not sure i'd call it artistry: my run-in with a self-styled master pick-up artist
So, anyone who follows me on Twitter is probably aware of some of the more lulzy experiences I've had in the world of online (and real-world) dating. They haven't all been terrible - I've actually gone out with a few great guys, but nothing has worked out long-term on account of things like distance, moving out of the country, and, in one memorable case, a guy who was determined to win back his spot on the Paralympic football team - but the good ones I tend not to share for laughs, you know? But the most bizarre experience I have had thus far revealed itself this weekend. Prepare yourselves, friends, for this story is a long and slightly confusing one. (warnings for misogyny, pick-up "artistry", general harassment of women; all pictures can be embiggened by clicking)
Our story begins this past Thursday, when my friend Mich brought her family to Oxford to see me and the city. I met them at the train station and we wandered back towards town, where we got distracted for a bit with the weekly antiques market that takes place in Gloucester Green. At one point, I'm talking to Mich's husband when this dude turns around and says to me, "Hi", as though I should recognize him. My first instinct is "oh god is he some academic I'm supposed to know, he vaguely looks like that one historian Tiago HELP". Further conversation reveals him to be the same guy who hit on me in Blackwells bookshop about two years ago - his line then was that he wanted recommendations on a Spanish grammar book (I was looking for a Spanish book for tutoring my two girls at the time). He mentioned being interested in Spanish lessons or conversation practice groups and I foolishly gave him my number. He also said - and this line still weirds me out to this day - that my glasses were "nerdy but cute". What even?
ANYWAY, back in the present, this dude - Tony - looked me up in his phone and apparently still had my number. He did that thing which dudes do now to make sure that you aren't giving them the wrong number and gave me a dropped call. Mich's husband came over and I was like, "oh yeah, I'm showing some friends around, most of them came over from Singapore" and Tony immediately turns to Mich's husband and goes "NI HAO!" in an exaggerated terrible Chinese accent. (Mich's husband is from Texas. Strike one.) I was by this point looking for an out, and managed to escape, but Tony insisted on giving me a cheek kiss, after which I basically ran over to Mich's husband and dad and stayed with them for the rest of the time.
We carried on with our tour of Oxford, and sometime in the afternoon, while we were down by the river, I got a text from Tony that said (prepare yourself for the cringe):
"Hola miss, did you manage to pick anything up at the market apart from me? ;-)"
Cringe-tastic. My feelings of EW, GROSS were consolidated. I did not reply, but *did* share it around with Mich's family, who now all greet me with "hola, miss!" when they see me. /o\
That night, out of curiosity, I decided to google Tony's number, just in case it revealed anything of interest (I have never before googled a guy's number, but SOMETHING was telling me that I should with this one). This was the very first page of results:
If you can't see - the very first set of results is this guy's number and participation in a bunch of pick-up artist forums. Obviously, being unable to control my urge to KNOW MORE, I started clicking. I encountered some seriously, seriously questionable stuff. In the order in which I found it:
1. This "field report" from 2006 where he describes how he changed date-venues on a girl (apparently a strategy to disorient your target and make them easier to manipulate?) and attempts to coerce her into kissing him.
2. Fat and ugly girls are hard to approach, apparently? You're afraid of rejection? Maybe don't treat girls like game tokens and you'll be more successful!
3. This one sounds more like fantasy than reality, but I'm really not sure that the lesson to be taken away from it is "pushing things as far as possible and never giving up" - I think it's "find a woman who is interested in a consensual experience, don't try to force unwilling women into doing shit". Amazingly enough. (Any dude who tried to touch me, at a bar or otherwise, on the first meeting would DEFINITELY not get the same reaction that this girl gave. Since women are individuals and all.)
4. He reveals his love for approaching women who are just going about their daily business (and who, I suspect, really don't enjoy his attentions for the most part). As far as I can tell, "yad stop" is some sort of cold approach where you comment on a woman's appearance. We'll get to that in a minute, though.
5. "Just kiss her and don't wait til the end of the date, do it during!" Hinting that you're going to kiss her is "almost as bad as actually asking her permission. Real men go after what they want." Protip: kissing girls without their permission is far worse. Perhaps this is why you are not getting laid, because the ladies you hit on can sense that you are creeptastic and full of rape-culture entitlement.
6. Oh, sorry, did you think that was the worst part yet? Nope. "Nice work, sounds like you took advantage of girls in vulnerable states... Theres something so sexy primitive about it that women love!" Excuse me while I go Xena on your ass, you motherfucker.
7. A little essay wherein Tony poses the question "have women got it easy?" Obviously, the answer is yes. The logic he uses is pretty gross, but the conclusion really takes the cake (or biscuit, for my BrEng-speaking readers): "Women do get hurt from abusive relationships or from being used but at the end of the day its their choice to go with that guy. Sometimes men have no choice but to be manipulative to get sex because they don't consider themselves worthy enough or good looking enough." Because men are entitled to sex with the woman of their choice, at all times, of course.
He also talked a lot about using his mother's heritage (she's apparently from Bolivia?) to strike up conversation with women about Spanish things or to attempt to talk to them in Spanish, and combined with some of the profile pictures he was using and the way he was phrasing things, I had a sudden eureka moment and thought that he might be the same guy - tonyken - who was creepy on OKCupid to the point of getting blocked earlier this year. (Spoiler alert: I WAS RIGHT.)
I don't really understand why pick-up artists in general LOVE the word "sexy". Sexy sexy sexy. It's a word that almost always puts me on the defensive and makes me super uncomfortable, and yet. (I suppose if you don't consider women actual people with actual feelings, but rather frustrating puzzle boxes that won't give you the sex-treat you deserve, then... perhaps this doesn't matter to you.)
And then, in a fit of inspiration, I wondered if he was the same guy who cold-approached me as I was leaving the library and heading home back when I was a baby grad student in 2010 - and if I could maybe find myself in one of his field reports. (Spoiler alert: IT WAS HIM. Also please do enjoy his opinion that "hot women need more work than big ones" - I thought it was the other way round? You can read the rest of the gross "field report" here - http://www [dot] puaforums [dot] co.uk/field-reports/4166-fr-incorporating-some-other-elements-daygame.html - but I don't want them tracing me so plz to copy and paste that).
That girl at the traffic lights? Was me. I remember some things very clearly - it had been raining, it was cold, I was wearing my brown boots and my hair up in a bun but the front part was unattractively damp. I had just left the library and was standing to cross the road by the Martyrs' Memorial. I saw this guy coming towards me and I thought he was going to ask me for the time or directions (which happens all the time, and I'm fine with). When he didn't, I was utterly paralyzed with ice-cold fear - thus the looking puzzled, I imagine, since I felt like a deer in headlights - and when he let me go I basically ran all the way back to college in a panic.
tl;dr version: That makes four run-ins I've had with this dude, all of them pretty creeptastic. He and his fellow ~artists~ pride themselves on the way they take advantage of women's socialization (being nice as self-defense, fear of provoking men's anger/violence, knowing that saying "no" will create a scene and problems) to harass them not only at bars and clubs, but wherever women may be - this guy in particular recommends grocery stores, bus stops, and bookstores as places to hit on women. Almost all of the field reports that they so proudly compile as evidence of their "success with women" read to me, as a woman, as logs of harassment and making women severely uncomfortable in their everyday lives, and manipulating them into giving their numbers or subjecting them to unwanted physical contact. I don't see how they can call that art.
(Post-script: as I was finishing up the last paragraph, my phone started buzzing. Tony calling. I didn't pick up.)
Our story begins this past Thursday, when my friend Mich brought her family to Oxford to see me and the city. I met them at the train station and we wandered back towards town, where we got distracted for a bit with the weekly antiques market that takes place in Gloucester Green. At one point, I'm talking to Mich's husband when this dude turns around and says to me, "Hi", as though I should recognize him. My first instinct is "oh god is he some academic I'm supposed to know, he vaguely looks like that one historian Tiago HELP". Further conversation reveals him to be the same guy who hit on me in Blackwells bookshop about two years ago - his line then was that he wanted recommendations on a Spanish grammar book (I was looking for a Spanish book for tutoring my two girls at the time). He mentioned being interested in Spanish lessons or conversation practice groups and I foolishly gave him my number. He also said - and this line still weirds me out to this day - that my glasses were "nerdy but cute". What even?
ANYWAY, back in the present, this dude - Tony - looked me up in his phone and apparently still had my number. He did that thing which dudes do now to make sure that you aren't giving them the wrong number and gave me a dropped call. Mich's husband came over and I was like, "oh yeah, I'm showing some friends around, most of them came over from Singapore" and Tony immediately turns to Mich's husband and goes "NI HAO!" in an exaggerated terrible Chinese accent. (Mich's husband is from Texas. Strike one.) I was by this point looking for an out, and managed to escape, but Tony insisted on giving me a cheek kiss, after which I basically ran over to Mich's husband and dad and stayed with them for the rest of the time.
We carried on with our tour of Oxford, and sometime in the afternoon, while we were down by the river, I got a text from Tony that said (prepare yourself for the cringe):
"Hola miss, did you manage to pick anything up at the market apart from me? ;-)"
Cringe-tastic. My feelings of EW, GROSS were consolidated. I did not reply, but *did* share it around with Mich's family, who now all greet me with "hola, miss!" when they see me. /o\
That night, out of curiosity, I decided to google Tony's number, just in case it revealed anything of interest (I have never before googled a guy's number, but SOMETHING was telling me that I should with this one). This was the very first page of results:
If you can't see - the very first set of results is this guy's number and participation in a bunch of pick-up artist forums. Obviously, being unable to control my urge to KNOW MORE, I started clicking. I encountered some seriously, seriously questionable stuff. In the order in which I found it:
1. This "field report" from 2006 where he describes how he changed date-venues on a girl (apparently a strategy to disorient your target and make them easier to manipulate?) and attempts to coerce her into kissing him.
2. Fat and ugly girls are hard to approach, apparently? You're afraid of rejection? Maybe don't treat girls like game tokens and you'll be more successful!
3. This one sounds more like fantasy than reality, but I'm really not sure that the lesson to be taken away from it is "pushing things as far as possible and never giving up" - I think it's "find a woman who is interested in a consensual experience, don't try to force unwilling women into doing shit". Amazingly enough. (Any dude who tried to touch me, at a bar or otherwise, on the first meeting would DEFINITELY not get the same reaction that this girl gave. Since women are individuals and all.)
4. He reveals his love for approaching women who are just going about their daily business (and who, I suspect, really don't enjoy his attentions for the most part). As far as I can tell, "yad stop" is some sort of cold approach where you comment on a woman's appearance. We'll get to that in a minute, though.
5. "Just kiss her and don't wait til the end of the date, do it during!" Hinting that you're going to kiss her is "almost as bad as actually asking her permission. Real men go after what they want." Protip: kissing girls without their permission is far worse. Perhaps this is why you are not getting laid, because the ladies you hit on can sense that you are creeptastic and full of rape-culture entitlement.
6. Oh, sorry, did you think that was the worst part yet? Nope. "Nice work, sounds like you took advantage of girls in vulnerable states... Theres something so sexy primitive about it that women love!" Excuse me while I go Xena on your ass, you motherfucker.
7. A little essay wherein Tony poses the question "have women got it easy?" Obviously, the answer is yes. The logic he uses is pretty gross, but the conclusion really takes the cake (or biscuit, for my BrEng-speaking readers): "Women do get hurt from abusive relationships or from being used but at the end of the day its their choice to go with that guy. Sometimes men have no choice but to be manipulative to get sex because they don't consider themselves worthy enough or good looking enough." Because men are entitled to sex with the woman of their choice, at all times, of course.
He also talked a lot about using his mother's heritage (she's apparently from Bolivia?) to strike up conversation with women about Spanish things or to attempt to talk to them in Spanish, and combined with some of the profile pictures he was using and the way he was phrasing things, I had a sudden eureka moment and thought that he might be the same guy - tonyken - who was creepy on OKCupid to the point of getting blocked earlier this year. (Spoiler alert: I WAS RIGHT.)
I don't really understand why pick-up artists in general LOVE the word "sexy". Sexy sexy sexy. It's a word that almost always puts me on the defensive and makes me super uncomfortable, and yet. (I suppose if you don't consider women actual people with actual feelings, but rather frustrating puzzle boxes that won't give you the sex-treat you deserve, then... perhaps this doesn't matter to you.)
And then, in a fit of inspiration, I wondered if he was the same guy who cold-approached me as I was leaving the library and heading home back when I was a baby grad student in 2010 - and if I could maybe find myself in one of his field reports. (Spoiler alert: IT WAS HIM. Also please do enjoy his opinion that "hot women need more work than big ones" - I thought it was the other way round? You can read the rest of the gross "field report" here - http://www [dot] puaforums [dot] co.uk/field-reports/4166-fr-incorporating-some-other-elements-daygame.html - but I don't want them tracing me so plz to copy and paste that).
That girl at the traffic lights? Was me. I remember some things very clearly - it had been raining, it was cold, I was wearing my brown boots and my hair up in a bun but the front part was unattractively damp. I had just left the library and was standing to cross the road by the Martyrs' Memorial. I saw this guy coming towards me and I thought he was going to ask me for the time or directions (which happens all the time, and I'm fine with). When he didn't, I was utterly paralyzed with ice-cold fear - thus the looking puzzled, I imagine, since I felt like a deer in headlights - and when he let me go I basically ran all the way back to college in a panic.
tl;dr version: That makes four run-ins I've had with this dude, all of them pretty creeptastic. He and his fellow ~artists~ pride themselves on the way they take advantage of women's socialization (being nice as self-defense, fear of provoking men's anger/violence, knowing that saying "no" will create a scene and problems) to harass them not only at bars and clubs, but wherever women may be - this guy in particular recommends grocery stores, bus stops, and bookstores as places to hit on women. Almost all of the field reports that they so proudly compile as evidence of their "success with women" read to me, as a woman, as logs of harassment and making women severely uncomfortable in their everyday lives, and manipulating them into giving their numbers or subjecting them to unwanted physical contact. I don't see how they can call that art.
(Post-script: as I was finishing up the last paragraph, my phone started buzzing. Tony calling. I didn't pick up.)