Replying to Auguste’s “Ten Worst Books to Read During Sex” meme at Pandagon, journalist/blogger Lindsay Beyerstein of Majikthise said.
I was going to suggest “How To Win Friends and Influence People,” by Dale Carnegie. But then I thought “Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language” is good bedroom advice, especially compared to the names of other people, especially those of former lovers.
A quick random Google of Dale Carnegie quotes also turns up “You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.” Also “Pay less attention to what men say. Just watch what they do.”
Not bad for someone born in the 19th (yes *19th!) Century! Sort the inverse of the 21st-Century cable-TV “pick-up artist” view of relationship building.
And if one can forgive his 19th-century gender pronouns one can see also:
“You’ll never achieve real success unless you like what you’re doing.” Which is appropriate considering how stressed we tend to get about dating, “finding the right person,” and even pickup scenes. (Back in the day it seemed to me that a lot of the heavy drinking and drug-shuffling at weekend bars and “mixer” parties was a lot less about lowering “inhibitions” and a lot more about anesthetizing stress.)
“The successful man will profit from his mistakes and try again in a different way.” Tip: “Maybe next time I should wear bigger aviator goggles” is trying again in the same way. Expecting the universe to fit our preconceptions is kind of… hard.
“If you want to gather honey, don’t kick over the beehive.” Sound advice for MRAs and counterparts alike.
“Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation. Your character is what you really are while your reputation is merely what others think you are.”
For that matter, see also:
“The person who seeks all their applause from outside has their happiness in another’s keeping.” Remember just as it’s alienating to use others for sex it’s also alienating to use sex for something other than, well, sex. (As in for personal validation. See also, again, Easton and Hardy’s The Ethical Slut
Anyway, yeah, I remember doing a Carnegie course for work years and years ago for communications and public speaking skills. I remember they spent a lot of time clarifying that the way to “win friends and influence people” mostly involved learning to be genuinely more interested in other people. Where the trick was being genuinely interested and not just being better at making them imagine you were.
With a lot more years and a lot more time spent thinking about sex, relationships, gender roles and sexual stereotypes I think the actual mechanism for success with that method is that if you’re genuinely interested in people, even if you’re just chatting them up in a bar time-zones away from home, is that if you’re actually just interested in someone for his or her own sake then it stops mattering whether you hook-up or not. Which itself, in addition to being its own reward, also improves your chances.
Which, yeah, makes it sort of the opposite of the PUA philosophy (at least as articulated in the 24 seconds I saw on some cable channel the other evening.)
I still wouldn’t read Dale Carnegie during sex… but he wouldn’t be in the ten-worst-books list either.
Submitted by 2454 (not verified) on Tue, 2008-10-21 11:18.
As I keep reiterating, PUA is just the use of a certain sociolect to enable people who perhaps otherwise wouldn't to bond with you in a culturally-influenced as well as naturally-determined heterosexual way. Once again, you keep harping on inauthenticity, artificiality, and technique as counter-arguments, which to proponents can read as "Be yourself...even if that's not working." The Saddle Ranch on Sunset Boulevard really IS crowded with delicious young beings every Saturday night, some of whose curiosity would be piqued enough to try on your aviator goggles, if aviator goggles hadn't already been done to death by Mystery. A gimmick to get you 30 seconds of fun interaction used to be known as an "icebreaker" and seen as somewhat less nefarious. And yes, a fun projected persona too far afield from your own personality type will cause nonverbal signals of stress that will drive away your interlocutors unless you are a consummate actor.
That said, "genuine interest" seems to be shorthand in your parlance for true curiosity mixed with equanimity to outcome, but I would argue that Carnegie's emphasis is "make FRIENDS." You can have any number of common points of interest, find another interesting foreigner (the joy and bane of my existence), and all you'll have is basic rapport--and hot n'heavy fun times are a function of something pre-verbal, pre-cultural, and all PUA does is remove some culturally-installed barriers to letting Shakespeare's beast w/two backs out to play. ("30 minutes to talk away my face", in the words of Voltaire.) That said, I think you make a valuable point re: genuine interest and authenticity, but I think it serves the naturally-less-than-attractive-to-the-opposite-sex as a means of avoiding an additional pitfall rather than something which constitutes a "method" or puts them on your level -- I think you are possibly more attractive and obviously more intuitive than most people and if that has "worked" for you, you are in the position of a "natural".
[Actually you bring up a great point, Eurosabra. Nearly all my relationships have been more like "friends with benefits" even if it's just been one day or evening after meeting time-zones away from where either of us lived. I haven't stayed in touch with everyone I've ever slept with but even decades later I either am or would be happy to hear from almost all of them... with or without "benefits." So yeah, I don't know about the Saddle Ranch (I'm not sure what that is although Google images suggests Paris Hilton has been there.) But if I was seeking even a short-term relationship I'm... pretty sure I wouldn't go there anyway. Thanks. --fl]