Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid

So I'm meandering through the Mysterious Forest of Twitter (because I will do anything to avoid marking papers) when I stumble across a tweet by a self-styled, Las Vegas-based playboy (whose first name is probably what he is not practicing, and whose last name is pretty much the epitome of posthumous cool).  This particular specimen of machismo has a manosphere blog, too, of course, where he promotes his e-books and classes.  His latest post teaches men "How To Have A Three Way With Strippers."  I didn't read it since I'm not planning a trip to Sin City anytime soon, but I would hazard to guess that it's all a matter of having the right party favors.

I recognized his moniker because he was one of the boys who was outraged by Roosh's little hoax.  But now he's done an about-face, urging his followers to "Treat Roosh right.  I'd take a bullet for him.  Don't fuck with him or fuck with me. And trust me, you don't want to fuck with him."

Now that got my attention, because I reckon I'm somewhere on Roosh's Shit List.  And at least by his standards, I've already "fucked with him" a bit.  

And "take a bullet for him," isn't that a bit... melodramatic?  I mean, under what circumstances might that be necessary?  Is Roosh a masculine lifestyle guru, or a war lord?

What are these guys so afraid of, I wonder?  That they'll be doxxed and their Google-able identities slimed?

Trust me, fellas, it isn't as bad as you fear.

Oops!  Breaking news!  Looks like the Las Vegas playboy has just been doxxed himself!  And not by some nasty feminist either!

Anyway, poor guy, I'm certainly not going to compound his misery here.  After all, we can all agree that doxxing is a terrible thing to do, a cowardly and despicable action, and as a sympathetic compadre pointed out, [tsk-tsk!] just goes to show how some people have way too much time on their hands!

I don't think this is going to help.

Entitled Babies, the Lot of 'em

May I just say here how insanely irritating I find it when "professional" PUAs like Roosh refer to seducing women as "work", as in (God-help-me-I'm-not-kidding), "the important work I do," or the disappointment of not getting to intercourse after "putting in hours of hard work."

Excuse my vent, but I have been working for forty consecutive years.  And by "work" I mean:  going to a job every single day, doing what I was told to do to the best of my ability (even when I didn't usually feel like it), and biting my tongue over and over and over again.

Have any of these manospherean bloggers ever held a real job for more than a year?  When did blogging-for-donations while extending one's adolescence beyond thirty become a respectable lifestyle for a man?

I can't post this rant on manboobz cuz someone will accuse me of being "ableist."  

Seduce and Destroy!

I'm among those who believe "Magnolia" is a great movie, not least of which is due to the incredible performance Tom Cruise gives as the toxic, emotionally crippled PUA guru, Frank T. J. Mackie.  Made in 1999, it still holds up well, and certainly Cruise has not had a role that rivals it since.  Also, the soundtrack by Aimee Mann is awesome.  You can watch the entire film on Youtube if you haven't seen it.  (Someone should have told Roosh this was a cautionary tale, not an instructional video!)

Christoph Waltz Teaches You the Art of Seduction!

Austrian actor Christoph Waltz poking fun of PUA here.  Best parody of PUA since Christopher Walken's hilarious "The Continental" sketches on SNL.

All kidding aside, I am utterly infatuated with this guy...  and a little Internet research proves I am not alone. 

For a seriously erotic (yet still quite funny) scene, watch this.  Who knew 16th century Anabaptists were so hot?  In fact, this clip inspired me to read a history of the Muenster Rebellion, and to order the movie it's from at great expense from Germany (even though there are no subtitles and I don't speak German). 

This scene rivals the infamous "eating scene" from "Tom Jones" in its bawdy celebration of our carnal appetites.  "Bad boys" whose mischievous rogue appeal is based on wit and humor are seductive -- especially when they don't seem to take themselves too seriously. 

Oh, and just one more, a kissing scene with a very young and devastatingly pretty Waltz as Tristan.  I may have to put this on continuous loop...

Performance Anxiety

N.B.  It was only after I had posted the following that I found David Futrelle over at manboobz had coincidentally posted a response to the same topic. 
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Yesterday, I was in a tanning salon waiting my turn at one of the beds.  (I want to build up a little melanin before our trip to Mexico).  To my annoyance, all there was to read in the lobby was Cosmopolitan magazine, the one magazine I cannot stand to look at.

Although there was much to admire about Helen Gurley Brown, I have always detested Cosmopolitan.  Not only for the content, or lack thereof (since it is dedicated almost exclusively to the various Geisha like arts of pleasing men), but for its style (which, BTW, Nora Ephron skewered brilliantly in a piece for Esquire many years ago).  Brown stepped down in 1997, but the magazine only seems to have gotten more obsessively focused on the need for women to cater to men in the bedroom, with shameless headlines screaming "Tease Him and Please Him!" "Foreplay Men Crave!" and "His Butt."  Every issue features at least one article on how to gratify men sexually.  Cuz these days the way to a man's heart is through advanced fellatio technique. 

So it was surprising to read over at ROK that "You've probably noticed that most women haven't got the tiniest interest in pleasing us.  The large majority of women believe that getting naked and allowing us to stab their insides with our manly part is pretty much all they have to do when it comes to having sex."  Well, you can't blame Cosmopolitan for not trying!

The article, by someone who calls himself Alex "The Player" Matlock, invites readers to identify the type of bad sex that they are (probably not) having.   He believes it is important for the Rooshites to know this because it's only "fair" and "natural" and besides, "Judging is important because it allow us to understand exactly what it is that we want from a sexual encounter."  Ah, if wishes were horses...!

Who is Alex Matlock and why should men listen to him?  According to his website, Mr. Matlock is working on his PHD -- and he spells it like that, all in caps -- in Social Psychology.  He chose Social Psychology because he thought it would help him understand women better.  He even shared a flat with three girls once, not to "bang" them, but to deepen his knowledge of the feminine psyche.

Although he assures us that he has "banged a lot of chicks," he has found that most of their performances fall short of the mark.  And because Roosh and his ilk love lists (also tables, graphs, flowcharts, and diagrams), Matlock methodically lists the five types of women in order of most (1) to least disappointing (5).

1. The one that tries too much (aka The Disaster) 

This girl is guilty of trying too hard. She moves out of sync [because the guy establishes the tempo, presumably].   She has the highest percentage of male genitalia injury [sic], breaks condoms, and makes guys lose their boners. That’s just one more reason to avoid “taking advantage” of heavily inebriated women. Why do I suspect the sarcasm quotes to be Roosh's touch?

2. The one that’s scared (aka The Virgin) 

I thought these guys wanted sweet, inexperienced girls?  But the so-called virgin is just scamming a fellow.  She makes a guy feel guilty by acting as though she doesn't know what she's doing.  Plus she only allows penetration in the missionary position.

3. The one that doesn’t move (aka The Starfish or The Doll)

Matlock suggests that because she doesn’t do anything that disrupts the actual lovemaking... she will probably have many more orgasms than #1 and #2 simply because she lets the man do his thing.  Matlock rates such women as "average" in the performance department.  And I rate Matlock's understanding of what makes a woman orgasm "below average."

4. The one that does something (aka The Girlfriend) 

Experienced enough to "put a smile on your face."
5.  The Pornstar
The ultimate girlfriend experience.  (Probably a regular Cosmo reader.)

Is it my imagination, or can I feel the editorial hand of Roosh in every piece that is posted to ROK?  Like Helen Gurley Brown and Hugh Hefner, his persona infuses everything.  But Roosh is no Hugh Hefner, and the glory days of magazines like Playboy and Cosmopolitan, which were once the authorities on How To Perform One's Sex, are over.  The only reason they linger on is that the one thing that doesn't seem to change is the sexual performance anxiety many young men and women suffer from.

And here's a picture of the author with two "chicks."  Not surprisingly, he's selling PUA too.

Alex Matlock is an expert in dating and woman psychology. This is the sort of stuff he discusses on his blog and in the free eBook he gives out. If you want to increase your success with women, visit ThePlayerGuide.com - a place where the dating mindset is thrown out the window in favor of more direct and fruitful methods of meeting and seducing women.

On PUA

Are you old enough to remember when the back pages of comic books and popular magazines had ads for stuff like "X ray glasses," that promised to give readers the power to see through girls' clothes, and Charles Atlas programs that guaranteed to turn any 90 lb. weakling into a muscle-bound beach bully?  There was always at least one ad for a guide to picking up girls.  I'll admit I was intrigued by glasses that provided x-ray vision, and I remember buying at least one clutch of "sea monkeys," but I knew the pick up guides had to be a load of rubbish and even if I had been a boy, I was pretty much sure I wouldn't have fallen for those scams.

Nowadays, we have infomercials and pick up artists like Roosh.  And while I'll confess I still slow down at the Walgreen counters where "As Seen On TV" products are displayed, I still scoff at the sad sacks who think the secrets of successful seduction can be found in slim missives dispatched from turd world countries.

Although I am contemptuous of PUA, I don't hate the suckers who support this industry: I feel kind of sorry for them.

I don't really hate PUA on principle, or rather I don't hate it more than I hate Cosmopolitan magazine.  PUA is like Cosmo for boys.  Adolescents are desperately looking for answers to the burning teenage question, "How do I make [people of the opposite sex] desire me?", and these sources give lots of advice, repetitive and reductive and simple-minded to be sure, perhaps reassuring by its very repetitive, reductive simple-minded nature.  It's understandable to devour junk when a person is fifteen, but by the time he/she has graduated from college and entered the "real" adult world, it's time to grow up.

Anyway, I'm all for everybody pursuing as much sexual validation as they need or want. What I hate is reducing both men and women to the sums of their worst parts.

My problem isn't with PUA or MRM in theory, it's with misogyny  misanthropy.  My problem with the PUA of Roosh, Rossy, et al. is that it isn't "sweet love making" that is being promoted, but rather opportunities to degrade, exploit, or humiliate a.target.  My problem is with referring to women as "notches" and "flags" or to men as "betas" and "manginas."

My problem is that I just don't recognize the people who inhabit the PUA/MRM world, where every man is a caged, snarling predator in a gnawing state of priapism, and every woman is either a conniving gold-digger or a maniacal, castrating bitch.

For one thing, nurturing a hateful, resentful, "us against them" mind set is counter-productive to the immediate, pressing concern of getting laid.  We won't even think about how it ruins any chance of a long term, emotionally intimate and trusting relationship.  C'mon guys, think about it:  Roosh gets his dick wet maybe once a month by making pick up his full time job but he's in his mid-thirties now, and he doesn't seem to have ever had a real friend, much less a regular girlfriend.  And this is your relationship guru?

People like Roosh or Roissy or (God forbid) Paul Elam are not making the world a better place, that's for sure.  And the irony is they're so self-evidently miserable themselves.

What's in that red pill, anyway?  Why would anyone want to take it?