/townhall/ - Townhall

I've literally never heard anyone call it "Loverboy culture." From what I've seen, this is an iteration on what was the "Pickup Artist" section of the internet now calling themselves "Red Pillers." At the very least that's what I understand is the sort of thing Andrew Tate in particular does.

Anyway, it's a pretty trash mindset in my opinion but it's not inherently wrong or evil. So long as consent is maintained I can disdain it and leave it at that. If Loverboy Culture as you put it, is a separate thing from Red Pillers and involves the emotional abuse strategies you've mentioned that's not okay. If it's just the Red Pill ideology, I can hate it all I want and let it exist so long as all participating consent.

>>11644
But can you still believe that all is consensual if the person who says that women exist only to please men, passes around "girlfriends" as if they're a bag of sweets and acquires his wealth that way?

Tate has been under investigation for claims of physical abuse and kidnapping.

>>11645
I can dislike the generalizations, sure. But fundamentally that's not all that different from certain types of BDSM lifestyles.

If the investigations turn up enough evidence to bring Tate to trial and convict him, that's kind of another matter. Him engaging in explicitly illegal activity is still different than if he were engaging in consensual relationships. He could have easily been doing both.

He's still pushing misogynistic ideas, absolutely. However if there are women who want to engage with him even knowing that, I can't really justify wanting to interfere in that. It's their business at that point and all I can really do is dislike that as a dynamic. If it does slip into outright abuse the authorities can get involved as they seem to be with the investigation. Before that threshold though, it's not really anyone else's business.

This shit is just what happens when we lack cultural scripts. For a long time, the script was parable for most. Men spent time, money, and resources courting women, training them to be breadwinners, which allowed them freedom in choosing who they wanted, and a certain degree of power and influence over women in a general sense. Women spent time, money, and effort making themselves appealing, learning how to apply makeup and act in a demure way to prepare to be housewives, which allowed them to largely set the rules and pace of the courtship. That system has it's flaws, but it was functional. It's largely been abolished now, which is only good or bad in the context of what replaces it, which right now seems to be essentially pimping cabals. Match group as a whole, onlyfans, traditional pimps, Andrew Tate and loverboy stuff, it's all fundamentally the same. It operates by perpetuating, exploiting, and profiting off a general confusion and discomfort around dating now that there are no rules.

The fact that women largely set the rules without overtly declaring what the rules are doesn't help. Not that it's really their fault, it's just cultural baggage from generations of expected demureness, but it leaves a power vacuum for how courtship should be done, and naturally, there are those that would exploit it. It doesn't help that, naturally, women don't all agree about how they'd like to be courted; Some, for example, use an initial rejection as a "shit test", various soft or hard rejections they expect men to ignore and push past to see if a man wants her enough, while other women see a man continuing to push after a no has been given as a consent violation. They will not communicate these in any reasonable way, and even if women in general had the inclination communicate, which they generally do not, there is no socially smooth way to accomplish this.

Essentially, when it comes to courtship, women aren't typically attracted to most men, while most men are attracted to most women, leaving women as, essentially, the game designers, and men, essentially, as the players, funnily enough. Women dictate the rules and structure of the process, and men do their best to pair-bond, or simply have sex with, the women they're attracted to under these circumstances.

A good step would be picking one of these to be the social standard and then to very harshly punish those who go against it. I would choose the pro-consent camp myself, seems to be a lot more workable, meaning any woman who performs shit tests, and any man who pushes past consent, should be ridiculed, ostracized, criticized, and otherwise severely socially, or even potentially legally, punished.

Right now it's just devolved into abusive, hyper-capitalist garbage. Even a woman against capitalism typically expects a man to pay for the date, or at least will not go on a 2nd date with a man who doesn't pick up the bill on the 1st. Even liberal women tend to expect a diamond engagement ring if they'll marry a man, despite it being a clear capitalistic, classest move. This makes sense, as most people will abandon their stated values given the opportunity for personal gain. It's unfortunate, but true.

So long story short, a system of courtship was torn down, the women tasked with replacing the system did not do so, and the void was filled by greedy, manipulative, hyper-capitalist bastards. That's where we find ourselves. We can't *really* come down on them in good faith without at least proposing an alternative system.

My 2 cents is we go with the consent system, but actually start enforcing it, and punishing both men and women who violate or undermine that system, as well as passing laws to get the money out of courtship. I'm open to suggestions for better models.

I honestly feel like what we see culturally as the super masculine kind of 'jock' aggressive 'type A personality' and rationalize as just being a relationship driven thing is just a paper thin mask over the real problem. We're talking about sadism, socipathy, and narcissism. That what it boils down to. People with severe mental illnesses they refuse to see as an issue to work on at all let alone treat.

And this isn't really a gender identity thing or a sexual orientation thing. The Karen calling the police because a black teenager is feeding the ducks on a park bench in what she believes is 'her park' in order to 'ruin her day' is ethically exactly the same as the Chadbro at a club mouthing off homophobic and transphobic slurs as he attempts to psychologically manipulate a stranger with the aims of using her as a nonhuman pleasure object with no actual emotion involved whatsoever. It's the same mentality. The sadist one. The sociopathic one. The narcissistic one. Viewing your fellow human beings as mere resources to benefit yourself (comedian Lewis Black aptly called this belief seeing others as "meat with eyes").

I wish I had a clearer idea of what to do other than just pleading that Americans in general become nicer and happier. But that seems to be that. Just be better.