Objectification, Dehumanization, and Desensitization

Objectification, Dehumanization, and Desensitization

There’s something wrong. This can’t be how nature intended for men and women to interact with each other. Why are there so many women who can’t seem to understand men? Why are there so many men who can’t seem to understand women? Why are there so many men these days who really have no idea what it actually means to be a man?

Men and women have had a falling out, it seems.

The overall inherent goal of a discipline like the pickup arts is to bring men and women closer together. On the surface it just looks like a set of tools for shallow, superficial men to learn how to attract sexual partners solely to fulfill a carnal desire, but those of us with extensive experience in any discipline can testify that many things in life aren’t as they first appear to be. Pickup artistry, in particular, has a very strong, sensationalized visage of carnality and selfish debauchery. At its heart, however, it has long stood as a pillar for lost men with desperate yet affectionate intentions to flock to in order to find a bridge to reconnecting with the opposite sex in a way that produces mutually beneficial outcomes.

However, it’s no secret that tons of guys learn pickup and seduction for the wrong reasons. Pickup should be used a tool to let men and women have fun the way nature intended without the social backlash of Madonna/whore complex-based stigmatization, and to let everyone find their own best-fit path to finding a beautiful experience of love, but a lot of these misguided individuals seek to “conquer” women instead. They just want to feed their egos with a power trip, ultimately furthering themselves from the goal of truly connecting with the opposite sex.

Aside from the misguided ego trip stuff, there are many different reasons a guy can have for getting into all this pickup artist business. Most of them just want a girlfriend and they have no idea how to get noticed by women, let alone talk to them. Many just haven’t gotten laid in a long time and they really know and understand the meaning behind that classic phrase, “Sex is like air; it isn’t important unless you aren’t getting any.” Some guys are actually doing okay for themselves, but they want to enrich their lives with a greater variety of sexual partners and seek a little confidence boost in order to do it. And then there are the rare few who are so desperately lonely and so absolutely clueless about women that they’ve spiraled into a dangerous and stubborn state of depression and self-loathing.

Whatever the case, each one of these motivations for learning pickup has one common factor at its roots:

They’re all inevitable symptoms of a greater desire to return to a more natural state of being on the same page, the same team, with women.

The art of seduction teaches guys to build natural connections and to appreciate feminine beauty for what it is, but mixing ego and power into the equation leads to a whole lot of odd crap. Namely, it leads to objectification, dehumanization, and desensitization.

More specifically, these guys objectify and dehumanize women in order to quell their fears of rejection while desensitizing themselves to pretty much everything.

Is that what a pickup artist is supposed to be? No, it’s not. But it seems as though this is the image our community has portrayed as a whole. You can’t really blame the PUA community for this, though. Pickup is kind of like Captain America’s “super soldier” serum as described by that German scientist dude from the 2011 movie – it makes a good man more good and a bad guy more bad. (Fortunately, we don’t live in a comic book world where the laws of duality remain static.)

Men have this weird thing about vulnerability. Society has conditioned us to never show any! It has taught us to dogmatically believe that the main identifying characteristic of masculinity is to not be weak. And, while there is a bite of truth is such lessons, the unnatural scale by which we’ve expected ourselves to live up to these weakness-hating standards have led us toward a highly unproductive path of desensitizing ourselves to basically every emotion ever.

What does that mean in the context of pickup? Well, objectifying women to the unnatural extent at which we’ve been conditioned to do so while dehumanizing them for our own disillusioned purposes drives a huge wedge between the sexes, and it drives an even bigger wedge between you and a life of deep happiness with women. Scientifically speaking, you might achieve all that you need in order to live a “pleasant life” as defined by positive psychologist Dr. Martin Seligman, but you will definitely limit yourself when it comes to experiencing the other two types of happiness.

If you’re desensitizing yourself from vital emotions like empathy, you’re perpetuating the cycle of objectification and dehumanization, thus desensitizing yourself even more.

Don’t make the same mistakes so many before you have made. I’m basically warning you against letting fear dictate your actions here.

If you’re already on this path of objectification, dehumanization, and desensitization, turn back no matter how far you’ve gone.

You won’t build a stable state of confidence by pushing someone away and putting them into a different category; instead it’s better to pull them close by putting them in the same category as you. You don’t have to dehumanize anyone in order to shed your fear of them; instead you just have to stop and realize how human they really are, how human you really are, and how that puts everyone in the same boat. On the same team.

Chief

Comments

  1. Hey,
    I am only 19 years old. I do not want to commit to anyone. But I want to have sex(I dont care if is with the same beautiful women). Because of PU I do not lie to women and don’t hurt them because they don’t expect anything from me while having sex with me.

    Can you tell me if I am doing something wrong?

    • In the context of this article, you haven’t given me enough information for me to determine if you’re objectifying or dehumanizing your partners or if you’re desensitizing yourself to such habits. What I can say, however, is that you’re pretty much doing what I teach in terms of managing expectations! I think what you’re doing is just fine for the current stage of life that you’re in. Keep up the good work in being honest and open about your intentions!

  2. koranos says:

    This is pretty cool. When I first started checking out the PUA community I was afraid it was going to be a bunch of jerks out to use women and throw them away when they were done. Now I am seeing a much deeper underlying theme that is expressed eloquently in this article. I love women, and why not do everything I can to be better at it. I almost feel like I owe it to them to improve on this, otherwise there are going to be a bunch of awesome ladies who will be missing out. Keep up the good work!

    • Thanks a bunch, koranos! I really appreciate your recognition of my intentions here. And you’re absolutely right that you owe it to women to make yourself a better man. In fact, we as men owe it to the world in order for us to be prepared to make it a better place.

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