I seriously doubt there is anyone here who has committed rape or felt entitled to sex, for that reason. Here, what you find is a lot of men trying to overcome the lack of knowledge about how to get into a relationship. Men in that position are not the ones out committing rape, abusing girlfriends, abandoning their children, etc. Such victimizers already know how to get to the relationship step as second nature!
Now, with that said, there is a distantly-related (though not dangerous) feeling of entitlement that arises in discussions like these that needs to be addressed. Let me explain.
Let’s say I’m told all throughout growing up, what is and is not appropriate behavior around women, and over time I internalize these rules, automatically identifying instances I see (of inappropriate behavior) as bad. This advice matches that given in popular, respected books about dating. And yet despite lots of interactions with women where I have romantic intent, I am utterly unable to generate interest in any of them.
First, let’s get a few misunderstandings out of the way: Of course women are thinking, volitional beings who are not obligated to perform for anyone’s sake and should not be viewed as slaves or property.
Even accepting all of that, one should anticipate that if I’m following the real female wants and expectations, and am an eligible, attractive male by conventional measures, that it should lead to some non-trivial fraction of these women developing interest. When none of them do, and when women flock in droves, full of desire, to the very same men who steamroll right over the rules I learned, and who appear to be extremely disrespectful toward women … well, that’s very strong evidence that I was not correctly taught what women do and don’t want.
I believe that people are entitled to be correctly taught the social “rules of engagement”. When men realize that the rules they were taught don’t remotely mesh with reality, and they have to “go underground” to get the truth, they feel that they have been deprived of something to which they are entitled—and I believe they are justified in feeling this way.
Men in that position are not the ones out committing rape, abusing girlfriends, abandoning their children, etc. Such victimizers already know how to get to the relationship step as second nature!
This feels nice (people who are like me aren’t the raping kind!), and for that reason I suspect it. What evidence is there that such men, once they do get girlfriends/women, are less abusive than the general population?
I seriously doubt there is anyone here who has committed rape or felt entitled to sex, for that reason.
I don’t see where Alicorn postulated a reason for men to feel entitled to sex – did you get the clauses reversed?
Plausibly nobody here has explicitly believed themselves to be entitled to sex, but I doubt none have implicitly held something like this attitude at some point.
I think the implicitly-held-similar belief is what I spelled out in the post: they believe they’ve “done their part to adhere to the standard they were taught”, but have been rendered ineffective because they were lied to, and in the absence of that lie, they would … have had more success. So, it follows, those others deprived them of that success.
Yes, but they may also resent women for not cooperating/rewarding them for following explicit social norms, for willfully being confusing, for cynically advocating (individually or, at least implicitly, as a unitary Matriarchy) these norms with no intent of rewarding them, and probably other similar things.
It seems to me a simpler hypothesis that these women are acting appropriately by avoiding you. Given that, it would be a disservice to potential romantic interests if you were given tools to pretend to be someone they’d want to be with.
But then, the ‘fundamental attribution error’ comes naturally to us virtue ethicists.
This doesn’t quite make sense. You seem to be arguing that women have some capacity to identify some “true nature” of potential suitors completely independent of their behaviour. It also suggests that women are acting appropriately by not avoiding PUAs. Which leads to an interesting quandary: is Joe’s “true” nature what women see before or after he learns PUA skills? Does that mean that naturally intuiting PUA skills (i.e. not having to learn them) makes a man a good catch? It’s not a simple hypothesis at all.
It’s also worth noting that not all PUA strategies are dishonest or exploitative. Some of them are nearly-common sense, and some of them are unusual but fundamentally honest.
It seems to me a simpler hypothesis that these women are acting appropriately by avoiding you. Given that, it would be a disservice to potential romantic interests if you were given tools to pretend to be someone they’d want to be with.
That hypothesis is very simple but it isn’t relevant to what Silas is saying. He is objecting to misinformation directed at guys and not even commenting on what women should be expected to do.
I seriously doubt there is anyone here who has committed rape or felt entitled to sex, for that reason. Here, what you find is a lot of men trying to overcome the lack of knowledge about how to get into a relationship. Men in that position are not the ones out committing rape, abusing girlfriends, abandoning their children, etc. Such victimizers already know how to get to the relationship step as second nature!
Now, with that said, there is a distantly-related (though not dangerous) feeling of entitlement that arises in discussions like these that needs to be addressed. Let me explain.
Let’s say I’m told all throughout growing up, what is and is not appropriate behavior around women, and over time I internalize these rules, automatically identifying instances I see (of inappropriate behavior) as bad. This advice matches that given in popular, respected books about dating. And yet despite lots of interactions with women where I have romantic intent, I am utterly unable to generate interest in any of them.
First, let’s get a few misunderstandings out of the way: Of course women are thinking, volitional beings who are not obligated to perform for anyone’s sake and should not be viewed as slaves or property.
Even accepting all of that, one should anticipate that if I’m following the real female wants and expectations, and am an eligible, attractive male by conventional measures, that it should lead to some non-trivial fraction of these women developing interest. When none of them do, and when women flock in droves, full of desire, to the very same men who steamroll right over the rules I learned, and who appear to be extremely disrespectful toward women … well, that’s very strong evidence that I was not correctly taught what women do and don’t want.
I believe that people are entitled to be correctly taught the social “rules of engagement”. When men realize that the rules they were taught don’t remotely mesh with reality, and they have to “go underground” to get the truth, they feel that they have been deprived of something to which they are entitled—and I believe they are justified in feeling this way.
This feels nice (people who are like me aren’t the raping kind!), and for that reason I suspect it. What evidence is there that such men, once they do get girlfriends/women, are less abusive than the general population?
Other than that I fully agree with your comment.
I don’t see where Alicorn postulated a reason for men to feel entitled to sex – did you get the clauses reversed?
Plausibly nobody here has explicitly believed themselves to be entitled to sex, but I doubt none have implicitly held something like this attitude at some point.
I think the implicitly-held-similar belief is what I spelled out in the post: they believe they’ve “done their part to adhere to the standard they were taught”, but have been rendered ineffective because they were lied to, and in the absence of that lie, they would … have had more success. So, it follows, those others deprived them of that success.
Yes, but they may also resent women for not cooperating/rewarding them for following explicit social norms, for willfully being confusing, for cynically advocating (individually or, at least implicitly, as a unitary Matriarchy) these norms with no intent of rewarding them, and probably other similar things.
Okay, I agree with you on that, but that’s already quite far from the “feeling entitled to sex” that you suggested before.
It seems to me a simpler hypothesis that these women are acting appropriately by avoiding you. Given that, it would be a disservice to potential romantic interests if you were given tools to pretend to be someone they’d want to be with.
But then, the ‘fundamental attribution error’ comes naturally to us virtue ethicists.
This doesn’t quite make sense. You seem to be arguing that women have some capacity to identify some “true nature” of potential suitors completely independent of their behaviour. It also suggests that women are acting appropriately by not avoiding PUAs. Which leads to an interesting quandary: is Joe’s “true” nature what women see before or after he learns PUA skills? Does that mean that naturally intuiting PUA skills (i.e. not having to learn them) makes a man a good catch? It’s not a simple hypothesis at all.
It’s also worth noting that not all PUA strategies are dishonest or exploitative. Some of them are nearly-common sense, and some of them are unusual but fundamentally honest.
That hypothesis is very simple but it isn’t relevant to what Silas is saying. He is objecting to misinformation directed at guys and not even commenting on what women should be expected to do.