What is it with MRAs and PUAs and MGTOWs and their endless acronyms? Here’s a new one on me: LMR. “Last minute resistance”. It’s how the acronym-ridden ones refer to women’s efforts to prevent them from sticking their penis into their vagina. It’s all about rape, in other words.
One of the odious PUAs at RoK tried to publish an e-book titled LMR Exposed: How To Overcome Her Last Minute Resistance To Sex, Turn ‘No’ Into ‘Yes’ And Get The Lay! It’s been yanked off the virtual shelves once the ‘bot slaves at Amazon realized what it was about. It wasn’t hard. Quotes like this…
I’ve had situations where a girl is lying naked with me on my bed, still loudly proclaiming that we’re not having sex… Other times, I just forcefully removed the hand, stuck my dick inside, and she welcomed it eagerly once I was in.
…make it clear that we’re talking about a rape manual.
Tauriq Moosa and Jezebel. have more, including the author’s reaction to “cuckoo social justice warriors”.
Sex is really nice, but why do some people make it their defining characteristic? And then be so damn bad at it?
Headline at HuffPro:
Uhm, no, by his own words, he has admitted he is a rapist. No ‘accused’ or merely ‘apologist’ necessary.
@zenlike
Pshaw. Feminists are so ridiculously touchy. Criminalizing forcibly penetrating women who’ve explicitly told you “no” and calling it rape is just the repression of masculinity. What’s next, saying it’s illegal to break someone’s ribs after they spill beer on you at a bar?
Reading those excerpts I realize I’ve been doing it wrong all these years. I’ve waited for the word yes, stopped in the middle of the event when asked, and went away when it was requested. Up until now I thought I was doing ok but I am clearly failing my male counterparts by making anything else seem illegal by comparison.
I don’t get why anyone would even admit to having such difficulty persuading someone to have sex with them, let alone write a book about it.
Huh. Well, there goes the very last chance for PUAs to pretend they’re not actively advocating for rape and training rapists. They can’t ever deny it again now.
Gah. At least Amazon had the sense to pull his book.
5, Phil Harrison
You see Phil, it’s the Western women’s fault. For not being real women anymore. And that’s why Vincent is now living in Thailand*, where women are still ‘real’ women.
And now I’m going to barf for a bit…
(* Because nothing says manly man more then going to live in the sex trafficking and human trafficking capital of the world.)
I have no words to express how repugnant I find this, or the depth of my contempt for its author.
This is clearly a rape manual. It doesn’t even really pretend to be anything else, and in it Vinturi pretty much seems to admit to forcing himself upon women, and then we only have his word to back his claims that they offered some kind of ex post facto retroactive consent. How else can one interpret;
(Emphasis added)
With what seems to be a pretty solid public admission of criminal behaviour to go on I hope that the police are taking action against this misogynistic arsehat.
The link to the article over at Jezebel gives a deeper insight into the toxic mindset that underpins Vinturi’s attitude toward sex and consent;
That’s right – Vinturi seriously argues that no doesn’t mean ‘no’, not even physical resistance means ‘no’ – it’s all just a test, you see. A test to see how much the man ‘wants it’, how far he is prepared to go; variables by which the woman judges his virility and fitness for sexual congress. If you don’t force the isssue, if you treat her like an actual person and respect her bodily sautonomy, then you fail the ‘test’, dontcha know, and we she walks away you have no one to blame but your insufficiently virile self.
In Vinturi’s deeply poisonous worldview, women are only interested in men who are prepared to rape them, if that is what it takes to get what they want. Refusing to coutenance rape makes a man ‘lesser’ and somehow ‘unworthy’ according to this twisted philosophy.
This goes far beyond rape aplogia – this is openly pro-rape, and denigrates the very notion that a woman’s consent and bodily autonomy are even worth considering as factors.
Vinturi is not just a disgusting excuse for a human being. He presents a clear danger to women.
This is where the MRA/PUA terror of false rape allegations comes from. They’re not frightened of women they didn’t harm accusing them of rape. They’re frightened of women they raped accusing them of rape.
None of those are actually acronyms though.
Or, you know, she was shocked at the force you used and too terrified to resist any further.
This scumbag doesn’t strike me as the type to be able to read a woman’s reactions very well. I doubt he thinks any further than the end of his dick.
Disgusting.
FUCKING SLEDGEHAMMER. This subject comes up a lot here so I knew sooner or later I’d see something like this. I thought I’d be OK, I was wrong. It’s been exactly one week since my fiancee was raped. She told him no, it’s not going to happen. He didn’t give a fuck. She was raped by some fucking piece of shit who thinks exactly like the guy who wrote this. Repeatedly screaming fuck you just doesn’t cut it anymore.
Phil Harroson@5:
They don’t think they’re having difficulty persuading women to have sex with them. They literally think every man on earth has this same problem of women not wanting to have sex with them. To these guys, the only difference between men is that some use guile (“I will pretend to be a feminist so the wimmins will let me put my dick in them!”), and some use a more direct method, i.e. force (justifiable force, to their creepy minds).
And of course it’s a self-perpetuating cycle, because women get the whiff of these guys’ creepiness, and thus women want to sleep with these guys willingly. That confirms the creeps’ thesis that “no women want to have sex” (completely missing the “with ME” that should go at the end of that sentence).
That’s why they usually go after drunk/drugged women, whose creepdar is full of static, or very young/inexperienced women, who may not have learned to read the creepdar so well yet. This lets them get into proximity, making the subsequent rape much easier than hitting women over the head and dragging them into an alley.
Argh, in 2nd paragraph, that should obviously be “and thus NO women want to sleep with these guys willingly.”
The Jezebel article includes a bit from the introduction:
Christ. The damage he is willing to perpetrate in the name of his monstrous insecurity and need to feed his ego is overwhelming.
Bargearse @ 13, I am so sorry. I hope you both find your way through this okay, and are able to help one another along the way.
Rey Fox @#11: that was a really excellent piece of pedantry.
Inaji @ 16
Thank you.
I do wonder why he says that.
Perhaps she was screaming in pain/shock/anger, and he interpreted that as pleasure?
After all, that wouldn’t be the only time he had engaged in astoundingly wishful thinking:
Bingo. Every time I see someone being so absolutely paranoid and terrified of being falsely accused, I have to wonder why.
Mr. Vincent builds a worldview around the fact that despite all his PUA training and practice women still refuse to have enthusiastically consensual sex with him. If this happens so often that he cares to write a book about it, then Occam’s razor leaves him as the problem, not at all the women who don’t want to sleep with him. A little meditation on his lack of empathy and successful happiness strategies might be in order (one of his other books is on Manly Meditation).
Living in Thailand adds another bias to his tales: It is very, very rare for a respectable Thai woman to have romantic, (not to talk of sexual) relations with a foreigner. So the Bangkok pickup market is all in professional hands, which means Mr. Vincent pays (a few dozen bucks) for each of his rape fantasies. But if even hardcore pros refuse to do as he wishes, he must be extraordinarily icky…
bargearse,
I’m really sorry your fiancee went through that.
It is weird how they adore using ugly, unaesthetic acronyms to obscure their ugly, horrifyingly brutish intent. On the other hand, they’re making great strides in medicine; reading the advertising blurb on that book is a surefire emetic.
Beatrice @ 23
Thank you. It’s strange, she tried to act like it was no big thing, just one of those things women deal with if they go out without a guy. I’ve been angry for a week but she’s been numb. I’ve been waiting for it to finally hit home, it happened a few hours ago. She’s finally cried herself to sleep and all I’ve got is anger and uselessness. I need an outlet and this is one of the few places I can get it out.
I struggle to understand how such individuals can develop such a belief that they have a right to sex no matter what. They obviously have no empathy for women and seem to think life is directed by their penis.
It would be sad, if the potential for harm they pose was not so dangerous.
I almost wish someone could write OIR: How to overcome the Odious Inadequate Rapist and His Attempts to Harm You.
Chapters could include everything from watching your drinks (as these OIRs may resort to drugging you) to knotwork with the penis.
Apologies, sometimes I have to resort to twisted humour to deal with the horrifying things I see in the world.
I’m often torn between reading Pharyngula because I think it is important to know the awful things that sometimes go on in this world (how else could you fight them?) but it also makes me sick to the stomach.
Bargearse:
It’s not strange, your fianceé is simply operating on the principles that have been hammered into her all her life. Yes, you have anger, and plenty of it, but don’t think it’s coupled to uselessness. All the things you’d like to do according to your anger wouldn’t help anyway, but your friendship, love, and empathy will provide a foundation for recovery. This is going to be a seriously difficult time for you both, and you’ll need a lot of patience. A little help might not hurt, either, in the form of a qualified advocate a/o counselor. It’s going to take time, remember that when the impatience hits.
bargearse @25
I’m so sorry to hear what happened to your fiancee. It sounds like you are being as supportive as is possible in a frustrating and anger inducing situation.
I don’t know what else to say.
I am sorry to hear that your fiancee went through something so terrible bargearse, and I imagine that your own sense of helplessness must be difficult to handle.
I hope that you are able to help each other through this, and that the rapist arsehole who did this is held to account.
mikee,
Don’t worry, there’s plenty of versions of “How to overcome the Odious Inadequate Rapist and His Attempts to Harm You” around. Both written and unwritten ones us women start hearing from about 10 years old to forever.
Helpful suggestions I really like come in advice sources called things like Men stopping rape or How to avoid raping anyone rather than How to avoid being raped.
Bargears, I am so, so sorry. That is so shit.
inaji @ mikee
Thank you, I didn’t want to unload but I read the OP and just saw red. The good wishes and advice is appreciated. I hope you’ll forgive me if I still hope for an MRA to put in an appearance, it’d be therapeutic.
Gen
thankyou
also thanks gregory
Beatrice@30
“Men stopping rape”
Absolutely, thank you for that reminder.
I’ll happily hold while you go at it.
I really feel sorry for the wives of such rapists if they suffer a debilitating mishap. I would foresee either divorce when they need support the most, or being repeatedly raped to satisfy the needs of an unfeeling sociopath.
Bargearse, this might be a starting point for you:
http://www.rainn.org/get-help/help-a-loved-one
http://www.rainn.org/get-information/sexual-assault-recovery/tips-for-friends-and-family
http://www.rainn.org/get-information/sexual-assault-recovery/self-care-for-survivors
Beatrice @30, I really like this one; it’s about how bystanders can help prevent or halt aquaintence rape.
Here’s one that just popped up on Twitter.
inaji @ 37
read the links, started crying again. There’s good advice there and it’ll be helpful tomorrow. Also a little weirded out over seeing Mick Foley’s face on a sexual abuse support site. Not something I’d normally associate a pro wrestler with.
What’s that old saying about being known by the company you keep? Well, Carl Timothy Smith, how much of your time with your acronym buddies is spent educating the rapists and wannabe rapists that what they are doing is rape, and that there’s no fucking excuse on the planet for what they are doing? How often are you going against the tide, and refusing to enable such horrible shit? Or are you just one of those dudes who shoves their hands in their pockets, hangs their head, and says nothing? Or are you one of those who cheers on the sidelines for those uppity b!tches getting their comeuppance?
That one is just too stupid.
Arrest everyone who belongs to a group that uses an acronym! They are all rapists. All of them.
Bargearse:
My heart goes out to you. I hope that helps a little bit. There are good people everywhere, even in pro wrestling. :D
Re: 39:
Ah, Carl Timothy Smith:
No, you don’t think alike because you use acronyms, even the same acronyms. But the fact that you are attracted to the same movement and use the same acronyms to express the same ideas – denotatively and connotatively – that might indicate you think alike.
At least, it’s a good null hypothesis. There are ways, of course, that you could prove that you reject misogyny, but I rather doubt they would much attract you.
@Bargearse and partner:
My full sympathy, and more empathy than I can reasonably spare, coming your way.
well, except for those like MAGTFTC MCAGCC SAPR (who are way, way too busy).
bargearse I’m so very sorry for what your fiancée has suffered. I wish you all the best in everything you do to try and be supportive; I hope you are able to help her through this, that she gets all the support she needs – and that you too can get the support you need. And I hope that the rapist is held to account.
(and btw, the middle one at least is a true acronym, conventionally pronounced like the pseudo-Irish surname ‘McGaksee’)
You know…Hothead Paisan might have been right after all. Where’s my labrys? My car needs a set of genuine trailer-hitch nuts!
Seriously, these people are almost trying to make this a self-fulfilling prophecy. What kind of utter narcissist does someone have to be to even think like this, that another person’s body is their property?!
I’m so sorry, Bargearse, for both your fiancee and you. You have my sympathy and empathy.
Also, Mick Foley’s been working with RAINN for a long while, he may be a pro wrestler, but he is pretty serious about helping survivors. Which is pretty cool, imo, if surprising.
David M. @ #19: “I do wonder why he says that.
Perhaps she was screaming in pain/shock/anger, and he interpreted that as pleasure?”
Because it can be much safer and over faster if you pretend to enjoy it? Because you know the guy’s fine with raping you, and you don’t wanna find out what other violence he’s okay with? Because it’s not uncommon for them to get angry and not stop unless they think you’ve had an orgasm (which means they weren’t rapists in their minds)? Or make you apologize for making them feel bad.
Azuma Hazuki:
It’s very common behaviour, and it takes place all around us, every day. When the rich peer down their nose at the poor, with a wave of dismissal. Every day people who walk by certain people determined not to see them at all, let alone as fellow humans. When one group decides to harass and deride certain individuals. When one group decides they know best about another group’s right to autonomy. And so on and on and on and on. It’s very easy for people to dehumanize another person or whole groups of people. All it takes is to start thinking of people as things.
How do I rescind from the human race?
I can’t imagine what use sex is if it’s not to please your partner.
I can easily masturbate. I do it all the time, when I feel like it. But when I have sex with a partner, I generally do it so SHE can get off. Not me. I do usually orgasm when she does without anything even touching me because I’m so thrilled that she’s so happy.
Women are all very different. (I felt stupider just writing that, it’s such a no doy.)
Just start with a conversation. What do you like? What don’t you like? Some women really like something in their vaginas. Many women (in my lesbian history) do not. Some women really like anal play and some don’t. Some like only their breasts touched while others hate to have their breasts touched. There is so much grey area in sex that is solidified by talking.
If they don’t know or can’t say, I think it’s best to not do anything and just leave. How can sex be fun if you’re forcing it?
HappiestSadist @ 50
::shudder:: Yes. Play along for your own safety and now there’s the added bonus of people dismissing your story because, well, you didn’t act like it was rape, now did you? Been there, done that, refused to tell anyone the story because I know better.
As it’s put in this document here:
Perform a sexual act on someone after dismissing the importance of their consent and then they act like it’s okay? Whether they’re really consenting or not, you’ve just proved yourself willing to rape. And that is the only charitable interpretation of that hateful book possible: definitely willing to rape!
Krasnaya Koshka:
For a rapist, that is fun.
It just might be like, I don’t know, women are actual people, human beings!
And not vague human-ish whales to be harpooned, and notched.
Beyond the beyond-disgustingness of the whole thing,– these guys sound just like my father–do these men not want real relationships with women?
Join my dad, then! He has many guns! He lives on a large plot of land! He has no women around him! He’s nearly 70 and harasses me daily! You could be
It just might be like, I don’t know, women are actual people, human beings!
And not vague human-ish whales to be harpooned, and notched.
Beyond the beyond-disgustingness of the whole thing,– these guys sound just like my father–do these men not want real relationships with women?
Join my dad, then! He has many guns! He lives on a large plot of land! He has no women around him! He’s nearly 70 and harasses me daily! You could be him.
Krasnaya Koshka @56
Your father sounds a quite bit like mine, with the land and the guns. Mine used to brag to me about the girls he’d raped. He didn’t touch me that way, but he made sure to let me know that he wanted to, which is one hell of a mindfuck in itself.
Going back to the quote from the Jezebel site I included in my post @ 9;
Even if one ignored all the voluminous evidence to the contrary, and chose for the sake of argument to accept that Vinturi’s basic premise was somehow accurate – that for some unknowable reason a substantial proportion of women regularly engaged in ‘testing’ the ‘potency’ of men by saying no just to see if he is willing to force the issue and thus prove his notional ‘manliness’ (urgh; the very notion makes me nauseous), and that if you don’t follow Vinturi’s advice then you will never have sex again (or at all, depending upon personal circumstance) then the logical, ethical response is not to assume that every no is a test and try to ‘pass’ by proving your preparedness to rape. Even if those women’s whose ‘no’ was in earnest were rare – even if only one in a hundred (or one in a thouand, or one in ten thousand) women who said no actually meant no – then the only ethical response from any halfway decent human being is to assume that every no was meant in earnest, because the risk that the woman you are with might be that one in a hundred is simply unacceptably high.
And if that means that you will never have sex again? The response to that has to be ‘so what?’ There is no way to know if the no was meant seriously or not, so you must work on the assumption that every no means no, and that only an unambiguous yes, provided with crystal clear consent, is a yes. Never having sex again is a small price to pay if it is the only way to reasonably ensure that you never rape anyone.
So, even if we are unreasonably generous, and grant Vinturi’s painfully stupid and grotesquely misogynistic premise, his pro-rape conclusion still doesn’t flow logically from it as the action of anyone who is even slighty ethically functional.
And in any case it is all a moot point, since what kind of person would even want to have sex with someone who plays such incredibly dangerous mind games with serious issues like their own consent? Why wouldn’t you see how toxic the situation was and at least try to walk away?
Whichever way you slice it, and no matter how generous you try to be, there is simply no way to read Vinturi’s idiotic and bigoted screed as anything other than a clear preparedness to rape, and advocacy for that attitude in other men.
ew.
EW.
As the father of a 17-yo daughter, I cannot even begin to fathom that shit.
I’m sorry you had that father.
Chas:
Unfortunately, it’s fairly common behaviour, along with a father constantly remarking on the sexual attributes of a daughter, making lurid comments, wanting to know if she’s going to ‘fuck’ someone, etc. It may not be physical rape, however, it has much the same result psychologically and emotionally, the same fallout, so to speak.
Even after my childhood rape stopped, the family member kept up with remarks and slimy “feel you up” hugs and such. It’s a constant threat.
Sorry about the double post! I’m in the woods currently.
I think a Trigger Warning is warranted here:
lindsay @ 58- That’s horrible. Total mindfuck. My dad did finger-rape me (I have no idea why, after 35 years, I must clarify this as not being penis rape) several times. But far worse to me was his constant coming on to my friends. That was more damaging to me than what he did to my body, I think. His constant reminding me that he could “have” any of my friends.
I might be derailing. Let me know if I am.
Inaji @55– Unfortunately, I know.
Inaji @ 61 – Yes, exactly. With my dad it was, “I want to see how much of a woman you’ve become.”
And he was an atheist high school teacher.
ChasCPeterson @ 60
Thank you for your empathy. Your daughter is one of the fortunate ones.
Lindsay and Krasnaya Koshka, I’m so sorry you went through these things. They are awful, they change you and your life forever.
Inaji and Krasnaya Koshka;
That is indescribably horrible. That such evil exists in the world, and is so comparatively common, makes me despair for our species.
———————————————————————————————————–
ChasCPeterson @ 60;
Even as a non-parent, the very thought makes me feel phsically sick. I can’t imagine how much worse it must be to have a daughter and realise that there are fathers as twisted and broken as this in existence.
Gregory Greenwood, I’ve always loved your comments here. You’re one of the people I’ve read with great interest when you post. You’ve given me a lot of hope so thank you.
Krasnaya Koshka @ 63;
I hope you don’t mind me saying that, although I have never met your father, I really, really hate the man.
As has been pointed out before, all atheism does is remove some of the religiously based obstacles to being a decent human being. In itself it is no guarantee that an individual will have even taken the smallest of steps toward being a good person, and as we have seen all too often, it is entirely possible to be an atheist and at the same time be a bigoted, cruel, and abusive arsehole of the first water.
As for being a high school teacher – as horrifying as it is, for some predators that is simply an opportunity to operate in a ‘target-rich environment’. Given his monstrous behaviour toward you, I fear that it is entirely possible that he may have assaulted other young people in his professional capacity as well.
Inaji
Yes, it is. The extremely fucked up dynamic of your father finding you sexually attractive, and simultaneously telling you that you should be ashamed of your harmful sexuality is not rare. Mine never laid a finger on me sexually, but I do get to deal with lots and lots of fallout.
I am shocked to hear multiple other people also have a +70 year old father with land and many, many guns. I thought I was the only one. Mine is also a former expert marksman sniper trained by the US marines. Just in case you were thinking of running away, he liked to demonstrate how he could shoot you dead from miles away using the neighbors puppies as targets.
*solidarity fist bumps with lindsay and Krasnaya*
And, of course, I adore Inaji. She’s what always brings me back to Pharyngula. And I’ve learned a lot from her.
Now I am derailing.
Actually, I don’t even know what to say now.
I have wondered if I’ve coerced some women into sex but I don’t ever recall being interested once they weren’t interested. Sometimes it was quite nice just to sleep, snuggle, go get breakfast and call it a done relationship.
Krasnaya Koshka @ 67;
It is nice to think that my comments may go some small way toward helping and making other people feel just a little bit better. I have been fortunate in my life in many ways to have never experienced horror such as that which you have endured and survived.
I was born a cis/het white guy to a middle class family. Through a mere accident of birth, and in no way due to merit, I am swimming in entirely unearned privilege along multiple axes. I think it encumbant upon me to try to do something, however small, to push back against a system that offers a pasty and generally pretty unworthy type like myself so much for no good reason, while grinding other (often much, much better) people down due to the stupidest and most ugly of bigotry.
It is people like you who inspire me; people who have suffered personal trauma and adversity beyond my limited capacity to imagine, and yet who are prepared to talk about the most painful and debilitating experiences of their lives in order to take a stand on behalf of other survivors who have undergone similar abuse. If you have the courage to do that, then doing whatever I can to support you, and demanding that others listen to your important words, is the least I can do.
Gregory Greenwood @ 68 –
I have no idea why I added that he was an atheist. I know atheists are not above-board. He was raised Mormon but I never knew it. He was/is a horrific racist. That’s why he lost his teaching job and why he now lives in a junkyard.
I know for a fact that he harassed many of his former students.
I haven’t spoken to him in 26 years, though he writes to me every other day, no matter my email address. I just delete. But it is withering to have him follow me around like that.
Tethys:
Jesus Christ, my heart breaks. I’m so sorry. So very sorry.
Krasnaya Koshka, I adore you too.
Gregory Greenwood @ 71 –
You are an awesome ally. Thank you for getting it and being you.
Many years ago I had the displeasure of having to work with a guy who reminds me of Vinturi. He absolutely hated women. He was convinced that all women were flaunting themselves at him with the purpose of frustrating him. He called them “bitches” routinely and would point them out to me on the street:
“Look at that bitch wearing that short skirt. Fucking whore. She wouldn’t fuck you unless you were a millionaire.”
I put up with it for about a week, but during the second week we were working at a house and a couple of young women were sun-bathing in bikinis in the back yard of the house next door. He became almost enraged.
He wanted to go next door and “tie those bitches up with wire (we were electricians) and fuck the shit out of them.” He was convinced they were taunting him, even though they weren’t even aware we were there.
I asked my boss to put me with someone else after that because the guy really gave me the creeps.
One has to wonder where all that hate comes from.
ChasCPeterson @60
As another father of a daughter, I have to agree. I feel nauseous just thinking about it.
Frog @ 14
I trust you’re not generalizing here. Due to my appearance and social awkwardness, I have often been described as a “creep” or “creepy,” and as a result, I had no success with dating since 1997. Needless to say, my lack of a love life can be very depressing and frustrating. However, no matter how lonely or bitter I’ve become, I’ve never considered it to be acceptable to force sex on anyone, nor will you hear me justify MRA assholes like this.
Not all creeps are that sort of creep.
Krasnaya Koshka @ 72;
Unfortunately, there are no shortage of people among the nastier corners of atheism out there who think that to be an atheist is to have somehow proven your intellectual and moral superiority for all time; as if seeing through the lies of religion means that you possess an almost clairvoyant vision denied to mere mortals. Reminders like those from your post @ 63 help poke holes in the self righteousness of those who equate atheism with automatic moral superiority.
It sounds like he ditched the formal religion, but kept many of its attitudes toward women (and, horrifyingly, underage girls and even his own daughter).
Bigotries often come in clusters, rather like pustules. A misogynist is almost always also a homophobe, and usually a racist into the bargain. I suppose that, if you have such a mindset that you are given to dehumanising one group of people based upon an attribute of themselevs that they cannot control, it becomes all but inevitable that you will expand your clutch of prejudices to include other marginalised groups as well.
At least he got fired from his teaching job. That should at least limit his access to victims to some small degree.
Perhaps unsurprising, but no less horrifying for that. I take it he was never prosecuted, still less brought to justice for his crimes? It is usually the way of things due to the unpreparedness of the authorities to take any accusations seriously, and the fact that most victims wisely never come forward in the first place, since they know that to do so is to place themselves firmly in the metaphorical (and sometimes all too literal, as Tethys’ post @ 69 illustrates) crosshairs.
I know that many predators continue to hound and harrass their victims for as long as they are able, compounding the trauma of earlier attacks with ongoing harrassment, but I still cannot begin to imagine how wearying and harmful that must be.
For whatever little it is worth, you have my most profound symapthies. And free cyberhugs if you want them.
Granted, “creep” is label a title I asked for or I’m proud of.
EDIT: Granted, “creep” is a label I neither asked for nor am I proud of.
(See what I mean?)
Akira MacKenzie @ 76:
Personally, I have a lot of issues with people freely using ‘creep’ and applying it to all kinds of people, who don’t in the least deserve such a label. There’s a wealth of people who don’t deal well with social situations, for a wide variety of reasons, and most of them wouldn’t dream of raping anyone.
It’s worth stressing here that the majority of rapists are perfectly comfortable with social situations, and are often personable, with what passes for charm in many cases. Given the high level of date and acquaintance rape, you’d think more people would grasp that. The issue of rape isn’t helped or addressed by those who simply wish to indulge in othering, by pointing to the socially uncomfortable guy in the corner. Thanks for speaking up about this, Akira.
Gregory Greenwood
QFT
Sniper moved to a rural city in southeast Missouri because his racist attitudes are tolerated there.
Inaji
Thank you, but its ok now due in no small part to you. *hugs fistbumps eternal gratitude*
Krasnaya Koshka @ 74;
I wish I could claim to be a good ally, but all too often I fail to take a stand against the day to day misogyny that infects our society when I encounter it.
And if I am in any way a good ally, then it surely isn’t due to upbringing or genetics. My younger brother is by any metric the more athletic, more intellectually accomplished, more handsome, and far, far more successful of the two of us. Unfortunately, he is also the kind of person who thinks that mocking feminism and progressive values is the height of humour and the surest indicator of political and social acuity. He habitually cheats on his girlfriend and boasts about the lurid details – he is very proud of his ‘girl in every port’ lifestyle – often wheeling out nauseating PUA talking points as he does so when describing how he secures his ‘conquests’ (or how he goes about ‘horning’ – his preferred term – ‘fit’ women).
The last time I saw him, he regaled me with his take on the power dynamics of sexual relatonships, and explained his notion that when men are younger, and are ‘pursuing’ younger women, then the women hold all the power because they are at the height of their sexual allure and thus their ‘market value’, while the men have nothing to bargain with by comparison. But as a man ages, or so it goes in my brother’s mind, the balance of power shifts in his favour, since a woman’s physical allure is apparently a diminishing asset over time (in my brother’s eyes), but a man is able to accrue more wealth and status the longer he lives, thus making it easier for older men to ‘bed’ (another of his preferred euphamisms) younger and more conventionally attractive women. My brother is currently 29, and will be 30 in a few months, and considers himself in the ideal ‘sweet spot’, being old enough and thus wealthy enough to hold the power in any prospective relationship, but still young enough to ‘get his money’s worth’ (are you seeing a pattern in his terminology yet?) by targeting younger women – his preferred age range being from about 19 to 25.
He explained this all as being an expression of an immutable ‘natural law’, and chided me for my (what he seems to simultaneously view as both funny and somehow unforgiveable) lack of success with women as an inevitable consequence of my refusal to ‘play the game’ and accept that sex is a prize to be won by any means – including deceit and manipulatiuon, though at least he has never endorsed the use of actual force – rather than a collaborative, cooperative act in pursuit of mutual pleasure and gratification.
And all this from a man who claims to be an ‘honourable lesbian’ because some of his drinking buddies are chill-girl lesbians who find his ‘pussy hound’ (yup, that’s right, another exerpt from his lexicon) antics endearing for some reason, and conferred the title upon him one night after a long drinking session ended with them instructing him in the proper means of administering cunni lingus, or at least so he claims (with fairly monotonous regularity), though his problematic attitudes toward homosexuality would be a whole other conversation.
I want to believe that he is only joking around and doesn’t mean it, and is only saying it to wind me up because he knows I am a progressive and a feminist, but I know him well enough to not be able to kid myself that he is not in earnest. And yet despite all this I say little, and only infrequently gently try to get him to realise how harmful and misogynistic his attitudes are, and never with any success. The rest of the time I grind my teeth and remind myself that, for all his flaws, he is still my brother. I know I should call him out on it, and really press the issue rather than letting him laugh it off in the way he often does as me just ‘getting my man-period’ (because there is nothing more crushing than comparing a man to a bodily process associated with women, of course), but I don’t. And the reason is simply that he is my only sibling, and although we often haven’t gotten on very well in the past – he did all he could to make my childhood a misery, despite being my younger brother – it is very important to my mother that we get along, and so in the name of family harmony I swallow my principles and say nothing for a few days every time he comes home.
Those hardly seem like the actions of a good ally to me, but that is quite enough off topic moaning from your’s truly.
Tethys:
All my love, support and hugs to you. Always.
Akira @ 76
An appearance that isn’t living up to some societal ideal and social awkwardness does not make someone a creep. I’m sorry that you’ve unfairly been labeled over such things.
The “friend” who raped me was a handsome young man who stood 6’2″ and had a body worthy of underwear modeling. Really, he was strikingly good looking by societal standards. His desire to rape had nothing to do with an inability to physically attract women. He had relationships before assaulting me and relationships after assaulting me. Right up until the night he raped me I had a little bit of a crush on him. Funny, charming, cute guy…and a rapist.
The idea that rapists rape because they can’t get sex any other way is an insult to celibate people and the concept of sex itself. It does absolutely no good addressing how and why some people rape.
So much for the forlorn hope that “LMR” might stand for something cool and interesting, like, I dunno, “linear magnetic resonance”…
I’ve been in bed with naked people who were clearly eager but too drunk to consent to sex so we didn’t have sex. Is sex so fucking compelling that we ignore the fact that it’s OTHER HUMANS we’re interacting with?
You can have sex in the morning or make another date, can’t you?
I ended up in bed with my now wife the second time we met. But we didn’t have sex. We touched bits of each other but we were too drunk to decide if we wanted sex. You know what? Waking up next to her, I felt fantastic. Waking up with a gorgeous naked woman was more than enough fun for me, why wouldn’t it be?
We had sex the next day when we were sober and both ready for it. It wasn’t difficult to wait.
PZ, Manboobz and others highlight the very worst of the pickup community, and, as illustrated in the OP, this can be very bad indeed. It is very easy to make hasty generalisations.
I’ve been reading sex-positive feminist Clarisse Thorn’s book Confessions of a Pickup Artist Chaser which gives a much more thorough critique. Vinturi does seem to be an outlier.
In The Game (the most famous PUA book by far) Neil Strauss talks of using “freeze outs”: essentially giving the silent treatment to a reluctant woman. Thorn describes this as “problematic”. However she also quotes a couple of PUA coaches (David Shade and Mark Manson) who explicitly reject any coercive or pressurising LMR techniques. Quotes in this lengthy post.
Shade:
Manson:
It’s worth mentioning that many of the more reasonable writers in the PUA community, including Manson, have left it behind as dating advice for men has become more accepted in the mainstream and it has become more acceptable for a man to ask for help.
“hasty generalizations”
“reasonable writers in the PUA community”
Fuck off.
The mere fact that these idiotic asspimples must come up with something like “last minute resistance” tells you all you need to know about them. Some of them might play at the “oh yeah, play like she’s a human being or something for x amount of time”, but they aren’t interested in women as human beings. They’re interested in a fucktoy, nothing more.
Some dude figured out that not raping a woman makes her more likely to want to sleep with him later, so he concluded that not raping is beneficial to his sex life.
Dudes learning from him have learned that not raping is a good method to score. Of course, it’s just one of the methods. Like any other, it’s possible that upsides outweigh the downsides.
It’s not like there’s anything else wrong about rape, besides possibly eliminating rapists future sexy times with his victim, right?
Except of course neither Shade nor Manson did come up with the concept of LMR.
There are a great many problems infusing PUA, including an adversarial view of gender roles, a commodity model of sex, stereotyping of both men and women (e.g. women only want relationships, men only want sex), the objectification of women as exemplified by the 10-scale or by viewing a woman as a “target” as opposed to a “potential partner”.
However, until recent years pickup had a near monopoly of dating advice for men. This means that most dating advice for men, including good advice that contradicts the bad, is also a part of pickup; a lot of men involved with pickup are looking for something other than notches on the bed post (Thorn mentions one PUA became known as the world’s best the moment he got married: I forget the name); and not all subscribe to its troublesome concepts.
Thorn found some PUAs, even including Neil Strauss, more receptive to feminist ideas than she expected and enough to be called a “mangina” by a former fan. She also claims to have nearly gotten Mark Manson to identify as a feminist: apparently he is unconvinced by the concept of the rape culture.
I am not arguing that pickup, as a whole, is good: much of it is ghastly, a small part of it is date rape. I am saying that it is more complex and diverse than may be immediately obvious. But of course on an internet forum everything must be black and white.
Sorry, your fuckwitted apologist is showing, pretend nuance where it doesn’t exist, and ignoring it where it does, like the diversity of opinion at this blog. Do yourself a favor. Stop digging a hole for your self.
andrewkerr @ 87;
The very name ‘pickup’ or ‘pick up artist’ illustrates the toxic mindset that lies at the very core of the entire ideology – that it is all about ‘picking up’ women for sex; not treating them as people in their own right, not engaging in a cooperative pursuit of mutual gratification, but ‘picking them up’ in order to gratify your own desires, and employing various psychological tricks and forms of manipulation in order to get what you want irrespective of the woman’s desires or views on the matter. It boils down to treating women’s bodies like they are public sex dispensers, and treating the individuality and humanity of any given woman as merely an obstacle to the free access to that public sex dispenser that must be overcome by whatever means prove most efficacious.
Whatever empty lipservice may be paid to the idea that it is important to respect women’s choices by people like Shade and Manson, they have still volintarily associated themselves with the PUA label for a significant period of time, and as such have associated themsleves with all that it implies about how women are viewed by people who subscribe to its tenets. That is, to put it mildly, problematic, and merely distancing themselves from the label now that it has become advantageous to them to do so is insufficient to amount to any meaningful repudiation of the deeply misogynistic underpinnings of the PUA philosophy.
I see no unreasonable generalisation in taking the PUA community at its own word with regard to how it views women, and in setting a very high threshold before anyone associated with such a dangerous ideology is granted any benefit of the doubt. It is nothing more or less than prudent.
And any claim that Manson on particular has had some road to Damascus revelation with regard to how he views wemen is comprehensively torpedoed by his supposedly identifying as feminist while rejecting the idea that rape culture exists. From your post @ 91;
He seems to have fundamentally failed to understand the logical implications of feminist thought if he cannot see the clear prevalence of rape culture in a society that still reflexively objectifies women and defines their worth as people principally by their sexual attributes, as can be seen from any causal perusal of trends in things like advertising and pop culture, and that is so riven through with toxic misogyny that the assumption, even among law enforcment officers, public prosecutors and court officials – all of whom should certainly know better – is still that a rape victim must either by lying about what happened to her, or is somehow to blame for her own rape, as can be seen from the endless pontificating about whether the victim was drunk or otehrwise inebriated, what she was wearing, why she was out in that place and or at that time, and what she may have done to ‘lead her attacker on’ that crops up every single rape is discussed.
That is either the product of staggering, blinkered incompetence or bad faith. Neither speaks well of Manson.
Nerd, King of Nuance, et al.:
While I share your isgust with the entire world/women-view of the whole PUA mindset, it does seem to me that there’s a real and acknowledgable difference between advocating and advising rape on the one hand and advocating and advising not-raping on the other. Don’t you? What’s the harm in budgin that far?
andrewkerr:
When it comes to the issues of consent and rape, you betcha. I’ve been raped. Lots of people here have been raped. Feel free to share your experience.
I have to wonder, did you bother to read the thread? If not, there was a post by someone sharing that their partner was raped a week ago. So, maybe it’s a teensy bit fucking tasteless for you to show up on a thread about an asspimple and his rape manual to discuss the wonderful nuances of various rape, oh pardon, ‘pickup’ manuals.
.
And yet, they still see women as a game to win, rather than people to get to know.
Game. Manipulation.
Because it’s all about winning the game of sex, not because then you’re treating her like an actual person.
You don’t see the problem in this?
Chas:
It’s still a hunt, women are still prey. Women are still goals. Objects. Pretty much anything except a human being that might just be worth their precious time. No, the underlying toxicity still leads to very bad places.
ChasCPeterson @ 94;
There is also a difference between not advocating rape because it is wrong to treat another human being like nothing more than a hunk of warm meat for your own carnal enjoyment, and not advocating rape because it might impair your chances of having further sex with that same person in the future.
Context matters.
Also, look at the quote back at andrewkerr’s pist @ 87;
(Emphasis added)
I find it extremely worrying that the author considers the idea of treating a woman like an actual human being – whose opinions and preferences about what happens to her own body and who she chooses to have sex with are important – to be ‘counter-intuitive’. Why isn’t this the obvious starting point? Why does he feel it necessary to put forward the idea that woman=person as if it is so radical and strange that no one would ordinarily even consider the notion?
Attitudes like that worry me.
I do want the result to be “don’t rape women”, regardless of the underlying rationale. But I’ll be damned if I advocate “don’t rape women because being nice is a better way to get laid” as a good way to think about women.
A PUA or former PUA denying the concept of rape culture is like a pig in a wallow denying the concept of shit. The dude is a producer in a subculture entirely based on the principles of rape culture; his not being able to comprehend rape culture makes him about as close to being a feminist as the aforementioned pig is to being a commercial airliner.
Can anyone tell me what RoK is?
Thank you in advance.
damien75 @ 101, Return of Kings. You can search it.
Damien: Return of Kings. In a nutshell.
Chas #94
Somebody else said it much better than I can:
Gregory Greenwood #98
The underlying attitude really hasn’t changed. For there to be the alleged nuance described, then there needs to be the equivalent of an up-front attitude that women are full human beings your equal, and RW wasn’t mean to say “guys, don’t do that”.
Thank you Inaji.
Actually I had searched RoK on google, as well as “RoK PUA” bot none of those queries returned “Return of Kings”.
RoK is a blog called Return of Kings. It’s written for “masculine men” and deals with such topics as “women are lying when they say they want equality”, “girls with short hair are damaged” and “when no means yes” (actual thread titles).
Now I have to take a shower.
damien75:
I rather expect the not-so-mighty Roosh doesn’t care for unexpected company, y’know, like human beings who might disagree with him.
@Al Dente #106
Yes, thank you, I have found it now, and I saw what it was like.
To be completely honest: dating advice columns/books should probably all go away, regardless of if it’s for women or men. It’s nearly impossible to pick out the good advice from the toxic stuff, and it can even be thoroughly mixed together in a single work.
Gregory Greenwood thank you for the response.
Manson’s post (“Why I am not a feminist”) in which he argues against the concept of rape culture is no longer online. The closest I can offer is a response from a feminist.
Judging by that response Manson did not have a consistent position on rape culture. If he really did argue that feminism has become unnecessary then that of course was extremely silly – and inconsistent with the quote.
I might highlight this:
In other words, he endorses enthusiastic consent. No, the way he pitches this is not how a feminist would. He may just be trying to appeal to his assumed audience, he may be trying to get as large a range of men as possible to buy his books and courses, or he may be coming to the right conclusion for the wrong reasons – but he is coming to the right conclusion.
Manson has a book with the title Models: Attract Women Through Honesty.
The excerpts aren’t very interesting. What I did find interesting is one endorsement:
My emphasis.
I’ve read far too much of this guy’s stuff now.
Another former member of the pickup community who still writes dating advice is Dr. Nerdlove, who is pretty mainstream these days. He has written on enthusiastic consent and coerced “consent”.
He also has a critique of pickup.
Clarisse Thorn’s interview with Neil Strauss can be found here.
I am bowing out of this thread now.
beargearse-
Wanted to pop in to share my sympathy and anger over that happening to your financee. Also, I hope that you also remember to take care of yourself as well as your fiancee. There are a lot of long-term PTSD effects for survivors of rape, but less talked about is the fact that partners of rape survivors often suffer secondary trauma as well.
A good resource that might help is the podcast episode “Sexual Healing” on the “Sex Nerd Sandra” podcast that she produced on March 20, 2013.
Ugh. For a world where no one had to suffer that bullshit ever again…
So… basically he takes exception with being lumped in with rapists when he thinks he’s only made common cause with harassers. Is that about right?
Krasnaya Koshka-
*Safe physical gesture of support* I’m so sorry you had to suffer that.
andrewkerr @91
…
Uh huh, sure, pull the other one it’s got bells on.
andrewkerr @91
Okay, getting into it a bit more.
I’ve had opportunity to encounter a lot of PUA bullshit over the years. It’s depressingly common among male geek communities. I also had a lesbian friend who came from a feminist background who fell in with them in a bad way. Did it smart, too, tried to keep in mind her values from before and only follow the mildest of PUA forums…
What happened was she became addicted to the “Game”, indulging in and defending more and more fucked up techniques that would have been abusive if the techniques hadn’t completely fucked her out of making any real connection for longer than a few moments.
Cause the thing about PUAs is that the “techniques” they offer are often rape tactics at worst and at best, are little better than manuals on emotional abuse and violating social niceties in order to ruin another human being’s life in order to gain homosocial approval from asshole misogynist men.
Because that’s the real dirty secret about PUA. It claims to be about “sex”, about acquiring sex and relationships with women and often sells itself as a way to “build confidence” for those who “just need a hand in dating”, but what it’s really about is aiding anxiety about fitting within toxic masculinity and being “man” enough to be safe from being considered an honorary woman by more toxic men.
It’s about the support one’s buddies give one after completely showing up a “frigid b****” who “thought they were too good for us”. It’s about enforcing doctrines of being an asshole so one can be considered a man and at worst, it means selling a doctrine of being a motherfucking rapist and upping one’s arsenal of rape techniques in order to not lose the respect of assholes and rapists.
It’s everything wrong with “guy culture” sold as a magic elixir to people who thought that this rabbit hole of bitter misogyny would solve real problems of loneliness, lack of self-confidence, and the way that sexism hurts men as well (by making them worse people or punishing them as “almost women”).
And you can see that in every “technique” that is traded around with fancy names to hide the reality. “Negging” to hide abusing and insulting people just trying to be out in spaces men would rather were their territory. “Games” that are all about monopolizing the time of people who do not want to spend time with you. “Kino” for raping people with unwanted touch while being able to exploit social niceties to make the woman seem like a bad person if she objects. And things undeniably rape like this, in case the rest was just too fucking subtle.
There is nothing to save in that culture and not a damn one of them that is actually engaging in anything genuinely therapeutic, feminist, or respectful of women and which does not at its heart make men worse people for following it.
They are, to speak bluntly, the scum of the fucking Earth.
I know. I even said so. There’s still an important difference between ‘if the sex-object you want to fuck says “no” then back off for selfish reasons’ and ‘if the sex-object you want to fuck says “no” then rape her’. It’s not even “nuance”. It’s not-raping vs. raping.
Potentially triggering anecdote that is actually kinda sweet:
Since we’re talking about this stuff, I had to take some medication this past week that made me rather loopy. It probably had the effect of lowering my inhibitions.
So there I am, with lowered inhibitiions, in my own bed that I share with my partner every night. While no couple has sex literally every night, it’s pretty common for us to get at least a little sexy. So when I came on to her, it wasn’t unusual. And she was smiley and pleasant and smooched me, and then said no to having sex.
I, encountering this last minute resistance, checked in with her. She was sure she didn’t want to have sex. End of sex encounter, though I was a bit disappointed.
Next morning she tells me that she didn’t trust that I had the capacity to give full and free consent, given the meds.
Isn’t that sweet? There was literally no chance that this would turn into a legal problem for her. But there was an ethical boundary for her anyway that wouldn’t allow her to assume the enthusiastic approach of her multi-year partner constituted consent.
For me, I thought it was unusual that she would be in a good mood and yet decide not to have sex, but I just checked in to make sure I understood that her answer was in fact no, and not something like, “not that type of sex, but maybe some other.”
On one level, I thought it was a bit hilarious that – being hot and bothered as I was, and with someone I have vast history in creating trust – I could be seen as not consenting.
But that wasn’t it at all: it was that she saw me as possibly – not certainly, but possibly – not having the ability to consent. And how she acted was exactly the kind of behavior that created that trust in the first place.
Yes, but those aren’t the only two options. It’s ok to not promote either of them in favor of another one entirely.
Crip Dyke @ #118: I’ve had those experiences too with my current partner (medication, a drink having a bit more kick than I expected, whatever), and knowing that there is that much safety and trust is a wonderful feeling. I just wish it weren’t so uncommon that either of us would even bring it up. It shouldn’t be so unusual.
What carlie said @ #119.
You’re not thinking creepily enough. See, relationships are something you have with humans, with persons.
I have a very good stomach.
I don’t want to have a very good stomach right now.
…I’ll just second that.
*looooooooong facepalm*
Yeah, I’m out of words and gestures.
“Shellshocked” comes to mind.
Has such a huge ego that he can’t imagine anyone might not have seen it. Logically, when people act like they haven’t seen it, they must be lying!
I want to… I don’t know. Scream?
*makes note: Mark Manson = ew*
Why hilarious? This was about informed consent: your partner clearly thought you might regret things the next morning, and didn’t want to put you in that situation. :-|
[cw: personal rape anecdote]
the man who raped me probably thinks he overcame some Last Minute Resistance too.
what actually happened: I said, no, stop, I don’t want to do this. he kept going. I tried to stop him, tried to push him away. he pinned me down with his weight, pulled my legs into the position he wanted them in, and stuck his dick in. at this point, I thought: “Well, I guess there’s nothing I can do about this now,” and stopped struggling. I was obviously in shock and didn’t know how to deal with the situation, so I defaulted to passivity.
the idea that the most traumatic experience(s; this happened more than once) of my life could be recorded as a “strategy” for “winning” the “game” is honestly more revolting than the rape itself, right now.