PUA vs. White Nationalist Perspectives on Mating

Posted By Alex Graham On In North American New Right | Comments Disabled

[1]1,480 words

One of the main tenets of pick-up artistry (PUA) is that women are attracted to psychopathic traits and that men should therefore cultivate such traits in order to attract women. There is a kernel of truth to this claim. However, White Nationalist men looking for the future mother of their children should note that mindlessly emulating psychopaths is not an advisable strategy. High-quality white women do not find anti-social behavior appealing.

One of the most useful ways of classifying people is according to life history theory: the “live fast, die young” lifestyle characteristic of r-selected organisms versus the slow maturation, greater impulse control, and higher parental investment characteristic of K-selected organisms. Psychopaths fall squarely into the former category. They opt for short-term pleasures over delayed gratification and are more interested in having as much sex as possible than having families.

Overt displays of psychopathy convey dominance, which is attractive to women, but they also communicate to prospective mates that you have a fast life history strategy. Sociosexual women who are solely attracted to dominance will be indifferent to this, but most women, who are more K-selected on average (this is particularly true of high-quality white women), want to see that you also possess traits suited to fatherhood. These include mastery/competence, dependability, and empathy, the latter two of which are at odds with psychopathy.

In The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature, evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller makes the argument that moral virtues are attractive to both sexes and were sexually selected for. This is a far cry from the social Darwinist worldview prevalent in the manosphere, and far more convincing. There are two main reasons why virtues were selected for: First, self-sacrificial behavior toward genetic kin is worthwhile if the benefits to one’s kin exceed the costs to one’s own fitness, and second, virtues such as altruism and heroism are costly, hard-to-fake signals of status and competence. The fact that men tip better than women and donate more to charity is consistent with the hypothesis that generosity in men was selected for. Being stingy and self-centered will alienate most women.

Another factor is that women evolved to prefer men who aren’t going to kill them. Women value kindness in long-term mates. David Buss, also an evolutionary psychologist, noted in a large cross-cultural study [2] on mate preferences that women place a high value on whether a man is “kind and understanding,” as this signals commitment to her and her offspring.

Miller’s thesis is particularly applicable to Europe, where there was a greater necessity for cooperation. Europeans have a lower incidence of psychopathy than Africans, Amerindians, and Middle Easterners, as James Dunphy pointed out in a recent article [3]. The harsh northern climes in which white people evolved selected for pro-social traits, delayed gratification, and monogamy, all of which are positively correlated with a slow life history strategy and negatively correlated with psychopathy. Psychopathy can be regarded as an adaptation to low-trust, unstable environments. It is unsurprising that the PUA scene and the manosphere in general are unusually racially diverse compared to other dissident subcultures.

The fact that moral virtues were selected for does not contradict the finding that women are attracted to certain manifestations of psychopathy. According to one study [4], women are specifically attracted to the charisma and emotional detachment exhibited by many psychopaths; importantly, they are not attracted to criminality, impulsivity, anger, and anti-social behavior. Being suave and cocky is attractive because it signals high status and does not preclude the possibility that a man will be a good husband and father, while being anti-social and violent does. This is a crucial distinction that most men in the manosphere overlook.

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You can buy Tito Perdue’s novel Cynosura here [6].

This article is not a blanket condemnation of “game,” which can be useful and incorporates important truths about female psychology. Projecting independence, confidence, and charisma, and being adept at banter are important regardless of the woman one is approaching. Rather, the point of this article is to caution men against indiscriminately modeling themselves after psychopaths if their aim is to seduce and marry a high-quality white woman (which should be one’s ultimate goal as a White Nationalist).

If you engage in anti-social, r-selected behaviors, you will attract unhealthy women who will be more likely to be promiscuous, mentally unstable, impulsive, and even psychopathic themselves (psychopaths are disproportionately attracted [7] to other psychopaths). These women might be good material for a casual fling, but you wouldn’t want to be stuck with one. The fact that PUAs and manosphere types are likely to attract women of the “crazy ex-girlfriend” persuasion could explain why their views of women are overwhelmingly negative.

The myth that all white women are secretly attracted to non-white thugs, and that this is why they are inclined to support BLM and open borders, is prevalent in certain pockets of the Alt Right. This is only true of highly sociosexual women. For K-selected women, genetic similarity in mates is important because it leads to less discord in long-term relationships. I have not seen data on this, but I would predict that people who have interracial relationships (excluding dorky white men who have no other options these days) are more sociosexual and likelier to have a fast life history strategy on average.

A PUA might retort that women are still attracted to macho non-white thugs in short-term relational contexts and callously regard genetically similar long-term mates as mere fodder for “beta bucks.” However, women’s preferences [8] for short-term mates are actually very similar to their preferences for long-term mates, which is a big hit to the dual-mating hypothesis propounded by the manosphere (h/t @datepsych [9]). In general, women see short-term relationships as stepping-stones to long-term ones, or as a way of cultivating a “back-up” mate should their husband die. On average, women are oriented toward long-term relationships and are much less interested in casual sexual encounters than men, contra the “cock carousel” trope (which almost comes across as the fantasy of someone with a cuckold fetish). The dual-mating hypothesis is only “potentially applicable to a small subset of women.” In other words, the manosphere believes the sociosexual subset of the female population represents women as a whole, probably because these are the only women with whom they interact.

One common characteristic of both PUAs and psychopaths is their tendency to engage in ostentatious displays of wealth, much like rappers’ obsession with “bling.” Andrew Tate, for example, brags about his lavish lifestyle and his collection of luxury cars. Since women are attracted to wealth, PUAs reason that one should aggressively signal one’s “alpha male” status with luxury items. Indeed, wealth and status are attractive to women. However, making impulsive purchases and displaying a reckless attitude toward one’s finances is an r-selected behavior that will alienate most high-quality women, who want a man who is reliable and will expend his resources wisely. People high in self-control (i.e., intelligent, high-quality women) want mates who are also [10] high in self-control.

Relatedly, the popular explanation for the ostentation of the “nouveau riche” versus the modesty of “old money” is that the latter behavior is a form of counter-signaling, which is not wrong per se, but I propose that life history theory provides a more comprehensive framework for understanding this divide. Contra the Left, families who prosper for centuries (excluding members of hereditary aristocracies) do so not because of “white privilege,” but primarily because they are predisposed toward unglamorous K-selected “beta male” behaviors like working hard, saving, and delaying gratification. (Will the great-great-great-grandchildren of famous rappers also be wealthy? Probably not.) Modesty is a by-product of these behaviors and functions as a way of signaling one’s reproductive strategy to potential mates.

In a recent video [11], Edward Dutton identifies Tate as a symptom of declining IQ and social trust. He likens him to the feudal warlords of sixteenth-century England, who commanded bands of loyal followers and employed Machiavellian tactics in their quest to gain power amid a climate characterized by instability and intrigue. (Dutton has written about this in his biography [12] of his ancestor Piers Dutton.) Dutton predicts that as civilization continues to decline, more PUA gurus will emerge.

The most fundamental difference between White Nationalists and PUAs is that the former think hundreds of years ahead and want to create dynasties and institutions that will last for generations, while PUAs are products of a decaying society and want to exploit the rot of modernity for their own short-term gain. PUAs extol “patriarchy,” but the mating strategies they promote are inimical to the establishment of patriarchal family structures and contribute to the phenomenon of single motherhood. Their advice is geared toward fast life history strategists pursuing serial dalliances as opposed to men looking to form and maintain long-term relationships. If one is looking to start a family, one must adopt a modified strategy that involves signaling prosocial traits, stability, and self-control.

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