Figleaf's Real Adult Sex

She’s talking about marketing one’s website but Traci Feit Love of Copyblogger has some great advice for prospective daters.

If you want to get lucky, you’re going to have to give up the “poor me” attitude and make some changes. Here are some ideas.

Listen before you talk

Two guys walk into a bar (humor me here). The first guy walks up to a woman and says, “Hi. I make a lot of money and drive a really fast car, so you will definitely want to go out with me. Here’s my number. When you’re ready to go out, call me.”

The second guy sits down at the bar and listens. He hears the woman next to him complain to the bartender that the last Italian restaurant she tried was terrible, and that she couldn’t seem to find good Italian food nearby. When there’s a break in the conversation, he says, “Excuse me, but I couldn’t help overhearing about your bad experience with some of the local Italian restaurants. Have you tried Davio’s Cucina? It’s really excellent.”

Which guy is more likely to end up with a date?

I’m betting on guy #2. Instead of just blathering on about himself, he waited and listened for an opening. He started a conversation based on a shared interest. And because he’d been paying attention, he found a great angle to quickly capture the woman’s interest.

She said it here.

When I started to write the post I was thinking about the “evolutionary psychology” theory that says with its bare face hanging out that the fictional woman ought to respond, immediately and every time, to prospective suitor #1. After all, the theory goes, the only thing “females” care about in mate selection is wealth, accomplishment, and maybe dominance.

I was tempted to snark about “pickup artists,” who also tend to think “females” are interested only in wealth, accomplishment, and maybe dominance. But who might applaud suitor #2’s “method” for overcoming his beta-male status but might not consider that #2 wasn’t using a method at all but was instead, you know, actually interested, however much he might also be interested in hooking up.

But before I actually started typing I decided I was dumb to assume that only men ask women out anymore. And it occurred to me that the difference between suitor #1 and #2 isn’t so much that one’s an privileged jerk and the other is sensitive and interested in whole people and not just a quick roll in the hay.

Instead it occurred to me that #1 is trying to perform male gender, assuming that it’s the act and its accompanying props and lines that matter. #2 who’s presumably just as interested as #1, is instead acting like a human being.

And when I considered that it occurred to me that while methods might be different women can be just as liable to try dating while trying to perform female gender.

When I thought about it that way it occurred to me that conceits like evolutionary psychology, Pickup Artistry, and the whole Sex In the City dealio with shoes and Mister Bigs map nicely to the performance of gender. And that if you imagine gender is real then, yeah, you could see the stories about “genes” and “methods” as real.

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Anyway, there’s more in Love’s post that works well for both blogging and dating.