Saturday, February 26, 2011

A life well lived

I don't normally feature poetry her at GfM:WCMCLFPUAftVoM, but I really liked this poem over at The Thinking Housewife.

I like how the woman in the poem knew instantly that this was her man, and that it was based on his kindness and truth. I'm not saying that all men and all women can know so soon, because they obviously can't. Occasionally it happens like that, but usually it doesn't.

Death comes for us all, my Lord, even for Kings. And a good death largely consists of a life well lived. The woman in this poem lived life well. May we all be so fortunate.

Friday, February 25, 2011

Dalrock catches Match.com doing something shady?

Dalrock has a couple of posts up about a shady blog posted at Match.com.

Fact? Fiction?

So apparently, it's about a 40 something divorced woman who eventually starts dating a rugged handy man type who is secretly a millionaire. And her ex husband begs her to take her back. I guess. I didn't read the blog, but that's what Dally is saying, so I believe him.

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Women are not entitled to dates

Hat tip to the Old Beauchamp Brogan Distinguished Professor of Law. I predict this post at The Frisky will be widely dissected by the Manosphere.

Where to start?

First, I'm generally an advocate of more dating. I think more men should ask more women out, and more women, when asked, should say yes.

And by dating, I don't necessarily mean the typical movie or dinner. Men who know Game have a broader understanding of what constitutes a date. In short, it's any time an unmarried man and woman agree to meet up at a specific time and place for a mutual activity when both sides know of potential for further romantic interest. Movies and dinners are usually terrible dating activities because they're so sedentary.

A man today who is interested in a potential long term relationship has to be casual about a date because a woman who senses any whiff of premature formality will react by thinking it's too much too soon and who does this guy think he is anyway. So a woman shouldn't expect a man to show up with his hair combed neatly and a box of chocolates.

The better course is for a man to leave a woman wondering, and nothing is better for that than strategic ambiguity.

Does it suck to be on the receiving end of that? Probably. I don't care.

And I gotta say, I love it when a woman theorizes that a man doesn't ask her out because he's "intimidated" by her or "afraid" of rejection. Guys, have you ever been intimidated by a woman? Yeah, me neither. But notice how "intimidate" and "afraid" is language that ascribes fault or defect to the man. Women never seem to understand that a man could feel ambivalent about her as a long term prospect or wife material. Or that a guy might be juggling a couple of other girls and that means she's not the top priority. Or he might be busy with work. Or busy with family. Or busy with a grad school application. Or whatever. It's always a fault or defect of the man. Unreal.

Also, women don't realize the second and third order effects of turning down an acceptable guy for a date, even if she's not feeling it. That guy, in his early years, will take longer to ask out the next girl because rejection sucks. No, he's not "afraid" of rejection, but yes, he is trying to avoid it (did I mention it sucks?). So if a guy is slow in asking you out, you can also thank the previous women in his life. (And, no, that doesn't let the guy off the hook for being slow if he's interested. A man has to learn to not give a shit.)

Of course, in his later years once he's learned Game, he won't be fazed by rejection and won't give a shit, and will simply seek out the next girl.

The bottom line is that girls are not entitled to be asked out on dates. Do you think guys are ENTITLED to go out on dates with anyone they ask?

Saturday, February 5, 2011

Revisiting Karen Owen


I just now came across a piece in The Atlantic by Caitlin Flanagan about Karen Owen. The piece is a month or two old, but I've really enjoyed Flanagan's work in the past. She pisses off all the right people. It's a long piece, starting here, but well worth your time.

The key section of the piece is below. What's interesting to me is what Flanagan misses:

"The notion that Karen Owen is good at getting the guy, that she represents something awesome for the future of feminism, is an assertion that cannot withstand a careful reading of the actual PowerPoint, a package that—far more than Owen could ever have intended—constitutes a story, one with a beginning, middle, and very sad end, and reveals her to be one of the most pitiable women to emerge on the cultural scene in quite a while. Her assignations are arranged chronologically in the thesis, and in the arc of experience that led her from Subject 1 to Subject 13, there is a very old story about women, desire, expectation, dashed hope, and (to use the old, apt, word) ruin.

After a freshman year spent in the thrall of the school’s handsome white athletes, something exciting happened: on the night of her 19th birthday, in September of her junior year [ADC: she turned 19 in September of her junior year? Meaning she was 16 when she showed up at Duke? Seems pretty young to me.], one handsome lacrosse player, recently broken up from his girlfriend of three years, bought her “many, many beers” at a Durham club called Shooters, and then asked her to go back to his house to “hang out.” The invitation was thrilling; it’s easy to imagine that the prospect of becoming his next years-long girlfriend was enticing, and even if the night began with some strange twists and turns—such as the man inviting his pals to admire her breasts outside the bar—wasn’t that the way it had probably begun for the last girlfriend? But once they went to his house, and then to his bed, things weren’t quite what she had hoped for: “It was over too quickly. I was probably a little awkward and didn’t really know how to move or what to do. And it was a tad bit painful …”

She never slept with him again—apparently he had no interest in seeing her again—and she was chastened enough by the events not to risk a repeat of them for several months. It’s not difficult to imagine what the days and weeks following the encounter were like: the expectation that he would call again, the anxious and depressing realization that he was done with her. But the following March, she was ready to try again. After many “long looks” exchanged with a campus tennis star on her way to and from the gym, the young man approached her at Shooters and asked her to dance; on the dance floor, he asked her to go home with him. What followed was the kind of one-night stand that changes a woman. He was rude to her in the cab, and things only got worse once they were in bed: “He was terrible, did not even bother to kiss me more than a few seconds, and finished in about five minutes, after which he simply walked out of the room and did not return.” She reports that “absolutely everything,” except for the fact that he was a successful athlete, was terrible about him, that the whole situation was terrible: “I accidentally left my favorite pair of earrings from South Africa. When I texted him this fact, he responded with ‘I will leave them outside of the building for you.’”

The story of Karen Owen is the story of those forgotten earrings. Imagine the moment in which she paused to take them off—her favorite earrings, the ones that came all the way from South Africa and that she took care to remove before going to bed, because that’s what you do if you’re a responsible girl with a nice pair of earrings. [ADC: Yes, the responsible girl going home for a ONS.] You keep them safe. At the very least, she must have imagined that Subject 2 was inviting her to do what Subject 1 had done—not just to have sex with him, but to hang out with him. And then to be turfed out so rudely, so quickly, to be treated with such ugliness afterward. Imagine having been so young and so hopeful [ADC: Imagine being young and hopeful and then things not working out perfectly!], being used sexually and then held in such contempt that rather than see you again, a young man leaves your jewelry outside his building, where anyone could come along and take it.

Subject 2, who was rated a 1 out of a possible 10, is the impetus for the entire thesis. In fact, at the very end of the whole ugly mess of it, after she has become so good at oral sex that she is repeatedly praised for having no gag reflex, after she has learned to crave sex so rough that she’s left battered, after she’s been cast aside over and over again, the final line of the thesis—before her jaunty “Acknowledgements” slide— is another angry remark about Subject 2. Being rejected by Subject 1 was hurtful and embarrassing, but being treated like a whore by Subject 2 is what broke her heart and her spirit, and if you are the kind of person whose heart and spirit can be broken by a one-night stand, then you may not be the brave new face of anything at all.

When everything went to hell, when the thesis was splashed across the Internet, there weren’t any young men by her side to protect or defend Karen Owen [ADC: Oh, really? Should there have been? There were no worthwhile young men in her life before she decided to fuck athletes? Nobody from the dorms or her classes Freshman and Sophomore year? No worthwhile young men at all, so she was forced to fuck assholes?]. It was a man’s job, though, and the man it fell to (goodbye, bold new face of feminism) was her father. He’s the one who told the New York Times reporter who called the house looking for Karen that his daughter did not have anything to say about the situation. What a moment that must have been at the Owen family home, how much it recalls the ending of “The Man in the Brooks Brothers Shirt.” In that story, years after the affair on the train, the narrator’s father dies; the seducer reads the obituary, and he sends her a telegram: YOU’VE LOST THE BEST FRIEND YOU WILL EVER HAVE."

I'm surprised that Caitlin Flanagan, of all people, lets her off the hook. I can understand her urge to be merciful, but Flanagan is usually a sharp writer of tough truths. And the tough truth here is this, every good man has seen this type of situation play out:

1. Good man likes good woman.
2. Good woman doesn't like good man, not like that, not in that way. Good man is a dear friend.
3. Good woman likes assholes.
4. Good woman gets an asshole.
5. The asshole treats the good woman the way an asshole would, i.e., he's an asshole to her.
6. Good woman is shocked and saddened that the asshole treated her like an asshole.
7. The end.
8. Ok, maybe not the end. Years later, when the good man realizes that he failed with her not because he wasn't good enough (and by good, I mean virtuous), but because he was too good, well, that's a dark realization with dark implications. The best thing to do is to keep growing, keep achieving accomplishments, grow in wisdom, gain confidence, and enjoy the company of all the new good women coming along.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

How the media sees PUAs




Interesting article at TBD.com today on a DC pick up seminar. There's a lot less snark than I would expect. Here's an example:

"We need daring women,” Kelvin [the PUA organizer] tells the men. “Let's go find them!" “But let's move away from the food court, because there's a lot of security here."

Surprisingly, most of the guys say there are there "to learn how to eventually meet that one special someone." Someone should write about this Game for Marriage concept.

Later on one of the instructors offers some worthy advice:
"Sex is merely the carrot; the whole event is a self-help conference in disguise. The pickup community – they call themselves "the community" for short – has veered away from scripted ruses and “negging,” a concept that teaches men to build attraction by making negative comments about a woman. Now they teach men that they just need the confidence to approach women, coupled with the ability to present how great they already are. And they state over and over: Don’t lie to women. Have a plan, but be yourself.

“Things will happen as long as you have personality, as long as she likes who you are, and as long as you’re not fake,” Speer tells the group. “Most women can see through this bullshit that we try to feed them. So the more bullshit you try to feed, the less successful you are with women.”

I never thought of guess the bra-size game:
"One of Michael Hurst’s favorite pickup moves is the guess-your-bra-size game. But be warned, gentlemen: He says you should always guess one size too high on the cup, and one inch too low on the measurement.

Hurst, the D.C.-based author of Become That Guy, speaks calmly but with a self-assurance that borders on smug. If you want to bed a woman, you’ve got to introduce sexual themes as early as you can, he says. You’ve got to say it with a knowing smile, not too seriously, while exceeding social norms for how long you can hold eye contact. He tells women: Every guy you’ve known since you were 13 has tried to scheme a way into your pants. At least he’s honest about it."

I endorse this Zen-like statement:
“Being bad with women is a symptom,” says James Norton, known professionally as Brother James, one of the founders behind D.C.-based Professional Pickup. “The cause of it is you’re bad with your life, and you’ve got to get your life right.”

On not being shy about approaching women:
"Don’t forget that it is the man’s job to approach women and begin the mating ritual, John Keegan, a lifestyle coach from New York City, tells his group of four. “We’re not bothering them, we’re doing our jobs,” he says. “No one in this world wants anything more than to make a connection. Why shouldn’t it be with us?”

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Welcome, Frost of Freedom Twenty-Five

Frost, I wasn't very impressed with your guest post over at Ferd's place, what with your exhortations to hate "God" as a metaphorical construct, even if I agreed with your exhortation to "devote your life to becoming the best possible version of yourself that you can," which I agree with.

I subsequently found your blog.

I encourage my readers (ok, let's be honest, my reader) to check it out. Good writing and some good counsel, especially on the futility of becoming a PUA. We have lessons to learn from PUAs, but that is not our vocation or our avocation. The glory of God is man fully alive. More about St. Irenaeus later.

And Frost, I created a new category for you on my blogroll. If you fit better into an existing category, let me know and I will move you there.