Uh Hey everybody welcome back to the sisybus 55 podcast today we’re joined by Rachel O’Neill who’s an assistant professor at London School of Economics uh she’s a feminist uh media cultural studies scholar and she’s also the author of Seduction men masculinity and mediated intimacy but also if you would
Like to further elaborate on exactly what you do and how you kind of got interested in this field yeah so as you said I’m an assistant professor here in media and Communications at LLC where most of my research centers on questions of culture subjectivity and I’m really interested
In understanding how it is that we come to be particular kinds of people in the world how it is that we go about negotiating day-to-day practices in our lives in relation to the broader social and economic circumstances that we live in and I approach a lot of that through
Questions of gender through through questions of power and inequality okay that’s yeah very interesting and uh I guess like on my end I became very interested in this topic around the same time as there was a lot of that like manosphere kind of Andrew Tate uh kind of discourse going on and there
Were some YouTubers that took it upon themselves to uh kind of dive into this era this group of people which was kind of like straight men or straight white men and actually give it kind of an intersectional lens which is kind of a at least at the time I thought was kind
Of rare in terms of researching this group um and then I kind of came across masculinity studies and um kind of oh there are people that actually analyze this specific group and it is important because they they they’re usually the ones that hold a great deal of power and influence so
It’s kind of important to research kind of their own world view and perspectives on in a more analytical way and then also because I belong to that group so it was kind of interesting to see certain insights and Views because I you know when I’m growing up
Um you know I probably adopted some of these these World Views at one point or another and it was interesting to see them talked about in a very like academic objective uh sense and uh and I do I like personally I feel like it’s it’s important to discuss kind of
Masculinity and its relation with sexuality and um especially the seduction Community because it does kind of act as a sort of a alternative educational system to a lot of kind of men or young men who don’t feel very good about themselves and it could be initially useful but then it could be
Kind of harmful down the road so that’s that’s how I came across your work and especially your uh when you’re talking about kind of the the fact that it like sex is kind of a currency in these communities and especially involving a lot of masculinity that it’s kind of
Traded amongst men to prove their their gender expression um so I guess that’s that’s my uh kind of backgrounds and yeah I’m wondering how you uh came across like this this field what kind of uh made you specifically interested in this well I’m sorry I’m such an academic I’m making
Notes as you speak I noticed that yeah part of the course I mean I think you’re making a great Point first of all in in highlighting masculinity studies this is something that within the area of a feminist scholarship within the area of gender studies a lot of the time gender
Is understood as a kind of a synonym for women and femininity and I think it is fair to say that within gender studies as a whole far less attention is given to Men of masculinity studies it is a kind of sub area of the discipline even though
It it ought to be far more prominent in in many ways so I think it’s it’s really important to draw attention to the fact that that there is this body of work there’s a field or a subfield that is specifically dedicated to studying questions of of men masculinity the ways in which men’s
Lives are shaped by these broader social and cultural forces that we’re kind of alluding to now and I also liked the the way that you raised the the way in which the kind of the Logics the teachings that are elaborated in the seduction industry become available to young men in
Particular on a very wide plane I think it’s often understood the seduction industry is often understood and written about including by academics as a subculture and from the very beginning of my research I really felt that that was inaccurate precisely because the subculture that language assumes that you’re
Talking about a reasonably small and bounded grouping of people when actually if you look at some of the entry points that people have that men have to the seduction industry these are extremely popular texts so the way in which I made my way into this area of research was exactly
The same way that many of my research subjects the men that I interviewed and spent time with made their way into it and that was through the very very popular best-selling book The Game by Neil Strauss and I have my signed copies up here on my shelf somewhere um
With a very interesting inscription um and you know this was a text that you know published in the early mid-2000s and and used to reached a really really huge audience it was a popular bestsellers on the New York Times bestseller at us for weeks on end
Um it’s been widely translated it is a book that certainly in the UK context you can go into charity shops and just find it all the time it’s one of these books that kind of repeats and it’s part of a much broader set of literature that can be classified as kind of relationship
Self-help or sex and relationship self-help and again going back to the point about masculinity studies the majority of that kind of advice advice of that sort is typically aimed at women and so the the literature the academic literature on sex and relationship advice looks at how this literature frames you know questions of
Femininity how you’re supposed to kind of how heterosexual women are instructed to learn how to please and appease men to anticipate their desires to think about you know men’s men’s wants and fears and you know kind of reckoned with their subjectivity in in many ways sometimes in very stereotyped ways in limited ways
But the the game was was really different because it was packaging a set of um quite parallel ideas to an audience of heterosexual men so the same kind of core logic that intimacy is an area of life that is fraught with uncertainty but that uncertainty is not inevitable
It can be overcome or controlled in some way and it can be controlled if you learn these tactics and techniques now ultimately the the kind of power imbalances that these different literatures generate you know if you’re if you’re giving heterosexual women advice versus giving heterosexual men
Advice there’s often a kind of a power imbalance that is that is replayed in in those literatures as women are taught how to kind of um make themselves uh more kind of appeasing and amenable um whereas men are often taught to be kind of more assertive and bolder
Um and so this this literature often kind of reinscribes those power dynamics but anyway suffice to say it was the game that initially Drew my attention to the seduction industry I came across that book in a charity shop I was at the time just beginning a master’s program
In gender I was already very aware that a lot of gender studies is focused on women and femininity I was very interested in questions of men and masculinity um perhaps just a little bit by Nature being a little bit um you know wanting to look at the less obvious topic Maybe
In in the field and when I came across the book and I I read it I was interested to know to what extent does the the community in the industry that Strauss describes in the book actually exist in the wider World um I was living in London at the time
And I just started looking you know are there seduction related events happening in the city and it it was very simple to find them there were many events taking place at the time I started the kind of very first round of research that I did for this project would have been around 2008
2009 and the very first event I went to was in a central London hotel with over a hundred men present uh who were listening to tips and advice that were being delivered by a trainer with a reasonably prominent uk-based company and the question that really exercised me at
The time and that motivated the project as a whole was to try and understand what makes partition participation in these spaces engagement with these texts compelling why do men read these books books like the game but the many many other books like it that have since been published
What makes men want to engage with the kind of YouTube tutorials and videos and infield content that you can find on YouTube and on other platforms what makes men want to actually pay to attend these courses and to connect with men who are who style themselves as as pickup artists and and seduction
Trainers what makes men actually want to go along and participate in those events and then what happens to them when they get there so that’s that’s kind of how I got to it and the question really that’s been motivating it why is this compelling and again at this particular
Historical moment because I think the historical moment is is really really crucial in in actually answering that in a kind of fully formed way yeah no I mean that is a very compelling question to ask I kind of Wonder I mean when it’s kind of stripped of everything else
Um for me at least I think what compels men to go to these spaces is uh in terms of like they feel like they are inadequate in some way in terms of uh expressing their gender identity which they are you know they want to feel masculine and at least for me I feel
Like it’s very culturally endorsed that um you know sexual domination or sexual success or as you use in the book quite often in a you know CR somewhat crude language but I think appropriate here is access to women’s bodies um is kind of the uh social signal of
You know being sexually successful and then because of that being more masculine more manly like you’re hitting that checklist so I’m kind of curious with your own research in these spaces before getting into the specifics maybe what do you think is the relationship between masculinity and sexuality and uh
Sexual desire like in in general but also more specifically talking in terms of like the kind of uh White Western uh like European uh culture well actually it’s perfect but you ended on that note because I was just about to say you know when we’re asking such a
Big question about you know the relationship between men and sex or male sexuality you know the question then has to become rich men where when um so my research has specifically been located in the UK context all of my research was undertaken in London I was
Within that speaking to men from a broad range of of different backgrounds uh some of whom were from the UK some of whom were maybe second generation immigrants some of whom were not from the UK but were visiting in some way or had had come to the UK recently to live
Um so it is very much speaking to and from the context of the west or the global north um although again recognizing that I think a lot of the the texts that circulate in the seduction industry travel much travel much further than than that context though you can easily find
Um pickup artist materials in the Indian context for example um so yes focusing in first on the question of which men wear and I’m also very focused clearly on on heterosexual men so this is uh this the seduction industry is specifically speaking to and offering advice for heterosexual men
Um there isn’t really space within this industry within the kind of discourses that it makes available to think about sexuality in any other way so there’s not a kind of um option to to be gay or to to be bi for example in these spaces those kinds of orientations just aren’t are aren’t
Either aren’t present they’re they’re there purely by absence um or were invoked by men um in very kind of conventional ways you know through jokes for example you know that’s so gay that kind of thing um which is which is clearly about kind of delegitimating those those options or
Those orientations so yes so men who are who are heterosexual are they the grouping that I’m I’m speaking about and as you’re saying yourself you know based on your own observations there is a sense for men we also know this from academic research not just my own but but many other studies besides
That men are often taught to understand sex and that that crude phrase sexual access to women’s bodies as the thing that confers masculinity or as a necessary prerequisite to the confirmation of masculinity by other men that’s often quite crucial it’s not simply that by being able to access women’s bodies
You can confirm your masculinity it’s by having that access observed in some way by other men and being seen to be legitimately masculine by other men but sexual access to women’s bodies is is crucial to that and that’s part of a broader formulation about the kind of
The control of women or what uh has been called in summer such as the kind of traffic in women that is crucial to patriarch patriarchal networks um so yes the phrase is somewhat crude but it is absolutely deliberate um and I think some of the the research that most has most um
Shocked me or kind of stayed with me is research demonstrating that when it comes to the the pursuit of sexual access to women’s bodies the pursuit of sex sometimes and especially in research with young young men and boys even boys will recount to researchers that they find themselves in
Scenarios where they are pursuing sexual interactions with with other girls or with women even when they don’t really want to because they know that this is the thing that boys are supposed to do and some of the most kind of poignant scenarios are those in which boys recount to researchers how they pushed
Girls into sex or push them into sexual encounters that they knew the girl didn’t really want and that they themselves didn’t really want but that they thought was in some way expected of them and and the expectation when you delve further into their stories and ask them where is that
Expectation coming from it’s coming from society in a broad sense but it’s kind of enforced by by other boys and men around them and so this is the kind of I mean it’s been talked about by academic researchers is the kind of the the triangle scenario
And you see this in films and and and and television all the time where there’s a a woman and two men um in a given narrative in a given story and the the woman is the kind of the pivot through which the the relationship between men is actually being actualized
And she is not actually as Central to the storyline as she might appear I mean you’ve kind of classic examples of this and any of the Batman films for example there was a woman present um but the real relationship is between the hero and the villain um and then Christopher Nolan’s quite
Good at that uh not writing a fairy fully fleshed out female character well absolutely absolutely um and and so yeah so those were the kinds of um that’s that’s some of the background I suppose to to to academic research on in the area of masculinitys and sexualities
That has also kind of motivated the the research and and it also you know I think part of the reason that the research really stays with me is that I I found very similar Dynamics even though I was working with adult men you know these were men who were all over 18
And many of them were in their 20s and 30s there was a similar kind of dynamic at play where sometimes they they didn’t even necessarily know what it is that they they wanted themselves from from dating and intimacy but there was an expectation coming from somewhere and sometimes quite clearly coming from
Their Friendship Circle that they should be going out and pursuing women and they should in particular be pursuing casual encounters even if that wasn’t really what they themselves wanted or were interested in or what was actually happening for them maybe they’d already met somebody and and they wanted a kind
Of more intimate or long-term relationship and something that I found within the seduction industry was that that logic was intensified manifold because trainers would expressly tell students so men who’ve paid to take courses with them women are for practice you are in you should be approaching women you should
Be going out on dates you should be sleeping women as a way to get your skill base up and the the actual encounter doesn’t really matter that much what actually happens doesn’t really matter that much the important thing is that you’re kind of working that muscle and you’re building up that muscle and
Some of them made a very kind of clear comparison where you invoked the metaphor of the gym where you you have to keep working the muscles otherwise they will kind of Fall Away you have to keep invoking those skills and practicing and honing those scales otherwise they will deteriorate
And in that regard something I found really again kind of striking and poignant were instances where men would tell me and this came from including men who were very deep in the industry themselves who are trainers that they had to keep going out and sleeping with women they didn’t want to
They were tired they’d been doing it all week they’d already slept with three or four women they couldn’t remember any of their names they were you know it was all the kind of a blur it was a haze but they had to keep doing it because the skill
Base of being able to approach women to talk with them to maneuver um the the encounter into the bedroom that skill base had been so hard one that they were terrified of losing it and what this gave rise to was this this kind of Perpetual discontent and this this kind of um
This fixation on pursuing sexual encounters even when they didn’t want to they didn’t they didn’t necessarily even want to be doing this um but there is this fear of losing the skill so that same kind of basic logic that we’ve we’ve talked about about sex is something that men are
Heterosexual men are are told is important for them to pursue and attain because it’s a mark of their masculinity that logic becomes intensified in the seduction industry and led to some some very unhappy outcomes um yeah no that’s a a very interesting I think point to really Hammer home is
That even men that and I think Neil Strauss is one of them that they they did find a lot of success in terms of fulfilling this this one particular aspect of masculinity later on they would go on to kind of say that this actually made me quite depressed and
Kind of led to a lot of issues in terms of intimacy um that you know maybe this isn’t what people should be warned young men should be warned earlier on that this particular path isn’t um necessarily like going to lead to happiness especially if you’re somewhat emotionally sensitive and you crave some
Sort of affection it can actually like callus your your heart in in some ways um and and I guess from that um there is this part of the process that I see reflected in in the book is this idea that it’s about the quantity of sex and not the quality of sex that
The advice is giving like if these people were really talking about you know there’s a form of Seduction that’s that’s very romantic and you know such as like foreplay uh it’s like you know it could it could enhance the experience of intimacy um but there there was sort of this
Feeling of it was like a a like a conveyor belt it was like an industrial sort of process of just keep going and going and going and at the same time you’re dehumanizing uh this other group of people women and um I think that’s the thing that has really hit home for
Me uh especially in in your work and I would love for you to like elaborate on it is this idea that the seduction community and maybe just modern uh perspectives of sexuality from Men in general reflect a sort of neoliberal or um kind of fordest model of of intimacy
Of sex and it kind of you know I think it’s it’s a really it’s specifically is able to criticize this form of uh Human Relationships without turning into a fully like socially conservative like kind of a puritanical uh antagonism towards sex in general um it’s still nonetheless kind of
Explains why these men can succeed in some terms but then feel very depressed uh with regards to the outcome so I’d love for you to to elaborate specifically on that absolutely yeah so within this fiction industry even though I mean for as long as I’ve been researching it everyone you know
Everyone will tell you that we’ve moved away from the canned content that Neil stress elaborated and that was Associated to the kind of early era of pickup we don’t do that anymore and to an extent that’s true it’s not entirely scripted but there are very clearly laid out formulas that are
Supplied by trainers and that the men who study with them who take their courses or who watch their videos online and so forth are encouraged to adopt and there is quite a bit of scripting that goes into that it’s just not as kind of hammy as the the earlier versions that Neil stress
Um could have made famous or popularized and you we see examples of this with actual blueprints like literal blueprints as in as you’d see in architecture that layout the different stages of intimacy and and you kind of actually hit on this so earlier when you mentioned before play this is something
That exists more widely in society and culture we have an idea that intimate encounters sexual encounters play out in relation to a kind of a script or a kind of a formula there are certain stages to it and what the end with and foreplay you know was obviously a step before the
Kind of main event and so forth so that logic exists culturally and what the seduction industry does is it codifies that in in really clear ways so you will find documents you’ll find um guides you’ll find textbooks you’ll find um online videos that set out the different stages and it might be that
There are four stages to an encounter or there are ten and within that it it not only tells men you know these are the stages of an interaction and there’s a kind of linear progression from meeting through to kind of cultivating Rapport and intimacy through to ultimately sex that’s that’s
Where it goes and that’s usually also the end of it it often doesn’t go far beyond that to well what happens you know if you would want to meet that person again for example um and so that that kind of logic exists culturally the seduction industry codifies it but more than that it
Provides very specific tactics techniques to be exercised through each of those stages so if one of the stages is building Rapport the trainers that I observed so when I went to the sessions and I watched them giving advice to men they would give very specific examples
Of the kinds of things that you might say to try and build rapport in a very strategic and and instrumental way but nevertheless in one in a way that’s supposed to feel very very intensely intimate to the other party so there’s something really important to think
About here in relation to this kind of neoliberal structuring and restructuring of desire and intimacy and I like the the cultural studies scholar Eva Luz uses the language of cold intimacy and I think it’s a really useful framework to to draw and to explain what’s happening in the
Seduction industry because it’s not that the kind of encounters that are being modeled here and that men are encouraged to engage for themselves are devoid of emotion they’re not they’re highly emotional they’re about trying to get the maximum emotional response from a woman very very quickly and to make her
Feel very closely connected and intimately engaged with you in a very short period of time and there’s something that’s so interesting and so troubling about that um as I said because it’s it’s not that it’s this cold and clinical approach to sex and and romance in some ways it is
But in it’s it’s it’s the the harnessing of emotionality and emotional intensity towards this predetermined outcome this kind of linear script that you’re going to follow you’re ultimately going to we’re going to try to get to sex um and so you have this kind of this cold intimacy and
I think in terms of the the neoliberal logic that we see here it’s very basically one of accumulation so you you want to accumulate sexual experience you want to accumulate sexual skill in order to accumulate a kind of sexual Capital which is for men also a kind of masculine Capital that works in
A very different way for women a certain kind of sexual capital for women functions very very differently being desirable is one thing but being sexually experienced does not tend to function as kind of positive um social capital for women in the way that it does for for men
And this logic of accumulation and the idea of sex and intimacy is something to be worked at and that follows a much broader neoliberal reframing of every aspect of life as something to be worked on you know you don’t simply work on your actual work and your job although
You should definitely always be hustling but you you have to work at everything else just as hard you have to work on your body you have to work on your your sense of fashion and how you kind of style yourself you have to work on your personality are you really kind of
Well-rounded you know have you got enough interest you have to work on your education you know you have to work on every aspect of the self because every area of your life is subject to this logic of accumulation of capital accumulation you need to maximize your human capital to be the
The best possible version of yourself in order to maximize your opportunities within the world and why that’s so closely connected to broader kind of economic circumstances is because there’s a sense of precarity and a sense of uncertainty that really undergirds and pushes forth that work ethic that
Logic that you have to really work hard on yourself in every area of life because there’s no safety net and because your life is probably certainly for young middle class people your life is probably not going to turn out quite the way that your parents did in terms of
The opportunities that are available to you and the kinds of security that you’re likely to be able to attain through your job and so forth so there’s this kind of generalized sense of of precarity that makes that that work ethic and the idea that that that’s accurate you know the idea
That you you really can work on intimacy and intimate relationships and that that is a way in which you can achieve control you can actually there’s something so interesting about that rather than recognizing or thinking about intimacy as something as a as a kind of a zone of
Vulnerability in in one way or another in multiple ways because we can’t control other people we can’t control how other people might feel about us and and then intimacy might be something that unfolds more or less spontaneously or doesn’t but with this kind of neoliberal conversion and this entry of
Neoliberal Logics the Logics of the market the logic of of of of work into the intimate domain those kinds of ideas are are pushed aside and even outright denied so no no you you can achieve control in this area and at the end of the day you know one
Of the reasons why I really use the language of Seduction industry or Community industry is because it’s often just referenced as the seduction community and there is a strong Community aspect to it but this is ultimately a commercial Venture for the people who make a living from doing this who write
The Books who host the blogs who produce the video content who sell the courses who run the weekend programs and so forth and the commercial Dimension I think is again really important to to highlight and to to underline as well do you have sort of the numbers for how
Much this industry like just off the top of your head around how much it generates like uh per year I wouldn’t have any kind of anything that would be accurate currently I mean the last time I was looking into the figures was some some time ago
Um to give a sense rather than maybe talking about the industry at large which I think it would be fair to say is definitely in the multi multi-millions per year in terms of if you’re thinking about all the different types of uh content that’s being produced you know again the the
Books many of which are going to be sold on people’s own websites on a self-published basis but also access to the programs in terms of online content to materials all sorts of offshoots in terms of you know seduction and pickup have provided the basis for reality TV shows there have
Been films made that are tied to this or utilized the industry as its basis or personalities Associated to the industry as the basis for the story so again because it’s so dispersed because it’s not a subculture I think it’s it’s difficult to to get a handle on that
But in terms of the the monies that individuals might spend um there the the cost of a lot of the weekend programs that I I was looking at was in the thousands so you could go you could get some programs that might be um in the kind of eight nine hundred
Pound Mark but there were courses that were that were far more expensive than that and then the week-long courses where you’re actually living with trainers those would definitely be in the thousands of three three to five thousand would be a kind of common figure and that’s those figures are
Going back a few years from when I was um more kind of actively researching it but that kind of cost and again thinking about that that neoliberal logic and that kind of Entry of Market um rationalities into the intimate sphere I had some interesting moments and interviews where I would ask
Men you know so why have you signed up to take this course so we met on a weekend training program you would just spend the guts of you know a thousand pounds or maybe two thousand pounds to be there why did you decide to pay for
That why did you decide to to to make that investment does it were and Men spoke about it as an investment and one that they felt was likely to to pay off and to offer a better return on investment or Roi than anything else they might do towards
Um the the goal of sexual success so one man literally pulled out um his phone and showed me the figures he had done he was like I could spend this much money on going to the gym and you know having a really cool look and you know having great clothes and stuff
Or I could spend money on you know buying this man’s um uh program so getting his online content but also coming to his event traveling to London to be here spending money on a hotel spending money in the clubs to go out with them and he the way
He talked about it was that it was a better return on investment this was more likely to give him the kind of results that he wanted and so again there’s that very clear kind of Market mentality and the idea that if you just make the investment if
You put in the work you will be able to get the the kind of rewards that are being promised by these individual trainers but also that is the kind of um that is the cultural logic of neoliberalism more generally which is which is all kind of
Tied up in many ways to the the idea of the the American dream right like that’s the American dream is a kind of a shorthand a cultural shorthand for that script of you know really work hard really invest and you’ll make it despite everything being against you or despite many many
Hurdles being in your way yeah oh that’s a very interesting um because I I recently also just had on the podcast um uh he was an uh Anthropologist who studies uh human like dating um relationships and I mean his take is is most things we do in life are in
Terms of at least at the anthropological level for reproduction or meeting which I think in some sense that makes sense like we we do probably do quite a bit in order to uh or at least I think especially men um in order to find some sort of
Affection or some sort of like a um intimacy with somebody at a very like base level whatever that turns into but this is almost you know it’s it’s it’s almost uh exaggerated the extent to which people will go to to have control over that because the thing is is like
We don’t really have control over like who who exactly is attracted to us at the end of the day which is just a scary thing to maybe accept for a lot of people you can really like somebody they just don’t like you back it doesn’t matter how much you like work on
Yourself or anything like that and it’s like in a way that makes sense in my head why they would invest so much money into that because that that just the idea or hope of the guarantee that you can attract whoever you want to attract is such a you know it speaks to that
That almost like I think Primal feeling of of this is something that you want but it’s kind of out of your control at the end of the day there’s a little bit of contradiction and I guess going from that I’m kind of wondering um you know there’s this contradiction in the
Seduction industry of women are kind of the uh holders of the value of men they’re kind of like they are what give uh validation or Worth to men is is the access to women and at the same time there is a sort of uh misogynistic sometimes very misogynistic and objectifying and dehumanizing
Um view of women um and it it causes this weird sort of like parasitic like uh how do you basically it’s like the The Fox and the in the hen house how you get in grab grab what you need and get out uh without getting like you know tied down
Or without getting you know any any sort of cons emotional consequences of having to be vulnerable basically um because then that is where you can maybe lose control in some sense I’m kind of wondering and also if because I just said a lot if you want to elaborate
On anything else but also just for you specifically what was it like being a woman interacting with these men that would like hold these views that would um kind of at the end of the day also you know regrettably they would also maybe see you as uh like something that
Could give them self-worth or like I’m sure that they were probably using you to practice their techniques at times um but I’m curious about that yeah I mean it’s actually the question that I get asked most often um about about the the book and actually when I was bring the book together I
Decided to put the chapter on field work so my reflections of being in the field of doing interviews of going to events and so forth I decided to put that at the back of the book because I I wanted to draw some kind of distance between myself and and the project or those
Experiences and the the kind of intellectual argument that I’m that I’m making um I think it’s there are many different aspects to it but I think women are often called upon to um certainly in it’s it’s kind of an expectation in feminist research that you will do that work of reflexivity and
You will talk about those experiences um and it’s it’s something that you find especially heavily uh is as an especially High expectation or assumed expectation when the the context is of uh one one that has any kind of sexual theme so there can be a kind of a pruriance to
That so there’s research for example Scholars who who do work around bodies and body work and uh one one scholar in particular who did research with nurses and then did research with sex workers and when asked about the research with nurses nobody ever asks well did you
Become a nurse yourself did you you know did you take up a caring role in a hospital whereas when she talks about her research on sex work she’s always asked well so did you do it you know you know were you did you position yourself
In this way did you go native and so forth so they’re they’re it’s it’s this kind of I had this um this difficulty in in thinking about how to talk about my experiences of doing the research because it is a kind of expectation and a kind of for a very good reason in
Feminist research that you will have that kind of reflexivity and do that work of thinking about how you as the kind of the tool of research the instrument of research shaped the process and shaped the findings but then also feeling that I didn’t want to necessarily
Um always have to lead with that because it was something that I was asked so often about so I do kind of um bracket it that way in the book but I mean this was a project I’ve researched that I mean I was researching the seduction industry
In some way for almost a decade and I had a very sustained period of around 14 15 months of field work where I was meeting men on a on a near daily or weekly basis to do interviews to go to events um I was consuming uh seduction content continually you know reading books
Reading blog posts uh following threads and conversations comments forums um and so it was something that I lived and breathed for over a year and it’s very difficult to kind of summarize that experience in um you know in in a few not that I’m summarizing anything here in a few words
But it’s not it’s not easy to kind of briefly describe it because it was it was such a strong it was a very kind of um profound experience um but there was also a kind of long journey to it it was it it was so sustained um and I had some really incredible
Learning moments and I had some really incredible conversations with men the there’s often an idea in men’s studies which is a particular approach to men and masculinity studies men’s studies is um well they have slightly different political affiliations and orientations but anyway suffice to say in men’s
Studies there’s enough an idea that it kind of it takes one to no one and only only a man can really research men because women just don’t really get it um and I had that put to me on a radio program I did once for caller called in
And was like how could you understand anything about men as a woman um I think we need to really challenge that idea of a fundamental sexual difference um and I also think that there are things that as a woman doing this research I was able to learn
And gain access to in a man in a way that men probably wouldn’t or wouldn’t in the same way and there are many different dimensions to that even just accessing the industry at all as a woman I’m very conspicuous I was always you know on view I was always
Being asked what are you doing here I never Blended in I was never in the background so I had I had so many opportunities to start conversations because I was never just blending into the background as a male researcher might have done and as loads of male
Journalists have done over the years in their various exposes of the industry um so I had lots of conversations and I was able to kind of open conversations very easily because people were men and I met were very curious about my presence um but in terms of the interviews I did
Themselves many of my interviews went for several hours they were very very long I would talk to men for four and five hours at a time I would talk with them on multiple occasions and on several occasions and interviews I had men say I’ve never told that to anyone before
Or to end the interview by saying you know more about me than anyone in my whole life I’ve never been able to have these conversations with any of my friends I would never be able to tell this to anyone I tell these these fears these anxieties uh to anyone because there’s no space
There’s no space available to do so that is not something that I feel allowed to do as a man um and so something about being a woman in those spaces and and being a not just a woman being a woman researcher who’s asking questions and who’s you know being quite um
Both both kind of neutral but also empathetic you know I am really listening to what men have to say I’m asking questions I am not making judgments upon them and and so it opened a space for for really interesting intimacies and you know kind of one-sided intimacies
Um insofar as I I wasn’t kind of relating back to them in the same way but so I had some really profound um conversations and I gained insight into some of the vulnerabilities that men walk around with that are absolutely intersectional these are these are insecurities and vulnerabilities that
Are not only about gender they can and are but they’re also about race race was a huge uh point of discussion racial Dynamics racial difference racial discrimination racism was something that that was patterned through my um through my data through my interviews with men and and class class was something that
Came up as well you know some of the reasons as to what motivates men’s engagement in the seduction industry you know it’s about making up for perceived deficits elsewhere I I feel that I’m at a deficit because I’m a brown man I feel that I’m at a deficit
Because I am I don’t have money and I don’t have education but if I could be good with women if I could be really good with women then that would be something that would be a mark of My Success in some way and success in a way that is very socially
Valued and that men are aware is very socially valued particularly among other men but also more generally you know men had I remember one occasion men one man who was a South Asian man and he was so hurt by the fact that in all of his
Years uh living in the UK and many of his friends being white British men they’d never set him up on a blind date with any of their female friends and it was just so crushingly painful to me that he was set aside in that way and not considered
Worthy or desirable Enough by his male peers um and friends and so so those conversations were really really profound and also there’s an interesting thing in research um that I don’t think people talk a lot about which is the intimacy that you developed with your transcripts so every
Interview that I did I typed up in full that takes hours and hours and hours and hours um and then you read it again and again and again and you’re comparing it to other transcripts and you’re going back through different questions how do different people respond to different
Questions and by the end of it you know the transcripts off by heart and there each of them can be 50 pages or 100 pages and and and I think that’s really interesting um so so that’s a very kind of partial answer to some of the Dynamics in my
Field work there were there were also um far less kind of positive aspects as well where I did feel that I was being um that I was being manipulated that I was being utilized or I was there were kind of attempts to instrumentalize me in some way
Um as a researcher to try and the trainers in particular trying to um maneuver our interactions in such a way that I would put out a kind of um a positive story about the industry essentially um or trainers who wanted to shock me and put me in situations that they knew would be
Um would have a kind of sense of risk or a sense of threat to a woman alone in a room of 15 men for example watching certain kinds of videos and content um and and I think sometimes there was a there there was a kind of a parodynamic
Or a power play to see okay she’s come into this space you know she thinks she can do this work but what can she handle um and so there are all sorts of these Dynamics and then there were other dynamics that were also um kind of difficult
Um because and something we’ve only kind of glanced on but some of the men who become involved in the seduction industry who seek out the forms of Education that are being provided here and it is you know you use that word early on education and it is
It is expressly pedagogical and it is supposed to be helping men and that is the promise the promises of help and what what that language lends itself to and that ethos lends itself to is the entry of significant numbers of men who have quite significant mental health problems who wouldn’t necessarily
Seek out mainstream therapy wouldn’t necessarily have access to or even know where to go for other kinds of therapy or support or just wouldn’t feel that those are legitimate or acceptable sources of support or or help they they make their way into the industry and there were numerous examples of my in my
Field work where men were very clearly in um acute distress they they needed professional help and I had one example of a trainer who was who was himself had some clinical experience some kind of uh psychology background and he he knew that and he recognized it and he knew
His company was exploiting those men but that was that was the price to be paid so I had some encounters with men who I felt were very um very on edge and potentially dangerous and I occasionally became the outlet for some of that right that’s quite I mean I guess that
Speaks also to the intersectionality of uh this this group too is that there’s also levels of like mental health and then when you add in like a you know lower socioeconomic status they don’t have access to the resources to to treat that and it does tie to the larger
Discussion of how much of people of men seeking out these this advice or seeking out this community comes from maybe larger material inequalities um I I am curious specifically because you know I have white friends that I also have like POC friends and naturally when you’re talking amongst
Guys you do end up talking about dating and like little things like oh what should I text this person or like this person hasn’t responded and there’s like little things like that and I do notice every once in a while with my non-white friends that there is a epistemic rift
In terms of like you know I don’t know what it’s like in terms of dating uh especially I’m in Canada it’s predominantly white here um as somebody who isn’t white that there is uh you know learning from them there is a a difference in terms of experience and treatment with how
Especially on dating apps how people will treat you or how dating kind of works here um so I’m very curious if you could elaborate on maybe sort of the general experiences I know you kind of mentioned it but the general experiences you see and and also from what I noticed in the
Book the sort of internalized rationalizations and logic that some of these uh minority men would uh kind of bring up when trying to justify why they should still follow this advice even if it didn’t really align with like who they were and was sometimes directly prejudiced against who they were absolutely
Yeah I mean I think so there are a range of ways that that race played out in in my research and I think some of it is in relation to the kind of um the homosocial formation of the industry itself so um certainly on the weekend programs and
The the in-person training there’s an idea that the trainers are going to they’re absolutely teaching and that’s very clear there’s a very kind of clear pedagogical remit but the trainers try and position themselves and style themselves kind of as men’s friends you know we’re all just a group of guys
We’re going out it’s going to be an awesome night you know there’s a kind of um there’s a kind of covering over of the commercial Dynamic to try and you know make it uh one of a friendship between men and men supporting one another um which is also a very uh
It’s a it’s a it’s a rhetoric that you see in different facets of the manosphere more more broadly that I think can be really really compelling to a lot of men who feel that you know Brotherhood is a kind of a social right that they’ve somehow missed out on or
That maybe doesn’t exist in the way that um they wanted it to and this was something that for um for South Asian men so British South Asian men so British British Indian British Pakistani they might might some of some of them had been born here some of them um were immigrants you know
First and second generation so a range of different kind of positionings but many of the South Asian British men I spoke to and they they were kind of overrepresented within my uh research uh cohort in terms of the interviews that I did but also in the industry in London
Specifically more widely it’s kind of noted and recognized you know a lot of people in the industry would say yeah we have um a kind of disproportionate number of brown men coming um for uh these kinds of you know coming to our events and so forth so that’s
Something you know the fact that it’s disproportionate in my research is kind of mirroring what I was seeing in the industry and what people told me about the industry here in London And Men from those backgrounds that I spoke to talked about the fact that they felt there were things about
Dating culture in the UK that they just didn’t really get or understand um and that they thought this was going to be kind of a way for them to to have it actually laid out quite expressly like this is what you should do these are the expectations this is what women
Want and so forth um and so it was a way of kind of gaining access to that kind of um cultural knowledge that is um that is shaped by by race and ethnicity um there is also an idea of wanting to have access to a certain kind of male
Friendship and to be accepted by the male trainers who are seen as um whatever other characteristics they might have um they’re successful men because they’re good with women um and and so it was a kind of access to that kind of network of of men and
One of the things that that I think is is interesting and really problematic in the selection industry is that a lot of the most um high profile trainers are are white the most successful trainers that I I met and interviewed and observed were white men in the UK
Um and a lot of their students are as I said there’s a disproportionate number of South Asian men and so there’s something that’s quite um difficult and problematic about that kind of uh relationship where essentially white men are held up and positioned themselves as the kind of Arbiters of of knowledge and of
Masculinity you know this is how to be a man and some of the models that they prescribe for men don’t actually work out very well for other kinds of men and other kinds of male bodies that are that are marked differently by race and this was something that I found
In particular with black men that I interviewed and black men by contrast to South Asian men in the seduction industry in London are um are fewer than you would expect given the the population of the UK um so they they are conspicuous in their absence from the seduction industry there aren’t very many
Um which is also interesting in terms of how white trainers will kind of borrow the Stylistics of black masculinity you know in and the language and so forth in in talking about what are what what a kind of Ideal man looks like and sounds like but when white trainers would give black
Men certain kinds of activities and tasks to do at training sessions they didn’t account for that racial difference so I had examples of black men who were told to as were all the other attendees you know start approaching women on on Oxford uh on Oxford Street one of the busiest
Shopping streets in the country and for you know for black men if they approached a woman on on Oxford Street and they maybe they’re moving quickly through the crowd or they’re you know they’ve made eye contact with one when the woman sees them coming at them um they had several instances where women
Kind of clutched their bags and moved away because they feared these men and so this was an example of a kind of um a very presumptive Viewpoint of the white trainer not recognizing how that embodied difference will make a difference actually on the ground and not accounting for that and also
Offering advice to uh black men that it that was very much about um conforming again to a certain kind of model of masculinity so um you know I had one black man I interviewed who who said that he he had in in his overhaul uh his kind of
Overhaul of his his wardrobe and so forth through his engagement with seduction industry he was only wearing suits from now on as a kind of effort to become respectable and to look like a certain kind of respectable man um and and so those kinds of Dynamics um
Yeah the the advice that’s being that’s being given doesn’t account for racial difference um and you know there’s something that’s very um difficult and unfair about that considering you know the the kind of audience for um a lot of this another way that race plays out is in structures of Desire um and
There there are at least two different ways of of talking about this or or two different dimensions to mention so one is um men of color and particularly South Asian men I spoke to feeling like they were considered by by women um and kind of in a sexual Marketplace
Is less valuable than white men and so there’s this very common narrative among many men I spoke to of different racial positionings that black men are kind of the the most masculine and the most kind of good with women in a way that is not actually that maybe sounds like it’s a
Compliment but it’s a very there’s a very Insidious logic to to that kind of argument um that black men are kind of naturally good with women and so forth but black men are kind of the most masculine and then white men who can kind of pick up these skills and and and
Um uh cultivate themselves as as having this masculine Capital but Brown men are kind of capped out of that um and denied access to it and that maps on to um much broader Logics about kind of effeminate effeminacy um among South Asian men which is a very kind of long-standing colonial discourse and
So so there’s this kind of racialized hierarchy among men which is very problematic in the context of an industry that’s promising you Brotherhood and fraternity and so the trainers had to kind of cover over those Dynamics in various ways while at the same time sometimes behind students backs being you know very um
Derogatory uh towards their students of color but another way that this all plays out and in a way that’s you know quite difficult and uncomfortable was a a vaunting of white women and white women as the the ultimate object of of men’s interests and and efforts and and
That was the case uh among many of men men of color I spoke to was that they didn’t want to be with women of uh their own racial grouping or other racial groupings they wanted to pursue white women specifically and they felt that that was the real
Marker of kind of masculinity and that would be the marker of their kind of true kind of integration or their acceptance within British Society if they were if they were migrants or they were first or second generation um and so there’s a very these dynamics of sexual racism played
Out both ways actually and it was it was interesting to have these conversations where for example a South Asian British man is telling me that he feels he’s being sexually discriminated against that he’s accorded lesser sexual value in British Society but then to simultaneously turn around and tell me
That he only wants to sleep with white women and so there was a kind of a lack of reflexivity around those kinds of issues so feeling persecuted by sexual racism but also evincing exactly that same logic in Reverse um so yeah long-winded way of saying there are a whole whole different
Spectrum of ways that that race played out and made itself present in this research no I mean I think that’s extremely constructive to go over because I feel like that that you know as you said these communities are seen as sub cultures but I think that there’s
Almost like a there’s a sub subculture especially when it comes to uh how certain racial minorities deal with dating that isn’t really addressed by this just kind of white heteronormative uh you know industry and um I think that that it’s important to be more outspoken
About that um because I feel like it it leads to a lot of just internalization and kind of pushing things aside in order to conform um on kind of on that note and kind of like a final uh question I do Wonder um just after all of the experience
Um because at the end of the day there are just a you know well-meaning men who uh feel inadequate when it comes to dating if you have any if you had to write your own sort of um the game uh which I would assume would be a little bit more humanizing
And considerate and and well backed up if you have any sort of advice in general towards towards men that do feel insecure um when it comes to their success and I guess you know with women but also expanding to other orientations it’s a great question it’s a big question um
Yeah there are a few things that I’d say actually so so one would be recognizing that your uncertainty is not a unique experience it is shared and it is shared by anyone who goes out into the world and encounters other people and has hopes and dreams and investments in in what might
Happen with with those encounters those those um those moments and so uncertainty and the anxiety that that generates that’s a feature of of intimacy and it doesn’t have to be a bad thing uh especially if you recognize that it’s not unique to you other people experience that other
Men and women experience that the person that you are interacting with in the moment might be experiencing that and so being able to kind of sit with that uncertainty and be the exception of it to an extent I think is I think is important or or can be can be valuable
I also think that this is a phrase I end up using a lot in in many different contexts but sometimes the the best way to get somewhere and the fastest way to get there is not in a straight line it’s not taking you know the A to B maybe it’s taking a more
Circuitous route it’s going the long way around and by that I mean that I think in order to have the kind of um interactions or relationships that that you might want and you know I think this applies whether or not you’re particularly interested in more casual encounters or you’re more particularly
Interested in finding a relationship being less concerted in the search and the the um the pursuit I think will often lead you to have more interesting encounters and relationships and more enjoyment along the way so being Less Direct less concerted less focused about you know
This is my goal and I’m going to pursue my goal in this kind of head down kind of way but actually kind of standing back looking up and being open to a much broader array of experiences that you can’t control and you can’t anticipate in advance and you can’t direct and
Choreograph and maneuver and manipulate but being open to to a broader range of encounters and and experiences and thinking about them as experiences rather than this kind of logic of accumulation that I think sets in not just in Industries like the seduction industry but again that’s a that’s a cultural logic that exists
Um much more widely I heard this on the radio the other day just talk about body count which is a new language on Tick Tock and I the first of all body count I mean it’s supposed to you know what’s your body count as in how many sexual
Partners have you had but body count I mean that actually sounds like you’re talking about how many people have you killed but anyway yeah there was a former friend I had that would use the term kill count which was just kind of I guess more directly to the point but I
Think it was a little that was a little weird um but again that’s the logic of accumulation and that is not the same thing as experience and if you’re really focused on accumulation you’re probably missing out on a lot of the experience or the potential experience that you might actually have
Um so I think being less goal orientated and even if you do have certain kinds of hopes or Ambitions for yourself sexually and intimacy being a little bit less concerted about pursuing them and being open to pursuing other interests that you might have and hopefully finding and making connections
Along the way rather than you know kind of dating or pursuing dating or pursuing sex in this very um kind of linear and and uh single single-minded way and then finally I think and this might be the the kind of most important thing I would say is that intimate relationality intimate I mean
Relationships of All Sorts are based on and Thrive through subject to subject relationality subject to subject engagement and by that I mean really and truly engaging with the person who’s actually in front of you the person that you’re actually with or that you’d like to be with and recognizing them in in their
Particularity and not accepting or or um organizing your relationships uh along the Logics of what women want I think this is such a pernicious question and it’s obviously a question that has been around for a very long time I mean Freud is banding it about over 100 years ago
And it almost always leads to a very dissatisfactory answer and one that just will not apply to many women at any given time because you know turns out women are people and people want different things and I think trying to let go of those ideas
Um that are cultivated in us from a very young age about men and women being you know different and and and aware of certain types and kinds that kind of Men Are from Mars Women Are from Venus type logic that has had such a long that book
Has had such a long cultural afterlife um and I think really trying to let go of that and trying to focus more on relating to the the object of your desire or the person in front of you just in their unique subjectivity and and just letting
Go of those ideas about what women want or what men are like or I just think that those ideas if you certainly from the kind of the work I’ve done and the kind of Kaleidoscope of personalities that make up the book there’s just no way there’s no it’s it’s
Always good to be so diminishing to answer that question in a you know what what are men like what do women want um we’re just we’re more complicated than that and we know this but there’s such a comfort in these very tired but um simplistic narratives there’s a comfort
In that because they’re simple they’re easy right it’s black and white it’s good and bad and you know there’s there’s we often kind of find recourse to those kinds of stories um and those kinds of scripts but but we know we know from our own lived experience that life is not quite so
Simple so yeah so relating to the other person as a subject and recognizing your own subjectivity and kind of subject to subject relationality yeah oh that that’s no those were great uh that was a great answer um well if you have anything else to say welcome to hear it but you know it’s
It’s it’s I think already we’ve touched on like so many subjects it’s and it’s been about an hour and uh um thank you so much for having this discussion also thanks for coming on the show um thank you so much for inviting me yeah yeah no it was it was great do you
Have any uh kind of closing thoughts or um no um I don’t I don’t have anything else I would add really I mean I would I would love you know if people are interested in this work um obviously I have a book but I also have lots of articles that are available
For you to access um so I would love if people wanted to read and engage um yeah I’ll put that in the uh the description also just to for anybody interested amazing thank you great yeah thank you for coming on cheers bye all right now
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