Basically, most women fall short of the standards of conduct that I hold myself to. Thing is, most men don’t measure up either. And in fairness, I frequently disappoint myself, as in cases where I make stupid errors in logic like this. So those charges I enumerated, to the extent that the apply at all, are not female specific, and I was wrong for making it sound like they were.

The only uniquely-female slant to this is that women have a bit of legal privilege that lets them get away with more than men do. Recently, a girl at the club I bounce at managed to get a guy hauled away in cuffs by claiming he groped her, regardless of the numerous witnesses of both genders claiming to the contrary. I’ve never seen a man do something similar. But, that doesn’t mean that men are any better — they just can’t get away with that kind of behavior.

Man, I’m starting to feel like Richard Gabriel over here.

This is what I meant about disagreeing on the margins. You are, in my experience, absolutely right for probably about 99.9% of the women on earth. However, I’d wager that, based on personal experience, only something like 10% of women have actively thought this through. You also strike me as being a not-insignificant distance from the fat part of the intellectual bell curve.

In short, you’re a smart girl who’s very much in tune with her sexuality. But men, by and large, are just trying to get laid by a hot chick. So the tactics they use are miscalibrated for you. Since the aim of most seduction is to pick up the most physically attractive chick possible, her expected intelligence and level of sexual awareness is average.

Most women give out bad dating advice due to ignorance of self — my most recent post is primarily about that. In your case, a portion of your advice is bad not due to ignorance of self, but because you’re explaining how a guy should go about seducing you, when the odds of him actually running in to a girl like you are very slim.

This cuts both ways. My physical requirements for a woman are actually rather lenient — essentially, she just has to be fit. I love me some butterfaces. Of far greater importance to me is her brain.

That said, when a girl asks me for advice on how to attract men, I generally just tell her how best to show off her goods. This probably wouldn’t make her more attractive in my eyes — if I wanted to tell her how to attract me, I’d give her a gun, a guitar, and a compiler, and tell her to start practicing. But she’s probably not going to run into a guy like me, so she’d be misplacing her effort.

So what I am saying (trying to say [as I quote Duncan Sheik mid-post]), and what I failed to say in my prior posts — i.e., where I was an asshole — is that you’re 100% right about what it would take to attract you, but I think you’re only 80% right about what it takes to attract women in general. Not surprisingly, that message got drowned out by what, in retrospect, was basically an eloquent “fuck you.” I did say I’m sorry, right?

On a different note:

I predict your prospects will improve fiftyfold in the next few years, if only because someone with your intelligence and ambition will experience a dramatic increase in status.

I’ve actually got even more redactions that I need to make, but they’ll come later. I’ve got a bad habit of arguing with myself in public, and, in light of that, you might want to reconsider your evaluation of my perspicacity.

Also, I’m not sure where you got this idea that I’m ambitious. My goal in life is basically to be Magnum PI — or, failing that, The Dude. But hey, your flattery is appreciated, and if I end up ruling the world through a twist of fate, you’ll get a commemorative beanie baby.

First of all, I’ve never understood the use of Dickensian as an adjective. Lots of Dickens characters are warm and fuzzy. Do you have the heart of David Copperfield? I’m okay with that. ;-)

I admire you for admitting to a shift in your perspective. I stand by everything I said — on this topic, at least. And I still say the movies are a good place to look to see what men and women want. If an onscreen character appeals to women, it’s not so different from a flesh-and-blood Rick Blaine (“Casablanca”).

I think perhaps people place too much emphasis on interpersonal interactions when it comes to attraction. A lot of a man’s appeal is who he is. That can’t be changed, and if it has any basis in reality, it’s a harsh reality. A woman wants to find a man who is taller, stronger, braver, smarter, witter, more worldly and more mature, higher earning, more knowledgeable than she is about manly things (not makeup application or botany, I’d venture to say) and “handsome” according to whatever early-imprint conception she’s got.

Once a man has covered these bases, there are a few fakeable signals that may or may not have to do with things you said: things like self-confidence and degree of enchantment with a woman (or feigned lack thereof). We can disagree about those. And sometimes a man does all the right things, but he just doesn’t have the right looks to appeal to a particular female, or he’s dressed the wrong way (yes, we have preferences about that), or he reminds her of someone else she doesn’t like, or she’s not interested in a person in his profession for whatever reason.

I think you mentioned being in college or thereabouts. That’s a difficult time of life for men in the dating game. I predict your prospects will improve fiftyfold in the next few years, if only because someone with your intelligence and ambition will experience a dramatic increase in status.

Of course, that’s the diplomatic way to phrase it. You could also just say I’m a flip-flopper who makes John Kerry look like a model of consistency. You could also go fuck yourself.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking that woman aren’t necessarily illogical about relationships, in contrast to what I’ve previously asserted. At minimum, saying that women are illogical connotes the wrong thing. It makes it sound like women know that they should approach relationships logically, but they fail to. I don’t think that premise is true, and I’m very reticent to tell anyone what they should be doing about anything, anyway. So that angle of attack is completely wrong.

What I think now is that they take the premise of dating for granted. That is, they don’t tend to try to tease out exactly what they want, and then develop a utility-maximizing strategy. They just do what feels good.

I also happen to think the same can be said for most guys. It certainly applied to me until relatively recently. I never really thought about what I wanted, I just went on instinct, being unhappy with the few girlfriends I had each year, but never actually stopping to figure out what I was ultimately trying to achieve.

Humanity is damn complex, and I’m not going to try to explain/figure out all of our sexual drives in this post. I actually started to do that before I realized that it would be a year and a book later before I ever got finished, and it would probably be wrong and self congratulatory anyway.

The enlightening thing is that when I actually discuss mating strategy with women, they’re receptive.

For instance, I now recall (and don’t know why I didn’t consider this earlier) a very liberal friend whom I discussed this stuff with. We were mutually attracted to each other, but I wouldn’t indulge due to the opposing polarity of our politics. This moment of abstinence was brought to you by pornography, by the way, and lots of it.

Anyway, we wound up discussing our amorous motivations very frankly, and it came up that she had frequently dated men on the opposite team, and that even though she understood why this was a bad idea intellectually, it had zero emotional resonance with her. In fact, she was consistently attracted to this sort of man. I gave her a crash course on the alpha-beta male dichotomy, and theorized that the conservatives she was dating were likely more dominant and sexually stimulating. She actually found it all very enlightening, to my surprise, and began to understand why she had so many nice-guy liberal friends who she “ought” to be dating but couldn’t get attracted to. It also explained why all men seemed to be assholes — confirmation bias from only dating assholes, who happen to be more arousing than nice guys.

Of maximal interest is that after this discussion, she began to understand why seduction tactics worked, even though she previously thought they were BS. Without examining her own sexual psychology, a woman is likely to look at a description of a neg and think “WTF?” That’s certainly what she did. But after accepting the theory that her attraction to a man is directly proportional to the amount of status he had over her, it suddenly seemed plausible.

BTW, this means I also need to redact what I said about women not being able to come to grips with their mating drives. I’ve got too many anecdotes to the contrary — more than just the preceding.

Ultimately, the question I’m trying to answer is “why did I think girls were illogical about dating, and why don’t I any more?” The idea of the unexamined premise answers the latter question. I’ll now take a shot at answering the former.

A woman doesn’t need to understand her motivations in order to get more men with stronger alpha characteristics in her life. Hence books like “The Rules,” and magazines like “Cosmopolitan.” The tips and tricks in there, from my perspective, would actively screen out beta males, but probably work at roping in alphas — which is what a woman gets maximal sexual pleasure from.

An alpha male also doesn’t need to concern himself with female motivations. He is, after all, getting what he wants.

But a beta male is not getting what he wants. So he needs to understand female sexuality in order to get anywhere. Once he does that, he’ll realize that what women say they want and what they actually respond to sexually are two different things. Confronted with this, it seems natural enough to say “women are illogical.”

But that’s not the case.

I now think that women are just ignorant about their sexuality, and I mean that in the best possible case. It’s not willful ignorance, they just don’t know. I’m also of the mind that seduction can be used for good or evil. You can take advantage of a woman, or you can explore her sexuality with her. You can use routines and lie, or you can create a lifestyle that’s more attractive to women.

Women are now sexually liberated, and I personally think that’s for the better. But, in order to fully take advantage of that, I think it would be to their benefit to spend more time understanding their sexuality, and communicating what they want. My hope is that, in the future, when a nice guy asks a woman for dating advice — or makes a botched pass at her — instead of speaking to him in platitudes, she recommends that he visit fastseduction.com and learn how to be attractive to women.

By formally acknowledging their sexuality, and the tactics that stoke the fire, women can then get involved in their own seduction. This would increase the pool of attractive males, while decreasing the percentage of that pool that are actually assholes. Most importantly (at least in my eyes), awareness would clear up the ethical issues, and decrease the effectiveness of those tactics that err on the side of deceit. That’s always been the primary source of my discomfort about the whole affair, and selfish creature that I am, I’d surely love to mitigate it.

Also, I’d like to publicly apologize to Clara. Rereading our conversations, I was needlessly acerbic with you, and I’m deeply sorry for that. It also doesn’t reflect how I feel about you at all. Where I actually disagree with you is, in effect, at the margins. And even if I thought you were totally wrong, the fact that you’re making an effort to promulgate what you find attractive warms the cockles of my normally coal-black Dickensian heart.

Two small, unrelated things:

1) Dingers (negs) are everywhere. It’s not a seduction thing–it’s an interpersonal thing. Look for yourself.

2) Richard Feynman’s “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman” has an interesting chapter on seduction.

I imagine te techniques do work, to a degree, but not for the same reasons you think they do. For one thing, a lot of the advice is not much different from what you would find in The Dale Carnegie Guide to Meeting Women: talk to women a lot, approach a woman you are interested in immediately, don’t complain, talk about the things she is interested in, be funny, tease gently (“negs”) to show that you are not intimidated and make her laugh. These are not exactly great revelations, and clearly anyone who was not doing these things before will have better luck once they start. We don’t need any grand theories about female irrationality to explain why these are good ideas. What I’ve read on the site you recommended could be summarized as follows: ‘women want to meet men, but they want to meet men who are more confident, funny, assertive, and sensitive than you are. Here are the rules to follow to make yourself appear to be what you are not.”

Anyone who consciously sets out to spend a lot of time practicing seduction will get better at it. I would imagine that once you start trying this stuff out the number of women you approach increases by a very large factor, and that alone is going to make a big difference.

Yes, any interested dude can learn this stuff for free, but actually, a lot of us are not interested. I think it would be lot easier to just find a girlfriend that you like and have sex with her. The sex would be much better, too. I can’t imagine anything more tedious than spending my time trying to seduce women, all of my interactions guided by a system, and all of my comments calculated and planned.

Alright. I’ll bite.

You got no data. And you can say whatever you want, be wrong as hell, and still have sexual success. In fact, to the extent that men are incompetent at seducing women, you have the upper hand, so there’s an incentive for you to decry techniques that actually work. Further, if my hypothesis is correct, and the things that actually reliably lube poon aren’t all that savory in the intellectual abstract, you’ve got an incentive to rationalize this all away.

But most importantly, you’ve got no data. The ASF forums, on the other hand, indicate that this stuff works. Further, it’s independently verifiable. That’s key.

Now, I don’t believe the seduction senseis actually follow their own advice. Insult women? Don’t pay compliments (and don’t pay for anything on dates)? You’re not dating unless you’re sleeping together?

They give boot camps where you pay for a guided tour. They show you how it’s done by doing it. Google up Mystery Method. Read the reviews on his website. There’s more than a few shocked testimonials from established publications on the efficacy of his material, as gleaned from eye witness encounters.

This may win over a girl with masochistic tendencies, or maybe a homeless person who needs somewhere to stay, but the rest will run in the opposite direction.

O RLY? Data. See above.

Did Tom Hanks insult Meg Ryan in “Sleepless in Seattle”? Did Pierre make Natasha open her own doors ‘n’ things in War and Peace?

Those are movies. They portray the world of romance as we’d like to see it, not as it actually is. In the real world, for instance, standing outside the window of a woman who dumped you while blaring Peter Gabriel out of a boombox is far more likely to get you a restraining order than a handjob.

Part of the allure of this advice is that it’s so incredibly democratic. Hey, guys, you don’t need to be handsome, intelligent, talented or even the slightest bit interesting. Just insult a girl — and she’ll swoon!

Clearly you are not putting much effort into any of this. Being handsome, intelligent, and talented are definitely good qualities, in so much as they net you high status, which is what the game is really all about. As for being “the slightest bit interesting,” well, that’s pretty fucking important. A guru called Juggler bases his entire school on a paradigm he calls “Interesting/Interested.” Google for Charisma Arts. His unique nomenclature aside, being interesting is called “demonstrating high value” in seductionese, with the concomitant TLA being DHV. That concept is everywhere. It is fundamental.

A neg, on the other hand, is a dangerous, delicate, advanced technique, that is easily misunderstood and misused, and takes a long long time to master. A lot of folks recommend ignoring negs until you get the basics down. This tree has blinded you to the forest, apparently.

How can these scam artists claim to be tapping into the female mind when there’s an entire canon of romantic literature that contradicts their facade-of-obnoxiousness theory?

Romantic literature is not the reference standard for what gets guys laid. It’s fiction, just like movies. And those scam artists get paid ‘cuz their shit works. You can actually learn everything you need without spending one red cent (that’s what fastseduction.com is all about), the learning experience is just a lot less polished.

Again, any interested guys should self verify. This can be done without paying anybody anything. It simply requires a time investment. You’re building a skill, and like any skill, the biggest cost is paid in time spent honing.

One successful jerk in fiction comes to mind, and that’s Steff from “Pretty in Pink.” Bear in mind, however, that a) he was a high-status adonis and b) his nastiness was in fact misdirected frustration at being rejected by the red-headed girl. It doesn’t really count because it was obvious to all parties concerned that he was crazy about her the whole time.

Again with the fiction. Whatever.

As I’ve said above, you’ve got an incentive to rationalize this all away. This is why I don’t take relationship advice from women any more. Unless she has a particularly strong allegiance to the truth, a woman is probably going to tell me what she thinks ought to happen, as opposed to what actually does.

NOTICE: Having a vagina does not make you a relationship expert.

The library of seduction knowledge has evolved from ordinary guys thinking of an idea, testing it, and — in the unlikely event that it works — keeping it around for refinement and inclusion in the canon. Any interested dudes can learn this stuff for free and see if it’s BS or not. I’m not selling a damn thing here.

I’m also not going to try to convince you that you’re being illogical. That’s probably not possible. But I am trying get this out in the open. I’ve said my piece, all bystanders can do legwork proportional to their interest and draw their own conclusions.

And on that note, I’m done. This is a waste of time. I should be sleeping. Or, y’know, jacking off to hentai porn because, in reality, I’m a 300 pound sweaty freak who couldn’t get a dead hooker to ride his baloney pony.

Now, I don’t believe the seduction senseis actually follow their own advice. Insult women? Don’t pay compliments (and don’t pay for anything on dates)? You’re not dating unless you’re sleeping together? This may win over a girl with masochistic tendencies, or maybe a homeless person who needs somewhere to stay, but the rest will run in the opposite direction.

Neg: A negative remark towards a girl designed to break her indifference to you by showing her that you are indifferent to her beauty (or other striking features). Not an insult, that would be bad. More like “Those are interesting nails – are they real?” or “It’s really cute how your nose wiggles when you talk – look, there it goes again! “.

Part of the allure of this advice is that it’s so incredibly democratic. Hey, guys, you don’t need to be handsome, intelligent, talented or even the slightest bit interesting. Just insult a girl — and she’ll swoon!

Did Tom Hanks insult Meg Ryan in “Sleepless in Seattle”? Did Pierre make Natasha open her own doors ‘n’ things in War and Peace? How can these scam artists claim to be tapping into the female mind when there’s an entire canon of romantic literature that contradicts their facade-of-obnoxiousness theory?

One successful jerk in fiction comes to mind, and that’s Steff from “Pretty in Pink.” Bear in mind, however, that a) he was a high-status adonis and b) his nastiness was in fact misdirected frustration at being rejected by the red-headed girl. It doesn’t really count because it was obvious to all parties concerned that he was crazy about her the whole time.

You are right, I was responding to what you wrote –and the point of view it expressed– rather than to who you really are, since I don’t know you aside from what you wrote.

You had posted a “metric-fuck-ton of shit” yourself, upwards of 2000 words –I wanted to do it justice :)