Is the seduction community promoting date rape?

Why is it that cults so regularly collapse into scandals involving sex?

There is always the suspicion that it’s because they are invariably run by gruesome and sexless old men. The fanatical devotion they usually demand, combined with the vulnerability of those almost magnetically drawn to charismatic “gurus” who claim to be in sole possession of “the truth”, offers perhaps another explanation.

For the uninitiated, pick-up artists, as they call themselves, dedicate their lives to bedding beautiful women. They exchange ideas in online forums, arrange meet-ups, visit bars and nightclubs to hone their “skillset”, and post about their exploits online. As with most cults, there are rival ideological approaches and theoretical schools. The best known figureheads in the business – for like most other branches of the self-help industry this is first and foremost about commerce – bring in millions of pounds a year selling books, instructing students, and organising conventions resembling World of Warcraft gatherings on steroids.

I actually took a brief interest in the seduction community during my first year at university. For a young man in his late teenage years and early twenties, much excruciating time is spent trying to figure out how to make oneself attractive to the opposite sex during a period when females seemingly hold all the cards - not to mention have the ability to destroy a young man’s self-esteem with a flick of the hair or a turn of the head. The feminist canon about patriarchy holds true for the most part of course, but rarely acknowledged is the fact that women have a greater degree of sexual choice. At no time is this more apparent than during the pangs of adolescence when one’s thoughts turn incessantly to intimacy.

Like most men my age, I didn’t feel in the slightest bit privileged let alone empowered because of what was hanging between my legs.

There was always a dark side to the community, however, and this was what kept my interest in it brief. I managed to get a girlfriend too – and without any of the various wheezes recommended by the pick-up artists. This proved to me at least that I was perhaps not as repulsive as I had feared. I also noticed among friends who took an interest in “the game” that, as with most cults, once they started to feel good about themselves they rarely stuck around.

Together with the casual misogyny of the seduction community – women are regularly referred to as “targets”, “HBs” (hot babes), and “warpigs” (physically unattractive women) - the most disturbing thing I encountered was the idea that when a woman says no it doesn’t really mean “no” at all, but rather “not yet”. Assuming one has executed a successful “seduction” and persuaded a woman that your lodgings are the best place to carry on getting to know each another, the next step according to “the game” is to outflank a woman’s “anti-slut defence” – a socially conditioned response to the fact that society holds promiscuous women in low esteem – and take her to bed.

The “techniques” deployed to overcome a woman’s disinclination to have sex, arguably in some respects, have elements indistinguishable from date rape. One famous PUA known online as “Roosh V” was even placed on the Quarterly Intelligence Report of the Southern Poverty Law Centre, a long-established civil rights organization which monitors and litigates against hate groups in the United States, after promoting in books and articles the notion that what no really means is, well, yes. According to Roosh Vörek (his real name) who says that the SPLA had to “partially retract their list by stating those on it are not members of a “hate group.”, “women need to understand that men aren’t robots who can suddenly stop at the drop of a dime with all that testosterone pumping through their system”.

“Therefore”, he asserts, “it would be prudent for them not to enter situations where the average man can’t stop due to his innate weaknesses as an animal whose entire existence depends on him successfully mating”.

Bastardised evolutionary biology crops up repeatedly in this strange world. Men and woman do not apparently make decisions influenced by their surroundings as well as by their biological drives. No, the way they behave in the sex game is entirely “hard-wired” – a belief which conveniently absolves men of all responsibility when they “can’t stop” due to their “innate weaknesses as an animal”.

And there was I naively thinking self-help was about personal responsibility.

Ok, so there are weirdos out there. Internet weirdos at that, which is probably even less of a revelation. Don’t be fooled by the goofball amateurishness of it all, however. Nor by the nerdy jargon which treats mating as if it were a level in a particularly enthralling computer game, with women as “targets”, friends as “obstacles” and other men as “AFCs (average frustrated chumps)”. Every weekend in London alone, Real Social Dynamics - probably the largest company teaching pick-up in the world, and which holds bootcamps in all major Western cities - will take around half a dozen men out to the capital’s bars and nightclubs (for the eye-watering price of £1,259) and will try to instil in them the core principles of pick-up as they interact with women.

It might not be harmless chivalry that students are imbibing, however.

One delightful thread on the Real Social Dynamics forum from 2011, entitled “Lie your way inside a woman’s vagina”, advises readers that, once they have a woman back at their house, they should not be “afraid to physically force her to do anything or to tell her no or shut up”. The poster goes on to counsel readers to “ignore what she says and physically force her. You must be able to verbally and physically dominate a drunken 18 years old girl”.

Another user chimes in: “yeah, and then when you're done with her, you just like grab all her clothes and then throw ‘em at her, then shout get out you f***ing whore. Women deserve this because ofwhat they've done to us.”

Rather than banning the above posters, or even deleting their posts, which are still there for all to see, Real Social Dynamics dating coach Jeff Allen, aka “jlaix” – a published author who teaches students every week in San Francisco and London - is “Loving the responses”.

Be careful out there, won’t you.

With rates of social mobility stagnant, it’s time to admit we got it wrong on grammar schools

One of the first political epiphanies I had occurred when I was ten years old. I was sat on the carpet in my Grandmother’s house as a speech by Mother Teresa was broadcast on the evening news. “Let us promise”, the saintly patron of Calcutta’s Convents told Ireland, “that we will never allow in this country a single abortion. And no contraceptives.”

It would be a bit much to say I had it all figured out right there and then - I had to ask my embarrassed grandmother what con-tra-sep-tives were for a start - but I do remember a flicker of recognition flashing through my brain as the meaning behind the words became clearer: many of the bad things that are done in the world – many of the very worst things – are done by people who are convinced they are doing good.

When it comes to schools, almost everyone in the political mainstream has accepted the wholesome idea that educational selection is bad. Equality is good but “elitism” is something approaching an abomination. If you understand that the debate over schools has been won by those with the best of intentions but not necessarily the best ideas, you are some way to comprehending the British school system.

Labour has been solidly against grammar schools since Harold Wilson’s government began phasing them out in 1964, but the Conservatives too have been content with the current system of comprehensives, with neither John Major nor Margaret Thatcher building more grammar schools while in office. In 2007 David Cameron reiterated his refusal to bow to calls to “bring back grammars”, and instead defined them as the “key test” of whether the Conservative Party was fit for office. He added that advocates of grammar school education were guilty of “clinging on to outdated mantras that bear no relation to the reality of life”.

Anti-grammar schools campaigner Fiona Millar (herself a former grammar school girl) summed up the attitude of those in favour of the current system when she wrote last year that “Selective education was largely abolished because middle-class parents were incensed at their children being labelled failures at 11 and forced into secondary moderns starved of the balanced intakes all schools need.”

There are two important assumptions in this sentence. The first is that school selection has been “largely abolished”. It has not. In fact the opposite holds true. The abolition of grammar schools has seen the despised “elitism” – or in other words, the recognition that some children are brighter than others – replaced with selection via the most ruthless commodity of all: cold hard cash. Access to most comprehensives today is “largely” decided by the ability of a child’s parents to pay the price of a house in a desirable catchment area. That is why premiums on houses in areas with good schools command an average price of £309,732 - 42 per cent higher than the average price of £218,114.

You do the maths.

Ms Miller is of course correct to say that many middle class parents were “incensed” by the grammar schools system. But then they were usually incensed because their children were losing out to bright working class kids. According to the Campaign for the Advancement of State Education, 66 per cent of parents wanted a grammar school education for their child, meaning many middle class parents were inevitably left disappointed when their child did not make the cut.

Were it the case that grammar schools had irreparably damaged social mobility there would be no point in having this debate. After all, the progressive ideal might just as well be defined as a state of affairs where the life chances of a child are not dictated by the bank balance of that child’s parents. That is, or at least that should be, the baseline for any social democrat or socialist worth their salt. Yet the abolition of grammar schools has had the opposite effect. The Franks Report on Oxford University, published in 1965-6, 21 years after grammar schools were opened to all according to ability, found that 40 per cent of places at Oxford went to pupils from state schools, compared to 19 per cent in 1938-9. Former President of Trinity College Michael Beloff claimed that by the early 1970s state schools supplied 70 per cent of the intake at Oxford.

Today 57 per cent of places on undergraduate courses at Oxford go to applicants from the state sector - including a disproportionately high number from the remaining grammar schools - and 42 per cent of places go to applicants from independent schools. And this is after universities have been told they risk being stripped of the right to charge higher fees if they fail to attract a wide mix of students.

The attempt by Labour education minister Tony Crosland to “destroy every fucking grammar school in England, Wales and Northern Ireland” was wrong not because his intentions were nefarious – the dissolution of grammar schools was supposed to do away with what Crosland called the “extreme social division caused by physical segregation into schools of widely divergent status” – but because the result has been a disaster for bright working class kids, who are crammed into classrooms with the uninterested, the idle and those who will simply always struggle with academic subjects. Rather than ushering in equality, comprehensives have resulted in mediocrity or worse for most children and a bonanza for wealthy families who despised the 11-plus but who can now buy their way into the best schools.

Under the Communist dictatorships of the 20th century, despite official ideology private enterprise flourished to an extent unheard of in the capitalist world. Similarly, under the UK’s comprehensive system selection is ruthlessly enforced in favour of anyone with enough cash and gumption to play the system. And like “actually existing socialism”, for many champions of comprehensives the abstract idea of equality is prized ahead of social justice. Or at least it appears that way. For what socialist would support a system where the children of the poor were condemned to bad schooling while the children of the rich were so privileged?

As benefits dry up, Wonga will prosper: 2013 could be the year of the payday lender

People who endlessly lecture the poor about personal responsibility rarely see the bigger picture. So for instance while commentators and politicians of the Right depict those on benefits as lazy chancers who prefer to stay in bed as their neighbours go off to work, they ignore or forget to mention the fact that 60 per cent of the people hit by the government’s recent benefits squeeze have jobs.

That’s right. Many at the bottom of society who will find the coming year tougher than the last (always the sign of a failing government) are people who leave the house every day to earn their money rather than make it - a distinction most of the millionaire cabinet will probably not appreciate.

No Conservative politician will ever tell you this of course, but as a party it believes with its heart and soul that rich people will not work unless they are given money, whereas poor people will only do so if they are not. Being “tough” on benefits is also more important than being correct about benefits.

As well as being a drain on taxpayers who must subsidise miserly employers, poverty pay has also led to a boom in debt. While the government waxes lyrical about reducing the nation’s credit card bill, the chancellor’s economic policies are resulting in more of us borrowing just to keep our heads above water. Last week the consumer group Which? found that nearly half of people used credit cards, overdrafts, store cards or payday loans to pay for Christmas, with average borrowing just over £300.

And of course, there’s nothing like a good crisis to galvanize a certain type of lustrous “entrepreneur” who is always on hand to interpret the misfortunes of others as an opportunity to make a fast buck.

The payday lending industry has experienced a boom in recent years as incomes have stagnated and speedy, unsecured loans offering cash with no questions asked have replaced banks as the go-to source for credit. Today 1.75 million British adults do not have access to a bank account and a further 9 million are without accounts that grant them credit. Combine this with stagnant pay and the ever-increasing cost of utilities, and many face a brutal choice – go without the basics or take out a payday loan.

Payday lender Wonga was named the fastest growing business in Europe in 2010, and last year it made profits of £62.4m, providing almost 2.5m in unsecured loans. Its headline annual interest rate is more than 4,200 per cent, so borrowing £100 means paying back £137.76p after one month to avoid late charges or, worse still, accrue rollovers and require additional loans to settle existing debts. Of those seeking help with debts from the Citizens Advice service, in the first quarter of 2009/10 only one per cent had at least one payday loan. In the same quarter in 2011 this had risen to four per cent. In 2012, 10 per cent had a payday loan.

A new book on payday lending exposes how the looseness of the regulatory system in the UK has made the British high street a gold mine for the industry, leaving behind a trail of indebtedness as poor families pile debt upon debt to pay off various high interest lenders.

“‘Julieta’ took out a payday loan of £200 on Tuesday, and repaid the loan on Friday, plus £60 interest. Her pay packet was £290 after tax. So of course she didn’t have enough money left to last until next payday so she took another loan from the same payday company a few days later, also repaying it on the Friday with another £60 interest. Her bank statement showed her doing this every week for a month.”

Loan Sharks: The Rise and Rise of Payday Lending (2012) also claims that payday loans are not being used to “top-up an exuberant lifestyle, as some would have you believe”, but are rather being taken out to cover the basics. Just as many previously took out overdrafts and credit cards to stay afloat (or through the bargaining power of trade unions took on employers for better pay), today it is payday lenders – something akin to Robin Hood in reverse – who people increasingly go to as traditional sources of credit dry up.

The payday lending industry has grown out of a failure by government and big banking institutions to accommodate for the rise in the cost of living, declining wages and basic credit facilities for those who need them,” author of Loan Sharks Carl Packman told me.

“These are perfect conditions for an industry that profits from poverty.”

Money lenders have been portrayed in fiction by everyone from Dostoyevsky to Charles Dickens as corrosive parasites who profit from the misfortune of others. Of course, not all money lenders behave like that, and credit would factor in any conceivable economic system – investment, for one thing, relies upon credit; and borrowing is often useful when personal finances take a hit for unexpected reasons.

But the apparently unstoppable growth in payday lending represents something wholly different. As well as being the ugly face of a predatory capitalism which believes profit must always trump ethical considerations, it is the cancer at the heart of Britain’s low pay economy. To justify the inexorable cuts it is making to benefits, the Conservative Party says work must pay. And yet it shows no intention of improving workers’ pay and conditions (quite the opposite), and is instead through a combination of callousness and economic credulity leaving people increasingly in hock to poorly regulated payday lenders.

“The government needs to monitor more closely the activities of payday lending, how responsibly they lend, and evaluate how many loans individuals are taking out to ensure they don't enter a debt cycle,” Packman added.

Those who have nothing to sell but their labour do not have the same interests as the new breed of payday “entrepreneur” just as surely as those who depend on their job for their livelihood do not want the same thing as those who live off dividends and investments. If the government continues on its current path, 2013 might well be the year of the payday lender – or, as they might more accurately be described, the harbingers of debt, debt, and more debt.

Originally published at the Independent.