Ok, I'll bite. I posit that PUA culture is about empowering men. How do I know this? Because I've lived it. I've read some of the books, I've been to the seminars, and I've met and worked with the instructors. And yes, I have gotten comfortable approaching women I've never met before in various situations and I've gotten more comfortable in social settings in general. My life is better than it ever has been, and it has nothing to do with women.
Where I disagree is with your suggestion that these PUA individuals define themselves by another's desires or expectations. I grant you that a lot of beginning "PUA"s do this (what objective criteria makes someone a PUA btw?), and in fact this is one of the reasons that they are unattractive to women - what woman wants to be around someone who cannot stand on their own two feet? Who wants a partner with no backbone? Ok, fine, there are probably a few, but they likely have their own issues to deal with. Anyway, when I spent time in the PUA community I found that it was more about men helping men become confident and strong individuals with healthier self esteem and boundaries - boundaries strong enough that they could, just as an example, understand and respond calmly to shit tests from someone they've never met before, whereas previously they might just wilt and slink off to the corner. Frankly, it felt more like a men's support group than anything. I'm sure that there were dudes there for other reasons, but the majority of folks and instructors that I met and worked with were normal dudes helping other dudes to learn social skills, a sense of identity and self-worth, and how to create exciting lives for themselves as men. A lot of guys put pussy on a pedestal, and the community teaches you that guess what, she shits too, and you have a lot more to offer a women in a relationship than you believe. It can, however, take some training to learn the most effective ways to communicate this within the two minutes that she is deciding yes or no.
So actually, no, after becoming a "PUA" (whatever that means), you will likely NOT be defining yourself by another person's expectations or desires. You will probably define yourself by YOUR expectations and desires, so that you can live YOUR life in order to achieve YOUR goals, and forget others' opinions because what matters is that you are living life on YOUR terms. The adage "do what you love and the money will follow" is analogous here: become the man that you want to be and success, however you define it, follows: in your career, in your social circle, and yes, with women, too. At least that was my experience. YMMV. I know, I know, there are guys doing this because they just want to bang hot chixxxx, mannn. Please feel free to vilify them if you like, but I don't think that it's fair to paint the entire community with such a wide brush as you and many in this thread have. People arrive at that community for different reasons, have different goals, and ultimately get different things out of it. Painting the PUA peeps with a single wide brushstroke seems a bit like saying that the entire FDR community believes X. If we all believed X already, we wouldn't need a discussion board, and clearly there is room for discussion within this community.
Well, I hope my first non-introduction post was controversial enough
