X,000 retainer even though by the time you sign and we do intake it’s already spent), yet act in such a shitty way that nearly no one wanted repeat business with them.
But I eventually realized that didn’t matter to them. All they cared about was the status declarations - being able to say “I’ve represented over 200 of the Fortune 500”, or “I’ve represented clients like !BigCompany.” And since it’s all about the status declaration…well, I don’t have to SUCCESSFULLY represent Google to be able to say “I’ve represented Google.” None of those companies need to have a POSITIVE view of me for me to say “I’ve represented 62 of the Fortune 100.” It doesn’t matter if they hang up on you the moment you say you’re calling from !Lawfirm - you did technically represent them, so it “counts”!
When that clicked for me re: work, it was immediately apparent that I was also describing a certain type of sexually active dude I knew. For them, it’s not about having a positive sexual experience with someone, making them feel good, or even building a good reputation with women. It’s all about that +1. And you can call it a +1 regardless of whether it was coercive or rape; whether she enjoyed the experience or not; whether it was 3 minutes or 3 hours; whether she’d ever speak to you again afterward or anything else. All that matters is being able to say “my count is 300.” Or “see that slut? I’ve tapped that.”
It’s an absolutely dismal way to live and view the world, but it’s unfortunately more prevalent than you’d think.
Makes me think of certain terrible parents, too. Determined to make their children as bragworthy as possible, but otherwise unconcerned with whether those children find happiness or success.
I get where you’re coming from, but my comment/story was late 00s/early 10s. Incel wasn’t even a term yet. So I don’t necessarily believe that stigmatizing language about incels caused the behavioral pattern being pointed out.
That said, I’m 100% onboard with Team Let’s Not Be Assholes To Each Other.
I honestly think it is a little ironic that "incel" has become the go-to feminist insult for men, and then feminist women become surprised that so many men seek validation by sleeping with lots of women. Like, what were feminists expecting?
I think Vagina Clicker explains a lot. Like the idea that slutty women are disgusting is at least partly because they're easier to shag, and less of a challenge requires less skill, so gets a lower score. Now where's that brain bleach?
Like the way that porn videos call the actresses in them "sluts" and ""bitches" (when they're not dividing them all into "teens" and "milfs", the two age categories of adult women). I mean, I get that "women" is a bit of a dull word, but "chicks" or "babes" are right there. I always think "Are... are you angry at them for being in porn? The porn you're currently jerking off to?"
TBF, I think "slut" is kind of ambiguous between being an insult and being a value-neutral term for an enthusiastically promiscuous person. (Indeed, I called a bunch of men 'slutty' in this post.)
I think they are angry at them, because being attracted to someone can feel like losing control to some degree. That makes them feel like the women have power over them and they feel weak and want to reassert themselves.
Also if we go by the points framing, they're possibly angry that the women don't use their agency to favor them exclusively and might get with other guys in addition to them, or even instead of them. That makes them feel like losers because they're not getting picked.
There's probably a bunch of psychology stuff that leads to this mentality
Either they're actually mad at them, or they feel an intuitive shame about the prostitution-method of sex and project it on the object of desire, or it's bringing out dark dominance/sadism stuff that they likely are unconscious of. I think that there's often a kind of deep resentment here.
(a bit of background: This is based on my concept of a theory of pornography and prostitution that is in line with / supports the Catholic view of sex and the notion that pornography is deeply repugnant and harmful. For the term to be "chicks" or "babes" would require a different psychosexual pathway that, while it does to some degree exist in some forms of erotica, is pretty much incompatible with video pornography of the normal type.)
I agree, but I think it's less about the video and more about whoever posted it.
Men shaming women for being attractive to them is probably as old as humanity. I always think there's a kind of guy who dismisses attractive women's opinions (she's just a bimbo, right) while outright hating women they find unattractive for not appealing to them. Card-carrying misogynists with experience at finding excuses to belittle women.
On the other hand, you don't watch porn because you hate women. You watch porn because you find women (or whoever you're watching for) sexy. And you make porn because money. I can say with solid confidence that the pathology lies with the man who sees a video of a women he likes the look of having sex, and thinks "Bitch! Slut!"
(This leaves out the issue of working conditions in American porn, which from what I hear are not good in a lot of places. Regulation and workers' rights is what's needed, I'd guess)
>I can say with solid confidence that the pathology lies with the man who sees a video of a women he likes the look of having sex, and thinks "Bitch! Slut!"
I believe that the way contemporary video porn works with the (Western male?) human mind psychosexually tends to encourage and focus on this, with the basis for it being a fairly common character flaw.
Yeah, I always got along with...women high in sociosexuality. They were horny, so they were willing to settle for me, and I saw it as a win-win. Besides, they were usually willing to talk about what they liked, which made it easy to keep them happy. If you're willing to date me, I owe you at least a few orgasms. ;)
I do think that 2-3 decades ago the "if you go home with a man you've just met, after snogging him in a bar, you're at the minimum AIMING for sex if not exactly promising it" deal was very much obviously known and accepted. So maybe he time travelled. That said, I don't think EVEN THEN it included being low-key kidnapped in a taxi by a possibly violent dude. It included "conventional invitation to see his etchings/for a nightcap". Not a fucking capture and ravishment.
So that's sad.
But the interesting part is about Vagina Clicker, and I think you're super spot on in how this process escalated. But I think there's more to it: vagina clicker is not just about amassing bedpost notches/commodity. More than about the +1, it is -- maybe predominantly -- about the THE TEXT that declared that +1. It's really not even about boringness of the compulsive but boring orgasms. It's about intra-male competition and "respect (???!!!!) that those men strive for. The vaginas they masturbate in and the women attached to them are insignificant. The man/girl game is ENTIRELY PVE, but I'm not sure if they fully realize it. The PVP is homo social.
I suspect that how much "go home with a man after kissing him" is aiming for sex depends a *lot* on social context. Bay Area poly hippies are probably unusually likely to hang out at each other's houses (because a lot of us are broke). But even so I have definitely had awkward miscommunications with people who didn't realize that, when I propose cuddling and watching a movie, I intend us to pay rapt attention to the movie the whole time. But-- you know, miscommunications! Not rape!
(I don't think "going home with a guy is aiming for sex" is incompatible with an activity-based model of sex-- if someone comes over to play TTRPGs with me I can expect they're aiming for TTRPGs, and also be chill with it if they turn out to not be in the mood.)
Yes totally. The idea that it's a "deal done" and if you change your mind you're somehow reneging on it, is extremely disturbing and wasn't really a thing even 30 years ago (and I think that cultural context -- everywhere -- has significantly changed since).
Also the manner of getting her to his place is such that even a potentially willing participant could start having doubts. This whole ravishment scenario is super disturbing, even more so if we're talking of the first time encounter with pretty much a stranger.
This guy is particularly bad, but as a guy who knows guys well, there definitely is a smooth gradient between the most sensitive, non-aggressive guy and this type, with everything in between. This is what makes things difficult for a woman, never knowing how far your partner or date is truly willing to go - before it may be too late.
Because it’s not as if there aren’t guys who will take no for an answer, even if you are naked, at their own place, and a lot of activity has already taken place..
The Aziz Ansari episode is a telling example. He was creepy but didn’t take it to this level.
Your second portion on the Vagina Clicker aspect is spot on, but I think the first half here is very unfair. Pretty sure this guy developed his instincts 20-30 years ago and no one had ideas like "consensual nonconsent" and all that in their mind. Previously there was not such a strong norm that any time there is any grey area or ambiguity, that sex happening is a worse outcome than not sex. Nowadays that's the assumption of everything is not 100% clear.
Current norms that you seem to favor also are concerned with crafting everyone's behavior and "the rules" around protecting the most vulnerable possible person...the person who can't bring themselves to say no, who freezes, who is unusually afraid of social penalties or upsetting someone, etc. Previous norms were more about working for the median person. I'm personally not convinced that norms crafted around the sensibilities of the least agentic and most sensitive 5% are better than ones crafted for the big part of the curve (either in the realm of sex or any other realm), though I understand the reasoning behind it.
I am a centrist who supports an even-handed solution to the problem. I think women should concealed carry and men should behave in the way they would if every woman had a firearm and was prepared to use it.
I am *gleefully* throwing the least agentic people under the bus here. If women aren't agentic enough to say what they want sexually with their own mouths, then they can't get laid! I don't see why respect for others' agency means you should be an asshole.
More women should have guns than men, but I'm not in favor of people walking around everywhere with guns. Yes it'd probably be better if the worst men feared a physical consequence in at least the same manner as they do from a man.
However I don't think your solution is centrist. The vast majoritycof women, and certainly those in the middle of the bell curve, are pretty clear that they don't want to be pursuer, the ones who make moves, or to talk everything out and blatantly state their intentions and desires before they do anything. I realize a lot of people hate that but it's the case.
Let's look at the real cab scenario here, bc you painted it in the worst possible light. and admittedly this guy is an extremist on the 5% tail end just look a woman who can find no way to leave or say no on the street during the day is. Still. He's spending hours hitting up random women in the street, a huge percentage of whom will not even let him get talking in the first place. The number who gets to the point in the interaction that he is even thinking about hailing a cab is already probably 5%. Of those, he says half will refuse to get in the cab in the first place. Of those who do, another half will give resistance and of those, some will be real nos. So at this point we are down to like 1% of the women he first started talking to, and I would argue he's probably not wrong that a good portion of that percentage is interested in fucking. And if not, we are taking about a very rare breed who is incapable of speaking up or telling a total stranger "no", to the point where that same person can arguably be described as functioning in society at all, at an adult level. There's no actual forcing a woman into a cab on a city street in broad daylight, you just painted it in the worst possible manner, and granted he used the word "shove" but he's also being bombastic for his audience.
Not saying this guy is a nice guy and the way he describes his own mental state sounds very miserable. I just think rapist is not fair and a bit too far. And yes I do actually think it majorly takes the seriousness of "actual rape" (yes, I used the phrase!) as almost a joke to call it rape when a woman can't bring herself to say no but also didn't actively say yes to a total stranger and goes to his house and says there when he leaves the room and everything else here. You can't have a blister on your toe and your foot being chopped off be the same thing, and "rape" becomes meaningless in this context IMO. Maybe a different word is needed.
The actual rape confession is the part where he responds to a woman saying no to sex by holding her down and choking her. That's felony rape, actually. Neither "I believed her to want it by looking in her eyes" nor "she should have been less sensitive and more agentic and less likely to talk to random strangers on street corners" nor "I have over forty sexual partners" is an acceptable defense for these actions in a court of law.
Separately, he also recommends a number of actions that are asshole moves, but not a felony. It is an asshole move to put someone in a cab if you know they don't want to be in the cab, regardless of whether it is in broad daylight. It is also an asshole move, as well as just kind of wild, to assume that "no" is no and "you're kidnapping me" is not no.
I have pursued my partners in every relationship I have ever been in. I assure you it is possible to pursue people without being an asshole and while taking "no" for an answer. (And before you say something about misreading signals-- sure, people do that, but people who regularly misread signals should not write dating advice books.)
Well look your read the book and I didn't. I just strongly suspect you are spinning it in the worst possible way, which probably isn't necessary bc it's already bad on its own. Like he doesn't say choke, you say choke. He says put your hand in her neck. That's not the same. I also think that all of these lines read totally differently if you have actors read them with an air of flirtation and being silly/naughty, versus how one reads them when they start off the article with you saying he's a racist before you even get to the quotes. Literally hire actors to read the exact same lines with a different tone and it would be an absolutely different tone. You assume "you're kidnapping me" is said in a serious manner and that the cab driver just totally ignores that he is complicit in this and doesn't call the cops, rather than that she says it in a playful and flirtatious manner. Pretty sure if it was said seriously with fear the cab driver would be like WTF? Actually it's probably more like they're making out in the cab and it's thrown up as a playful protest, which is a much more reasonable way to read it, if one is not primed before they get to that text with "rapist".
But all that aside, the big thing that is bothering me here that I just fundamentally object to us the idea that you can "put someone in a cab". That is not a thing. Are these women passed out, scooped up and inserted into a cab while the cab driver waits? No they're presumably totally sober adults weighing over 100 lbs in the daylight. How do you "put" someone in a cab?? Like seriously? That's the part I'm hung up on. No one who isn't mentally challenged or fucked out of their mind and not sober has to get in a cab if they don't want to, and no it doesn't require much at all push back or bravery or social graces to NOT get in a cab with a guy you just met. Nobody is going to get into a cab it they really don't want to, there's no such thing as "putting" an adult into a cab.
Anyway I'm sorry for arguing about a book I haven't read, and my intent is not to advocate for this guy, I'm just stuck on the cab thing. But also I do think calling people rapists should be taken seriously.
"Grab her neck so that her fingers slightly press into her arteries but the palm doesn’t put much pressure onto her windpipe." That isn't just placing your hand on someone's neck!
But separately: you keep saying broad daylight. This bothers me. The taxi scene isn't happening in broad daylight. The quoted section indicates twice that some of these are happening late at night. I don't know if that matters to you at all because you've found every way you can to downplay and reinterpret what this guy is doing but that crosses from making stuff up to just plain contradicting the words on the page.
You're right, because the book is called "Day Game", and is specifically about picking up women during the day (which these guys consider a much more challenging and impressive level to be at in their Vagina Clicker game, more difficult then picking up someone at a bar/club), I was imagining these scenarios to all be in the daytime. My bad. But actually, it would be *even more unlikely* that anyone would get in a cab with someone they didn't know, unless they wanted to go with them, at night! Who would do that?? To someone fearful, that's the beginning of a serial killer plotline. So no it doesn't really change anything. What would change it is if they are drunk and he is not. If that's the case, and what he's actually talking about is meeting a woman during the day but then hanging out with her til nighttime and getting her drink while he remains sober, then yes that changes things a lot.
Yes, I think this is a good articulation of the problem. And then you've got the red pill types who notice that lots of women don't actually like norms optimized for the 5%, so then they overcorrect in the other direction. Which creates traumatized women. Then those women push for dysfunctional, draconian, unworkable norms. Commence the doom spiral.
You know, I've subconsciously had that problem with progressive culture for over 30 years, and I finally saw someone actually explain explicitly what my problem was. Thank you.
One: holy shit. I thought opening by saying "push her into the taxi" was startling, then it gets worse and worse. BTW, note that he says "flag a taxi" and not "call an Uber"? I imagine that's because a black cab (the only cabs legally allowed to be flagged down in London) has a thick plexi-glass (or something) barrier between the driver and the passengers. He's chosen a transport method that reduces the chances that the driver will listen to the conversation and realise he needs to be separated from his victim.
Also: "There are few men alive who wouldn’t look at the Rolling Stones afterparties and think “I want that!” but it carries a deep cost."
Hahahaha. Few male teenagers, maybe. A party where you're all off your face (and I say this as a heavy drinker) and the girls there are either teenagers who are responding to your fame or women who don't want to have sex with you, which is why you pay them. And at some point some wanker throws a TV through the window. You can keep it.
*I learned not to look needy or persist--don't get too excited early on, it scares people. If rejected, avoid the person entirely.
*I learned about the importance of social proof, so I stopped complaining about my prior failures.
*I learned that if you don't play the male role, most women aren't interested, so you have to do things like make plans, apply small amounts of physical contact and see if it was reciprocated, and move things forward even if you'd rather not. (If they hesitated, I backed off. Also, this may have changed in the past few years.)
*I learned that women are attracted to confidence, so I learned to fake it and not show vulnerability until later.
*I learned that 'maybe' actually means 'no', so I just left the person alone after that.
*I learned that there's no way out of the friendzone, so I usually (politely) rejected offers to remain friends afterward--I would have just gotten depressed seeing them date anyway. (Some more evolved people can maintain the friendship, I know.)
*I stopped fantasizing about the perfect person and started settling for people actually interested in me. You have to offer *them* something. If you're a 3 (and I actually got the number by manipulating the OKCupid interface), don't waste your time with 10s.
Stuff like this that obviously violates consent I stayed far away from. While I knew from talking to women that sometimes no actually *did* mean keep trying, I also knew I wasn't smart enough to tell a fake no from a real one, so I just treated all nos as real. Besides, when I was younger I used to have random girls following me around and refusing to leave me alone and it was really annoying. I figured it would be even worse if they were, you know, bigger and stronger than me, so I figured people have a right to be left alone.
(Medical consent was my model--it can be revoked at any time.)
I also didn't 'neg'--I figured I didn't have the interpersonal skills to calibrate it without being genuinely insulting.
So, if you drop the genuinely toxic stuff that violates the other person's rights, I think it can sometimes be useful. I did actually start getting second dates and so on, and had some relationships, some of which stayed as friendships after the fact. Never found love, but I think that one's on me. I mean, I could have gone to the gym. ;)
A few decades ago, "PUA" referred to a guy teaching other guys that if they will wear a large silly hat the girls will notice them, and similar pieces of wisdom.
And that guy probably got more online hate back then than Mr. "if you squeeze her throat so hard she can't say 'no', that's technically consent" gets today.
Good post. I like the phrase "unnegotiated, safewordless consensual nonconsent play". It emphasizes that even if she really did somehow enjoy it, that doesn't make his behavior ethical.
From an expected-utility ethical perspective, you can think in terms of "false negatives" and "false positives". This concept can apply at any stage of the dating process. A "false negative" is someone who wanted to go further, who you didn't put the moves on (because you're too shy or whatever). A "false positive" is someone who didn't want to go further, who you put the moves on anyways.
A "false positive" in a sex context isn't *necessarily* rape, but this is arguably a rare corner case. For an extreme example, suppose my date smiles and says "I want to fuck", but secretly doesn't want to fuck, and is traumatized afterwards. That sucks, but it's [likely] not a situation I could reasonably have prevented.
Ultimately our notion of "rape" is basically a social contract around what a man is expected to do to minimize the risk of false positives. According to this way of thinking, it's possible to violate that social contract, and rape someone, even if they actually *did* want it and enjoy it.
That's how I think it should be, in principle at least. Unfortunately, we're not very good at negotiating that social contract right now. My sense is that a vocal set of traumatized women have tried to use the internet to unilaterally expand the set of actions which can be considered "rape" and "sexual assault", sometimes in moral-panic-like ways that aren't reasonable. Now we've got a situation where men have splintered into various subgroups: There's the subgroup that says: "I can't reliably predict what will make women upset, so I'm not going to make any romantic moves whatsoever." And there's the subgroup that says: "What women say online has nothing to do with the sort of dominant behavior they actually like, so I'm totally ignoring what they say online." Both of these responses suck.
I find the lack of quality information and reliable sources on this topic frustrating. Internet discussion has the usual self-selection issues, but I suppose IRL has the issue that women might be too intimidated to share their opinions frankly. I wish we could randomly sample the population to get representative and honest opinions.
I find it funny how many “blackpill infohazards” apply to men just as much as women.
“Women would literally fuck a criminal if he’s hot!!” and men wouldn’t?
“Women get wet if you push and ignore their sexual boundaries!” as if men wouldn’t get hard?
Obviously, *some. Some women, some men. A lot of men are subs who fantasise about being taken by bad women, actually.
But men have the luxury that any and all dumb sexual choices they make is explained away by “well they’re men, they’re horny pervs, what did you expect”. Whereas when women make dumb sexual choices and have sexual fantasies that are uncomfortable, they’re never given this excuse. They get psychoanalysed.
For men, sex tends to be what's scarce. For women, commitment tends to be what's scarce. (Note: This is a general trend which may not hold for weird places like the Bay Area.)
If men sexually pursue antisocial women, that's not necessarily a blackpill for women, since sex is more abundant for women anyways.
Men *marrying* antisocial women would be the blackpill for women.
>But men have the luxury that any and all dumb sexual choices they make is explained away by “well they’re men, they’re horny pervs, what did you expect”. Whereas when women make dumb sexual choices and have sexual fantasies that are uncomfortable, they’re never given this excuse. They get psychoanalysed.
Women are constantly proclaiming about what they want from men. When they go for the opposite, that's a blackpill. That's another key reason why your analogy doesn't hold. There's a shared cultural understanding that men are horndogs, yet women make proclamations of their own virtue which they don't live up to.
For your analogy to hold, women would have to be responding to red pill content by saying: "Yep, well what did you expect? Us women are horndogs. Sometimes we think with the vah jay jay. It can't be helped." Honestly, I would welcome if more women stated that aloud, so we could at least have a frank discussion. The current situation sometimes feels like half of the women complaining about the behavior that the other half of them are incentivizing, and somehow men are the only ones ever to blame.
I am indeed from a weird place, a place so weird that a pick up artist wrote an entire book about how PUA techniques apparently don’t work on women here (Roosh V’s “don’t bang Denmark”), so.
I thought American society and other WEIRD societies may had gotten so far that it was understood now that women can also be pervy horn dogs sometimes. OTOH, the US is unusually religious for its wealth. I can imagine that mix of religious purity culture that Scandinavians associate with the 1950’s or earlier, with its urbanism and “woke” faction, makes for a very strange dating culture.
Nevertheless, I’m pretty sure American women knows that some men care more about hotness in their wives than personality, so they’re willing to overlook anti-social traits. Maybe they even find the anti social traits hot - “don’t stick your dick in crazy”, “but crazy chicks are better in bed” is a sentiment I’ve definitely heard sometimes in American culture. Men are surprised that some women may have similar priorities. Noted.
>I am indeed from a weird place, a place so weird that a pick up artist wrote an entire book about how PUA techniques apparently don’t work on women here (Roosh V’s “don’t bang Denmark”), so.
Very interesting, do Danish women complain about being unable to find enough casual sex though? Somehow I doubt it. Did they get mad at Roosh because his book means they'll get less casual sex?
>I thought American society and other WEIRD societies may had gotten so far that it was understood now that women can also be pervy horn dogs sometimes.
There was a recent prior wave of feminism in the US that was in the business of insisting that. The post-#MeToo wave has quietly removed this plank from the feminist platform. Nowadays feminists supposedly have a zero-tolerance policy for aggressive guys. That's why it's a blackpill.
I don't think religion is a big contributor at this point. The US might be more religious on paper, but I don't think this contributes a ton to the US gender discourse.
Eh. Imo it says things everyone kind of knew already: a lot of women are sexually submissive and a lot of sexually submissive women think guys should just take them even if they resist. The problem with that is just that women aren't all like this, so if you actually do that, you're risking making a horrible mistake.
Re: Vagina Clicker, weirdly enough I figured that out by working for an extremely aggressive attorney. They’d chase potential clients hard, take ethically suspect shortcuts to close the sale (e.g. only ask for an $X,000 retainer even though by the time you sign and we do intake it’s already spent), yet act in such a shitty way that nearly no one wanted repeat business with them.
But I eventually realized that didn’t matter to them. All they cared about was the status declarations - being able to say “I’ve represented over 200 of the Fortune 500”, or “I’ve represented clients like !BigCompany.” And since it’s all about the status declaration…well, I don’t have to SUCCESSFULLY represent Google to be able to say “I’ve represented Google.” None of those companies need to have a POSITIVE view of me for me to say “I’ve represented 62 of the Fortune 100.” It doesn’t matter if they hang up on you the moment you say you’re calling from !Lawfirm - you did technically represent them, so it “counts”!
When that clicked for me re: work, it was immediately apparent that I was also describing a certain type of sexually active dude I knew. For them, it’s not about having a positive sexual experience with someone, making them feel good, or even building a good reputation with women. It’s all about that +1. And you can call it a +1 regardless of whether it was coercive or rape; whether she enjoyed the experience or not; whether it was 3 minutes or 3 hours; whether she’d ever speak to you again afterward or anything else. All that matters is being able to say “my count is 300.” Or “see that slut? I’ve tapped that.”
It’s an absolutely dismal way to live and view the world, but it’s unfortunately more prevalent than you’d think.
Makes me think of certain terrible parents, too. Determined to make their children as bragworthy as possible, but otherwise unconcerned with whether those children find happiness or success.
I get where you’re coming from, but my comment/story was late 00s/early 10s. Incel wasn’t even a term yet. So I don’t necessarily believe that stigmatizing language about incels caused the behavioral pattern being pointed out.
That said, I’m 100% onboard with Team Let’s Not Be Assholes To Each Other.
I honestly think it is a little ironic that "incel" has become the go-to feminist insult for men, and then feminist women become surprised that so many men seek validation by sleeping with lots of women. Like, what were feminists expecting?
https://www.ggd.world/p/ghosting-the-patriarchy-female-empowerment/comment/69680009
I think Vagina Clicker explains a lot. Like the idea that slutty women are disgusting is at least partly because they're easier to shag, and less of a challenge requires less skill, so gets a lower score. Now where's that brain bleach?
Like the way that porn videos call the actresses in them "sluts" and ""bitches" (when they're not dividing them all into "teens" and "milfs", the two age categories of adult women). I mean, I get that "women" is a bit of a dull word, but "chicks" or "babes" are right there. I always think "Are... are you angry at them for being in porn? The porn you're currently jerking off to?"
TBF, I think "slut" is kind of ambiguous between being an insult and being a value-neutral term for an enthusiastically promiscuous person. (Indeed, I called a bunch of men 'slutty' in this post.)
You're established as sex-positive, though. I view it more skeptically when it's someone's default term for a woman having sex.
I think they are angry at them, because being attracted to someone can feel like losing control to some degree. That makes them feel like the women have power over them and they feel weak and want to reassert themselves.
Also if we go by the points framing, they're possibly angry that the women don't use their agency to favor them exclusively and might get with other guys in addition to them, or even instead of them. That makes them feel like losers because they're not getting picked.
There's probably a bunch of psychology stuff that leads to this mentality
Frankly, I think men often kind of *are*.
Either they're actually mad at them, or they feel an intuitive shame about the prostitution-method of sex and project it on the object of desire, or it's bringing out dark dominance/sadism stuff that they likely are unconscious of. I think that there's often a kind of deep resentment here.
(a bit of background: This is based on my concept of a theory of pornography and prostitution that is in line with / supports the Catholic view of sex and the notion that pornography is deeply repugnant and harmful. For the term to be "chicks" or "babes" would require a different psychosexual pathway that, while it does to some degree exist in some forms of erotica, is pretty much incompatible with video pornography of the normal type.)
I agree, but I think it's less about the video and more about whoever posted it.
Men shaming women for being attractive to them is probably as old as humanity. I always think there's a kind of guy who dismisses attractive women's opinions (she's just a bimbo, right) while outright hating women they find unattractive for not appealing to them. Card-carrying misogynists with experience at finding excuses to belittle women.
On the other hand, you don't watch porn because you hate women. You watch porn because you find women (or whoever you're watching for) sexy. And you make porn because money. I can say with solid confidence that the pathology lies with the man who sees a video of a women he likes the look of having sex, and thinks "Bitch! Slut!"
(This leaves out the issue of working conditions in American porn, which from what I hear are not good in a lot of places. Regulation and workers' rights is what's needed, I'd guess)
>I can say with solid confidence that the pathology lies with the man who sees a video of a women he likes the look of having sex, and thinks "Bitch! Slut!"
I believe that the way contemporary video porn works with the (Western male?) human mind psychosexually tends to encourage and focus on this, with the basis for it being a fairly common character flaw.
Yeah, I always got along with...women high in sociosexuality. They were horny, so they were willing to settle for me, and I saw it as a win-win. Besides, they were usually willing to talk about what they liked, which made it easy to keep them happy. If you're willing to date me, I owe you at least a few orgasms. ;)
Fascinating.
I do think that 2-3 decades ago the "if you go home with a man you've just met, after snogging him in a bar, you're at the minimum AIMING for sex if not exactly promising it" deal was very much obviously known and accepted. So maybe he time travelled. That said, I don't think EVEN THEN it included being low-key kidnapped in a taxi by a possibly violent dude. It included "conventional invitation to see his etchings/for a nightcap". Not a fucking capture and ravishment.
So that's sad.
But the interesting part is about Vagina Clicker, and I think you're super spot on in how this process escalated. But I think there's more to it: vagina clicker is not just about amassing bedpost notches/commodity. More than about the +1, it is -- maybe predominantly -- about the THE TEXT that declared that +1. It's really not even about boringness of the compulsive but boring orgasms. It's about intra-male competition and "respect (???!!!!) that those men strive for. The vaginas they masturbate in and the women attached to them are insignificant. The man/girl game is ENTIRELY PVE, but I'm not sure if they fully realize it. The PVP is homo social.
I suspect that how much "go home with a man after kissing him" is aiming for sex depends a *lot* on social context. Bay Area poly hippies are probably unusually likely to hang out at each other's houses (because a lot of us are broke). But even so I have definitely had awkward miscommunications with people who didn't realize that, when I propose cuddling and watching a movie, I intend us to pay rapt attention to the movie the whole time. But-- you know, miscommunications! Not rape!
(I don't think "going home with a guy is aiming for sex" is incompatible with an activity-based model of sex-- if someone comes over to play TTRPGs with me I can expect they're aiming for TTRPGs, and also be chill with it if they turn out to not be in the mood.)
Yes totally. The idea that it's a "deal done" and if you change your mind you're somehow reneging on it, is extremely disturbing and wasn't really a thing even 30 years ago (and I think that cultural context -- everywhere -- has significantly changed since).
Also the manner of getting her to his place is such that even a potentially willing participant could start having doubts. This whole ravishment scenario is super disturbing, even more so if we're talking of the first time encounter with pretty much a stranger.
If you're not going to actually watch the movie, what's the point of putting it on in the first place? ;)
Constant joke in the local asexual community that we need a new codeword for "let's go to mine and actually watch something on Netflix together".
This guy is particularly bad, but as a guy who knows guys well, there definitely is a smooth gradient between the most sensitive, non-aggressive guy and this type, with everything in between. This is what makes things difficult for a woman, never knowing how far your partner or date is truly willing to go - before it may be too late.
Because it’s not as if there aren’t guys who will take no for an answer, even if you are naked, at their own place, and a lot of activity has already taken place..
The Aziz Ansari episode is a telling example. He was creepy but didn’t take it to this level.
good review Ozy thank you
here's a good paired read on "men who have a lot of sex and then don't go onwards to be a slut" https://substack.com/home/post/p-162166922
It discusses views on attractiveness while referencing Pride and Prejudice. I feel like this would interest Ozy, though I could be wrong.
Your second portion on the Vagina Clicker aspect is spot on, but I think the first half here is very unfair. Pretty sure this guy developed his instincts 20-30 years ago and no one had ideas like "consensual nonconsent" and all that in their mind. Previously there was not such a strong norm that any time there is any grey area or ambiguity, that sex happening is a worse outcome than not sex. Nowadays that's the assumption of everything is not 100% clear.
Current norms that you seem to favor also are concerned with crafting everyone's behavior and "the rules" around protecting the most vulnerable possible person...the person who can't bring themselves to say no, who freezes, who is unusually afraid of social penalties or upsetting someone, etc. Previous norms were more about working for the median person. I'm personally not convinced that norms crafted around the sensibilities of the least agentic and most sensitive 5% are better than ones crafted for the big part of the curve (either in the realm of sex or any other realm), though I understand the reasoning behind it.
I am a centrist who supports an even-handed solution to the problem. I think women should concealed carry and men should behave in the way they would if every woman had a firearm and was prepared to use it.
I am *gleefully* throwing the least agentic people under the bus here. If women aren't agentic enough to say what they want sexually with their own mouths, then they can't get laid! I don't see why respect for others' agency means you should be an asshole.
More women should have guns than men, but I'm not in favor of people walking around everywhere with guns. Yes it'd probably be better if the worst men feared a physical consequence in at least the same manner as they do from a man.
However I don't think your solution is centrist. The vast majoritycof women, and certainly those in the middle of the bell curve, are pretty clear that they don't want to be pursuer, the ones who make moves, or to talk everything out and blatantly state their intentions and desires before they do anything. I realize a lot of people hate that but it's the case.
Let's look at the real cab scenario here, bc you painted it in the worst possible light. and admittedly this guy is an extremist on the 5% tail end just look a woman who can find no way to leave or say no on the street during the day is. Still. He's spending hours hitting up random women in the street, a huge percentage of whom will not even let him get talking in the first place. The number who gets to the point in the interaction that he is even thinking about hailing a cab is already probably 5%. Of those, he says half will refuse to get in the cab in the first place. Of those who do, another half will give resistance and of those, some will be real nos. So at this point we are down to like 1% of the women he first started talking to, and I would argue he's probably not wrong that a good portion of that percentage is interested in fucking. And if not, we are taking about a very rare breed who is incapable of speaking up or telling a total stranger "no", to the point where that same person can arguably be described as functioning in society at all, at an adult level. There's no actual forcing a woman into a cab on a city street in broad daylight, you just painted it in the worst possible manner, and granted he used the word "shove" but he's also being bombastic for his audience.
Not saying this guy is a nice guy and the way he describes his own mental state sounds very miserable. I just think rapist is not fair and a bit too far. And yes I do actually think it majorly takes the seriousness of "actual rape" (yes, I used the phrase!) as almost a joke to call it rape when a woman can't bring herself to say no but also didn't actively say yes to a total stranger and goes to his house and says there when he leaves the room and everything else here. You can't have a blister on your toe and your foot being chopped off be the same thing, and "rape" becomes meaningless in this context IMO. Maybe a different word is needed.
The actual rape confession is the part where he responds to a woman saying no to sex by holding her down and choking her. That's felony rape, actually. Neither "I believed her to want it by looking in her eyes" nor "she should have been less sensitive and more agentic and less likely to talk to random strangers on street corners" nor "I have over forty sexual partners" is an acceptable defense for these actions in a court of law.
Separately, he also recommends a number of actions that are asshole moves, but not a felony. It is an asshole move to put someone in a cab if you know they don't want to be in the cab, regardless of whether it is in broad daylight. It is also an asshole move, as well as just kind of wild, to assume that "no" is no and "you're kidnapping me" is not no.
I have pursued my partners in every relationship I have ever been in. I assure you it is possible to pursue people without being an asshole and while taking "no" for an answer. (And before you say something about misreading signals-- sure, people do that, but people who regularly misread signals should not write dating advice books.)
Well look your read the book and I didn't. I just strongly suspect you are spinning it in the worst possible way, which probably isn't necessary bc it's already bad on its own. Like he doesn't say choke, you say choke. He says put your hand in her neck. That's not the same. I also think that all of these lines read totally differently if you have actors read them with an air of flirtation and being silly/naughty, versus how one reads them when they start off the article with you saying he's a racist before you even get to the quotes. Literally hire actors to read the exact same lines with a different tone and it would be an absolutely different tone. You assume "you're kidnapping me" is said in a serious manner and that the cab driver just totally ignores that he is complicit in this and doesn't call the cops, rather than that she says it in a playful and flirtatious manner. Pretty sure if it was said seriously with fear the cab driver would be like WTF? Actually it's probably more like they're making out in the cab and it's thrown up as a playful protest, which is a much more reasonable way to read it, if one is not primed before they get to that text with "rapist".
But all that aside, the big thing that is bothering me here that I just fundamentally object to us the idea that you can "put someone in a cab". That is not a thing. Are these women passed out, scooped up and inserted into a cab while the cab driver waits? No they're presumably totally sober adults weighing over 100 lbs in the daylight. How do you "put" someone in a cab?? Like seriously? That's the part I'm hung up on. No one who isn't mentally challenged or fucked out of their mind and not sober has to get in a cab if they don't want to, and no it doesn't require much at all push back or bravery or social graces to NOT get in a cab with a guy you just met. Nobody is going to get into a cab it they really don't want to, there's no such thing as "putting" an adult into a cab.
Anyway I'm sorry for arguing about a book I haven't read, and my intent is not to advocate for this guy, I'm just stuck on the cab thing. But also I do think calling people rapists should be taken seriously.
"Grab her neck so that her fingers slightly press into her arteries but the palm doesn’t put much pressure onto her windpipe." That isn't just placing your hand on someone's neck!
But separately: you keep saying broad daylight. This bothers me. The taxi scene isn't happening in broad daylight. The quoted section indicates twice that some of these are happening late at night. I don't know if that matters to you at all because you've found every way you can to downplay and reinterpret what this guy is doing but that crosses from making stuff up to just plain contradicting the words on the page.
You're right, because the book is called "Day Game", and is specifically about picking up women during the day (which these guys consider a much more challenging and impressive level to be at in their Vagina Clicker game, more difficult then picking up someone at a bar/club), I was imagining these scenarios to all be in the daytime. My bad. But actually, it would be *even more unlikely* that anyone would get in a cab with someone they didn't know, unless they wanted to go with them, at night! Who would do that?? To someone fearful, that's the beginning of a serial killer plotline. So no it doesn't really change anything. What would change it is if they are drunk and he is not. If that's the case, and what he's actually talking about is meeting a woman during the day but then hanging out with her til nighttime and getting her drink while he remains sober, then yes that changes things a lot.
Sorry *rapist not racist. My phone is autocorrecting bad things to be!
Yes, I think this is a good articulation of the problem. And then you've got the red pill types who notice that lots of women don't actually like norms optimized for the 5%, so then they overcorrect in the other direction. Which creates traumatized women. Then those women push for dysfunctional, draconian, unworkable norms. Commence the doom spiral.
Yes
You know, I've subconsciously had that problem with progressive culture for over 30 years, and I finally saw someone actually explain explicitly what my problem was. Thank you.
I generally agree with you we shouldn't restructure social norms in the way Ozy is advocating.
But if this guy's goal was to rape as many women as possible, I don't think there's much he would need to change in his routine.
Wait, he never gets her bra off? He's skipping the bases!
One: holy shit. I thought opening by saying "push her into the taxi" was startling, then it gets worse and worse. BTW, note that he says "flag a taxi" and not "call an Uber"? I imagine that's because a black cab (the only cabs legally allowed to be flagged down in London) has a thick plexi-glass (or something) barrier between the driver and the passengers. He's chosen a transport method that reduces the chances that the driver will listen to the conversation and realise he needs to be separated from his victim.
Also: "There are few men alive who wouldn’t look at the Rolling Stones afterparties and think “I want that!” but it carries a deep cost."
Hahahaha. Few male teenagers, maybe. A party where you're all off your face (and I say this as a heavy drinker) and the girls there are either teenagers who are responding to your fame or women who don't want to have sex with you, which is why you pay them. And at some point some wanker throws a TV through the window. You can keep it.
Sometimes I wonder if PUAs get a bad rap. Then I read shit like this
I got some good things out of them!
*I learned not to look needy or persist--don't get too excited early on, it scares people. If rejected, avoid the person entirely.
*I learned about the importance of social proof, so I stopped complaining about my prior failures.
*I learned that if you don't play the male role, most women aren't interested, so you have to do things like make plans, apply small amounts of physical contact and see if it was reciprocated, and move things forward even if you'd rather not. (If they hesitated, I backed off. Also, this may have changed in the past few years.)
*I learned that women are attracted to confidence, so I learned to fake it and not show vulnerability until later.
*I learned that 'maybe' actually means 'no', so I just left the person alone after that.
*I learned that there's no way out of the friendzone, so I usually (politely) rejected offers to remain friends afterward--I would have just gotten depressed seeing them date anyway. (Some more evolved people can maintain the friendship, I know.)
*I stopped fantasizing about the perfect person and started settling for people actually interested in me. You have to offer *them* something. If you're a 3 (and I actually got the number by manipulating the OKCupid interface), don't waste your time with 10s.
Stuff like this that obviously violates consent I stayed far away from. While I knew from talking to women that sometimes no actually *did* mean keep trying, I also knew I wasn't smart enough to tell a fake no from a real one, so I just treated all nos as real. Besides, when I was younger I used to have random girls following me around and refusing to leave me alone and it was really annoying. I figured it would be even worse if they were, you know, bigger and stronger than me, so I figured people have a right to be left alone.
(Medical consent was my model--it can be revoked at any time.)
I also didn't 'neg'--I figured I didn't have the interpersonal skills to calibrate it without being genuinely insulting.
So, if you drop the genuinely toxic stuff that violates the other person's rights, I think it can sometimes be useful. I did actually start getting second dates and so on, and had some relationships, some of which stayed as friendships after the fact. Never found love, but I think that one's on me. I mean, I could have gone to the gym. ;)
>I actually got the number by manipulating the OKCupid interface
What?
A few decades ago, "PUA" referred to a guy teaching other guys that if they will wear a large silly hat the girls will notice them, and similar pieces of wisdom.
And that guy probably got more online hate back then than Mr. "if you squeeze her throat so hard she can't say 'no', that's technically consent" gets today.
Good post. I like the phrase "unnegotiated, safewordless consensual nonconsent play". It emphasizes that even if she really did somehow enjoy it, that doesn't make his behavior ethical.
From an expected-utility ethical perspective, you can think in terms of "false negatives" and "false positives". This concept can apply at any stage of the dating process. A "false negative" is someone who wanted to go further, who you didn't put the moves on (because you're too shy or whatever). A "false positive" is someone who didn't want to go further, who you put the moves on anyways.
A "false positive" in a sex context isn't *necessarily* rape, but this is arguably a rare corner case. For an extreme example, suppose my date smiles and says "I want to fuck", but secretly doesn't want to fuck, and is traumatized afterwards. That sucks, but it's [likely] not a situation I could reasonably have prevented.
Ultimately our notion of "rape" is basically a social contract around what a man is expected to do to minimize the risk of false positives. According to this way of thinking, it's possible to violate that social contract, and rape someone, even if they actually *did* want it and enjoy it.
That's how I think it should be, in principle at least. Unfortunately, we're not very good at negotiating that social contract right now. My sense is that a vocal set of traumatized women have tried to use the internet to unilaterally expand the set of actions which can be considered "rape" and "sexual assault", sometimes in moral-panic-like ways that aren't reasonable. Now we've got a situation where men have splintered into various subgroups: There's the subgroup that says: "I can't reliably predict what will make women upset, so I'm not going to make any romantic moves whatsoever." And there's the subgroup that says: "What women say online has nothing to do with the sort of dominant behavior they actually like, so I'm totally ignoring what they say online." Both of these responses suck.
I find the lack of quality information and reliable sources on this topic frustrating. Internet discussion has the usual self-selection issues, but I suppose IRL has the issue that women might be too intimidated to share their opinions frankly. I wish we could randomly sample the population to get representative and honest opinions.
Dude that Chesed essay is a total blackpill infohazard
I find it funny how many “blackpill infohazards” apply to men just as much as women.
“Women would literally fuck a criminal if he’s hot!!” and men wouldn’t?
“Women get wet if you push and ignore their sexual boundaries!” as if men wouldn’t get hard?
Obviously, *some. Some women, some men. A lot of men are subs who fantasise about being taken by bad women, actually.
But men have the luxury that any and all dumb sexual choices they make is explained away by “well they’re men, they’re horny pervs, what did you expect”. Whereas when women make dumb sexual choices and have sexual fantasies that are uncomfortable, they’re never given this excuse. They get psychoanalysed.
Women and men are very very different so 'reverse the roles' is a silly exercise.
For men, sex tends to be what's scarce. For women, commitment tends to be what's scarce. (Note: This is a general trend which may not hold for weird places like the Bay Area.)
If men sexually pursue antisocial women, that's not necessarily a blackpill for women, since sex is more abundant for women anyways.
Men *marrying* antisocial women would be the blackpill for women.
Here's an example of what an actual blackpilled woman looks like: https://loloverruled.substack.com/p/you-cant-fuck-the-sad-away/comment/103480270
>But men have the luxury that any and all dumb sexual choices they make is explained away by “well they’re men, they’re horny pervs, what did you expect”. Whereas when women make dumb sexual choices and have sexual fantasies that are uncomfortable, they’re never given this excuse. They get psychoanalysed.
Women are constantly proclaiming about what they want from men. When they go for the opposite, that's a blackpill. That's another key reason why your analogy doesn't hold. There's a shared cultural understanding that men are horndogs, yet women make proclamations of their own virtue which they don't live up to.
For your analogy to hold, women would have to be responding to red pill content by saying: "Yep, well what did you expect? Us women are horndogs. Sometimes we think with the vah jay jay. It can't be helped." Honestly, I would welcome if more women stated that aloud, so we could at least have a frank discussion. The current situation sometimes feels like half of the women complaining about the behavior that the other half of them are incentivizing, and somehow men are the only ones ever to blame.
I am indeed from a weird place, a place so weird that a pick up artist wrote an entire book about how PUA techniques apparently don’t work on women here (Roosh V’s “don’t bang Denmark”), so.
I thought American society and other WEIRD societies may had gotten so far that it was understood now that women can also be pervy horn dogs sometimes. OTOH, the US is unusually religious for its wealth. I can imagine that mix of religious purity culture that Scandinavians associate with the 1950’s or earlier, with its urbanism and “woke” faction, makes for a very strange dating culture.
Nevertheless, I’m pretty sure American women knows that some men care more about hotness in their wives than personality, so they’re willing to overlook anti-social traits. Maybe they even find the anti social traits hot - “don’t stick your dick in crazy”, “but crazy chicks are better in bed” is a sentiment I’ve definitely heard sometimes in American culture. Men are surprised that some women may have similar priorities. Noted.
>I am indeed from a weird place, a place so weird that a pick up artist wrote an entire book about how PUA techniques apparently don’t work on women here (Roosh V’s “don’t bang Denmark”), so.
Very interesting, do Danish women complain about being unable to find enough casual sex though? Somehow I doubt it. Did they get mad at Roosh because his book means they'll get less casual sex?
>I thought American society and other WEIRD societies may had gotten so far that it was understood now that women can also be pervy horn dogs sometimes.
There was a recent prior wave of feminism in the US that was in the business of insisting that. The post-#MeToo wave has quietly removed this plank from the feminist platform. Nowadays feminists supposedly have a zero-tolerance policy for aggressive guys. That's why it's a blackpill.
I don't think religion is a big contributor at this point. The US might be more religious on paper, but I don't think this contributes a ton to the US gender discourse.
Perhaps the relative strength of Danish/American welfare states is playing a role: https://www.richardhanania.com/p/a-mate-selection-theory-of-feminization
Eh. Imo it says things everyone kind of knew already: a lot of women are sexually submissive and a lot of sexually submissive women think guys should just take them even if they resist. The problem with that is just that women aren't all like this, so if you actually do that, you're risking making a horrible mistake.
Someone needs to do a bayesian analysis of how many of the women this guy slept with were raped VS actually wanted it.