Capitalism causes health problems: obesity

Following the British government's moves to set a mandatory minimum price-per-unit for alcohol, and to increase VAT on hot snack foods such as pasties and pies, last night's "10 O'Clock Live" on Channel 4 held a debate discussing "nanny state" politics as regards binge drinking and, particularly, obesity.

They had Dr Dawn Harper from the channel's "Embarrassing Bodies" series to make the case for these types of interventions, Morgan Spurlock of "Supersize Me" fame who seemed not quite to know which side of the debate he was on, and Amy Lamé to present the anti-fatshaming opinion. David Mitchell sat as the chair for the debate, challenging the three debaters on their respective positions (and making witty and amusing comments, because it's supposed to be a topical comedy show).

The usual talking points were covered, such as, "fat people are a drain on the NHS" (Dr Harper stated that currently, treating all the cases of diabetes costs the NHS £1M an hour - apparently forgetting that diabetes is not always related to weight) and "It's a class issue because it's raising prices on the stuff poor people eat, and not rich people". Mr Spurlock even mentioned that the cheapest foods are the worst for you, which is how come poorer people are disproportionately affected by obesity and diet-related illness in general.

What nobody mentioned was how to make good food affordable. I don't know if "food deserts" (areas in which it's not possible to buy fresh or non-prepackaged produce) exist in the UK yet (I've only seen the phenomenon discussed with respect to the USA) but the fact of the matter is, making the bad stuff more expensive doesn't help anyone if there's no viable alternative available.

I wrote last summer about the ways in which a conscience is a marketable commodity in capitalist societies: you pay extra to feel good about yourself. In the same way, healthy eating (for instance, as in that post, by buying organic/free-range/non-prepackaged food) is a consumer commodity, for which one has to pay a market premium. Eating well and healthily is not seen as a fundamental, inalienable human right: it is pretty much explicitly something that you have to pay for. As I said in that earlier post, I would love to be able to eat with a conscience, to eat well and not rely on processed food. But unfortunately, my budget does not allow me that option a lot of the time. I look at the fresh, unprocessed meat at the supermarket and calculate how many dinners that will get me, and then I look at the breaded, processed, chunks that will get me the same amount of meals for half the price, and what can I do but go for the cheaper option? If you raise taxes on the breaded slop then it is just going to be harder for me to feed myself, but I'm still going to need to do it. If you did go so far as to double the price, then probably I'm just going to eat every other day - which has its own health problems that follow from that.

I love it when the foods I enjoy and that are unprocessed are on special offer at the supermarket, because I can finally eat more healthily than otherwise, and I can enjoy cooking far more.

The only option if we really want to get poor people eating good food is to make good food cheaper, rather than (or perhaps, as well as) making "bad" food more expensive. Arguably, if the price of good food were subsidised using the proceeds of taxes on "bad" foods to make the good food cheaper, then that would do both things at once (incidentally, introducing targeted subsidies for poor people to use would be a very bad plan, because that's explicitly telling people what they can or can't buy and people don't like being told what to do like that: the subsidies have to apply to the pricing, not the purchasing, if they are to produce longer-lasting effects).

The other issue in changing people's eating habits is the issue of preparation. Processed foods and prepackaged meals are popular because you just bung it in the microwave and it's done. If you're on a low income and working 40 hours a day, travelling God knows how long just to get to and from work every day, and struggling to maintain a decent living standard in your home, the last thing you want to do is spend a precious hour slaving in the kitchen before you eat and can relax. You just want to get something in your belly and have done with it and forget about life until morning. If your household requires two incomes to run it, then who's going to do the cooking? Buy the stuff that comes in a plastic tray and forget about it.

If you buy fresh produce, fresh meats, etc then it takes time and effort to convert those materials from raw organic matter into a pleasing meal. I have time available, because I'm unemployed. If I got a job on minimum wage, however, I'm not sure that I would have the energy and the will and the time to spend making stuff from scratch. Lord knows, there are enough days as it is where I feel too tired from the exertions of the day to spend more on making something really nice: I just go for a cheap and nasty solution in the meantime. And I'm proud of what I do in the kitchen! I get a big psychological payoff from it! So if I feel worn out, then what about people who actually have jobs?

What's the solution? Better pay, shorter working hours (if necessary, mandated by law). What you spend on those things will be recouped and more from the costs and working hours saved by having healthier, happier, and less exhausted workers for a start. Not to mention, lower tax expenditure on running the health service.

So, my plan to solve obesity is by:

• Lowering the prices of good food and only then raising the cost of the "bad" stuff
• Raising the national minimum wage to a level that allows people to work shorter hours
• If necessary, enforce shorter working hours (which might also help to combat unemployment as businesses employ more people to compensate for the shorter working hours directive)

It takes all three points to do it: it's no good making good food cheap, if people don't have time to cook it, and they won't have time to cook it unless they can afford to take that time away from paid employment.

Obesity as it manifests currently is a consequence of capitalist economics. QED.

On ethics, CSI, the bystander effect and choosing to be better than that.

[SPOILER WARNING: Just in case you haven't seen it and might plan to in the future: spoilers for an episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation season 1. But I'm guessing most people who want to have seen it already, right? So this is the only warning you get.]

So the other day, I was waiting at the bus stop to come home. A mother was struggling to keep control of three young boys, and deal with the needs of a younger girl in a pushchair. At least half a dozen other people were also waiting there.

Mum looks very stressed, and makes all kinds of threats trying to get the older two boys to calm down, while she tends to the youngest two children. While her attention is focussed on the youngest two, second-eldest runs past eldest, who swings a very calculated punch to catch second-eldest on the elbow - it didn't look that hard, but second-eldest burst out crying (my best guess is that the punch caught the funny bone, from the scale of the reaction).

As soon as 2nd-E starts crying, Eldest says, "He tripped and fell over." Mum and the other children may have been focussed on each other, but there were eye-witnesses standing all around waiting for the bus, of which I was one. I hoped that Mum might see through the fabrication when, on the third time of telling, Eldest added the denial "I definitely didn't punch him." But she was more concerned with treating the injury supposedly sustained in a fall, and keeping tabs on youngest son (who seemed to want to head straight across the flow of traffic to the other side of the road).

I was in two minds about what to do. Social norms seem to say that you don't tell people how to look after their kids, and you don't interfere in their business. But at the same time, if the incident goes unnoticed then the younger of the two will grow up knowing that no one has his back, and the eldest will grow up knowing he can use violence and get away with it. Injustice will have been permitted to be done.

So when things were calm enough for me to intercede, I screwed up my courage to the sticking point, overcame my sense of social propriety, and remarked quietly to the mum what I saw happen. "Let justice roll on like a river, and righteousness like a never-failing stream!" [Amos 5:24] Mum thanked me for bringing the facts to her attention, and I am pretty sure that Eldest has got away with this sort of thing before because he seemed outraged rather than unhappy to have been called on his actions. I think I did the best thing.

But to do so required thinking outside the socially-prescribed boxes that we create around ourselves and others. Like I said, there were at least half a dozen other eye-witnesses to the incident, and not one of them showed any sign of speaking up. That was what prompted me to bite the bullet and say something myself.

***

Recently, I have been rewatching the early CSI epsiodes, and one in particular caught my attention, because of the concluding sequence in which the team discuss the ethics of the case they've just uncovered. The episode title is "Unfriendly Skies". The basic plot is that a man suffering from undiagnosed encephalitis (swelling of the brain) starts to act strangely while on an aeroplane at 35,000 feet altitude, culminating in an attempt to escape from the plane via the emergency exit - which would kill everyone else on the plane as well. Five passengers ended up desperately struggling with him and he ends up dead. Unfortunately, the victim was killed after he was trying to escape from the mob, and was no longer doing anything to threaten anyone. Unfortunately, because, "no jury would ever convict", the passengers who killed the victim go free.

The team's discussion is whether they, had they been on the flight, would have done the same.

Nick Stokes: "Where's the justice?"
Warrick Brown: "Oh, you think this is about justice?"
NS: "Yeah, what else?!"
WB: "It's about human nature, how people react when their lives are threatened."
Sara Sidle: "I know you're not condoning what they did!"
WB: "I'm not discounting it. I mean, think about it: is there any place more vulnerable than a tin can at 30 thousand feet?"
SS: Feeling vulnerable is NOT a defence, and where they were is irrelevant. They took a life."
WB: "Because their lives were threatened."
NS: "Yeh. Their lives were threatened, when Candelwell was at the emergency exit, trying to open it. But the 5 feet between the exit and the aisle is what made the difference between self-defence and murder."
WB: "Human nature again. I mean, adrenaline doesn't come with an off switch."
SS: "I don't care what you say. I could never take a life."
WB: "If it was between him or me: I could. Nick?"
NS: "I don't know."

[Catherine Willows and Gil Grissom arrive]

CW: "Well, it's wicked serious in here!"
SS: "Yeah. Well, we were just talking about murder, and whether we would commit it. I couldn't, Warrick could and Nick's on the fence. We're taking an exit poll."
NS: "Catherine: you're a mother. You and Lindsey are on that plane... how far do you go?"
CW: "All the way."
SS: "You didn't even hesitate!"
CW: "That's right. It involves the protection of my child, I fight to the death."
WB: "See? We have four people here, all of different opinions. Think of how the passengers must have felt."
SS: "What do you think, Grissom?"
GG: "I can't answer that question."
CW: "Well, that's a cop-out! It's a simple question: what would you have done if you had been one of those passengers?"
GG: "It's not about that. You all have different opinions, but you've taken the same point of view. You've put yourselves in the shoes of the passengers, but nobody's put themselves in the shoes of the victim. that's the point."
SS: "I'm sorry. What are you saying?!"
GG: "Nobody stopped to ask Candelwell if he was alright, they just assumed, because he was kicking the back of Nate's seat, that he was a jerk. Because he was pushing his call button that he was bothering the flight attendant. Because he was trying to get into the lavatory, he was making a scene. Because he was going back and forth up and down the aisles, he was posing a threat."
CW: "He was a threat!"
GG: "No. He turned into a threat. But it didn't have to be that way. People make assumptions, that's the problem. You just did. And I think these passengers made a wrong assumption, and now this guy's dead."
WB: "If that's your stance, how could it have been prevented?"
GG: "If just one person had stopped and taken the time to look at the guy, to listen to him, to figure out what was wrong with him, it might not have happened. It took five people to kill him, but it would've only taken one person to save his life."

That was what started me thinking about writing this post in the first place - then the incident with the boys at the bus stop happened, and I started sorting the concepts in my head into (hopefully) some kind of order.

The scene from CSI that I've transcribed above illustrates two things about social norms and human behaviour: first, there's the class of behaviours of which the Bystander Effect is a member: social tendency towards inaction (and, in this particular type, there's also the tendency to ascribe evil to others' behaviour while seeing reasons for our own similar behaviours, so characters assumed it was jerkishness and not illness causing the bad behaviour). Second, there's the "mob behaviour" tendency towards social action. Both are ways in which social norms and "human nature" tend to work against what we instinctively feel is ethical, and yet it is hard to say for sure that we would be any different if confronted with the situation.

It is socially difficult to ask a person if they are alright, especially if there is no obvious cause of pain or suffering. I remember a few years back riding on a train and the woman sitting opposite me seemed unable to stop crying. After some hesitation, I asked if she was okay. As it turned out, she was on her way to receive treatment for a previously diagnosed condition that was causing her eyes to water and although it was painful, she was not in need of help. But again, it mattered that I did not just assume that this was "normal" sadness. What if it had been a serious condition?

Because I am aware of the social norms described above, and of such experiments as the Milgram experiment, several years ago I made myself a firm promise that I would consciously work to undo these particular social norms and boundaries in my mind and transgress the norms to act ethically. Thus, not letting the eldest boy get away with bullying his sibling. Not letting it pass that a person sitting opposite me seemed to be in distress. Not letting it pass that a dog is tied to a bench outside a shop (see under "Clarisse Thorn Routine 3" on that link).

There are other good reasons for challenging normal behaviour and making a conscious effort to deprogram oneself from these social behaviours. I recall seeing a few years back a documentary on television about how people behave in crisis situations. It demonstrated an experiment where, if a single person was left in a room to fill in a simple test form, and then smoke was fed into the room from under a second door, then pretty soon that individual would exit to seek help. If you put several people in the room, all filling out forms together, and start to feed smoke into the room under the same circumstances, most of the time the people will just carry on doing the form. In some examples, it was demonstrated, they would stay there even when the smoke made it almost impossible to see the paper. If a real fire had been threatening them, then they would almost certainly have become trapped by it. Using anecdotal evidence from a sea disaster (my memory wants to say it was the Estonia sinking, but I don't trust my recollection far enough to say definitively) they discussed how some people, even when the dining room on the ship was tilting at an steep angle, and water flooding in, found it hard to abandon what they were doing, because nobody else would move first. The tendency of humans to act as a group or not at all can be a benefit when we say "strength in numbers", but when a disaster approaches and we do nothing, it can be a death sentence.

I want to be prepared, mentally, for all kinds of extreme situations, to make sure I can do the best thing for myself (survival) and for others (ethics). I want not to be trapped by Bystander effects, Somebody Else's Problem effects, mob behaviour, and so on. I saw a documentary about the Bystander effect that showed two scenarios where a single person responded, and one where a busload of passengers did nothing while a couple of youths beat another person to death, and the passengers talked about how it felt to have done nothing. I want to be the person who, on that bus, would have stepped in. I want to have the mental tools, as well as the physical tools, to do that. Equally, if a group of people turn on someone, I want to be able to be the person who tries to persuade them to calm down, or at least to be able to pull back and do something else. I don't know that I would ever have the guts to interpose myself between the mob and their target, but I want to be able to do something better than to go along with their actions.

I want to be able to take Gil Grissom's view, and not let it get to the point where I'm forced to choose. At the very least, I want to be able to stop (and try to get others to stop) once Candelwell is safely away from the emergency exit. I don't think, ethically, we have the right to let our behaviour be governed by norms when it means others suffer, and that means we have to make a conscious commitment to breaking those boundaries.

Desperate Dennis: A look at Mr Waterman's bad excuses

With the emergence of Dennis Waterman's remarks about hitting his ex-wife because she was "too intelligent", I have been a little bit torn.

Not regarding the wrongness of his actions, or indeed, his attitudes and excuses. There's no excusing his behaviour or his apparent lack of contrition or repentance (just saying he's "very very ashamed" doesn't mean he's made any steps to reform himself to avoid repeat occurrences).

In what follows, I may make a case that seems to defend Mr Waterman. This is only so that I can pick holes in it and demonstrate why even if there may be some ways in which he has a point, when it comes to the crunch he's just plain wrong. I empathise to criticise.

I can sort of understand the emotional space that he might be trying to describe when he talks about losing arguments and not getting a word in, and the theoretical distinction he wants to draw between "a beaten wife" and "she was hit". I don't think it's a valid distinction, and certainly not in this case, but I think I might be able to see what he wants to believe about it and why he might want to (besides the obvious of trying to make it seem like his actions were okay).

The emotional space I think he's describing is one of desperation. Of feeling trapped and under attack. I have no way of knowing if Mr Waterman had any reason to feel that way, but when you feel helpless and unable to protect yourself, you turn to whatever methods are available to get out of that situation. The sad thing is that many men never learn any other techniques than violence.

Now, a brief thought experiment is to reverse the genders in the situation - so a woman says of her male partner that he would never allow her a word in edgeways, she could never win the argument, always made her feel less intelligent than him, was "a bit of a power freak" and "determined to put [her] down". One might be forgiven for seeing it her way when she lashes out at him.

I need to be very clear here: there is no equivalence between that scenario and the actual situation in which Mr Waterman attacked Rula Lenska, because typically when a man is using his intelligence as a weapon, he also has the benefit of size and strength on his side. Mr Waterman may not have had the education, but we can believe that physically the balance was in his favour. I think that talking about "she was hit" is his way of trying to draw an equivalence, and he's just wrong.

The situation is also not equivalent, because his version of events is somewhat at odds with Rula Lenska's, who says that there was a pattern of violent and abusive behaviour. Given that that link also quotes Mr Waterman as saying, "I’m actually quite Victorian in that way. It’s been suggested that I’m chauvinistic but I don’t think I am, I’m just... I think there is a place for women at home." I am very much more inclined to believe Ms Lenska than Mr Waterman over the actual nature of the events. And, again, he has shown no hint of changing his tendencies or behaviours, which also implies a likelihood of a continuing pattern rather than a one-off event.

Mr Waterman claimed that, "It's not difficult for a woman to make a man hit her." This, of course, is utter bollocks. I know science fiction and fantasy stories often have mind control powers ascribed to certain types of people but as far as I know, they don't actually exist in the real world today.

However, if we change it slightly, we can get a certain potentially true statement: "It's not hard for a woman to make a man want to hit her." I think we can generalise that further to "It's not hard for one person to make another person want to hit the first person." However, in general if the second person (or "man" in the gendered version) actually hits the first person (or "woman") then it doesn't matter how much he wanted to do it based on the behaviour or speech of the first person: the second person is still completely responsible for his (or potentially her) own actions. And yes, Mr Waterman, that goes even when he's so drunk he claims not to be able to remember the details later. After all, it was a free and conscious decision to drink alcohol, and if you know alcohol can reduce capacity for self-control, then you're responsible if that loss of self-control leads to violent behaviour.

Our emotions need not rule us completely. I do not believe we can be entirely responsible for the emotional reactions we feel. These things can be wanted or unwanted, we may feel stuff that really we don't find after a moment's reflection is truly worthy of our higher selves. But the trick is that, while we may feel those things, we don't have to act on them. Human beings have the ability to delay or deny the gratification of our baser passions in this way, if to respond to them immediately would cause harm.

Feeling a burst of violent rage at feeling trapped or defenceless in an argument is not necessarily something unusual, or something to be frowned upon. But acknowledging that anger is one thing. What a person chooses to do as a result of it is quite another. You can push it deep down and suck it up; you can turn away and find some alternative activity to unleash the pent-up anger; you can run away and find a quiet spot to calm down. Plenty of choices there. But choosing to hit someone because of it is not a good choice. (Again, if alcohol reduces the faculties in such a way as to make you more likely to choose that course, then the obvious responsible thing is not to drink alcohol.)

So whatever happened, Dennis Waterman is wrong both to have used violence in the first place (and also, to have drunk alcohol if it makes him prone to violence, or forgetting his violent behaviour) and to have used the arguments he did to defend himself.

Oh, yeah - final point: if she's more intelligent and/or better educated, so that she wins her arguments with you, maybe it's better if you don't argue with her but listen to what she says and go along with it. Just a thought.

5 year old bullied into haircut

I'm a bit teary over this story, but wanted to draw attention to it because this. And also this.

And also, the Iggy Pop quote.

Talis Kimberley's song, my version and (mostly) pictures of my youth. It's relevant:

What happens when they don't?

Many people know the line from "Field of Dreams", "If you build it, he will come" (often misquoted as "if you build it, they will come"). It's often used as a reminder to follow our dreams and trust that things will work out okay if we believe in them enough. In Wayne's World 2, it's spoofed as "If you book them, they will come" with Jim Morrison's ghost telling Wayne to put on a big festival. In the "sad ending", the bands they book don't turn up. And that's kind of what this post is about.

There seem to be several advice tips out there in various contexts that operate on a principle that requires a person to believe that something that is currently unavailable to them or invisible from their perspective, will reappear if they act on the assumption that it already exists. The "if you build it..." plot from "Field of Dreams" is like that - the faith that people will enjoy watching baseball purely for the joy of childhood memories, so by building the field instead of planting crops, it would be a success automatically. The faith would win through.

One such is the advice that is discussed in Clarisse Thorn's "Confessions of a Pick-up Artist Chaser", concerning social phobia (and, incidentally, pick-up artistry's "Field Reports"), which is that people having difficulty with social situations can a) keep a log of encounters that went well and b) transgress some of the rules that they feel exist, to see that in general people don't react badly, or at least, nowhere near as badly as the person fears they will. I recently wrote about an example from my own efforts with pick-up. Also, viddy this XKCD.

But the question is, what if the feared reaction is exactly what you get? Or at least, what if the reaction is sufficiently bad as to reinforce rather than undo the social phobia assumptions? Here's a post where I wrote about an example from my own experience that shows that happening. Alright, so the reaction wasn't dreadful, but it was pretty much the "bad feeling" reaction that I expect when I break through the social boundaries I tend to assume exist.

This particular advice is essentially about competing assumptions: the therapist who assumes that people won't react badly (or at least, won't react badly enough to provoke shame or embarrassment) versus the social phobic person's expectation that they will, and consequent fear of that outcome. The advice is fine as long as people behave the way the therapist expects them to do, but not everyone does; differences of class, gender, I'm guessing race as well, tend to mean that people in general often do have different ways of reacting and have different standards for having a negative or shame-inducing reaction. Sometimes, the feared disaster will happen unless it is possible to calibrate for different social settings and norms.

The big one that I have been meaning to mention for a while now (and now I just managed to stack up enough other similar bits to push me to do so!) is the self-help advice that "motivation follows action", which I have seen quoted in various places, and in some form in most "coping with depression" books. I've even seen it suggested as sex advice (for women, specifically) that if you just get started, maybe with some extended foreplay or kissing, then motivation (i.e. sexual desire) will follow (Sadly, I don't recall the source). To some degree, I think this works for men, too - or at least, I think my desire often works this way.

And often, it's true that motivation follows action: I've found it to be very helpful with a lot of things, including my exercise "programme". There are times when I don't feel like putting in any effort, but if I just get going then I often surprise myself by how much I end up wanting to do it. The same often goes for doing the housework.

But the problem remains: what happens when you start doing something and you stick at it for a bit, but motivation doesn't follow? Now, a lot of the time, it's something that needs doing. Housework is a prime example! I hate doing the washing up, and starting it doesn't make it any easier to feel motivated (except that I also hate to leave the job unfinished, so I get pulled in both directions on that one - maybe that was a bad example!) Anyway, the job needs doing but I still feel the dragging, tired, depression-state even after I have got myself warmed up and doing it. It's very hard indeed to keep going (although that's normally when I just remind myself that it needs doing and to grit it out, sometimes I do end up giving in).

It's another case of the advice assuming that the motivation is there, the energy is there, it's just out of sight or temporarily unavailable. Start moving, and you'll see round the corner and there's the motivation, or you'll make contact with it again (like a spaceship coming out of the radio shadow of the Moon). You have to take it on faith that the radio is still working, and that the motivation really is just around the next corner.

And, since this advice has been offered to women regarding sex, there's quite a serious issue of consent and rape culture to be mentioned. How many scenes in movies and television show a woman who starts off displaying sexual interest in a man but it ends up that she pulls back and apologised for not wanting to go further? Consent campaigners frequently state that consent is continually negotiated, it isn't a one-off switch at the start of a sexual encounter. This sort of thing obviously needs to take that into account. But it also sends the message that "no" doesn't really mean "no", it means "get me warmed up first". And that's not okay. If it's true that women start to feel more motivated sexually once they actually start getting it on with their partners, and then feel more in the mood, then there is only one way that that can possibly work in the context of responsible and consent-respecting relationship, which is that she initiates the sexual encounter. (At which point, we also get the thorny issue of the assumption that dudes are always up for it no matter what the time or place - what if she initiates and he says the equivalent of "Not tonight, dear, I've got a headache"?)

And then, if she initiates (and he's up for it, figuratively and literally!) but finds that after all, her desire doesn't follow, then what? Of course, she says, "I'm sorry, I thought I could get into it but it's not happening for me, let's try again another time." (Or, if it's a one-night stand, "Sorry, you picked the wrong girl/guy to go home with"). And then God help her (because the courts probably won't) if he decides to ignore that... Which is a problem. (And of course, there's "LMR" tactics in pickup artistry that assume that it's just a form of "anti-slut defence" - although the most ethical PUAs do advise assuming that sex is not going to happen, most still see this as a tactic to demonstrate respect rather than actually respecting her "no"). Ideally, I would like to know if a partner is trying "motivation follows action" when zie starts hir actions because then if I am also feeling the same way about sex, for example, I can suggest that we don't bother or take it slowly to see how we both feel; and I can also be ready for her discomfort and withdrawal if the motivation doesn't materialise. (Of course, I need to practise communicating that way as well, there have been some times when I have felt that I would have preferred not to go as far, and essentially on that same basis of not quite finding the motivation following the foreplay action, regardless of what my willy did.)

In other (non-sexual) ways, "motivation follows action" can be used either to pressure people into doing something that they haven't the energy to do, or to keep going with something that they agreed to do on that basis and then found that they weren't capable of seeing through for whatever reason.

I've found it to be a very useful slogan, but at the same time it has to be treated with scepticism because it isn't always true, it is only true some of the time, and for some people. How common those times are depends upon the person.

Pick-up updates, supplemental (March week 2)

So I had occasion to go back into town today at lunchtime, and was eager to see if the progress I made last time was genuine or not - I was hoping for more opportunities to approach.

Kinda blew it a couple of times, but mostly not in a big way (like, to get to a woman of interest, I'd have had to dodge through the traffic which is great in a romcom movie, but in real life can get you dead quite severely! So I didn't try an approach in that sort of situation.)

But then an opportunity did arise. Head-on approach, as usual for me, and slightly nervous, but I knew what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it.

I hesitated a little too long in making my move, so her momentum carried her far enough that we ended up sideways on to the direction she was travelling. Maybe that's better in terms of being less threatening, but it also meant that she stopped for only a couple of seconds and effectively maintained her momentum. (I guess calibrating that time of intervention so that she both is not threatened and also will stop long enough for me to say my opener and follower confidently, will be a tricky art to master.)

That said, I spoke my opening line (a compliment on her top, if I recall correctly), aiming for confident delivery and I hope I smiled (I usually do when I talk to people). The effect? A very bright, "Thank you, that's really nice of you to say!" from her. At that moment, I lost my grounding because I hadn't worked out a follower in time so I just said my automatic reply "You're very welcome..." as I quickly tried to come up with something to say next, but she was already going as I said those words.

Ho hum.

The good news is, the approach pretty much went well (if I'd spoken a beat earlier, maybe I'd have had time to think up my follower, but hey) - I didn't seem to cause any kind of offence, I didn't bother her or get slapped or any of the range from "Huh, who the fuck are you?" to "Argh! Help! Police!" that the over-imaginative mind can conjure. Nope - she smiled, was bright, cheerful about it even, and seemed genuinely to like the fact that I noticed her top and remarked on it.

I'm going to say that this does represent continued progress in that I made the approach, got another positive experience of actually hitting on someone (i.e. not just saying hi or a casual day-to-day comment but something that could be read as a signal of interest). It feels like stuff might actually work for me. This feels like new territory. I mean, intellectually I always knew that a positive or at least relaxed response was most likely, and at worst would be just a funny look and she walks on, but you need the lived experience to believe in the good things. I'm getting there.

Back to town tomorrow, so who knows what could happen next?

PORN REVIEW: Dreams of Spanking's "Punishment by Proxy"

Continuing to big up Pandora Blakes spanking porn site, "Dreams of Spanking". Seriously, I know I got freebies for writing these reviews but this one hand-on-heart is a cracker. I think it's also the last scene tagged "F/M" (Female top/Male bottom) so I have now reviewed all of the ones currently available. I'll be reviewing some more of the M/F scenes, and I may want to check out a few of the F/F scenes (even though most F/F spanking porn doesn't work for me, I suspect that Dreams of Spanking may be different). This is influenced by details of this video...

Punishment by Proxy

Starring

• Jimmy Holloway
• Pandora Blake
• Zoe Montana

Available from Dreams of Spanking.

Another school punishment setting, with Jimmy and Pandora in the familiar roles as pupils who have to be brought back in line. This one has a theme of illicit teen romance (Zoe, as the teacher, pretty much opens with "Behind the bike sheds again, it seems.")

The twist is that the two star-cross'd lovers are made to punish one another in an attempt to break the bond between them.

The first things I noticed were Zoe's imperious manner (as ever), and Jimmy's demeanour. I've discussed his insouciant or aloof air before. Here, he doesn't seem to have it in the same way: there is more of an anxious element to his stance so that that, although his facial expression is similar, the overall impression is more on-edge. I want to believe that this is purely down to good acting, although in the notes on the Dreams of Spanking site, Pandora notes that:

It was an edgy, difficult scene to tackle, as it involved Jimmy and I switching with each other for the first time. Neither of us had really topped before at this point, and it was Jimmy's first ever spanking shoot, so it was a bit nervewracking for both of us!

So it may have had something to do with it being his first time, or anticipating his first topping experience. Like I said, I prefer to believe that he's just doing a really good acting job.

Pandora acts very much as though she knows what's coming in terms of the physical punishment, afraid of what Zoe can deliver. (It doesn't stop her protesting that the "6-inch rule" of separation between boys and girls, is a stupid one, though!) The building of tension and anticipation just in her body language is exceptional and, in the opening sequence where the misdemeanours are recounted you could probably run it as a silent movie and you would know exactly what was about to happen.

An interesting point, given the strong body language signals I was picking up during the introduction, the moment when Zoe reveals the twist receives a very muted initial response from the two students. I recall seeing a documentary with John Williams (the famous film score composer) in which he discussed an occasion early in his career when he was composing a score for a thriller. The director or producer (somebody famous, but I forget who) said to him about one scene something like - "Lovely work in the build-up, but right here, where the big shock happens, you've got a lot of sound. It should be silent." In some ways, I think this is like the body language equivalent of that silence where normally you get the orchestra "sting".

Once the logistics are worked out, Jimmy begins hesitantly, prompting Zoe first to have Pandora's skirt raised, and then to take over to show them both how it's done (and as regular readers will recall, I have noted previously that Zoe really knows what she's doing with an over the knee punishment!). I mentioned "oomph" and "arm strength" before. In this scene, the hairbrush used as the main implement breaks, Zoe is that powerful (of course, poor Pandora gets the blame for this equipment failure - it was her arse that broke it, after all...) Since it's just the bristle pad that flew off, this doesn't affect the performance in terms off impact, so the show goes on, and Jimmy once again starts spanking Pandora.

Eventually, it's time for "all change!"

Jimmy is told to take both his trousers and his knickers down (yes, I noticed that - but letting it pass without further comment) because he was too gentle with Pandora. And then it's his turn to receive the brush to his buttocks.

A word about empathy: when Jimmy was spanking, I found it quite easy to relate to his uncertain vibe (I just thought of the first spanking I ever gave!); when Zoe was spanking Pandora, I oscillated between empathising with her (because dang, I want to be that good!) and with Jimmy who couldn't bear to watch. But when Pandora was spanking Jimmy, her distress was too obvious and I couldn't relate to the scene at all initially. Then I noticed Jimmy, in the midst of receiving the blows of the hairbrush, tenderly rubbing Pandora's leg, apparently trying to comfort her even in the midst of this awful ordeal and his own pain. With that, I was with him, because in that situation (in real life rather than acting), with that punishment, that is where I would have been mentally as well. I would have been focussed on making the experience as bearable for her as possible (incidentally, in the real-life situation, when it was my turn to spank rather than be spanked, I would have been absolutely vicious, in the hopes of (a) having the teacher be satisfied quickly so it ends sooner and (b) making sure that the teacher didn't step in!) and his tenderness went right to where my heart is. So then, I was in the scene as him. (Of course, it's entirely possible that he was just clutching at whatever was nearest to try to make bearing the pain easier, but I want to believe in the tenderness and caring!)

Another key element is reactions: I'm a reaction junkie with almost all my kinks, spanking included, and spanking porn is no exception. Pandora's reactions especially are very strong, yelping, squealing, wailing, kicking, you name it. In the notes mentioned earlier, she describes it as, "From an actor's point of view, this film was amazing. It was hot, intense and so much fun to play out." The intensity really shines through in her responses to everything, and of course intense responses make for hot porn.

I keep coming back to this thing of silent movies, where everything had to be said with expressions and body language, and the occasional flash card to provide essential information to the audience. When it comes down to it, this whole shoot could have been presented as a silent movie. Maybe just a couple of cards to explain "You have to punish each other!" and "If it's not hard enough, I'll have to take over!" - and the rest of the story is told completely without the need for dialogue. I wonder about how to score such a piece in terms of the background music (a lot can be done with audience emotion and perception of a scene just with music, as I noted with that half-remembered anecdote from John Williams) but what an idea to conjure with.

The final element to mention is visuals - I'm just going to say that a bottom walloped by Zoe's hairbrush is visibly a well-walloped bottom, and Pandora does a pretty good job, too, going by the marks she left (and that's why I want to see some of the F/F stuff: Pandora does more topping in those and I want to see how further experience in the role improves it!)

So the upshot of all that is that on just about every category, this video scores top marks. I'm always hesitant to describe anything as perfect, but it comes down to this:

Overall score: 5/5

Seriously, spanking fans, check this one out.

In which I come out as anti-marriage...

Via The F-Word Blog

The Home Office is the UK has started a consultation on legalising LGBT marriage (currently, according to the consultation, if a married trans* person seeks full gender recognition as hir desired identity then the marriage has to be terminated first - they propose getting rid of that rule, so the 'T' is relevant). Such a step would only apply to civil ceremony marriages, and not to religious ceremonies.

My position is that all couples regardless of gender or sexuality of the partners should have the exact same legal rights to recognition of their commitment and union with one another - personally, I think "couple" should be any number ≥2 with divorce being possible between any single pairing within the group, or any set of pairings. But polyamory rights is another issue entirely, and the details of such legislation would be tricky to work out.

Now, the more observant reader will have noted that my heading for this post says I'm anti-marriage. That statement will require some qualification. Here's what I wrote in the comments box for the consultation:

My preferred approach is to abolish marriage as a legal institution and replace it entirely with civil unions (allowing currently married couples to convert their marriages into civil unions) as the sole legally recognised and rewarded form of personal commitment and partnership. Then religious or other groups who wish to carry out additional ceremonies to mark the occasion can do so freely and on whatever grounds they choose. Hopefully, "spouse", "husband" and "wife" would remain in common usage for civil partners.

In many ways, for all my radical attitudes about a lot of stuff, I am quite traditional: I like the idea of committed, legally-recognised and supported/rewarded family units. I have zero value judgement against those who aren't in those kinds of units, because what works for me is not always what works for others and vice versa. But yeah, I like the idea of people committing to one another for life and having a family and all (family need not include children). All things being equal and beneficial for it, then yeah, I'd prefer to see that. In that sense, I am pro-marriage.

I just think that "marriage" is simply a word. If religious groups want to make a kerfuffle over what it means, then let them have it in an official capacity. I'm sure everyone else will go on calling their partnerships "marriages" as well, even though that would no longer be the legal designation. Meanwhile, religious groups can celebrate whatever the fuck celebrations and ceremonies they choose, calling them what the fuck they choose, without it having any impact on any legal stuff whatsoever. BDSM couples who get married sometimes treat that as a parallel to their BDSM commitment and celebrate a separate "collaring ceremony" later, why should religions be any different? I'm writing as a Christian here, too. Jesus said, "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's." [Matthew 22:21 - I usually go with the NIV, but some verses of the old KJV are so memorable and quotable!] The legal status of marriage has nothing to do with God, that is Caesar's thing, and belongs to the State, not the Church. For those of us with religious beliefs about the union of two people in life partnership, and how God views that, that is between us and God, and we can render unto God what is God's independently of the State. It actually offends me in my faith that the Church mixes God and the profane in this manner. The Church should have no business dealing with tax advantages, legal access rights and so on - I mean, if you're going to invite that stuff into God's house, then why not just go the whole way and set up money changers' stalls as well? (Yes, I went there.)

So, fuck "marriage". Ditch it, call it something else, and move on with people of any gender combinations (including the ones who aren't in the binary) being able to have those happy unions regardless of what bigoted groups say. If they want marriage so badly, let them have it and define it how they want, just they can't have it with a legal definition. When civil unions are the only game in town, then I'm pretty sure that most people (especially those who were married and now have to convert to retain the legal benefits of marriage) will stick to the old words and there won't even be a social cachet to having the extra religious ceremony because the words will be the same. Sure, you'll get weird snobbish "no, we're really married, not just civil union," types, but since just over 2/3 of all marriages in England and Wales in 2009 were civil ceremonies [source: Office of National Statistics], I don't honestly see very many people caring except other religious types - those snobs are more likely to offend other people than be granted higher status for it. Well, with one possible exception: since a civil ceremony and a religious ceremony would be two ceremonies that had to be booked, there's possibly going to be an extra cost for a couple who are committed enough to their religious belief to want a church wedding as well as a civil union. Possibly, it would become a sign of status because of wealth giving the freedom for two ceremonies, thus wealthy people who want to show off their supposed piety would be able to splash out on the religious occasion as well (although I'm pretty sure Jesus had some things to say about lavish displays of wealth, too). Ideally, the Church, if it truly cared about people's souls and not pulling a profit, would charge only a minimal fee for booking a ceremony, or would incorporate marriage consecrations into the regular Sunday service instead, so there was no added value for the wealthy to display their wealth by getting a priest to perform the ceremony for people who probably have no other affiliation with them.

See also, my Fantasy fairytale magical daydream post, all about my dream wedding ceremony (looks like I'll be needing 3 ceremonies...)

Pick-up Progress Update: March week 2

So I've been going into town regularly this week with at least half an eye to trying out the advice I've learned most recently, and since finishing Clarisse Thorn's book "Confessions of a Pickup Artist Chaser" (available on Kindle), with an eye to the remarks and suggestions in there, too. Usually, though, I have some genuine other purpose - there's something I want to buy. Today, I needed a replacement for my clothes airing rack, which finally gave up the ghost a couple of days ago. That meant figuring out how to carry an awkward angular object - I decided to use the trolley from my wheeled shopping bag (the bag bit is detachable) and a stretchy luggage chord to keep it in place. THIS IS RELEVANT to the update, as you shall see.

The obvious question was whether trundling an airing rack behind me would in any way cramp my style and "game". Inasmuch as it was a wide load and therefore restricted how quickly I could move, it did. It also meant that I felt I had to be conscious of how it might restrict a woman's ability to get past me if she wanted to avoid conversation - it's pretty bad form to make someone feel trapped by you.

So jogging up from behind, passing, and turning was not looking like a realistic approach (and besides, as that post notes, it's not something I feel totally comfortable with anyway).

Most of the trip went similarly to the ones in that update, so I didn't get the results I was looking for but bugged out with various excuses.

Finally, as I was heading home, I saw a good-looking woman in my age range, about 100 yards off. It wasn't ideal for feeling comfortable with it, because it meant I had to do an about-turn and cross the road to go towards her, and this took me off my natural route home. This meant being pretty deliberate about my intentions straight away which is nerve-wracking. I felt the fear and did it anyway.

I hoped to get ahead of her quite naturally and then turn and do a stop and run with what I had, which I think was something specific about her clothes (I forget now - all the other lines I didn't use got jumbled together). That didn't happen, instead I somehow wound up on a course that would put me behind her - so I decided to try the "Yad stop" anyway. But (of course) I couldn't get to jogging speed because of the airing rack banging at the backs of my thighs. I figured I'd missed my chance.

Suddenly, then she turned sharply (in a way that looked like she would have done anyway had I not been there) as I made my way on a smooth path and ended up behind me. I thought she'd reached her car as we were now just in the entrance to a car park. This impression was wrong, and instead she pulled in behind me with her footsteps shadowing mine just a few yards back.

This was my chance to make an approach. I gave it a few seconds and then turned, looked over my shoulder, and said with mock-indignation in my voice, "It feels like you're following me!"

She smiled and brightly said that I shouldn't worry, she wasn't a stalker, just heading back to her car. I liked her smile and said so, and of course she said thank you. I forget what the next exchange was exactly, but then we reached her car. So I said, "See? I walked you safely to your car!" which made her laugh and smile again.

There, we parted ways, so it feels like it was "incomplete" in some ways, but the best thing is that it was a positive experience in which I transgressed some of the usual boundaries I feel about behaviour and socialising (cf. social anxiety in Clarisse's book) and got what felt like good vibes back again.

I want to emphasise that I was looking for her body language a lot here (because of the nature of what I felt were my transgressions) and didn't feel anything defensive or perturbed coming from her - there again, I don't always trust my calibration with these things.

I also want to talk about what the transgressions were: first, there was the deliberate action that clearly changed my course and (had she noticed) could have clued her in that I was going to try to talk to her. Although there is a path to my home that goes through the car park, it wasn't an obvious one to choose, the natural route would have been to keep going in the same direction once I crossed the road. At some point, though, a deliberate sign of intent that allows space to avoid it is a good thing, I guess. It feels like a transgression, but actually is probably not and it only feels that way because it crosses a mental boundary rather than a social one, in that it gives much less space to back out without losing face (if only to oneself). It also means deciding to do the thing you fear.

The second transgression was the line I used to open with. I have seen the use of such a line criticised before by feminists, although the usual criticism is of a more explicit and direct form such as, "Are you stalking me or something?" I deliberately kept stalking out of my statement, and focussed in my intent on the fact that when someone is close behind you, it feels uncomfortable and that was all I really complained about - but I knew that the same words could be taken in the way she did, and that felt "wrong" to do. But it was what I had in the moment, and it was also something that could be played gently and safely in bright daylight and giving her lots of space and backing out of her path so she had an easy route to her car (all of which, I did and had). As I said, it played out well, with confident and unthreatened body language from her. I should also point out that I have reasons in my past where feeling stalked or followed is a genuine concern for me at night, so this also transgressed a personal boundary by playing with something about which I genuinely do feel insecure at times.

Finally, it felt like a big transgression to claim/pretend to take credit for getting her to her car. It was, of course, bright daylight, and no threats around unless you count me as a threat (which I was really not, and giving her space to show it). Although she said the "stalker" word first, it was my opener that raised that concept in her mind (albeit in inverted manner!) She was, of course, perfectly capable of getting safely to her car without a man looking over her. Arguably, it was an unfeminist or even anti-feminist thing for me to say, and if you wanted to take that view I couldn't tell you you were wrong. My excuse is that it was so obviously nothing to do with me that she was safely at her car, that it had to be taken as a joke and not a genuine statement of my beliefs. Nevertheless, I felt that I was taking something that wasn't quite mine to take and in doing so reaching slightly beyond my normal sense of self.

I think all of these steps/transgressions are positive ones in terms of progressing with pick-up, and with social interaction generally. While I might not want to go with the "following me" line again, or even the "safely to your car" line, the fact that I used them and didn't die of mortification or seem to perturb the woman I was speaking to, does a lot.

I'm working regularly on my fitness and have a rather haphazardly constructed (because I made it up myself based on remembered and half-remembered stuff, and a bit of info I found health websites) exercise routine. One thing that I've seen mentioned a lot is that you get the best muscle growth when you test your muscles slightly beyond what they can really take - apparently, that's what's happening when they say, "feel the burn". I think, for me anyway, a similar deal may be possible in terms of my psychological muscles. Today, I tested myself in three ways that went slightly beyond what I can really manage and the result is hopefully that I'll be able to do more, especially if that exercise is repeated. Feeling the fear and doing it anyway is maybe like "feel the burn". The trick, of course, is not to overdo it, which would actually do real damage to the muscle (or, in terms of learning pick-up, would result in a negative or incongruent experience that sets confidence and self-expression back a long way).

PORN REVIEW: Dreams of Spanking's "Her Ladyship's Breakfast" (and link to a review on AYTIWS)

More reviews of Pandora Blake's Dreams of Spanking material, this time going with a format that doesn't usually float my boat as much but here - well, read for yourselves:

Her Ladyship's Breakfast is a photo gallery scene featuring the delightful Jimmy Holloway and the delicious Adele Haze (if only her name began with J, or his with A, and then that would be great alliteration or something of that nature, but alas, not).

In some ways, it's hard for me to add to the blurb on the Dreams of Spanking website itself:

Lady Adele likes the look of her handsome new butler. At breakfast, she sets him up for a fall. Once she's broken through that professional composure, the interest is entirely mutual.

The professional composure is essentially the same expression that in other reviews I described as insouciance, and the sense of aloofness that that word conveys is here represented in a different setting. Jimmy plays that style so well, and it is a perfect match for the butler role in this piece.

Adele, on the other hand, acts the role of barely-contained lust for her employee with a devilish twinkle in her eye and similarly lusty red lipstick. Her costume had me a little confused because it seemed more like a farm maid's outfit at first glance, although the detail in the dress probably would be more likely to be a wealthy woman's garb. I don't know, maybe this is a case of reality is unrealistic? Never mind, this isn't meant to be a fashion or costume design thingy, because I am probably rubbish at either of those disciplines (mmmm, discipline... now where was I? oh yes...) Adele also seems to slot perfectly into her role and the chemistry that this creates is tangible even in the still photos.

To say, "she sets him up for a fall," does not do justice to the relevant images in the series. The camera catches Jimmy in mid-reaction as he tries to prevent Lady Adele's tea from spilling on the carpet and a closer to perfect "shock" is hard to imagine. Adele, of course, can be seen smirking broadly as her ruse takes its intended course... I keep coming back to this image rather than the actual spanking ones, because from my point of view as a top, a sadist and a Dominant, very often this is an emotional peak in the course of a scene with a partner - the moment at which the planned downfall occurs and the nature of the interaction changes for the first time. For an image that has no overt sexual or SM content, it is still one of the sexiest in the set, precisely because the emotional story is what turns me on. If emotions are your kink, too, then already I have to recommend buying the set.

Also incredibly delightful, once the spilt tea is wiped up, Adele cups Jimmy's chin with her thumb and index finger. In one frame we see the most delightful "help me!" pleading expression from the butler. He knows that the predatory Lady wants something special, and sure enough, she's helping him undo his trousers in the next few images.

The sequence of kinks that follows is: over the knee spanking, foot/shoe worship, she holds his face to the floor with her foot on the back of his neck, and then it's time for the cane. These are all pretty standard fare, although as I said, Jimmy is very expressive and Adele looks awesome in charge.

But personally, I just keep coming back to the emotional and sexual charge between the characters. The acting is superb, and Adele as Her Ladyship conjures not just playful sadism, but lustful tenderness as well - there is, of course, no dialogue in a sequence of photos, but it's not hard to imagine both the words and the tone of voice being used - the transition to the caning, for example, she explains just what's coming but she does in a voice dripping with honey and sweetness.

That's what makes this sequence work for me, both empathising as the bottom and vicariously as a top. Photosets aren't normally my thing, I like to hear the story and watch it play out. Here, there's enough that I can do both in the comfort of my ownn mind.

****

At And You Thought I Was Sweet I also reviewed A Taste Of Their Own Medicine, which is a school punishment video that I didn't feel comfortable reviewing here for various reasons. It's F/MF, starring Pandora Blake, Zoe Montana and Jimmy Holloway (listed in an order that has no justification except that it was the only order I could think of that had no justification for it), with a wide range of implements including paddle, cane and wooden ruler. I liked it a lot, and speaking of "no justification", it turns out that that's the thing for which the school prefects are being punished, abusing their power... Check out the review (trigger warning for hinting at underage punishment and sexual assault - hence not reviewing it here!), or better yet, check out the site!

Thoughts from a slightly lighter side: more responses to Clarisse Thorn's book

So, continuing the rambling points of contention or interest that I found in Clarisse Thorn's book "Confessions of a Pick-Up Artist Chaser" (part 1 here).

Hopefully this will be quicker to write up!

Privileged nature of explicit verbal communication

Clarisse discusses some of the problems with the "explicit verbal communication" model of enthusiastic consent, and this is a fascinating point that she raises:

There's something important to keep in mind about direct explicit verbal communication, and that is: some people are better at it than others. For example, I have always been better at writing than most people I know. However, I suspect that I am not as good at non-verbal communication as most people I know.

What this means is that if I encourage people to use explicit and complex language, then I am attempting to move conversations into a sphere where I have more skill... and therefore, I am attempting to move conversations to a sphere where I have more power and privilege.

It's an important issue. Like Clarisse, I consider myself to be pretty capable when it comes to using words to say things. Like Clarisse, I feel myself often to be out of my depth when trying to understand non-verbal cues and make sense of them.

But, her argument goes, caring about someone's feelings means we have to at least try to engage on their level and if we are able to understand their non-verbal signals then we should respect them, even if we aren't getting the communication that keeps us in our safe zone. If I get the sense something is wrong, then if I can sense enough to figure out what, then I shouldn't force a partner to tell me, I should make the change automatically. (I'm not sure how my partner then knows that I would have been more comfortable with a verbal acknowledgement - maybe we talk it over later? In the moment, the response is what matters, and not making my partner step out of hir comfort zone.) More often, I will think I've picked something up but won't be certain, and then I need to move things into a sphere where I can check what I "heard". With each new partner, it seems this starts anew, and for me is part of learning them - the aim, of course, being to acquire that "magical" Domly state of appearing to be a mind reader.

But, as Clarisse says:

Now, if my hypothetical partner mostly communicates non-verbally, and I mostly communicate verbally, then we might not be a good match. Maybe we would be better off breaking up.

It occurs to me also that if my vocals and body language (the non-verbal signals on which a non-verbal partner would be relying for hir read of what I'm about) is poorly calibrated for the culture that is familiar to my partner, then that also could end up being a reason to break up rather than rely on communication that isn't that good. I have been told that my body language is confusing or sending signals that I didn't think I was sending, so I think that's an issue to bear in mind as well. If zie is constantly being frustrated because zie thinks I'm signalling one thing when I mean and say with my words something else, then to hir I may appear incongruent and manipulative; meanwhile, I will be becoming frustrated because my partner seems to be wilfully casting my words in a negative light or doubting my honesty. That would become painful pretty quickly.

I have always been fascinated by science-fiction stories that have a theme of hyper-awareness of body language to the point of telepathy: Isaac Asimov used this as part of how Second Foundationers speak in the Foundation saga; he also used it in Nemesis, where a socially-awkward girl nevertheless by observing extremely closely, was able to pick up unconscious muscle movements and work out what people where thinking. I think these stories captivate my attention precisely because such awareness is the inverse of my own capacity, or lack of it, in reading people. As noted above, I like the myth of the Domly mind reader but that's just learning one person at a time and (for me at least) it takes a LOT of work and checking back to make sure I'm getting it, before it clicks properly. (Of course, sometimes the myth is enhanced because I get it right a lot early on, which shows that I'm already well-calibrated to that partner.)

In general society, I feel at a disadvantage because I do not feel able to rely on my understanding of non-verbal cues, and in social situations it's generally not easy to ask, "I was watching your face and I heard a thing in your voice - did that mean [thingy]?" By moving things into an explicit verbal sphere, I am taking power that I normally feel is denied to me, but I have to be careful that in doing so I am not also taking power away from another.

Clarisse Thorn makes the point that verbal and nonverbal communication have to complement one another - which is more important depends on what needs to be communicated (for instance, specific kinks usually need to be negotiated in words, but the pleasure they give can be signalled in plenty of other ways!) She talks about a bottoming partner becoming non-verbal during a play session and being alert enough to realise that she needed to stop rather than rely on verbal communication. Equally, with the "Domly mind reader" myth, there can be a tendency for people to think they can rely on non-verbal communication and not realise that maybe the signals aren't actually as clear as they thought - you can't rely on one or the other - body language alert topping and bottom having a safeword are each a safety net for if the other fails, and humans being unpredictable beasties at times, these things are never 100% proof against something going wrong. But better verbals, as well as better awareness of non-verbals, are important.

Clarisse's Three Routines

Clarisse outlines three of her favourite pick-up routines that she's been using, and still uses. In this section, I'm intrigued and wonder mainly how they would unfold if she (or someone) were to try them on me. I'm kind of curious how I might be able to use them myself, too.

I also wonder how my answers would come across - I'm pretty sure the first one might be interpreted as a version of a "shit test rebuttal" or similar "gamey" type of answer, and would certainly be meant in a flirty way.

See what you think:

CLARISSE THORN ROUTINE 1 (tm): "What surprised you most about this week/this month/your new job/the project you're working on/etc?"

Snowdrop's Reply: "You asking me that question!" [smile/grin]

What do you think? What would you say back to me? (I think probably, I would use the time I took to say that to think of a more specific answer, that I would then use if she shows more interest by pushing for it.)

I'm not sure about the next one, i think I might get a bit intense and theoretical on it.

CLARISSE THORN ROUTINE 2 (tm): "Would you eat human meat? You know, like, if you had the option to eat human meat. Would you?"

Snowdrop's Reply: "Well, I think it depends on why, I assume we're not talking here about absolute survival-or-starve necessity, but a situation where I could choose not to and still live? So, then, is this in a culture where it's the norm, and if so, what's the status of the deceased? Is it some transgressive community? (in which case, again, how and why did the person die?) Or what?"

I think I would want to put the question back on the asker in that way so they're forced to outline a specific scenario - this would probably tell me something about hir personality if I knew how to analyse it. It would certainly make me feel like I was opening them up a bit more and making them reveal the fantasy scenario. Okay, now I feel like I might have a natural instinct for some of this PUA stuff, and that scares me a little!

Incidentally, I love the practical and ethical answer she got from one guy:

My favourite response ever was the guy who hypothesized that we could use stem cells to grow the human meat. By the end of the evening, he and I had a name and logo for our restaurant. yes, i did make out with that guy.

Clarisse also notes that this routine has been nicked by someone as a match question on OKCupid. For the record, it's a question I declined to answer...

On to routine 3 - you know, I really am starting to feel like I might be better at strategic ambiguity than I ever thought.

CLARISSE THORN ROUTINE 3 (tm): "Describe yourself to me in 5 things you've done."

Snowdrop's Reply: "Hey, you're just trying to get me to spill all my best anecdotes in one go - no fair!" [laughs and smiles]

Actually, I would probably take a couple of seconds to come out with that, which would be me trying to think of 5 things to tell. So the answer is actually another one designed to buy some time to sort through my collection of anecdotes to think of the best ones to tell in that situation and to that person. But I can see how it could come across as very calculating, or perplexing/frustrating, or intriguing, depending on the level of interest that my partner already has in me. I'd be interested to know what sort of responses it might get in "live play".

Another thing I might do is ask a question in return, about what sort of anecdote she might like to hear - childhood story, something everyday, something unusual for me, something about chasing a dream, something about relating to other people, some funny calamity, or some other type? That would give me something to focus on and make it easier for me to give a meaningful answer - and it would also tell me something about what's important to the person asking me.

I figure I ought to have a go at choosing 5 things to talk about and explaining why those things count, so here goes:

1. [Chasing a dream] I auditioned for the second series of Fame Academy, I forget now when that was - I set off pretty early, but still only just made it before they closed off the queue - I sang "I Will Survive" with my guitar. They told us they would call before 10:30pm that evening, but it turned out that the next train back home wouldn't get into the station until 10:35pm - so I'll never know if I would have made the cut or not. It's a long walk uphill from the station to where I lived, so I decided to call a taxi - except that the number at the station, the company told me they had no cabs free. I decided to try my luck at the bar across the street from the station to see if they had a different number I could try. Instead, they saw I had a guitar with me and demanded I sing for them. I did as many songs as I could remember, and in return I got a free pint of beer, they had a whip-round and collected enough to cover my train fare for the day, and then one of the regulars gave me a lift home.
2. [Something unusual] Back in 2005, I went to the first Solfest, which was a music festival just by the Solway Firth, which meant trekking the length of England on public transport. For me, that's a pretty big adventure! I took my tent, a load of cash, clothes, sleeping bag, camping stove and stuff. I planned my route carefully: get the train to London, then the coach all the way to Carlisle, another train out to some remote rural station, and I booked a taxi in advance to get me to the field where the festival was taking place. Somebody else took my taxi, apparently assuming it was normal for a taxi to be waiting at the station in the middle of nowhere. I rang from the phone box at the station and soon got it sorted out, and made sure they knew who to ask for at the festival gate afterwards! Actually, we ended up being able to share the taxi back to the station, the guy who'd stolen it on the first evening and me. It was a great festival, I discovered some great artists, such as Beccy Owen.
3. [Childhood stories] When I was about 5, I had hit some other kid in the infant school playground. A teacher saw this and caught me, saying, "Say sorry to [whoeveritwas], now!" And I, being a plucky kid and already with a strong sense of dignity and the meaning of forced and unforced behaviour, said, "Okay, but go away first." I knew I had done wrong and should apologise, but I wasn't going to feel threatened into apologising - I wanted to do it on my own terms, so that it was genuine.
4. [Relating to others] A couple of times, I've seen dogs tied up in the street and not been able to see any sign of the owner, and worried that it might have been abandoned - you hear stories about animals being left and then people just walk on past for hours and hours before anyone checks what the deal is. So the first time this happened, I decided to check the collar and see if I could call the owner to make sure they were nearby. I was just kneeling down and making friends with the very fine and handsome dog as I checked the tag, when this lady came out of the shop a couple of doors down and demanded, "What are you doing with my dog?" So I explained, and she said frostily, "How could anyone abandon a dog as handsome as this?" But the second time, it was a rather scrawnier looking hound and again, I was just looking around for a payphone (I didn't have my mobile with me) when this fella came out of the shop opposite, and challenged me just the same. But when I explained what I was about, he was really grateful that I cared enough, and also told me about ho much he loved his companion - he invited me for a beer at the nearest pub and we had a great chat about all sorts.
5. [Everyday] Well, at the moment I'm writing a novel - I've set aside time in my schedule just to work on it, and made it my new year's resolution to get it finished - or at least the first draft - this year. Not so much something I've done, as something I'm doing now, I guess, but I am finally getting it done, it's been sitting on the backburner for way too long so the thing I've done that describes me is get my finger out and start taking it seriously!

I'll leave it to you, dear reader, to decide what those stories say about me and what message I might be wanting to give a person by telling them.

Nerdy Introverted Guy Dating Advice

Quoth Clarisse:

I asked Brian what he thought the solution was, and his two main suggestions were that nerdy introverted guys might consider practicing:

• NERD ENVIRONMENT 1. Through online dating sites.
• NERD ENVIRONMENT 2. During the day, like at libraries and laundromats and coffee shops. As Brian observed, "The introvert girls are out during the day. They don't go to nightclubs."

Still, the problem remains that if the goal is to practice in-person social interaction as much as possible, then bars and clubs really are the best environment, because they're the easiest places to talk to lots of people in a short period of time

Well, daygame has definitely been my focus to deal with my introversion (and the lack of any suitable nightgame venues in easy striking distance of my home). Internet dating sites are also a place where I am giving it what I've got.

However, I really take issue with the idea that bars or nightclubs are "the easiest places to talk to lots of people", if you're introverted. The very fact that there are lots of people makes it exceptionally hard to breathe or concentrate or anything, let alone talk to lots of people. Only by focussing hard on one person in such an environment is it even possible to cope. Put me in a vibrant happening nightlife venue and I will almost have to retreat into a corner and shut down, retreating from the environment. If the goal is to practise in-person social interaction as much as possible, then clubs and bars are the WORST place for an introvert like me to try it, because those places shut down every social doodah in my body. Find me somewhere that doesn't burn my brain out in, like, 10 seconds, please?

Ethical Game

In the last chapter of "Confessions..." Clarisse presents is with her "Grand Theory of the Ethical Game". I have to be honest, it doesn't seem terribly grand to me, although certainly ethical. It still feels light on practised and tested techniques that arise from the theory, hence not so grand as I would have liked. Where techniques are mentioned, mostly it seems to be in order to strain out the "bad" PUA advice and leave the "not so bad/acceptable" advice behind in the sieve.

A lot of the focus is on mutuality. Clarisse sums it up with a nerdy reference - I talked about cooperative board games earlier (a game where the victory condition is everyone achieves their individual victory condition simultaneously would make a great board game, I wonder if it's been done?), Clarisse talks about video games:

You and your date can be on the same team. If this is a roleplaying game, then your date is a Player Character rather than a Non-Player Character. if this is a first-person shooter, then the arena is set to co-op mode.

Examples of how this works are:

• "mutual Last Minute Resistance" techniques, where if a partner withdraws from sex at the last minute, the aim is not to pressure or withdraw attention but to maintain a comfort level and maybe resolve whatever the issue was that made the partner have doubts and see if those can be resolved; or, working on proper foreplay before trying to go for penetrative sex.
• Techniques that affect both parties similarly - the example given is time dilation, which is where a date is scheduled over several venues to make it seem like it lasted longer; this effect will actually work on both partners, regardless of who planned the date that way.
• Well-calibrated strategic ambiguity that takes into account how a partner is responding and feeling about things - also, the "leave her better than you found her" maxim

The principles that Clarisse Thorn lays out are very good ones, but as I said, a lot of it seems to be about straining out the bad and adapting what's left, rather than working out what techniques naturally follow from these principles and also work well.

One thing struck me: in the preamble to this theory, Clarisse writes,

I will acknowledge that those of us who try to be careful, intentional and ethical about love and sex will sometimes feel like we're "losing," or "getting less," than other people who are less ethical.

Honestly, I don't think I do any more. It was only when I was in my Nice Guy phase back at university that I really felt that way ("Why do all the hot girls like jerks?" and so on). But I grew out of that phase and became somewhat more mature in my approach to love, sex and gender in general.

There was an episode of the cartoon "The Real Ghostbusters", based on the Ghostbusters movies. In this episode, ghosts representing the forces of Good and Evil have materialised in a baseball park to have an epic battle over the fate of one person's soul (a member of the Ghostbusters team, of course). The battle takes the form of the land on which they fight, so of course, it's a baseball match. Evil cheats, and the team protest to the umpire. The umpire replies something like, "It is in the nature of Evil to cheat. They get to do so. Good, on the other hand, cannot cheat because then Evil wins."

Again, the song "Trivia" that I linked in the previous post also makes a similar point.

My sense of ethics is a part of who I am (did you get that from my anecdotes above? I hope so!) and if I play unethically (i.e. if Good cheats) then I automatically lose and Evil wins. I can't "lose" by being ethical, because if I am unethical then I lose every time.


Miscellany

Some short thoughts, some of which are serious and some I just found downright amusing.

The Parking Brake Test

Basically, would you feel like an idiot if you didn't use the hand brake and then your car rolled down a hill and crashed? Yes, you would, and you'd feel even worse trying to explain to your friend why this happened. Similarly, if there's something you're not sure whether you should do and if you don't do it you'd feel like an idiot when trying to explain to your friend why not, then do it straight away!

Of course, in my language, this is the "new compression coil test", after the component in Firefly that Kaylee wanted to buy in episode one, and Mal didn't - and the old one failed with disastrous consequences in a later episode...

This will probably become one of those things to which I return time and again, rather like the bubble test analogy mentioned in the previous post.

AnneBonney's Advice

For newbies to PUA.

A) Think very, very carefully about what your goals are, what you are willing to do to achieve them, and WHY you want them

...

B) Be very, very careful who you listen to and where you put your trust and resources.

Very wise indeed, and thankfully, both precautions I have taken in my own exploration. As discussed in the previous post, I test all new advice against my bubbles and remain sceptical of most of it. I also worked out very clearly what I want to get out of this whole exercise. As mentioned in the previous post, it's a long-term emotional connection with a person (probably female); and my main areas for seeking improvement are in making approaches and inner confidence. I also want to arm myself better against PUA, against women's game (if I can devise a shield for that, given what my game objective is), and to be able by knowing the sides of the game that are being played, to see them and opt out if I don't want to play.

"What do you think? Am I a reasonable person?"

My instant interpretation of this on first reading was "What? Do you think I am a reasonable person?" I'll leave it to you to make up your minds what answer that means I would have given had I read the questions correctly the first time...

Sex workers in competition with PUAs

Clarisse, a PUA and three of her friends in the sex industry (escorts and a pro Domme) out for a meal, one of the sex workers accuses the PUA of "stealing our clients! If you weren't training these guys, they might be paying for sex!" PUA agrees.

Of course, they are paying for sex. That's what the commercialised PUA industry promises its customers. In essence, it's a version of the old saying, "Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime." Except that women aren't fish.

"The Lord of the TL;DR: Fellowship of the TL;DR"

Since I basically equated Roissy to Sauron in this chapter, the Too Long; Didn't Read" movie title situation is obvious.

So now I'm dying to know the themes of the chapters summed up as "The Lord of the TL;DR: The Two Towers" and "The Lord of the TL;DR: Return of the King" (maybe the words "Towers" and "Return" should be rendered as TL;DR as well?)

I started these posts with a song, I'll end with another:



Fave line: "Yeah, I do want it / But I'll stop sharkin' a minute to get chips and drinks."

Ideas from the dark side: my responses to Clarisse Thorn's "Confessions of a PUA Chaser"

So this is the main "I want to debate this with you" post about Clarisse Thorn's book, "Confessions of a Pick-up Artist Chaser". I want to preface it with a remark by Clarisse later in the book, and invite you all to read it in the context of the banner heading on this blog...

In general, anyone who has problems with traditional, heteronormative gender roles is going to have problems with the seduction community. Most of those people get so annoyed that they avoid pickup artistry from the start. this means that guys who want seduction advice and who don't want to deal with traditional, heteronormative stuff will either look for that advice outside the seduction community, or they'll try to adapt pickup advice for their needs

Obviously, I chose option 2.

I already wrote about how the idea of "women's game" targeting (men's) emotions affected me when I feel like I have no armour against that sort of game.

As an aside, I remembered a song by the brilliant songwriter Brian Bedford, performed by his former band Artisan:

Trivia

"And the wildcard, the Joker, will always be there/
And he always wins, because he never plays fair"

I think there's a lot in that song (listen to the whole thing!) that's relevant to the whole narrative that Clarisse tells of her adventures in exploring pick-up.

Women's Game, Victory Points, Emotional Escalation

But the first point I wanted to mention in this post is tangentially related to the "women's game" post. It relates specifically to Clarisse Thorn's discussion of "The Rules" and "He's Just Not That Into You". Now, folks may remember that I wrote about HJNTIY and basically braindumped my reactions into several posts explaining why the book infuriated and annoyed me. Clarisse, it seems, while objecting to the heteronormativity of the book at least accepts that there might be some valuable underlying premise to it, and this is problematic for me.

At the start of the relevant section, Ms Thorn opens "In USA culture, men are expected to initiate sexual encounters. Men are also expected to ... take charge and 'run the fuck'." The key point for me is "in USA culture". I don't really know how different British dating culture is from that of the US, so I don't know how much to read from what follows. I do know that I do not behave like a USAian male, for the most part - at least, not according to these stereotypes.

My biggest problem with HJNTIY is simply that it appears to advise women to judge men by how closely they conform to "run the fuck" performative masculinity. A guy who doesn't want to perform masculinity in that way is somehow seen as defective or disinterested.

The issue I have with Clarisse Thorn's treatment in this area, when she talks about "emotional escalation" versus "sexual escalation" is that she discusses men objecting to having to "do all the work" (that is, "run the fuck" - although as she notes, the stereotypical man tends to be quite put out when a woman actually does take some responsibility for initiating/moving things along).

While men are typically handed the role of sexual escalation, women are typically handed the role of emotional escalation. Men are expected to game women into bed, and make it look effortless. Women are expected to game men into falling in love with us, and make it look effortless.

That last sentence, of course, repeating the issue that made me feel all weird and vulnerable, as described in my last post.

Based on that last post, perhaps you can see why I feel like I am being asked to do all the work. For me, making the first approach is not sexual escalation, it's emotional escalation. Sexual deal comes later. That's one reason why I've toned down the kinky references on my dating site profiles: I want to find out if there's an emotional future first, and then if there is, negotiate a sexual future as well (although for me, some elements of kink are about emotional compatibility, not just sexual).

Annoyingly, Clarisse writes:

This isn't to say men don't want to fall in love. I'm sure there are plenty of men who want to fall in love, just like there are plenty of women who want to have sex. It's just that many men who want to fall in love also want women to "do all the work".

Of course there are exceptions. Some men are more interested in love than sex, the same way some women are more interested in sex than love.

And then pretty much drops it right there (a remark about how performative masculinity mitigates against men admitting it, and that's it).

Later, Clarisse writes:

Some guys tell me that all men really want is to fuck women ... In the meantime, other guys tell me that there's absolutely no problem with men and women being friends.

...

What's especially irritating is that many dudes on both sides expect me to magically divine a man's intentions towards me. not only am I expected to read dudes' minds; I'm expected to figure out whether I'm attracted to a guy, and decide what will happen in our relationship immediately. pro tip: sometimes attraction develops over time. Attraction doesn't always develop over time, but sometimes it does. I suspect this is common for many women, if not for men.

When I am supposed to make the first move, I feel like I am expected to read women's minds. I feel like I am expected to "decide what will happen in our relationship immediately". In fact, just about every stage of the escalation path discussed in HJNTIY (see below) feels like exactly that problem. My problem is that initial attraction happens quickly, but doesn't always mean anything; Clarisse describes a friend of hers cautioning her, "Sometimes you just freak out about people. It doesn't mean you're in love with them," and also mentions watching herself because of the glamour of New Relationship Energy (things might seem sparklier than they really are because ooh shiny new person in my life). She also notes that:

...in some cases, people value certain qualities so much that they become emotionally invested too quickly for caution. PUAs developed the term one-itis to describe how a lonely guy can get invested too quickly in a girl who shows interest, because he's not used to girls being interested.

So I have to be cautious about all those things and wait for the real feelings to catch up with the "ooh shiny" that really is just me really really wanting it to be real, instead of actually feeling it's real - I need to allow real attraction, and not just "sparkly NRE" attraction, to kick in - if it's there. It's part of why I panic about women gaming me - if they hook onto my NRE/one-itis vibe, then ouch.

Clarisse discusses "The Rules", before moving onto HJNTIY. A quick note on "The Rules" - from what I've seen discussed, they don't scare me because they actually look pretty transparent and someone trying to pull that stuff - gone. On to HJNTIY:

If we adopt the PUA framework, and agree that women offer men sexual Indicators of Interest when we want them to take the sexual initiative, then perhaps we could also say that men give women emotional IOIs when they want us to take the emotional initiative. We could say that men work for our attention once they're into us, the same way women start working for a man's attention during the Qualification stage of seduction.

In this context, He's Just Not That Into You could be seen as a manual for seeking a man's emotional Indicators of Interest. It's a manual about how to not "fall for it" if you really like a guy, yet he won't work for your attention and thereby show that he's open to your game.

And of course, I break that model because I want emotional IOIs from a woman - preferably a nice, big, emotional Statement of Intent, because direct game is better with me all round. Indeed, I'm inclined to date like a woman at least to start with. So I want to know that my emotional "game" is not going to waste, before I turn it on. It's worth noting that in some ways, I played a pretty hard emotional escalation game myself when I met SNS on a first date, and arguably "weaponised my vulnerability" (a term Clarisse introduces later as hardcore emotional gaming) to boot. So my previous remarks about worrying she did it to me are a bit daft!

I'm becoming quite keen on board games, with the fortnightly get-togethers at my local. Usually, there are several types of counters in modern board games: your "meeple" (the token(s) that represent your place on the board, from "me" and "people"), one or more types of currency (which can be used to perform actions), very often some form of mechanism (usually in the form of cards, which describe the range of actions currently available for a player to choose from), and victory points, which is how you measure who's winning - sometimes at the end currency turns into victory points, too. In Clarisse Thorn's model described above, emotions are men's currency and women's victory points; sex is women's currency and men's victory points. But what if I'm playing my hand of men's cards but with a woman's objectives (that is, I'm playing for emotions as victory points)? You get things like my dislike of making the first move, but because the men's deck of cards contains actions like "ask a girl out" instead of "bat your eyelashes at a gorgeous potential partner" (I don't even know what the equivalent action for a guy would be - I do know that it is not (as some men seem to think) email her a picture of my erect penis) I have to spend victory points instead of currency. When Greg Behrendt advises making a man do the chasing, he's asking me to spend my victory points on a roll of the dice. I would rather see her play a card first, so that I know what I'm getting for my gamble.

Interestingly, the next passage that I picked out was where Clarisse discussed the seduction community's reference to "the game" in terms of "adversarial gender roles", and referenced one PUA instructor: "He suggested that the best way to imagine any interaction is to think of it as having fun, as having a good time together, rather than regarding everything as a step on the Path to Vagina."

Clarisse responds:

Yet are adversarial gender roles intrinsic to pickup artistry? From the way most PUAs discuss "the game," it sounds like an adversarial contest. It's a struggle to reframe it as a cooperative game instead.

Cooperative play is used as a feature in a lot of board games. However, the way PUA seems designed, and the way all the advice functions, is to have people competing for victory points instead of maximising victory points. One example of a board game that doesn't work that way so much is Carcassonne (incidentally, the game that coined the term "meeple"), where although it is a competitive game, players benefit maximally from cooperating with other players to complete scoring features, making cooperating into an effective winning strategy. Making one big city with one or two other players scores as many points for each player as if they had made that same city on their own, so it's better to cooperate than to try to claim cities for oneself. The PUA instructor mentioned by Clarisse above seems to be advocating this style of gameplay - but there's still the adversarial element of "points for me" being the victory condition, just as it is in Carcassonne. A truly cooperative game is one where you only win if everyone wins, and that's definitely the game I want to be playing. Trouble is, there are a lot of Saboteur players in the dating game (people who think they only win if someone/everyone else is losing - as discussed by Clarisse with particular reference to "Darth Vader" type PUA Roissy, and to "alpha"/"beta" terminology).

Anxiety and Calibration

The next point I wanted to bring up was the discussion of "social phobics". Clarisse offered a link to a pdf of some academic paper discussing something called "social phobia" but annoyingly, there didn't seem to be a clear definition of what social phobia actually is. One thing I wanted to know was whether social phobia was synonymous with introversion, as far as symptoms were concerned, would an introvert be mistaken for a social phobic? Was it something distinct from introversion, or was there some overlap in terms of presentation? In short - am I the sort of person that's being discussed here?

A quick skip to wikipedia's page on social anxiety reveals that at least some psychologists talk about anticipation of a negative emotional experience being the central part of defining the phobia: that is, feeling embarrassed or ashamed isn't a problem, the problem is the fear of feeling those emotions. (Which is a big thing mentioned in most PUA analyses of approach anxiety, incidentally - Clarisse ponders similar thoughts in comparing PUA with a self-help group for men with social anxiety.)

Wikipedia's points helped me understand what was going on, but I was still left bothered by the term itself, and by the paper's discussion of the situation. I dislike personality and behavioural issues being unnecessarily pathologised as illnesses, and talking about "patients" with respect to feeling anxious about looking like a fool just seemed over-medicalising the problem. But the language issue was what really struck me: "phobia" has some quite strong negative connotations in terms of a person's character: it's often presented as a weakness or even a prejudice: "homophobia", "transphobia", "commitment phobia", for example. It's a word or suffix that is often used to label people as bad people.

I think most of the symptoms that I have been using pick-up advice to try to overcome are not social anxiety symptoms, although without a doubt I used to have them in bucketloads when I was growing up, and when i was dealing with my own issues about my sexuality. Inasmuch as I need coping mechanisms and tend to avoid or feel uncomfortable in social spaces, this is not due to anticipating negative emotions, it's due to (anticipating) (emotional) exhaustion - it's not shame, embarrassment or loss of face that I fear: it's overexertion. This is not an irrational fear but one based on the facts of my introvert's neurology. There are also symptoms that result from being poorly experienced with social situations, due to not being able to handle then for very long due to introvert burnout. Interestingly, the paper that Clarisse references says:

As many social phobics have excessively high standards for social performance, it can be particularly helpful to encourage patients to behave in ways that they would consider unacceptable (given their rules) and observe others’ responses. This exercise, which we have termed “widening the bandwidth” helps patients to discover that there are a wide range of acceptable ways of behaving in social situations. Such knowledge can be remarkably liberating as it means they no longer have to attempt to follow strict, and difficult to observe, rules.

Several PUA advice sources discuss this type of thing (Clarisse compares it to "peacocking" and "sarging" - wearing gaudy/out-of-place clothes, and making a sequence of approaches in an evening, respectively). Some of them look for a big "blowout" transgression, I believe Mark Manson (whom Clarisse references several times) talks about incremental levels of transgression (heck, I've pretty much followed that model, going right back to saying hello to strangers (this link is particularly relevant to the discussion of discovering the acceptable behaviours). Of course, it doesn't help when people actually do react in the way that the socially anxious person fears.

But the main thing I feel anxiety about is not so much "lots of social rules that I have to stick to" , but rather, feeling like there are unspoken rules out there that I don't know, so I want to tread carefully to avoid tripping up on them and hurting someone's feelings (I guess if there's a fear/anticipation element with me, then it's not embarrassment or shame so much as guilt). When I feel like I know what the rules are, I am confident and can jam with the best of them. But most of the time, I feel like people are following a secret rulebook that I haven't seen, and I'm trying to figure out the rules of the game "cold". Naturally, this makes me more careful than most at least initially.

Clarisse discusses this in terms of the PUA terminology of "calibration". I feel poorly socially calibrated, but I'm not sure how true that is. it seems that even in some situations where I am uncertain, I am at least coming across as confident, assured, and well-mannered, so i guess that's a plus. But equally, I have worked hard at being able to fake it. I used always to miss the social cues and nuances and thus end up seeming rude or hurting people. I didn't like that, so I've worked hard to change it for most of my adult life. All the same, it tends to mean that sometimes I still miss important points, or else imagine something is significant when it really isn't. I'm still nervous that there's shit going on that I just don't get. I feel that way a lot about performative masculinity in general, and I feel it most strongly in dating situations.

Sometimes, I think maybe that the world is poorly calibrated to me: after all, I'm MAAB and happy with most of my male genetically produced characteristics, but I still (want to) date like a woman. The world bases its calibration on my physical appearance rather than my emotional self.

PUA Culture Shock

Clarisse talks occasionally about culture shock - first with reference to the sense of being incongruous that some newbie PUAs get, but then with reference to her own journey. Initially, she says:

Pretty much everyone has gone through periods of incongruence while learning a new skill, integrating into a new job, and so on. The more dramatic the change of environment, the more incongruent the new person may seem as they struggle to adjust. ... Perhaps the subcultures of the Western world have become different enough that when people want to switch between them, there's some very mild culture shock. Such as, for example, when a nerdy guy learns how to navigate the mainstream dating world.

Compare, for example, Staci Newmahr's journey into the SM scene in Caeden, where she had joined using a scene name of Dakota:

Several months into my fieldwork, my identity conflict arrived at its resolution ... The night before, I had written in my journal:

Ethnography depends on, I think, the constant, all-encompassing endeavor to be liked. To remain conscious of being liked nearly all the time is exhausting. The most fundamental difference between Dakota and Staci, I think, is that Dakota is nice.

...

Dakota often cannot extricate her feelings about people from what she knows they can contribute to her work, on every level, including the emotional experience of being involved with them ... and thus is not very "true".

I'm starting to not like Dakota very much. And I don't know what to do about that, because I can't just get rid of her. Staci would ruin my research. But it's going to be Staci who has to deal with the post-research fallout - when Dakota leaves, Staci will be left to defend herself, and Staci isn't quite sure that any of this is defensible.

That night, at the club, I was suddenly sick of everyone around me. i was tired of the scripts I heard repeatedly, tired of having to explain why I didn't want to play with this person or that person, tired of hearing my own repetitions of who I was and why I was there. ... I was tired of the social dysfunction, tired of feeling pity for people I was "studying", tired of my own relentless ethical dilemmas over authentic and inauthentic presentations, tired of trying to figure out whether I "really" liked someone or "really" wanted to play with him or her.

...

Adam found me, sat next to me, and asked what was going on. Without hesitation, I told him everything. I hated all of these people. I hated myself. I hated him. What the hell was I doing here?

"Ah. Hello, Staci," He said. "I was wondering when you'd show up."

Although Newmahr doesn't talk about culture shock, and as an ethnographer you'd think she would know when that term was appropriate, it does sound a lot like the dissonance that Clarisse Thorn discusses with respect first to nerdy guys learning pick-up, and then with respect to her own journey "down the rabbit hole" in exploring PUA. (Incidentally, Newmahr's discussion of the "coming home" sensation in the Caeden SM community, which echoes an observed phenomenon in filk fandom as well, sounds almost like a reverse of culture shock, and I wonder what there is to be said about people living in culture shock in their native culture, who form communities precisely to escape it?)

All of that comparison with Staci Newmahr's BDSM culture clash is a bit of an aside. What I was going to say is that Clarisse goes on to remark:

I've mentioned before that some culture shock experts list "symptoms" of culture shock, and one of those symptoms is "not feeling like yourself."

It's very clever to list "not feeling like yourself" as a symptom of culture shock, as long as your goal is to assimilate into the new culture. But if you like yourself the way you are, then "not feeling like yourself" might be the point where you question the costs of your newfound cultural understanding. It might be the point where you consider going home.

She later refers to "reality-checking myself through my social networks", concerned that she might be absorbing and internalising the manipulative methods of PUA. An analogy that I love in reference to the same thing is fro a BDSMer who's also a diver (I forget who, it may have been PaganDiver on Informed Consent). Apparently, when diving, it's possible to become disorientated and forget which way is up, and back to the safety of the surface. If that happens, follow the bubbles - they go upwards. If you can't see the bubbles, find someone who can. The bubbles refer to your moral compass, your sense of "ick" about something. If you can't tell whether something is icky, turn to your friends who know you best and share your values - they will be able to see the bubbles (tell you if it's icky).

I mention all this to talk about my own engagement with PUA advice. One "shady" PUA mentor told Clarisse that a guy starts counting as part of the seduction community, "I'd say that it's when he spends his first dollar." I have deliberately kept the community at arm's length. Even advice that looks like it might be worth the money, I wouldn't pay for it because it's always a pig in a poke - I can't tell if it will have any value to me until I've heard the advice (and of course, once I've heard it, i don't need to pay for it...) The first dollar (or quid) that I've spent would appear to be on Clarisse Thorn's book, but I doubt that makes me a member of the community (especially as I only comment on it here).

But another way in which I am cautious is that I always check my bubbles when I take on board any advice that I find for free. As Clarisse says, I like myself the way I am for many reasons, and so advice that runs contrary to those things I like about myself and that would make me feel incongruent on those axes (advice that doesn't relate to them probably couldn't make me feel incongruent, although I might be stepping outside my comfort zone) is advice that I will reject as worthless to me - if it strikes me as particularly unethical, I might even write a blog post here decrying it.

Outcome Independence

I've commented before that one of my biggest breakthrough moments was when I realised I don't need sex. That I could gladly withhold it if someone else was trying to use sex as a bargaining chip or leverage against me, and that I could discount it as the objective in the game. In other words, when I admitted that I really wanted to play for the emotional Victory Points mentioned above.

In the classic terms of PUA, then, I am outcome independent because most PUA advice seems to be about getting sex, and if you're okay with not getting it, then that actually makes it easier to get. But I'm playing for emotional connection, and that's somewhat harder for me to pretend about.

Earlier, I talked about being super-cautious when i start to feel NRE vibes (or one-itis vibes).

Clarisse notes that:

One awkward thing about this is that even if you're the most outcome-independent person in the world, the outcome-independence starts going away once you're really into someone. When experienced PUAs confront this fact, they often talk about either pretending that they don't care, and thereby pretending to be outcome-independent... or simply letting go of the fear of being hurt. Actually, one of my non-PUA friends put it best: "Go into every relationship accepting that your heart may be broken, and you'll be fine."

Obviously, my super-cautious approach to start with sounds like "pretending they don't care". Actually, my preference is for the second option: my post-break-up mantra is "Pick myself up, dust myself down, move on to the next bear trap." I assume it will hurt the next time, but that won't stop me getting into it. I remind myself of that every time a new relationship starts to emerge. But I still want to manage how much it's going to hurt, and how likely it is. That's why I stay cautious so that I can let my real feelings catch up with the situation. It's like slow-playing a hand in Texas hold 'em: I have to bet cautiously for the flop and turn card, then when the river is revealed I can go all-in, as long as I've got the hand I was hoping for. (I've no idea how this analogy ties in or doesn't with the board game analogy used earlier, except that the element of chance in poker is similar to my mention of being asked to bet victory points on the roll of the dice.)

The analogy has further parallels. Clarisse also talks about the PUA "necessity" of being willing to "next" a partner - that is to walk away and say a figurative, "next, please!" The analogy is that a good poker player needs to be able to recognise that his pocket aces aren't going to beat the flush that the other player is representing when the flop turns up three cards of the same suit. No matter how good the hand feels, if you think someone else has a better hand, you have to be able to fold without losing too much - so bet cautiously. But equally, that means you can lose out when you do have the best hand and you could have gone all-in and taken everything.

As Clarisse puts it:

But of course, "you always have to be willing to next people" can be a callous maxim. Taken to extremes, you always have to be willing to next people implies that everyone is interchangeable. That no one is worth caring about. That no relationship deserves any effort. the worst part of romantic outcome independence is potential heartlessness.

...

Yet vulnerability isn't always a bad thing. Connection is a real thing. personal compatibility is a real thing. So is love.

If you didn't listen to the song Trivia linked above, do it now. This point is basically its final message.

Connected with this, and I just want to mention this briefly because it echoes something that Evan Marc Katz ("Dating coach for smart, strong, successful women" - NEVER get tired of that tagline, it's so cheesy!) often talks about on his blog, Clarisse talks about the role of commitment:

PUAs rarely talk about how choosing to commit affects things, but in long-term relationships, that choice is key. A person who specifically decides to seek a committed relationship is a million times more likely to find one - whether that relationship is monogamous, polyamorous, married, unmarried, whatever. Movies and novels and hormones all team up to promote a myth of "The One": a soulmate, an ideal match. A person who will barrel you over, whetehr or not you're open to it.

But in reality, if you find a good match, then if you consciously commit to that person, your emotions will follow your lead.

And with that, I shall leave this for the time being, since this post has already got far longer than I expected or is practical!