Assholes Finish First
Joks — Maybe the Omegas won and graduated from the race. :)
Hadn’t realized that Bob Gosse made a film of this piece of shit. Gosse should have stayed producer.
Why on earth would anyone think of Tucker Max as sex positive? He seems to be revenge fucking his way through life to compensate for a love deprived upbringing (my dimestore Freud interpretation).
So what is the perspective from the “broken” side? if sex is taken they will….?
I think girls like the one in that particular story think that sex is what they have to pay in exchange for emotional comfort/a relationship/whatever. They also buy into the sex negative narrative that women don’t enjoy sex, they just have to give it up sometimes as currency for something else.
Sex positive isn’t really a rating of the sexual experience itself. It’s more of a description of an attitude toward sex. If you’re sex positive, you think it’s a good thing for two adults to desire sex equally and agree to have sex with each other. If you’re sex negative, you think one or more parties should hate sex or that there is a limit to how much sex someone should have. So even though Tucker Max thinks of it as a positive sexual experience whenever he gets what he wants, he’s still a sex negative person because he thinks women should naturally hate sex. I seem to remember other stories where he has sex with sex positive women who just like sex and don’t want anything else from him, but he hates them as well because they fuck other men with the same enjoyment. (God, I must have been feeling really bored and masochistic to have read all this stuff, but it is morbidly fascinating to see what the sex lives of clueless, shallow people are like.)
Just read (most of) the recent Shame thread. Haven’t seen the movie.
This, from Savannah, is accurate:
I think girls like the one in that particular story think that sex is what they have to pay in exchange for emotional comfort/a relationship/whatever. They also buy into the sex negative narrative that women don’t enjoy sex, they just have to give it up sometimes as currency for something else.
It’s an old-fashioned notion, but it’s the same as the casting couch concept, really. Using sex or sex appeal to get what you want is an old tactic for women. An easy one, and an old one.
I’m not sure about this black and white categorization of “sex positive” and “sex negative,” however. Relationships, particularly when you throw sex into the equation, are a lot more grey than that. So this great insight from Meg on the Shame thread:
People who want to be seen as bravely living without restraints like to speak of sex as if it’s a totally harmless thing that should be stripped of all taboo and fear, that we should have no more caution around sex than we should around a walk in the park. This is totally unrealistic. Sex has serious ramifications as we know on all sorts of levels, it is unique in its ability to engender the deepest human responses, it is often closely associated with violence and terrbile abuse, the human psyche is often damaged in a variety of ways and sex is a very common violent and cruel outlet for that, it does have associated dangers – disease, irresponsible procreation, attack, betrayal, manipulation, no sexual mores results in the undoing of the fabric of human society – I have no particular respect for the fabric of human society but what is the alternative to order around that I wonder – violence is more easily shown on tv etc because it is “safer” than sex in that it does not have anywhere near as many threads of meaning and emotional attachment associated with it as sex.
What about the virgins trying to get deflowered by Tucker?
They aren’t looking for a quid pro quo.
Let’s not over think this.
B-girls just want to get laid because it feels good and to impress their friends.
Sex is the sine qua non of a lingua franca.
Is that gonna change in a sex-positive world?
Btw, Doc Lemondrop coined the phrase sex-positive on the Shame thread so we’ll have to ask him what he was thinking.
Sex is the sine qua non of a lingua franca.
Yes. It’s the easiest way to get to the point BUT, that’s on the surface. Because as Meg points out, there’s a lot of power in the consequences of the sexual act — physical and mental.
and to impress their friends.
This is the quid pro quo.
@Odi
Getting ‘jack-hammered’ (the word used in the book) could be a quid pro quo too I suppose.
sex is what they have to pay in exchange for emotional comfort/a relationship/whatever.
The quid pro quo is unnecessary in a sex-positive society? Everyone is insecure to a degree and I don’t see that going away because sex is positive. What is negative about exchange?
Ya know we’re assuming that sex is a negative somewhere. It is in terms of unwanted pregnancy, STDs, and etc.
From the way this guy talks I’m not sure he enjoys sex very much. He just enjoys the victory of attaining it.
I think there’s nothing wrong with either gender wanting to have as much sex as possible, so long as attention is paid to health concerns, but it’s incredibly wrong to lie and coerce to attain it.
Of course, learning how to market yourself to attain sex is different from being manipulative.
For me the meaning of sex is determined by the individuals having it, and it’s commendable to want to make sure the sex you have has that meaning, but it’s wrong to judge other people who don’t give it the same meaning.
When I refer to ‘Social engineers’ I mean people who approach social interaction as a science. A lot of them run classes on how to improve your social skills. Most of them are people who grew up having no social skills. This makes sense to me: Some people have the skill naturally, and those without it have to approach it as a science to attain it.
Robert, Lemonglow didn’t coin the term sex positive.
I don’t think insecurities will go away entirely in a fully sex positive society. But if we got rid of the whole sex negative theory of “women can’t enjoy sex” or “people should only have X amount of sex,” it would erase a lot of Tucker Max-like situations.
Robert — I’m not in support of people using sex to obtain something else, but it is something that many people either consciously or not practice. That’s all I was saying. I’m not sure where the jack-hammered thing comes in but more than anything it reminds me of American Psycho. ’Nuff said.
Jirin — wow, I had no idea people studied social interaction in a scientific way in order to fit in. Weird. A step up from learning table manners, I suppose…
As for Tucker Max types being erased — no. Unfortunately, this kind of person will always have an excuse to think and do what they do.
Also, ideal society based on sexual values? Um, a bit too concentrated on only one aspect of someone’s life, no?
Also, this in regard to women and sex and sex in some societies. These ideas are OLD.
Sex is tied up with emotion. To abuse sex is to abuse your emotional health.
She’s Gotta Have It is such a great movie.
But if we got rid of the whole sex negative theory of “women can’t enjoy sex” or “people should only have X amount of sex,” it would erase a lot of Tucker Max-like situations.
Just curous, as someone who is a proponent of the sex-positive movement. What do you think about people who say they are asexual?
“Jirin — wow, I had no idea people studied social interaction in a scientific way in order to fit in. Weird. A step up from learning table manners, I suppose…”
^ ha ha ha — I forgot about that one, Joks! :D
^^here is another gem Odi:
Sex is tied up with emotion. To abuse sex is to abuse your emotional health.
yes as Brandon was and as all sex addicts are, because their emotional health is already compromised which draws them to destruction (some kind of toxic addiction invariably being part of that)
What do you think about people who say they are asexual?
Asexual people generally don’t just say they are asexual, they generally know they are asexual, all it means is they actually can happily live without sex…asexual people are not “frigid” however (nice old fashioned word) but sex has to come knocking for them to kind of notice it. This is quite healthy and normal for them. But they need to find each other for compatibility, obviously
Joks – from your personal collection?
^^haha Robert.
No, but i’ve read The Game. Not V.A.
Joks is pure game. He don’t need no stinkin’ pointers!
Oh my God, Joks, I didn’t know about that one. That color is really yucky, and I’m not going to say anymore about it.
Here’s something the Wikipedia article about The Game quotes:
The reviewer remarked that “The sell is that, with the special techniques they learn from Mystery and other gurus, the ubergeeky can often give a convincing simulation of being a regular human being, even if, like one sarger in this book, they are in fact near-sociopaths”.
I’m going to put the whole “Reception” section from Wikipedia here, because this book, according to reviews, touches very much on this discussion:
Neil Strauss was quoted in a review in The Guardian as saying “A side effect of sarging is that it can lower one’s opinion of the opposite sex”, though the reviewer noted that “And yet, as he has described it, the inverse is true: a low opinion of the opposite sex is a prerequisite for sarging”. Strauss was also quote as saying “The point was women; the result was men. Instead of models in bikinis lounging by the Project Hollywood pool all day, we had pimply teenagers, bespectacled businessmen, tubby students, lonely millionaires, struggling actors, frustrated taxi drivers, and computer programmers – lots of computer programmers”. The reviewer remarked that “The sell is that, with the special techniques they learn from Mystery and other gurus, the ubergeeky can often give a convincing simulation of being a regular human being, even if, like one sarger in this book, they are in fact near-sociopaths”.
Another reviewer in The Observer wrote “Some of the recommended techniques are sinister. One involves discreetly undermining a woman’s self-esteem by paying her a backhanded compliment in the hope that she will hang around to seek your approval. This manoeuvre has its own name: ‘the Neg’”.
Malcolm Knox wrote “I doubt he has anything helpful for anyone except those men whose emotional maturity stalled at age 15”. He also wrote “If the reader is too far ahead of the author, a book has a problem. On page 406, Mystery’s mother says his problems are caused by his low self-esteem. Strauss reflects: ‘Only a mother could reduce a person’s entire ambition and raison d’etre to the one basic insecurity fuelling it all.’ No. It’s taken 406 pages for Strauss to realise what most readers will have got by page 10”. He notes the failure of “Project Hollywood” and that the book doesn’t recognise the role of women in selecting partners. He also writes “The other false advertisement is that Strauss has ‘penetrated’ a ‘secret society’ of geeks-turned-gurus including Mystery, his rival Ross Jeffries and renegade PUA teachers nicknamed Papa and Tyler Durden. Yet when Strauss writes about them in The New York Times, they’re thrilled”.
Alexandra Jacobs wrote that he switched awkwardly between misogynistic comments and feeble attempts at self-awareness. She also notes that “But he does come to perceive one curious thing about the P.U.A.‘s: They seem far more interested in spending time with fellow P.U.A.’s, amassing, refining and discussing the game, than actually getting to know women. Call them S.L.B.’s (scared little boys)”.
I won’t go into too much detail but i will say that ‘negging’ works on particular kinds of girls. mostly good looking ones with bitchy personalities. and yes, insecure types. although i never realised it was called ‘negging’ until i read The Game. I think it’s an old trick that men have been using for eons to score with women that are better looking than themselves. Supposedly it works on ‘smart’ girls too, but i’ve never tried it on them so i have no idea. The guys in the ‘seduction community’ see no difference between smart and dumb girls to my knowledge. It’s all about activating emotional ‘triggers’. They treat women as an undifferentiated mass. That’s cool if you just want to have sex and pick up and don’t mind getting rejected a whole bunch of times for using such a generalised approach, but for establishing meaningful relationships the advice is almost completely useless.
But i think PUA has a clear role in today’s society imo. Courting has changed dramatically. The old methods don’t work, at least not for the younger generations anyway.
Personally speaking, i’d much rather sit on the fence than use bullshit techniques that only attract the wrong kinds of women(at least nowadays anyway), but i guess it depends on your priorities. I’ve met guys whose only goal is to score with ‘hot’ women. The vast majority of my guy friends are more interested in relationships. The girls i know can go either way.
As for Tucker Max types being erased — no. Unfortunately, this kind of person will always have an excuse to think and do what they do.
Yes, there will always be assholes in the world. But I honestly don’t think Tucker Max types in particular are sex negative just because they’re assholes. I think the sex negative story that society has told them (“beautiful women don’t like sex, so you’ll either have to trick them into it or find an insecure one”) plays a large part in their methodology. I don’t think there would be a total absence of sex as currency and/or manipulation in a sex positive society, but I think it would be insanely hard for the Tucker strategy to work if the overall message in society was “it’s okay to have sex with whoever you want, whenever you want, and in whatever relationship (or non-relationship) context you want, as long as it’s consensual.” I think the fact that women are framed as always protecting themselves from sex and never wanting it creates a lot of power imbalances and non-consensual situations. There are a lot of other factors that go into it and many other things that complicate sex, yeah. I hope it doesn’t sound like I’m saying that being sex positive will solve all sexual miscommunication.
What do you think about people who say they are asexual?
I don’t have a problem with asexuality at all. Although I’ve never seen it written anywhere as an official sex positive stance, I like to think being sex positive includes having zero sex, if that’s what you want.
Sarging and negging. Fun new words!
I don’t know. Being a Lothario is not new. Why does everyone think that it is? There have ALWAYS been men whose thrill in life is to fuck as many women as possible.
;) Nope, not new at all!
odilonvert
I think he’s equally matched in the insecurity department for going after insecure women in the first place.