So, with thanks to everyone for participating, I’m closing this thread to further comments.

From my experience, I highly doubt that women actively select for jerks, abusive or otherwise. What they do is actively filter out needy, insecure, and fawning types. If jerks and assholes are underrepresented among those that match these descriptions, they’ll be overrepresented among those that women pair up with. Regular, un-assholey confident guys will also be overrepresented, and probably more so; the former stick out in your mind merely because they violate all the principles you’ve internalized about women, which is to hold them on a pedestal. Don’t. It serves no one.

Self-confidence presents a bit of a catch-22, I know. You have to build it up if you weren’t born with it - and at least when it comes to women, I wasn’t - but ‘practicing’ it in an uncontrolled environment might just end up shredding it even further. Try it someplace safer, such as with female friends. It will probably work better if you don’t tell them what you’re up to, as most friends, understandably, will try to spare your feelings if they do; brutal honesty is what you want. But also understandably, you may find it a wee bit manipulative if you don’t tell them.

Actually, I should back up here a bit. The point behind trying it with your friends is that you don’t take it personally if the responses aren’t what you’re looking for. But I suspect that the average clueless ‘nice guy’ will do just that; not because he’s a horrible person, not because he feels he’s entitled to positive responses or dating or sex or what have you, but simply because his self confidence is so low that he bases his entire self worth on how the next oxygen-breathing bilaterally symmetrical human female ’sees’ him. So first things first: stop that. Even good looking, assertive, and attractive guys misfire all the time with women.

Discussion hasn’t crept up around it so much, but I’d like to go into a bit about Pick Up Artists and the so-called Seduction Community. (I made the assumption that all the allusions toward ‘tricks’ and ‘techniques’ that have been made were sidelong glares of disapproval at this sort of thing. Correct me if I’m wrong.) I’ve done my research on it, and I found it lacking in many ways, from the pre-occupation with the bar scene to the seedy looking infomercial-style web layouts. I also found much of what they had to say very potentially beneficial to many men - and most of the ‘tricks’ taught are merely confidence building exercises. For instance, I found this one bitty that was remarkably insightful: when you feel you’ve run out of things to say, rather than searching for more questions a la some awkward interviewer, tell a short anecdote or story about yourself. You’ll be more comfortable, it’ll fill embarrassing seconds of silence, and lead to further conversation down the road, including the possibility that *she’ll* start to ask *you* questions about yourself - LB or LB look-alikes, try this if you haven’t already. That’s whenever you want to be more interesting, not just in a dating/romantic context.

I haven’t heard of that show, larry, despite watching VH1 quite frequently. If what you say is true, it sounds exactly like the sort of help those guys need.

You and kellymac were MRAs on Hugo’s blog last year and you live in Asia with your mail order bride. You live the vending machine paradigm.

Feminists don’t see life the same way as you so you should agree to disagree like kellymac has although she won’t stop talking.

Larry, relying on a packaged, heavily-edited video show for dating tips is not what I’d consider sound advice.

Possibly. It could be faked, or even tilted to favor the host or an outcome. Or it could also work, or semi-work. I just found the whole concept very interesting. What if? Geeky engineers the world over would giggle-sniff with glee and hope.

Anyway, I have been reading about it and the host of the show on the internet. Apparently there is a whole “seduction” sub-culture community where they share techniques, openers, dialogs, and routines, etc. They have a whole language that they use talking to each other: “In A3 when you DHV and get three IOIs you can move to C1.” which supposedly translates to something like: When you demonstrate higher value and receive three indicators of interest you can move from the attraction phase 3 to the comfort building phase 1. whatever.

I ordered a book called “the game” from amazon that apparently tells the story of the rise of this guy and the community he and others founded. Being married I can’t try it out, but it is fascinating enough to read since I can somewhat relate to those shy nerdy socially awkward guys and some of the things they are going through.

What a weird concept. Women aren’t allowed to reject men unless they have a reason you think is appropriate? And yes, “bores me” and “I am not attracted to them” is a perfectly valid reason for either a woman or a man to decide not to pursue a relationship.

Larry, relying on a packaged, heavily-edited video show for dating tips is not what I’d consider sound advice.

Do you genuinely not know what a patriarchy is? If not, please check out the feminism 101 blog, which I’m sure someone will provide you a link to.

Do you know what the patriarchy is and choose to dispute its existence? Fine. Do it somewhere else, not in this thread.

To answer your question, I am not a feminist and I am not a troll.
I did not read all and everything in this thread, which I think, is by far too long. A new thread should be created about this topic, but this is up to the administrator. This thread here is getting confusing…

I myself as a non-American man and not living in the USA find your criteria (comment 404) how to choose a man highly strange and it is no surprise for me, that US-citizens do have a certain communication problem among themselves.

What you are doing as American woman is to judge a man solely on his surface - according to your comment 404 a man should not be boring and not be unattractive…How do you measure that? This is a valid reason to reject a man from the first beginning on?

In the country I am living, a woman seriously interested into a long term relationship would look much deeper - for example by asking a man how many hours he is working per day and how long he has regular employment, asking him if he has a criminal record and if his new car is paid already…

If you ask and LISTEN carefully, you will realize soon, that the unattractive and boring man is not a great entertainer, but at least honest and willing to work.

———–

Comment 468, LarryFromExile,
If a girl checks about her man carefully, is modest and not expecting too much, pick-up artist technique will NOT work.

pathetic.

Don’t assume that all women are the same. Don’t assume that there is one “trick” that will work on all women.
Don’t assume that there are “tricks” to getting women.

I have been watching that pickup artist show on VH1 and the concept is absolutely fascinating: Take some socially awkward geeks, teach them some theory and methods (”tricks”) to get women attracted to them. The first episode they were sent into a bar and told to approach women and be themselves. They were all horribly rejected, some of the guys were crying, it was pathetic. A few lessons later and most of them are doing much better approaching, being accepted, and interacting with women.

So just for the sake of discussion lets assume that there are indeed “tricks” to getting women to like you. Of course, not all women, but say something like 70% of women that go clubbing. Would it be unethical to use such tricks? As I mentioned above, would it be much different than “tricks” women use to attract men? (make-up, sexy clothing, laughing at jokes, etc)

sarahmc,

this is what i’ve been saying that no one else has been saying.

yohan,

i checked and see you haven’t participated on this thread until the 459th comment. you have to read the previous 458 comments before commenting in this thread because i don’t think you’re a feminist.

you didn’t read the last twenty comments carefully which would have answered all your questions.

you should head to the heartless bitches website because you don’t deserve us fine feminists explaining our last twenty comments to you.

you’re a troll.

Reading this statement, I think, you are asking too much from most men - you expect too much from men…he should be a nice guy, not an asshole, no jerk, and even if he is or is not, he should not be unattractive, not boring…and…and…

If a woman really finds such a man, I see no reason why he should marry. Why should he? What will be given to this man in return, if he accepts marriage? He will find many women, who want to be with him.

I think, there is no clear answer to such questions anyway, but to look for ‘Mr. Perfect Dream’ does not make much sense - women are also not always presenting ‘Miss Perfect Dream’. Some more tolerance and less expectations on both sides might be helpful.

And mythago, those perceived “benefits” usually come at a cost. Some might say, “But under patriarchy, women don’t have to pay on dates!” Yeah, and as a result, men feel they’re owed something when they treat women to dinner (or a movie, or a ball game…). It’s not like women get any “benefits” for free. They come at a cost, usually the cost of personal or sexual autonomy. I’ll pass.

You don’t “try to end” a discussion by continuing to participate. If you want to stop talking about it, stop talking about it. Exit-line-with-followup isn’t an exit line.

The “nice guys” with the TM symbol is not referring to men who behave decently; it’s referring to men who adopt a passive or faux-nice demeanor as a perceived successful alternative to macho assholery, and who get enraged that the Nice Guy strategy doesn’t work.

I’ve noticed, by the way, that both here and at your blog you conflate “privilege and benefits” with “all of the advantages”. Of course women get some benefits under patriarchy. Not-all != most, best.

—————————————————
I disagree to this definition.
I do not think, this is the correct description of a ‘Nice Guy’

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nice_guy
Herold & Millhausen (1999) claim that “while nice guys may not be competitive in terms of numbers of sexual partners, they tend to be more successful with respect to longer-term, committed relationships.”
—–
I personally think, there is no clear definition about this term ‘nice guy’ - and I have never seen a clear definition about a ‘nice girl’ either.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nice_guy
“Nice guy” is a term in the general public discourse and in popular culture for a male with certain personality traits and behaviors. The term is ambiguous, and means different things to different people.