Last week, Van City Buzz published an article about a woman named Nicole who was repeatedly “harassed” on the street by a “Pick-Up Artist” in-training.
For those of who are unaware, a Pick-Up Artist (PUA) is a man who uses a variety of manipulative techniques to seduce and discard women. The movement gained attention in LA in 2005, when writer Neil Strauss published his infamous book, The Game: Penetrating The Secret Society of Pick-Up Artists. I read The Game, as many others did. Unfortunately, most men looking for guidance only read the first half of the book which is filled with the so-called top secret success skills and failed to make it to the second half where the entire system and it’s PUA heroes fall to their deeply depressing demise.
In her story, Nicole says she was walking down Robson Street and was approached by a man, who, encouraged by his PUA teacher, tried to strike up a conversation with her. She gave him signs that she was not interested (at first subliminal, not verbal), eventually getting irritated he was not taking her hints and she told him to piss off. The next day, she found herself back on Robson Street and the same teacher again encouraged a student to go and try to talk to her. Maybe this teacher needs glasses? Maybe he suffers from facial agnosia? Or maybe he views any walking figure with tits as a target? Either way, Nicole was “it” again, along with her friend who happened to be walking with her.
“I asked him to please just leave us alone, but he wouldn’t go away,” Nicole described in her story.
“He started getting really aggressive and got up in our faces, as if he were trying to start a bar fight with a man.” Eventually the man exploded at Nicole, saying she did not own the street corner, and stormed off.
It is unfortunate that Nicole had to deal with this two days in a row. Really, that’s just completely irritating. But there are plenty of irritating, ill-informed, socially ridiculous human beings crawling around this world. Practically 90 per cent of the population is stupid, in my opinion, and no matter what your situation, you have to deal with disgusting morons of all genders on a daily basis. It’s called participating in the public.
Men and women have been trying to figure out how to “get” one another since we evolved into human beings. Sex, love, and capital fuel our existence. In her controversial 1992 essay “Rape and The Modern Sex War”, Camille Paglia wrote, “Nothing about the sexes has truly changed. The comic film Where The Boys Are (1960), the ultimate expression of ‘50s man-chasing, still speaks directly our time. It shows smart, lively women skillfully anticipating and fending off dozens of strategies with which horny men try to get them into bed.” This 60-year-old example applies exactly to the PUA culture of 2015. Sex can be beautiful, it can be a loving force, but it can also be a dark, rampant power.
The CFUV 101.9 FM show “Women On Air” addressed the Robson Street issue by interviewing Vancouver PUA and author Tony D, as well as two self-proclaimed male feminists. The male feminists said, if men want to get laid, they need to stop feeling entitled to women’s bodies. They talked about total consent, asking to progress sexually. Tony D talked about “stop means not yet”.
My VICE editor, Tracie Egan Morrissey once tweeted, “I’d sooner fuck an unwitting chauvinist than a smarmy self-identified male feminist.” I agree. As I listened to the male feminists talk about their beliefs on the radio, I felt increasingly annoyed. They were talking about women like we were helpless victims incapable of taking care of ourselves. The PUA may think he can toy with my mind and charmingly convince me to have sex with him, but at least he views me as a worthy sexual challenge instead of a charity case devoid of autonomy.
But views like this about sexuality and dating get messy because, statistically, it is understood that men almost always do the raping. This is a fact of life. Every human being needs to be aware of the ugliness of the world: this is not a nice place. Rape, murder and theft are realities of modern, city life. This is why I lock my doors and windows when I leave the house.
I don’t have to agree with Tony D, but I do have to try to understand him. That’s just good social strategy. As a (mostly) straight woman, I have to deal with the Tony Ds of the world every day so shouldn’t I try to talk to them, figure them out?
I do not have a definitive answer on how to solve the so-called sexual differences in our world. They are too vast, too ever-changing and yet, in the case of straight men and women, seemingly stagnant.
Human beings will never stop the psycho-sexual plotting to try and fuck one another. And people like myself will never stop trying to analyze it because until a time comes where we have all evolved into independent, asexual strawberries who no longer need one another for companionship, then the mind fuck will continue.
