MMX2010

Your argument is very coherent and echoes what I said earlier: that either the majority or a significant minority of people who have imagined being the opposite sex are not transgender. ---- Lindsay Leigh Bentley's article is fantastic. Thanks for posting it. ---- TheLastPsychiatrist sarcastically suggests where the motivation / feeling of unease comes from. http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/01/couple_reveals_childs_gender_f.html

I share your opinion. That's why I asked why BaylorPRSer told his parents that he was moving to Vietnam and didn't want to hear any of their opinions about it. My ACE score is four, so we both agree that my parents were abusive assholes. But I would never tell them that I was moving 10 time zones away and didn't want to hear their opinions. Because even though my parents are assholes, this declaration does nothing excepts really hurts their feelings and provokes them into giving me the opinions I claim not to want. Hence, the provocation is manipulative and my words are lies, and why lie to abusive assholes when you can just ignore them?

Not true. The pattern is that the people who assume that sexual intercourse within the first two years of getting to know someone is personal are the ones least likely to have casual sex. When I presented the argument that "All personas are genuine personas." and "Because Who You Really Are is so big that no one can see it within the first two years of getting to know you; hence, all sexual intercourse within the first two years is an impersonal reflection of How You Present Yourself.", those arguments were meant to convince people who think "All sex is personal." to change their minds. In response, no one refuted the argument - (nor attempted to refute the argument) - and no one attempted to change their minds. This is the behavior of someone so sure that his emotional assessment is accurate - no matter what philosophically rigorous challenges can be mounted against his assessment. And this behavior leads to the expectation that everyone agree with him, meaning that he can only have sex with people who share his irrationally negative assessment of casual sex. It is not lost on me that the people who believe "All sex is personal." are both accurately called Sex-Negative (in an increasingly Sex-Positive world) and ironically reflecting the stereotypically 1950's female assessment of sexuality - i.e. "Anyone who has sex with multiple people is corrupted.", "Anyone who can't relate to the female's emotional turmoil surrounding all sexual activity is callous.", "Anyone who has more sexual experience than the concerned and frightened woman should never be taken seriously - because it's impossible for sex with multiple people, of varying ages, levels of intelligence, degrees of emotional expression, and philosophical-understanding to be positively-educational.", and "If we only silently accepted the female-emotional assessment of sexuality, then there would be peace and harmony in all sexual activities."

If you use your anger to focus on self-improvement, then anger is healthy. If you use your anger to destroy people who know better than you and were trying to help you, then anger is unhealthy.

Does she objectively and consistently behave better while you're with her than she would if you were to disappear? If so, that's support; if not, that's enabling. As far as co-dependency goes, the absolute best series of articles was written by Ricky Raw at therawness.com. There are six parts, and each part will (should!) take you at least two hours to read. So many paragraphs will make you instantly reflect upon all of your relationships and all of the close relationships you're aware of that you'll probably need to take notes, (or, sometimes, to stop and celebrate the insight). This is part one: http://therawness.com/reader-letters-1-part-1/

TheLastPsychiatrist wrote a long and thought-provoking article defining two contrary ways of acquiring self-knowledge. The first involves introspection and therapy, while the second involves a series of competitive / cooperative relationships. If we accept that childhood traumas destroy our natural extroversion, (especially because Stefan portrays Isabella as so very extroverted and caring because he has never traumatized her), then any self-knowledge that relies solely (or even primarily) on introspection and therapy strikes me as potentially ineffective, (if not outright dangerous). TLP's essay is linked here, and it's the most beautiful thing I've ever read. http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/10/the_story_of_narcissus.html The takeaway message is as follows, but the entire article is worth reading: How is it that centuries later, Tiresias's prophecy is still not understood? Tiresias's prophecy was: He will have a long life, if he never knows himself. Now, what could that mean? Oh, he was right: Narcissus did live a long life-- though not a happy one. He spent his life alone, dreaming, and gazing into a pool, waiting to die. But Tiresisias's prophecy seems... wrong, counter to the Greek spirit, an affront to logic; shouldn't "knowing thyself" be the highest virtue? He will have a long life, if he never knows himself. But it's so simple, the explanation. It's so simple that no one has ever thought of it, and the reason no one has thought of it is that it is too terrible to think about. Forget about whether the prophecy is true. Ask instead, "what would the parents have done once they heard it?" When Laius and Jocasta were told that Oedipus would eventually destroy them, they pinned his ankles and abandoned him in the woods, ensuring that he'd someday have cause to do it. And so when Narcissus's parents heard the requirements for their child's long life... they would have done everything possible to ensure that he didn't know himself. No one knows what Liriope and Cephisus did, but whatever they did, it worked: he didn't even recognize his own reflection. That's a man who doesn't know himself. That's a man who never had to look at himself from the outside. How do you make a child know himself? You surround him with mirrors. "This is what everyone else sees when you do what you do. This is who everyone thinks you are." You cause him to be tested: this is the kind of person you are, you are good at this but not that. This other person is better than you at this, but not better than you at that. These are the limits by which you are defined. Narcissus was never allowed to meet real danger, glory, struggle, honor, success, failure; only artificial versions manipulated by his parents. He was never allowed to ask, "am I a coward? Am I a fool?" To ensure his boring longevity his parents wouldn't have wanted a definite answer in either direction. He was allowed to live in a world of speculation, of fantasy, of "someday" and "what if". He never had to hear "too bad", "too little" and "too late." When you want a child to become something-- you first teach him how to master his impulses, how to live with frustration. But when a temptation arose Narcissus's parents either let him have it or hid it from him so he wouldn't be tempted, so they wouldn't have to tell him no. They didn't teach him how to resist temptation, how to deal with lack. And they most certainly didn't teach him how NOT to want what he couldn't have. They didn't teach him how to want.

Well, this is going to be harsh. I'll do my best to soften the blow, but I'm not sure how to do that with so many things to criticize. ------------------ The first thing is that you're asking the women of FDR how you come across, but you're not asking the men. You've no idea how bad of an optic this is. (1) Let's say Super Hero Philosophical Woman gives you wonderful and effective advice on how to improve your profile. What's going to prevent you from having feelings for her, feelings that she never intended you to have? (2) Let's say Super Hero Philosophical Woman gives you sincere but ineffective advice. Now you're angry with her, because it's her fault, right? So if she's right, she loses; and if she's wrong, she loses. So why should she help you? ----------------- The second thing is that women don't deliberately give excellent advice on how to attract women, because they want you to Just Get It. http://therationalmale.com/2012/08/22/just-get-it/ Quoting the article, With a practiced, but cute, little wrinkle of her nose, and the huff of her $5K tits, my girl had just indirectly revealed one of the most vexing complexities of intergender communication – women want men to “just get it.” Just Get It From Female Dating Advice: The guy with the capacity to call a woman’s bluff with a confidence that implies she is to be worthy of him rather than the other way around is the Man to be competed for. Essentially the ‘chick speak’, ‘chick advice’ phenomenon is a shit test writ large on a social scale. And even your own mother and sisters are in on it, expecting you to ‘get it’; to get the message and see the challenge for what it really is, without overtly telling you. She want’s you to ‘get it’ on your own, without having to be told how. That initiative and the experience needed to have had developed it makes you a Man worth competing for. Women despise a man who needs to be told to be dominant. Overtly relating this to a guy entirely defeats his credibility as a genuinely dominant male. The guy she wants to fuck is dominant because that’s ‘the way he is’ instead of who she had to tell him to be. Observing the process will change it. This is the root function of every shit test ever devised by a woman. If masculinity has to be explained to a man, he’s not the man for her. In my Pour Girl’s example we see this ‘get it’ paradox from the single-man-sex-life perspective, and in Athol’s scenario we see it from the married-man (or LTR) -sex-life perspective. Many men will complain that they hate the presumption that they need to be a mind reader and ideally women ought to just communicate overtly and directly – just as a reason-based man would communicate. The problem is that in doing so it changes the dynamic for hypergamy. As I’ve stated so often, women say they want the truth, but they never want full disclosure. Hypergamy will not be pandered to, and will not be negotiated with. This is why the “communication is everything” meme has been responsible for the demise of more relationships than anyone will ever admit. It’s not that you communicate, it’s what you’re communicating and how you communicate it. I’ve counseled more men than I care to recount who’ve sobbed from the depths of their souls, “IF SHE’D JUST TELL ME WHAT I HAVE TO DO TO MAKE HER LOVE ME I’D DO IT!” not realizing that their very verbalization of that and a belief in open, rational communication is the very thing that’s killing (or killed) their woman’s desire for him. As I’ve written a thousand times, a cardinal truth of the universe is that genuine desire cannot be negotiated. The moment you tell your wife, your girlfriend, that you will exchange a behavior or attitude or belief or any other compromise for her desire you fundamentally change her organic desire into obligation. What she wants, what her hypergamy wants confirmation of, can never be explicated, it can only be demonstrated. If her desire is for you to be more dominant, her telling you to be so negates the genuineness and the validity of your becoming so. Again, observing a process will change it – on a limbic level of consciousness her innate hypergamy is aware of that truth. She wants a man who knows he needs to be dominant with her, that is the confirmation of hypergamy. -------------------- The third thing is that the first thing women notice is your photo, and they're very good at sizing up what kind of man you are, and what kind of relationships you've had. What do I see? A very needy man, who expresses absolutely no emotion in his photos except loneliness and heartache. A tired man, a wounded man with no energy to pour into the world, who has had few, if any, relationships with women. You don't look like a happy player who's been with hundreds of women and is looking to settle down. You look like an unhappy person, who's hoping to find the One Woman Who Understands Him Better Than Anyone Else. -------------------- "Now just a minute, MMX2010! Didn't you read the rest of my profile? I do so much good for the world!" Yes, I read your profile, and I'm mind-boggled that you give technically-perfect non-friggin-emotional descriptions of your Humanist group and your small business that has grown to employ five people. HOW can you accomplish so much - but give no impression of the battles you've won, defeats you've suffered, joys you've derived, heartaches you survived, and happiness/joy you've created in others? I mean, it's one thing when an inexperienced guy unknowingly allows a chick to place him into the "Boring, Passionless Guy" box - (she asks interview-like, resume-based questions and he answers dryly and honestly). But it's quite another thing when a 31 year old man who should know better places himself into that box by presuming that these are the questions she wants, and this is the way he must answer! --------------------- Do you listen to rap music? I hope not, because this will be a completely foreign example of what you should be channeling. In this video, a "Clark" is a style of shoe - and the speaker at the beginning strongly believes he's discovered how to add small amounts of dye to a specific spot to make a fortune. (You only need listen to the first minute.) That dude is dumber than you are, more violent than you are, and he's talking about something utterly pointless: dying shoes to re-sell them - but can you hear the passion in his voice, the absolute joy in the pursuit of a way out of poverty? Why can't you channel that? -------------------- Knowing what I know about Toronto and online dating, you're better off deleting your profile and meeting people face-to-face, through your social circle of friends if necessary. Your profile is so far off-field from what women-pursuing-online-dating actually want that you'll probably be frustrated for a very long time if you limit your romantic pursuits to OKCupid. I did my best to soften the blow a bit, but I'm not sure how successful I was. I do know that what I said was true, and I hope it helps you.

Do you think fake-positive people only exist in America, or will they exist in whatever-country-you're-moving-to? If they exist in that other country, what will do you when you encounter them?

I think the article is just a very fancy of way of saying, "When you take other people's rejection of your ideas personally - (even though it can't possibly be personal) - you create a vengeful spirit that cannot change their minds and cannot wound their hearts any worse than they've already been wounded; this is like punching a brick wall: it only hurts your hand."

On the RooshVForum, a member cited a study entitled "Confidence Predicts Success More Accurately Than Merit", whose authors concluded that irrational self-confidence allows people to persist when things aren't going well. While an accurate assessment of the barriers relative to your merit prevents people from persisting. So I guess it means that the "falsely positive people" are the most productive, after all?

Roosh's counter-argument is brilliant and much better matches observable, objective reality than yours. It begins with three facts. (1) Who You Really Are is defined as every thought, sensation, and emotion you'll ever have and every action you've undertaken. Thus, Who You Really Are is a gigantic thing, which you can conceive of as meter stick. And the only way someone can get a true picture of Who You Really Are is to be magically teleported into your body, from birth, to experience every thought, emotion, sensation you'll ever have and every action you've ever done. (THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE.) And the only way someone can get a fuzzy-but-accurate picture of Who You Really Are is to interact with you daily for two years - but that hardly ever happens. (2) When you hit on a woman in a thirty-minute approach, she reacts to How You Present Yourself. When you go out on a first date, she reacts to How You Present Yourself. When you participate in a call-in show with Stef, he reacts to How You Present Yourself. When you participate in an FDR Chat Window, the people react to How You Present Yourself. When you have a glorious two-month affair with a woman who is very much into philosophy, she reacts to How You Present Yourself. But in none of those cases will anyone react to Who You Really Are. (3) How You Present Yourself is so very miniscule compared to Who You Really Are. Is just is. It just objectively is. And How You Present Yourself is best conceived as a millimeter, (probably smaller). =============== Accepting these facts leads to some surprising, but unavoidable, conclusions. (1) Whether you're accepted for How You Present Yourself, or rejected for How You Present Yourself, neither the acceptance nor rejection is ever personal, because personal acceptance/rejection requires that person has a fuzzy-but-accurate picture of Who You Really Are, a process which takes a minimum of two years. (2) The desire to be seen for Who You Really Are based on brief interactions is irrational, because it's impossible for anyone to fulfill that desire. And all conclusions you make about Who Someone Really Is based on any process besides daily-interaction for two years are always irrational. (3) There is no such thing as a False Persona that masks Who You Really Are, because Who You Really Are is eternally masked by its very bigness. All Personas are real, because How You Present Yourself is always real, (except when you lie about what you've done). =============== Your statement, "I feel like I'd have to do a lot of mental gymnastics to reason myself out of the feelings of attachment, but would be much easier if they were lesser quality of partners." is double wrong! (1) The real "mental gymnastics" you perform are desiring to be seen for Who You Really Are as quickly as possible, even though she doesn't really know you, and you don't really know her. The nagging feeling that you're demanding the impossible, which you wrongfully call "mental gymnastics to reason yourself out of the feelings of attachment", is the truth. (2) Your conclusion that Who She Really Is, is a "lesser quality partner" is absolutely wrong, because you're drawing this conclusion from brief interactions with her. Those brief interactions are based on How She Presents Herself, which cannot in that brief time give you a fuzzy-but-accurate picture of Who She Really Is. If "emotional, intimate, and romantic connection" is achieved when Who You Really Are experiences Who They Really Are, then it's impossible to achieve this through brief conversation. All you can say is that you aesthetically prefer How Woman #1 Presents Herself over How Woman #2 Presents Herself. Either way, your preference is impersonal, and therefore not intimate. All relationships are transactional in the first two years, because both people are using How They Present Themselves in order to meet their present needs. And "sex on the first date" is not NEARLY as destructive to love as, "How can I speed up the process of getting to know Who You Really Are? And how can you speed up the process of getting to know Who I Really Am, so we can have intimate, personal connections now?" There is no way to speed up the process. To think you've found a way is irrational and destructive, because to think you've found a way is to judge yourself and the entire female gender unfairly. ============= Since men have to do all of the approaching, and since being rejected FEELS personal - (even though it totally isn't) - men develop comforting myths in order to keep approaching. And the most convenient, timeworn myth of all is, "Oh, wow. That rejection really stung. But if she only knew the Real Me, Who I Really Am, then she'd accept me." This myth leads to its other equally popular myth, Oh, wow. That rejection really stung! My attraction to her must've been really wrong then! She must be a horrible partner!" Since neither myth is true, and since those myths are both strongly advocated by the men who are most reluctant to have sex, I'm repeating my statement, "Any man who says, 'I don't have nearly as much sex as That Guy Over There, BUT I understand women, sex, and relationships better than he does....' is docked a hundred trillion points."

I agree with you, but there's a tremendous obstacle to your suggestion: the nature and make-up of the long-time FDR listeners. A sizable portion of the FDR-audience are MGTOWs, and Stefan has interviewed MGTOWs on multiple occasions (Paul Elam comes to mind). On the other hand, hardly any FDR-members are "players", or "implementers of PUA", or "serial daters". Worse, the MGTOWs say things like, "PUA is manipulative and dishonest!" without having studied it (or without having implemented it long-term, over 100 approaches, the way Roosh would suggest). This imbalance creates a desire for a harsher, stronger, fiercer anti-woman message that Stefan is feeding into.

(1) You're 100% right in everything you say. (2) But you only frame this solution as "People with an apparent lack of empathy should change their behavior.", without considering the opposite frame "People with an apparent surplus (or right amount) of empathy should change their behavior." (3) When you say, "However most of the time what we experience is people actively opposing the behaviour/emotion/idea, which can not logically be attributed to a lack of understanding, but an opposition/anger towards the expression of this behaviour/emotion/idea", you are mostly correct. But you don't consider that the person is expressing opposition/anger towards the invalidity of the behavior/emotion/idea. I've had too many people in the FDR community accuse me of "lacking empathy" when I've swiftly pointed out that their argument is wrong, or their emotional reaction is biased/ill-informed. So I no longer accept the premise that, "In all case, the person with less empathy is wrong, while the person with more empathy is always right."

Also wanted to add: One of the essential changes that happens when a man pursues his mission is that he has to pretend that it's 100% guaranteed that he'll succeed. (Missions are so hard and require such long efforts that people stop trying when they don't 100% believe they'll succeed.) So fake happiness is not always a horrible thing.

You don't sound like you're routinely pursuing your dreams, to the point where you know that all of your life's energy - whether time, money, or body - is adequately channeled into making those dreams come true. Without this sense of mission, all you can do is assume - probably with 97% accuracy - that the smiling people aren't really happy. But the price of that 3% failure rate is that you can't recognize the truly happy; worse, you push them away from you with your sour attitude.

I would argue that we're a sexually reproducing species, so any argument which begins, "I don't have sex, but...." or "You don't need to have sex to...." is automatically docked 100 goals. (It's like spotting the opposing team 100 goals, but trying to win the game anyway.) I also think that saying, "I know, just by conversing with them, whether the sex will be enjoyable." is much more likely to be a buffer against rejection than an actual insight into the nature and character of the other. A simple explanation, for example, would be, "I hit on her; she rejected me." - instead of the more complex explanation, "By virtue of our conversations, I deduced that sexual intercourse with her would be unpleasant because of her tenseness...." Not saying you're wrong; just saying I'm skeptical.

I agree with this argument, but with one important caveat. When the argument is used to describe a man, it's usually correct. But when the argument is used to describe a woman, it's almost always wrong. Women experience their peak Sexual Market Values at age 23, and so their sexual promiscuity is experienced in the mind of an immature young adult. But men experience their peak Sexual Market Values at age 36, and so their sexual promiscuity is experienced in the mind of a mature adult. Since the primary goal of any society is preventing men from realizing their peak Sexual Market Value, (because a man who realizes that he'll become awesome at age 36 is much less likely to support a same-aged woman over a lifetime), the "importance of soul argument" is merely designed to make older men seek out the affections of same-aged women. Smarter men, however, know the ruse and reject the argument.

You can dismiss this as nonsense if you wish, but the blue stuff was explained to me as follows. In older times, men and women stood side by side looking towards God-above. As long as he was devoted to God, and she was devoted to God, then God would watch over the both of them, ensuring that the marriage would remain virtuous and just. In modern times, God doesn't exist. So men and women look into each other's eyes for fulfillment. He comports himself according to her opinions, and she comports herself according to his opinions. And the emotional connection from mutual self-staring is supposed to bond them together. The modern problem is that when man-looks-into-woman's-eyes and woman-looks-into-man's-eyes, neither is looking at the world. So the world becomes irrelevant and decays. Which means that the solution is for man and woman to stop looking into each other's eyes, and to find something in the world that compels them to work together. But not God, because God still doesn't exist. What is this? Mission. A man on a mission devotes himself and his every action into the fulfillment of that mission. And every woman he meets either "folds herself into" his mission or doesn't. The woman who most strongly folds herself into his mission is the woman he's supposed to choose to be with. Without mission, a man is stuck seeking "value for value" - but he defines "value" according to subjective, ambiguous terms. Whereas mission makes a man define value in subjective non-ambiguous terms.

Roosh's book, Bang, introduced deep philosophical questions into PUA. I (might) be able to pick up a digital copy that I can give to you, if you're interested. Because Roosh's book is so philosophical (and matches a lot of what Stefan also believes), I see no contradiction between PUA and Stefan's messages.

Dishonest how? (It's important, but if you don't want to share, I understand.)

Philosophy has made me realize the importance of mission, and that the purpose of morality is to help people find their mission faster. When people do not have mission, they aimlessly chase their lusts, cannot form genuine personal connections with others, and are not happy with the things they possess. A beautiful man with lots of money, admirers, women, and strength of body becomes an angry, domineering, sneering shell without mission. Very few people possess a sense of mission, and having a mission DOES NOT enable you to steer / convince others into either loving your mission or acquiring their own. So philosophy gives you mission, and mission gives you happiness - but it also (mostly) makes you lonely.

This is completely true, but you're also way too nice. He should learn from me, a self-described womanizer-in-training and aspiring super-troll.

So you have this plan that you're not conscious of. It's the same plan that the majority of men have. (1) Get in touch with your childhood wounds. (2) Find a woman who understands those childhood wounds. (3) Get in a relationship with that woman, who provides us with the maternal love that we lacked as children. (4) Become strong enough as a man, through her healing influence, to love her powerfully and deeply. But women only appreciate a man who has this plan: (1) Get in touch with your childhood wounds. (2) Become strong enough as a man, without any woman's healing influence, to love any woman powerfully and deeply. When you speak of an unfulfilled need for safety and love, you're looking for some authority figure - (preferably maternal) - to help you learn how to heal. But a man only ever heals himself.

What you typed (and what I highlighted in blue font) is narcissism. In the first sentence, you admit that the first thing you thought when you read that article is, "I wonder how what they did reflects on me." That's narcissism. Your second sentence, "*I* feel ashamed for them, at what *THEY* have done.", is false-as-stated, because it's impossible to feel anything for someone else. I can't feel angry for the woman who loves me; she either feels angry (or doesn't) of her own free will. A more accurate (and therefore truthful) translation of your second sentence was, "I felt angry at them for provoking my sense of shame-for-myself and concern-for-myself by committing their crime. Because my first thought when reading this article was, 'I wonder how what they did reflects on me.'" BUT even this second sentence isn't perfectly accurate, because they didn't provoke your sense of shame/concern for yourself; you voluntarily felt it as a result of reading the article. You have agency over your feelings, because even the feelings that seemingly arise involuntarily can be controlled / altered by self-knowledge and the acquisition of new moral perspectives. ---------------------- What you said in green font is the typical reasoning of narcissistic individuals. They feel that the narcissism is cured by going inward, through long series of therapeutic interactions, to find the childhood-centered root cause of the narcissism and undoing it. The problem is that the assumptions that (1) the cure for narcissism is internal, and (2) only you are in the prime position to discover the cure through introspection are BOTH narcissistic!. Blog author TheLastPsychiatrist has already discovered the cure for narcissism. He warns that the majority of narcissists will not follow through on his cure, because they don't understand how (and why) it works. The cure for narcissism has two steps. Step one: Fake not being a narcissist. Step Two: There is no Step Two; there is only Step One. The retort by those who doubt the cure is always as follows, "But you don't get it TLP. You're supposed to recommend a specific form of therapy that is most effective in getting me to understand the root cause of my narcissism! You're a goddamn psychiatrist! What's the matter with you? How dare you not recommend either medication or therapy!?!?" And TLP's retort is always as follows, "The cure for narcissism is the cure for narcissism, because it is NOT FOR YOU. Instead, it's for everyone else you'll ever come into contact with." ------------------ Something else to consider. If you ask HannahBanana what she felt when she read this article, I'm guessing she felt sadness for the babies who suffered. This isn't narcissistic, because she doesn't care about "how she feels", nor "how the existence of this crime reflects on her". She simply and spontaneously feels sadness for the babies who suffered. And if you ask me what I felt when reading this article, the truth is I didn't feel anything. I saw the title, knew what the article was about, and refused to read it. I've no power to alter whatever crimes these men committed, and I know that reading about these things sours my mood. And I don't want my mood to be soured over a problem I cannot solve, especially since my job requires face-to-face contact with people who need my help. My feelings are partially cold, partially narcissistic, partially unselfish, and most pragmatic. Lastly, you'll notice that your second reply focuses entirely on what you feel and what you want to know about yourself. Which, naturally, means that it contains no curiosity as to what others felt and what they learned about themselves. So all of your curiosity is directed inwards, none of it is directed outwards, and guess what? You're an isolated individual who has trouble making long-term friends, right?

You can't "win" this argument by appealing to "dishonesty and manpulativeness", RJ. For one thing, you're using the anonymous FDR-member's actions to negatively generalize about PUA-in-general. That's invalid, because generalizations involving large numbers of people require studying a large number of people. Second, you've never studied any PUA-manuals, nor have you implemented PUA yourself. Hence, your opinion isn't based on your personal experience with PUA, but with what you may have heard (or just believe) about PUA. Third, in Stefan's only podcast that directly addresses PUA, he simultaneously stated that: (1) "He hasn't really studied PUA." and (2) "From what he's read, PUAs habitually lie to women - and, in lying to women, they become enslaved to women's approval." This is dishonest and manipulative because he should've studied PUA much more deeply before making a generalization about PUAs and because lying IS NOT an essential part of PUA. Yes, some PUA's lie, but the majority of PUAs do not. (This is exactly how lying IS NOT an essential part of studying philosophy or chemistry, and yet some people who study philosophy or chemistry will lie.) Fourth, if a PUA understands that palm-reading and horoscopes are designed to create rapport, using horoscopes and palm-reading IS NOT dishonest nor manipulative. (This is exactly like knowing that telling jokes, introducing yourself to a woman, or asking her about her hobbies are also designed to create rapport - which means there's no "dishonesty" or "manipulation" in doing any of those three actions.) --------------------- Finally, you don't understand the point of the anecdote, but Ragdoll totally gets it. You'll notice that Ragdoll is married - while neither you, nor the anonymous FDR-member you're defending are married. (This is important.) The point of the anecdote is as follows: (1) The anonymous FDR-member DOES NOT WANT a not-yet virtuous woman whom he can (hopefully, but not 100%-guaranteed because women have agency) mold into a virtuous woman. Instead, he wants a WOMAN WHO IS ALREADY VIRTUOUS whom he can just introduce himself to...and romance is kindled. (2) When Stefan Molyneux met his future-wife, she was a statist, religious, non-Defoo'ed woman who continued to maintain a relationship with her abusive-parents. (I remember him saying those three things about her.) Everyone on FDR agrees that those three things are a sign of non-virtue - but Stefan coached her while dating her - (and, perhaps, after sleeping with her even though they weren't yet married - and I'm saying perhaps because I don't remember him directly saying this.) Here's the important part: When you compared Stefan-on-the-day-he-met-Christina to the anonymous FDR-member-on-the-day-he-felt-revulsion-towards-the-hipster-girl, the following things are readily apparent: (1) Stefan is significantly more philosophically sound. (2) Stefan is significantly happier. (3) Stefan takes much better care of his body. (4) Stefan has always known how to flirt with women. (5) Stefan is much more patient with bad arguments, and is much more willing to steer people through them. (6) Stefan is older and wiser. (7) Stefan has much more ambition, particularly with regard to spreading philosophy and helping others. (8) All of the above are things that virtuous women look for when seeking a virtuous husband - which means that women find Stefan significantly more virtuous and attractive. And yet, despite Stefan's enormous virtue-advantage only Stefan was willing to mold a not-yet-virtuous woman into a virtuous-woman. And his willingness to mold a woman into virtue LED TO Freedomain Radio and the birth of Isabella. If narcissism is defined as the gap between What You Think You Deserve and What You Really Deserve, the FDR-member you're defending is highly narcissistic. He's far below Stefan with regard to just about everything that matters to a virtuous woman AND he wants an already virtuous woman to love him. This narcissism is revealed in two equally sad ways: (1) If he were transported back in time to the week before Stefan first met Christina, and he met Christina, he would think she isn't good enough for him. (I can see his diary entry, "Met this bland-looking chick. Found out she was an Greek Orthodox statist who maintains relationships with her abusive parents. How lame. Where are the virtuous women!?!") (2) If *I* were to somehow meet that hipster chick, use PUA on her to create rapport, engage in casual sex with her, introduce her to philosophy, guide her into virtue, and then decide we weren't long-term compatible, I would have increased the number of virtuous, marriageable women in the world by one. And if, two months after she and I broke up, the anonymous FDR-member were to re-meet her and discover she was virtuous, he would refuse to associate with her after discovering that she slept with me. This is because he wrongfully thinks that PUA only works on non-virtuous women and because he doesn't want a non-virtuous woman to become virtuous by sleeping with other men. He ONLY wants a virtuous woman to become virtuous by listening to Stefan, or him, or another virtuous person. So, in the end, it doesn't really matter whether he thinks PUA is dishonest and manipulative, because his usage of PUA was dishonest and manipulative. Worse, it reveals the gap between What He Thinks He Deserves and What He Really Deserves. Also, it doesn't really matter whether you think PUA is dishonest and manipulative, because you haven't studied it, and you defend someone who didn't study it very deeply either. If you were to read Roosh's excellent PUA guide entitled Bang!, his first chapter speaks about "mindset" and "intention". If you want to use PUA to create happiness and rapport in others, PUA will inevitably do that. If you want to use PUA to strengthen your embittered, entitled attitude towards women, PUA will inevitably do that. If you want to use PUA to strengthen your ability to handle discomfort, PUA will inevitably do that. And if you want PUA to either heal or maintain your current personality-dysfunctions, PUA will do that. Whatever you want PUA to do, it will inevitably do. (Ironically, the same can be said for philosophy.) And your (and his) unwillingness to address what PUA actually says inevitably leads him to speak authoritatively about PUA - despite not understanding it. Which just makes him (and you) wrong about PUA.