Rachel O'Neill, Seduction: Men, Masculinity and Mediated Intimacy (2018)
This is very good, with the proviso that a) it's got a fair amount of dense theoretical discussion in it and b) the topic is depressing and partway through I had to break off and read a fluffy romance.
This is about the 'seduction' community in the UK, in which O'Neill managed to do embedded research (she discusses how she managed this and there is an extensive postscript on 'Power and Politics in Feminist Fieldwork'). It's very much about the men (there are, somewhat counter-intuitively, some women trainers), both as 'trainers' and as consumers of the various courses, 'boot-camps', and related materials.
Various points:
The way in which leisure activities/self-improvement get turned into work and things that effort must be put into rather than sources of pleasure and relaxation.
That the men involved were all pretty highly-educated (at least an undergraduate degree and sometimes more): nonetheless they seemed to totally subscribe to the (very simplistic) 'evolutionary psychology' arguments being touted in the seduction community. I began to wonder what their degrees were in...
Further to which, although they had bought into the 'men spreading their seed biological imperative' argument they did not actually spread their seed and on the whole seem to have been responsibly practising safe sex.
Women tend to feature as something between consumer goods and rewards for reaching a new level in a video-game, and are judged entirely on externals. (Which, we may observe, do not include 'good child-bearing hips' though youthfulness is factored in as far as EvPsych arguments go.)
Though men's achievements in seduction are also judged on the externals of numbers, quality-rating of women, speed with which goal accomplished, etc.
Some indicated that they did eventually want to settle down in a relationship but did not want to feel like they had 'missed out'.
Notion that women should ideally be approached in ordinary day-to-day circumstances, because that is what happens in rom-coms, and the laydeez lurve rom-coms. Um. Oh dear.
'Deep down women really want it' (sigh).
Way in which it could become a bit of a cult, with men doing one course and then a more intensive bootcamp and possibly even going on to train as a trainer and becoming a trainer...
But also they found a sense of friendship and solidarity with other heterosexual men in the community, which they did not get within the standard parameters of male association.
I got to wondering, as she got to these accounts by men who were anomicly (?sp) constantly pursuing seductions in a way that seemed like an addiction - how enjoyable or particularly erotic the sex itself was. Presumably, being men, they get off, but there was no sense of the sexual experience itself being particularly amazing or sensually rewarding as opposed to 'she was way out of my class'.
One thing that's hard to tell is how extensive this all actually is - I did get the sense that there was a lot of repeat trade for trainers and possibly a sense of them fighting over a limited pool of potential customers? but this wasn't really foregrounded and not what O'Neill was looking at. This entry was originally posted at https://oursin.dreamwidth.org/2872161.html. Please comment there using OpenID. View
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