Here’s my take on the matter: it’s neither harder nor easier, it’s just different.
I thought I would start with an interesting scenario that was posted in a similar thread on the forum. I was going to post this there, but I didn’t want to derail a thread intended for answers from someone else with my own opinion, so I made this thread instead.
Take an average guy and an average girl. Put them both in the same bar which is composed 50/50 of guys and girls of all levels.
Now have each one of them raise their hand and shout “Who wants to have sex with me tonight?”
The girl will have a line. The guy will not.
At first glance, it seems pretty easy to assume that this is true. But upon closer inspection, we can see that this really isn’t the case.
First of all, even if you put all the other issues that women have to deal with in the dating scene (we’ll get to those in a minute) aside and had a women stand in the middle of a bar and shout “Hey, who wants to fuck?” there would be, in reality, surprisingly few takers.
Think about what would go on in the mind of the average man. This is a man who has been socially conditioned to think that women really don’t like sex that much, and that any women who seems to openly want to get laid must be a slut. Factor in that same socially conditioned fear of contracting an STD from such a person and you have already lost a large percentage of potential takers.
Now consider all the insecurities that most men suffer from. How many of those remaining men would be too insecure or paranoid to believe that this woman was REALLY just up for a quick lay and nothing more? How many would be so confused by the idea of a woman shouting to an entire bar that she needs to get laid that just the idea would freak them out too much to consider lining up? How many men would be too afraid to show their interest for fear of it all being a joke and getting rejected?
Suddenly, our list of potential takers comes down to either extremely confident men who understand that sometimes a girl just needs to get laid (of which there are really very few), or guys who will just fuck anything warm and squishy with two legs (and who wants that?). Not really an abundance of choice.
Now admittedly, this is a rather pessimistic view of this scenario, but when looking at things from a general sense, it is still a very realistic one.
Just think about it for a second: the idea of a woman just coming up to us and saying “Hey let’s fuck.” is so outside of most of our realities that it would just freak us out too much. Despite all the bravado they would display if you presented them with the scenario, even most aspiring PUAs would be so thrown off by the fact that it was actually happening that they would miss their chance.
I know this from personal experience.
There were several occasions during my transformation from AFC to PUA that an attractive woman would show obvious interest in me and I would blow it. The idea that an attractive woman was so interested in me that she wanted to have sex with me – without me really having to do anything – was so outside of my reality that I didn’t believe it was happening. My insecurities would take over and I would have no idea what to do and eventually botch the whole thing. And I was an aspiring PUA! I should have known better! How is the average guy going to react?
I have seen this same reaction countless times with students and wingmen in the field, as well as with AFC friends and acquaintances: too much interest will freak them out and they will eject.
These are only the factors that affect that special scenario. The reality of the dating scene is much more complicated. The scenario itself is faulty because it almost never happens. And the reasons why this almost never happens are quite related to why I believe it’s impossible to gauge whether or not picking up is easier for men or women:
They are simply different sets of problems.
We find it easy to say that women have it easier because men are always up for sex, so they should never have any problem getting laid. And on paper that may be true: it would be easier for a girl to get a guy into bed than it would be for the guy if the situation was reversed.
The problem with this is idea is that we’re only looking at the kinds of problems that men have to deal with in the dating world. Women have a whole slew of completely different problems that they have to contend with while they’re out trying to get laid. They may have advantages where we do not in this area, but they are hindered by things which the average man doesn’t even consider.
First, you have the external issues:
There are the insecurities and social conditioning of the men that the average woman wants to sleep with, which I illustrated above.
Then there is this whole concept of a “slut”. If a woman shows too much sexual interest too quickly she could freak the guy out or accidentally make him think that she’s a slut, neither of which are good for her. A reputation as a slut could ruin a woman in a limited population.
You have to consider how such a label can affect how she’s viewed within her peer group. A woman who is considered to be “giving it up too easily” suddenly becomes a threat to the replication value of everyone else in the group. This usually leads to more unfounded (or at least grossly exaggerated) rumors spreading around. I myself have seen absolutely horrid and completely untrue rumors spring up around a woman just because slept with a guy too quickly.
I have seen a woman who has had only two boyfriends in her entire life have one one-night-stand with a guy, and then suddenly there’s rumors floating around the next day that she’s a huge slut and had a foursome with this guy and two of his friends and that she’s got herpes and all sorts of other diseases. Granted, this is a pretty extreme example, but things like this happen more often than the average man tends to think. Anyone who has spent a lot of time with women knows how catty they can be with one another, and some men can be even worse.
A man only needs to be primarily concerned with his social value in the realms of preselection, dominance, access to resources, etc, while a woman has to worry about how forward she is being, whether or not she is dressed too slutty, and whether or not her behavior will be interpreted badly by her peer group. These may or not be harder issues to deal with. It’s hard to say, really. They are simply different sets of problems.
Then you have the internal issues:
A woman has a set of neurological circuitry that can really make it difficult for her to just get out there and get laid. Things like the Anti-Slut Defense, which is a hard-wired mechanism for preventing the loss of perceived replication value, are an example of this, as are the Last Minute Resistance circuits which are hard-wired to prevent a woman from becoming pregnant with a man who may not stick around to take care of her young. But there are also those feelings of guilt or “dirtiness” that are ingrained into some women by they mothers when they are very young, which make it very hard for them to be sexually active without feeling guilty about doing so.
Most of these have been discussed ad nauseum, so I wont go into detail about them here. I just want to note that they are important factors.
Most men don’t have to deal with any of these problems. Our issues in this category fall in the realms of approach anxiety, building attraction, and so on, while theirs fall under ASD, LMR, and the like. I think this is where you can see the differences between both sexes? problems most clearly:
Practically speaking, a reasonably attractive woman will have little trouble approaching a man and making him attracted to her, while for a man to do the same is MUCH harder (as I’m sure most of us are aware). But conversely, a man will internally have no trouble going through with the actual act of having sex, whereas a woman has to overcome many internal hurdles before she can get down to it.
And then there are the men themselves.
Most of us will never know what it’s like to be with a partner who is bigger and stronger than us. Most of us never have to worry about being afraid for our physical safety because of our partners. We know that when trying to choose a sexual partner, a woman has to screen for a man with healthy emotions, and who will protect them should they become endangered. This is because, among other things, we men can be very scary sometimes.
As men, we don’t have to worry about whether the person we just invited into our home is going to rape us. We don’t have to be concerned about whether they will hurt us if we have second thoughts or resist their escalation in any way. For men, the average psycho or stalker that we find ourselves mixed up with is an annoyance and little more. For women, they represent a significant risk to health and safety.
A woman has to take all of these factors into account when playing the field. If she doesn’t deal with these problems, then she can find herself in a world of trouble. Yes, it may be easier for a woman to attract a man, but is it the man she wants? Is she going to be safe around him? Are people going to think she’s a slut for sleeping with him? Is she emotionally comfortable with sleeping with him?
These are all very real problems that a woman has to deal with when courting a man. And it’s because these problems exist that we have invented tactics and methods to make things easier for a woman to sleep with us. We teach men to be understanding, non-judgmental and discreet where necessary, to convey healthy emotions and a genuine connection to our partner, to provide plausible deniability, and quite simply to not be creepy and scary.
If women did not have these problems, then we would not need to teach any of that.
Sure, it may be easier for a woman to attract a man, but when it comes down to actually picking a man up, both men and women suffer from very different sets of obstacles that they must overcome. This is what I mean when I say that you have to look at the bigger picture. There are many things in the act of picking up which either sex will find easy or difficult. But they are too different to measure up against one another. To try to quantify these issues accurately and compare them would be impossible.
As I said before: it’s neither harder nor easier, it’s just different.
In closing I leave you all with a little song to consider: Thank God I’m Pretty, by Emilie Autumn.
Feel free to discuss, ask questions, etc. You all know the drill by now. 
Happy sarging,
Prophet
About Prophet
Prophet is a
VA Coach operating out of Toronto. Aside from his work as an instructor/site admin for Venusian Arts, Prophet is a software consultant at a leading software development firm. In his spare time, he finances, writes, and produces independent films with his wingmen, Showcase and Wild Card.
This is a particularly BRUTAL routine that I use when I meet an especially aggressive AMOG. I only use this for the guys that really need destroyed. However, it’s a neat little routine in that you can break it up and only use the pieces you need. As a whole, it’s a rather long piece to try to get out in a busy nightclub without getting interrupted, so you should only use the parts that are relevant to the situation.
First, read my little article on how to shake hands. All you’re really doing here is teaching the guy what I wrote about in that post while simultaneously framing him like a try-hard beta male. Just be sure you do this with an extremely friendly tone and a warm smile. You don’t want to come off harsh or like you’re obviously attacking him. You’re just teaching something to the group and showing the guy something cool, even though you’re really AMOGing him while leading the group (DHVing yourself while DLVing him).
There are two good ways to bring up this routine: either the AMOG will go to shake your hand and try to squeeze the fuck out of it to intimidate you, or, if he’s trying to AMOG you in other ways, you say “Man, you are a COOL guy. What’s you name?” and offer to shake his hand.
Note: sometimes a guy will refuse to shake your hand. He’ll just stare at you or say something lame like “I just washed my hands.” In this case, be completely unreactive. Just smile and keep your hand out, and occasionally look expectantly back and forth between him and your hand. As long as you are unreactive and smiling, the longer he goes without shaking your hand, the bigger a fool he will look. He becomes the social violator and ends up blowing himself out. After a while you can give up and say “Wow, you can dress him up, but you cant take him anywhere!” Problem solved. You don’t even need the rest. 
Most of the time, however, he will shake your hand and try to crush it. Especially if he’s bigger than you. But even if he doesn’t, you can still pretend that he did and carry on as normal.
Act like he was trying REALLY hard to squeeze your hand. Laugh and say “Woah! Easy there killer, don’t crush my hand!” Clap him on the shoulder (AMOGing him by putting your hands on him). “Damn man, you obviously work out!”
Then turn to the girls…
“You know, a lot of women don’t realize that when two males meet, the aspiring alpha male will try to show dominance over the alpha male by trying to squeeze the shit out of his hand. Just like how goats will but heads to compete for a mate. So what will happen is that one will really try to squeeze the others hand,” [during this, you can even do a little NLP gesture to show him as the beta, and yourself as the alpha]
[act this next part out, overemphasizing the effort you're putting into crushing someone's hand. This will frame your AMOG as a try-hard because you JUST called him out for doing exactly this]
“and then he’ll squeeze back harder and then the other will try even harder, and so on and so on”
[put your hand out and shake his hand again while you say this next bit, put on a shit-eating grin as you talk, as if you're pretending to smile while you're crushing his hand. DO NOT ACTUALLY TRY TO SQUEEZE HIS HAND - you're just pretending here]
“while they both just stand there smiling at each other like nothing is wrong at all. And this can go on for like, several minutes: these two guys just standing there trying to crush each other.”
[Then turn to the girls while still holding the guy's hand]
“But of course all the women ever see are two guys smiling at each other, and…you know…holding hands.”
[shrug a little here to show how ridiculous it is, then let go of him]
One of the great things about the bit above is that any time he tries to AMOG you again, you can continue to frame him as a try-hard beta by just turning to the girls and saying something like “See? Just like goats butting heads. So anyway…”
Now that you’ve framed the guy as a total try-hard and a beta male, you can go on and teach the guy how to properly shake hands (thus further showing dominance). Even though you just horribly tooled the guy, you are still smiling and wanting to teach him something because you still think he’s cool, which will make him look like a social violator if he gets all defensive.
“But you’re a cool guy, so I’m going to show you the proper way to shake someone’s hand so that kind of shit never has to happen.”
[Now you take his hand and show him how to point his index finger when he shakes hands]
“First, whenever you shake someone’s hand, point your index finger straight out, almost as if you are pointing at the other guy. When you do this, the other guy can squeeze your hand all he wants, and you’ll barely feel it. Go ahead and try it: squeeze as hard as you can.”
[He may try or he may not. Either way, he's playing into your frame and looks bad. Just make sure it looks like you don't feel anything. You probably wont feel any discomfort at all, but sometimes you run into some REALLY strong guys. Just laugh and say "See?"]
“Next, when you shake someone’s hand, turn your hand so that your is on top of his.” [Show him by doing this yourself]
[Now speak both to him and the girls, you want to set this frame in their minds as well]
“Spoken words only make up about seven percent of human communication. The rest comes from tonality and body language. People don’t realize it, but when they see two people shakes hands, they unconsciously consider whoevers hand is on top to be the more dominant person in the interaction. Isn’t that interesting?”
[pat the guy on the shoulder or something]
“So there you go! You never have to butt heads with anyone ever again.”
From there you can launch into anything else.
The beautiful part about this last bit is that not only are you teaching the AMOG something, but by showing how whoevers hand is on top is more dominant, you are also teaching the women in the group that you are, in fact, more dominant than him.
Again, this is a LONG routine, so you have to pick and choose what parts are relevant relevant to your situation.
Feel free to ask questions and enjoy!
Happy sarging,
Prophet
About Prophet
Prophet is a
VA Coach operating out of Toronto. Aside from his work as an instructor/site admin for Venusian Arts, Prophet is a software consultant at a leading software development firm. In his spare time, he finances, writes, and produces independent films with his wingmen, Showcase and Wild Card.
Here’s a little gambit that I picked up from my wingman Changes.
Actually, he DID this to me without even realizing it and I decided to turn it into a gambit…but credit still goes to him.
First a disclaimer: you have to be sure that woman has the right personality for this. Usually you want someone who is playful and fun, and who will OBVIOUSLY know that this is a joke. As long as you’ve demonstrated the right amount of playfulness during the sarge, she should realize you’re just messing with her. But sometimes some women will take things the wrong way, so be very, VERY fucking careful.
I find that the best place for this is (at the very least) after you’ve already #-closed her and spoken to her on the phone at least once after that. She should be comfortable with receiving texts from you and is more than likely to respond if you send one. The purpose of this is just to demonstrate that you are fun and unpredictable, and it ALWAYS seems to get a reaction if you calibrate it right.
The gambit is pretty simple:
1. Send her a text that just says “Ho.”
2. Then immediately send her another one that says “Did I just send you a text that said ‘Ho’?”
3a. If she responds with yes, then respond with “Good
”
3b. If she responds with anything else, send another text just saying “Ho.”, and then follow that up with “How about now?
”
3c. On the odd occasion, you might get a response like “Yup! That’s me!”, in which case you can respond with “Good. Just checking.
”
4. Then just stack forward to some more fun conversation, phone call, etc.
Words like “bitch”, “slut”, and “asshole” also work here, but you have to calibrate based on the culture and personality of the woman in question in order to make sure that she will immediately take the comment as a joke.
Play around with this and enjoy!
Happy sarging,
Prophet
About Prophet
Prophet is a
VA Coach operating out of Toronto. Aside from his work as an instructor/site admin for Venusian Arts, Prophet is a software consultant at a leading software development firm. In his spare time, he finances, writes, and produces independent films with his wingmen, Showcase and Wild Card.
Having a firm handshake is extremely important.
Everyone SHOULD know that by now, but some people still don’t have it, so I’ll go over the basics here…
A weak handshake conveys insecurity and (obviously) weakness. Your handshake should always be strong and firm. It should convey confidence and power. Smiling and eye contact is important as well. You should look them straight in the eyes and smile warmly. In the field, I personally like to add a lot of enthusiasm to my handshake, practically thrusting my hand into theirs with a huge grin on my face. It conveys just the right attitude.
Knowing when to let go is important as well. You should know to let go the moment the other person starts to loosen their hand, or whenever you feel you’ve held hands long enough. Whichever comes first. Remember: you should be always leading, even in a handshake.
This doesn’t just apply to men you meet, either. A woman expects a firm handshake from a confident alpha male.
Don’t believe me? Make your opener for this week “Hey guys, do you find a strong handshake attractive? Or does it matter?” See what kind of responses you get.
You don’t want to give them the limp fish, but you don’t want to crush their hand either, so be careful. The key words here are strong and firm. A handshake conveys a tremendous amount of information about your personality, so practice with your wing-men or friends until you feel you’ve got it right.
Now that’s the stuff everyone should know already. Here’s the stuff that most people don’t:
Most guys who are going to try to AMOG you are going to squeeze your hand rather hard. The more they feel threatened, the harder they will squeeze to show you that they mean business. If you’re like me, and wear a lot of rings, someone squeezing your hand like that can fucking hurt.
Luckily, you can get by this by sticking your index finger straight out when you take the guys hand, as if you’re pointing at him (Lovedrop taught me this, by the way). By doing this, your hand will naturally grip his farther up, so when he squeezes it, he will be squeezing your HAND, and not your fingers or knuckles. He can squeeze as hard as he wants, and he’s not going to hurt you. And you can still squeeze his hand firmly without any problem.
The other thing you can do is turn your hands so that yours is on top of his. According to several body language texts that I’ve read over the years, the person with their hand on top during a handshake is considered to be the more dominant one. The perfect way to do this is to turn your hand the moment you grip his. Do this firmly and quickly (but not too fast!), so that you will catch him off guard, as he might try to resist. If you do firmly twist your hands before he can react, you can lock yours over top of his, and even if he tries to turn it back, you will have the advantage and can let go before he can even try to overpower you.
Sounds like a lot of work right?
Well, it takes a hell of a lot more to explain than it does to just do it. Just point and twist, and be strong and firm. It’s as simple as that. Try it out with your friends or wing-men, and you’ll see how easy it is. Within a day or two, you’ll never shake hands the same way again.
Happy sarging,
Prophet
About Prophet
Prophet is a
VA Coach operating out of Toronto. Aside from his work as an instructor/site admin for Venusian Arts, Prophet is a software consultant at a leading software development firm. In his spare time, he finances, writes, and produces independent films with his wingmen, Showcase and Wild Card.
A little while ago, a student asked me for tips on how to make idle conversation with women. My response, as you can see below, somehow became a rather lengthy explanation of my understanding of the art of conversation.
I figured you guys might enjoy it, so here it is!
———
There is an ongoing statement in the seduction community that says “NEVER ASK QUESTIONS”. The idea is that when we are picking up a woman, we must avoid falling back into that “interview mode” that AFCs usually fall into when they want to keep a conversation going. These are those standard interview-like questions that every chode and his mother will ask a girl over and over again throughout her life. “Where are you from?” “What do you do?” “Where did you go to school?” How many times has the average HB heard those questions? Hundreds? Thousands?
These are the kinds of questions that you need to train yourself to avoid asking.
Unfortunately, people tend to take the above statement a little too literally and really NEVER ask any questions.
This is not what a calibrated PUA does.
The proper way to do this is to reframe those interview-style questions into statements, such as stating “You seem like and East Coast girl.” or something like that instead of just asking where she’s from. You’ll either be right or wrong, but the girl will still give you an answer regardless. From there, you can start to ask follow-up questions if you want to. So if the girl tells you that she’s really from X, you can say “Oh X! That’s groovy. What do they have for like, landmarks and touristy stuff there?” Or whatever information about where she’s from that you GENUINELY want to know. Or if you know something about the place: “Oh X! That’s groovey. I take it you’ve been to the ___ then? It’s actually on my list of things to visit during my travels.” So you ask a follow-up question AFTER you have made a statement and got the girl to invest in an interaction.
This is, of course, a GENERAL GUIDELINE, but it gives you an idea of how things tend to flow. It is not a strict rule, and there will be moments where you need to ask a direct question. This is just an example of what you might want to do instead of just asking “where are you from?”
Books like How to Win Friends and Influence People tell you to listen and let other people talk and ask follow-up questions and talk about details and such. This is good advice if you do it in small amounts, but as a PUA you also have to make sure that you are leading the conversation.
When you find out where she’s from, the girl might tell you a story or talk about something to do with where she’s from, or you can just continue to lead the conversation by going off into a story about how you LOVE checking out any interesting landmarks or tourist attractions whenever you travel or whatever. And then maybe you’ll tell a story about something that happened when you were trying to take a picture of something but were interrupted by a humorous incident. And then maybe she’ll tell you about how she loves photography, and you can ask a question or two about that, and so on and so on.
This is how natural conversation flows. You both talk back and forth and jump from one topic to another fluidly. The trick is to make sure that you are leading the conversation so that she doesn’t go off into some huge rant about some drama with her ex or her girlfriends, or he boss, etc, etc. Women have a tendency to just go onto the same old boring topics that they talk about with everybody. If you let this happen, she will eventually get bored of the conversation and unconsciously blame you for it, even though she was the one who steered the conversation in that direction in the first place! It’s not her fault though, she was expecting you to lead the conversation, and you DIDN’T. As a result, you lost value in her eyes. You need to make sure that you are steering the conversation to where you want it to go, but not necessarily dominate it (as most aspiring PUAs try to do). As you move into the comfort phase of the courtship, you should both be contributing to the conversation almost equally.
Conversation is about building a connection, and in order to do that you need to talk about things that actually BUILD CONNECTION. Make sure you avoid useless topics of idle conversation.
So what do you talk about then?
Conversation topics can usually be grouped into a couple of categories:
Things that are happening in the world – politics, movies, music, things on the news, etc
Things that are happening to people you know – gossip, drama, funny stories about friends, etc
Things that are happening to you – what you are doing, where you are going, adventures or interesting activities that you tend to get up to
Things that you love or hate. – your hobbies, your pet peeves, your favourite books, movies, music, friends, enemies, etc
I tend to avoid the first two categories because they are really just forms of idle small talk. Have you ever found yourself stuff in a conversation with someone that you really aren’t interested in talking to? Those are the times when the first two categories usually come out. You talk about movies or music or politics or maybe even gossip if you know some of the same people. These conversations go nowhere and don’t do anything but fill in awkward silence.
The second two categories are things that should be of interest to your partner. These are the kinds of things that you both should be talking about. These are the topics that convey who you are!
I find that when I’m building a connection like this, I just talk about anything that is important to me. I’ll talk about my writing and how much it means to me to be able to make another person experience a powerful emotion just by reading the words that I write down on a page. I’ll talk about how much I love to get my nails done at a salon because I love being pampered. I’ll talk about the necklace that I wear that sort of looks like the symbol for medicine but is really a powerful spiritual sigil and how it is connected with why I style my hair into large red devil horns. I’ll talk about the human pineal gland and how that is of particular interest to my spirituality and how it connects to both my writing AND my necklace and devil horns. I’ll talk about how I used to be an amazing artist and how I lost my skills when I got into computer graphics, but how that allowed me to pay my own way through university by building websites for companies. I’ll talk about the things I want to do with my life and how I’m actively working towards those goals. I’ll talk about how much I love to travel and how I can’t figure out if my next big trip will be a tour through Europe, or the Pyramids in Egypt. I’ll talk about how I got my favourite record by my favourite musical artist signed by him in person and how it trips me out that it’s 20 years older than I am and how I love to just chill with my friends and listen to classic rock on the original vinyl records.
See what I wrote there? That took less than five minutes to write all those possible conversation topics off of the top of my head. Notice how they are all about the things that I love and/or things that I am currently doing? Notice how each one conveys different aspects of my personality? Think about how much you just learned about who I am and what I’m all about just by reading what I wrote there!
Also notice that for every one of these topics there is plenty of room for you to talk about how any of those topics correspond to her. You need to make sure that you are also talking about things that will allow you to really get to know who she is and what she is all about. You can talk about her artistic talents or what she does to express herself creatively. You can talk about the places she has travelled to or wants to travel to. You can talk about her hopes and dreams and plans. The possibilities are endless.
Notice something else here as well: I’m not just talking about things I like, I’m talking about things that mean something to me.
For instance, if I were to just talk about how much I love classic cars, it would bore the shit out of the average girl. But if I were to talk about how the first car I ever bought (a 1975 Chevy Monte Carlo) was actually my DREAM CAR, and how my mom always drove these old 70′s Monte Carlos when I was a kid, so I practically grew up in those cars and it was always my dream to own one of my own? That can be a very compelling story.
See the difference?
Once again: the purpose of conversation is to create a connection. Talking about the kinds of things I have mentioned above will give you both the feeling that you really KNOW each other. You are telling each other emotionally compelling things about yourselves. And that’s what creating a connection is.
About Prophet
Prophet is a
VA Coach operating out of Toronto. Aside from his work as an instructor/site admin for Venusian Arts, Prophet is a software consultant at a leading software development firm. In his spare time, he finances, writes, and produces independent films with his wingmen, Showcase and Wild Card.
Dear Mystery… Episode 8
Farewell Matt
Hosts talk Final Decision
Simeon, the Winner
The Final Two Prepare