Seduction

“The patterns of intimate relationality enumerated in the seduction industry [or “pick-up artistry”], and the willingness with which many men buy into them, further evidence the production of distinctly antisocial forms of sociality and subjectivity within neoliberalism. Exacerbating this situation are postfeminist imperatives of ‘liberation’ and ‘empowerment’ which imbue women with uncompromising agency in sex as in everything else, rendering deeply embedded modes of inequality all the more insidious. As a cultural formation, the seduction industry not only promotes a masculinist subject positioning among men but bends heavily towards masculinism as ‘the point at which dominant forms of masculinity and heterosexuality meet ideological dynamics, and in the process become reified and legitimized as privileged, unquestioned accounts of gender difference and reality.’[1] … Seduction acts as a conduit for social grievances by promising men greater control in their intimate lives.”[2]

[1] Stephen Whitehead. Men and Masculinities: Key Themes and New Directions (Cambridge: Polity, 2002), 97.

[2] Rachel O’Neill, Seduction: Men, Masculinity, and Mediated Intimacy (Cambridge: Polity, 2018), 119.