MASTER THESIS Not MeToo: the seduction community’s nice guys, bad apples, false allegations and anxiety Mihaela Crăciun 11786884 Cultural Sociology Track Supervisors: dhr. dr. K. (Kobe) De Keere dr. M.A. (Marguerite) van den Berg Amsterdam, 08-07-2018 1 Table of contents Abstract........................................................................................................................4 Chapter 1: Introduction................................................................................................5 Chapter 2: Theoretical Framework.............................................................................10 2.1. Emotional landscapes and cultural incoherence .......................................10 2. 2 Men’s rights movement and hybrid masculinities....................................11 2.3 Neoliberal logic and hegemonic masculinity in the SC.............................14 2.4 Sexual scripts and essentialism..................................................................15 2.5 Seduction and anxiety ...............................................................................17 Chapter 3: Methodological Approach..........................................................................20 3.1 Desk Research............................................................................................20 3.2 Participants.................................................................................................21 3.3 Interviews Overview..................................................................................22 3.4 Interpretive approach and positionality......................................................24 3.5 Data analysis..............................................................................................25 Chapter 4: Findings......................................................................................................25 4.1 Concepts and lingo.....................................................................................26 4.2 Neoliberal, self-entrepreneurial framework...............................................32 4.3 The “poor nice guy”: navigating anxiety and rejection.............................41 4.4 Not MeToo - it’s just the bad apples..........................................................48 4.5 MeToo: false allegations and anxiety........................................................53 2 Chapter 5: Conclusion..................................................................................................58 Bibliography.................................................................................................................62 Appendix......................................................................................................................69 Word count: 23,925 3 Abstract This paper explores the worldviews of the Dutch “seduction community” in an effort to understand how their inter-subjective frameworks relate to wider instances of inequality (Lamont et al, 2014). The seduction community is a transnational, self-help community aiming at empowering men who are “deficient” at social skills and particularly at successfully “picking up” women. The embodiment of masculinity is central to this rule- based, essentialist framing of sexuality and attraction in which men aim at instrumentally influencing sexual interactions in a quest to regain control and felt lost power over intimate relations (Schuurmans, 2017). Sexual success becomes a token of manhood that not only helps “socially awkward heterosexual men” (Denes 2011:414; Almog et al, 2015) climb up the social ladder of masculinities but also one that promises soothing of anxieties and mastering of emotions. Based on a desk research of “pickup” concepts and on qualitative interviews of the local seduction community’s members, this paper examines how members of the SC frame their involvement with pickup as well as broader issues of inequality such as sexual violence and the anti sexual harassment activism represented by MeToo. The paper argues that the community resorts to an intertwining of two complementary frameworks: hegemonic masculinity versus victim power, emphasizing what scholars have called hybrid masculinity (Connell et al, 2005). 4 Chapter 1: Introduction The issue of sexual harassment and assault has made its way into the public sphere for a few years now in light of feminist activism (Gotell & Dutton, 2016). Yet it is the recent MeToo movement that has showcased the extent to which sexual harassment is a pervasive social matter. The name “Silence Breakers” (Zacharek et al, 2017) was given to the main figures associated to the MeToo movement, so as to imply the broken taboo around sexual harassment that up until recently was mainly kept a private matter. Issues such as low reporting rate of sexual assault, low conviction rates (Tempkin & Krahe, 2008), widespread sexual violence against women and a culture of victim blaming and stigmatization in which women are the “gatekeepers” of sexuality and thus responsible for transgressions have long been documented (Gottel & Dutton, 2016). The movement has gained considerable support and the amplitude of the stories comes to show the extent to which feminist legitimacy was gained. Contestation and backlash to the movement has not nevertheless failed to come. The MeToo hashtag was quickly followed by #NotAllMen (Emery, 2017), as reactionary to a perceived overly inflated critique to manhood. Initiatives such as “La lettre des cent femmes” have come to critique MeToo for Puritanism, for “hatred of men and of sexuality” (Nous defendons, 2018). Postfeminist claims framing patriarchal structures and gender inequality as a thing of the past (McRobbie, 2008) are not new and have been a matter of interest for many sociologists. Postfeminism has been related to processes of reconfiguration and negotiation of intimacy (Gill 2009) and even with the rise of antifeminist attitudes and of the men’s rights movement (Ging, 2017; O’Neill, 2015; Gottel & Dutton, 2016; Menzies, 2007). Researching on MeToo and anti-harassment feminism proves therefore to be of high relevance in terms of better grasping the movement’s advance as well as the backlash that feminism still has to navigate its way through. The widespread endorsement of the “real rape” myth (Temkin & Krahe, 2009:349) still carries important consequences that ultimately minimalize the seriousness of sexual assault and thus implicitly enables a system of sexual violence. While MeToo is not be taken as ultimate victory on otherwise structural matters of inequality and sexual violence (Davis &Zarkov, 2018), it does bring to the forefront a necessary debate on sexuality and sexual harassment issues. Of particular relevance to reshaping of cultural norms of sexuality and consent as brought forward by the MeToo movement is the pick-up artist community, hereby called pickup community or seduction community – SC (O’Neill, 2015; Schuurmans, 2017). The 5 SC’s main aim is to increase sexual choice and control for heterosexual men through specific knowledge acquisition, skill training and seduction practice – self proclaimed as “artistry” or “game” (O’Neill, 2015; Schuurmans & Monaghan, 2015). While main figures and popular “gurus” of the SC have oriented themselves towards more marketable identities such as “dating experts” or “lifestyle coaches” (O’Neill, 2015:8), thus diversifying the spectrum of memberships, for concision purposes we will refer to the entirety of materials, practices and followers identifying with this corpus under the sole name of SC or pickup community. The SC professes self-help goals in helping men increase their erotic game, their heterosexual competences and sexual success with women, all within a re-enactment of hegemonic masculinity markers such as dominance and control (Almog et al, 2015; Schuurmans, 2017). The community targets men with low social skills (Denes, 2011; Almog et al, 2015) by putting forth a rule-based schemata of ideas, skills and seduction practices that would grant them success with women. Meticulous practice or “ascetic labor” (Schuurmans, 2017:69) is emphasized as only way to achieve success, in a paradoxical mixture of hedonistic goals and ascetic means (Hendricks, 2012). Originating from the US, this community has quickly spread into a global phenomenon that transcends its cyber dimension (Schuurmans, 2017). From online classes, blogs, forums where members exchange personal experiences with game, to offline seduction workshops, bootcamps or “in field” practice trainings, PU has gained many followers around the world. While its origins are traced back to the 70s and to figures such as Erik Weber’s “How to Pickup Girls” (Almog et al, 2015) , the SC has truly gained worldwide recognition after the bestselling success of the book “The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists” (Strauss, 2005), in which Strauss describes the catchy story of his evolving from an AFC (average frustrated chump) into a PUA (master pickup artist). While commercial in nature, this transnational community is considered part of the wider men’s rights movement (MRA), aligned with the central MRA philosophy: the popular Red Pill Philosophy1 aiming at liberating men from misandry and from the “feminist delusion” (Ging, 2017:1). The men’s rights movement or men’s rights activism (MRA) developed in the 1970s as an anti-feminist faction of the men’s liberation movement (Coston 1 The Red Pill Philosophy originates from the /r/TheRedPill subreddit concentrated on antifeminism and