How to screw chicks like Ian Dunt

Should progressives be helping men to 'get laid'?

The progressive left has no opinion on men ‘getting laid’ according to Ian Dunt.

It has opinions on everything else. It has opinions on women getting laid (good for them), it has opinions on toxic masculinity (bad) and it has opinions on gender equality (there should be more of it). But it is completely silent on the subject of men getting laid - which, generally speaking, they are very interested in doing, and will continue to be interested in regardless of whether progressives want to talk about it. So the stage has been left entirely clear for the far-right to set the narrative, which it has done with devastating effect, monopolising young men's obsession with sex to spread a vicious fictitious storyline about power and identity.

Anyone who sets themselves up as an expert on this topic inevitably invites ridicule. Ian Dunt is no exception. By Friday evening, a few hours after the article had gone live, its author had received a torrent of abuse from Bluesky’s self-appointed arbiters of the correct position on everything.

I also chimed in, albeit for different reasons. Check out this paragraph about the manosphere (emphasis mine):

In the middle are the male influencer set, charging impossible amounts of money for insecure men to attend crash-courses on how to attract women.

As one of the ‘alpha male boot camp’ organisers told attendees: In the past, “low-status men got at least one girl that they could have sex with. Then, after birth control and the sexual revolution, we allowed people to choose more, and what women were choosing was the high-status men. Which is why you guys are here.”

I already know what the alpha male boot camp organiser told attendees because I was the person who reported it during an undercover investigation for my new book Lost Boys. Ian knows me and he knows about my book. But apparently it’s too much to expect a professional pundit to show journalistic courtesy by citing the work they are riffing on for clicks and cash.

Anyway, back to the main topic: do progressives need to be helping men to have sex?

I wouldn’t have thought so, though I’ll caveat this by saying there are certain structural things that progressive governments might wish to do - build houses, create more public spaces, make it cheaper to go out - that would probably indirectly make it easier for people to meet up and form relationships. But dating advice? Nah.

The hysterical response to Dunt’s article perfectly encapsulates why. Most progressives don’t choose their sexual and romantic partners on a strictly egalitarian basis. But ideology requires that they pretend they do. And so even Dunt’s milquetoast advice to ‘just be nice’ is greeted with howls of indignation and the rattle of tumbrels. I could reel off some of the objections in my sleep. Telling men to be assertive presumes women are the ‘gatekeepers of sex’. Anything that smacks of self-improvement is too individualistic. Advice to be competent discriminates against the incompetent. In other words, around every corner and in every vestibule a stony-faced commissar lies waiting with a clipboard.

Hence the right has monopolised the conversation up to now. And hence dating advice with a self-consciously progressive bent invariably becomes glib and condescending. Want to find a girlfriend? Then don’t be a misogynist. It really is that simple.

Is it that simple though? It’s certainly comforting to believe that people get what they deserve in life, despite lots of evidence to the contrary. While I would guess that misogynists have more difficulty sustaining long-term relationships (which require at least some degree of mutual respect) I’ve met plenty of sexists who have absolutely no trouble finding sexual partners. First impressions can be deceiving. It is vanishingly rare for people to reveal that side of themselves right off the bat (unless it’s on the internet).

Whether taking a more enlightened view helps men to have sex or not seems beside the point. You shouldn’t be a misogynist because it’s stupid and primitive. You should learn instead to discriminate: the idea that people can be reduced to a set of immutable physical characteristics belongs to the infancy of our species.

This is not to say that all of Dunt’s advice is bad. Some of it is serviceable, though as elsewhere the good stuff has been cribbed from somebody else.

The most important thing I ever read about dating was from a male writer who, upon being rejected one time, simply said: ‘It’s OK. I’m not for everyone.’

You are for some and not for others. This is anathema to the pickup artists who tell men that they can attract any woman by following a script. This is their entire sales pitch. Buy my course and attract any woman in under 10 minutes et cetera. They claim to have uncovered the hidden code and, through its dutiful study and application (and by giving them money) you too can go ‘from loser to lothario’.

Yet in seeking to set himself apart from the masculinity entrepreneurs of the manosphere, Dunt feels the need to cleave to the usual treacly stuff about ‘authenticity’ and being a nice guy.

Simply being nice is enough. In fact, the importance of niceness is criminally underrated, both as a feature of humans in general and as a quality that attracts women. Nice guys do not finish last, except perhaps for in a few cut-throat industries. Generally speaking, they are the ones people want to work with, stay friends with, and spend time with. And people includes women.

It’s hardly the stuff to elicit a thrill of approbation. Which is not to say you shouldn’t be nice. But the word means different things to different people. The best way to be ‘nice’ in the context of dating is to respect other peoples’ boundaries. Don’t be pushy; don’t turn up with an agenda; and be chill if things don’t work out. Acting like you want something (especially to ‘get laid’) puts things on lock down faster than a severe case of halitosis. Being nice can go a long way if there are no strings attached. Otherwise you’re instrumentalising the person instead of seeing them. Nobody finds this attractive.

Even garden variety misogynists think of themselves as ‘nice guys’. Women will often tell them so. That way they can let them down gently while they figure out their exit strategy. Other men interpret advice like this through the prism of neediness and approval seeking. They won’t have their own opinions around women. They will nod along dutifully and like what she likes. Sometimes they even expect to be rewarded for their complaisance with sex. It’s really not all that different from the transactional view of sex articulated by the manosphere, albeit without the scripted routines.

I don’t claim to be an authority on the subject of helping men to ‘get laid’. I’ll leave that to Ian Dunt. Though I do think there are some simple things a man can do to improve his chances. Grooming is the most obvious place to start. Practice good dental hygiene (I can’t tell you how many men I met when I was researching my book who’d signed up to expensive courses when they would’ve been better spending the money on a good toothbrush and some listerine). Wear clothes that fit. Get a more relevant haircut. Exercise or go to the gym if you can (not to get buff, unless you want to, but because you’ll have more energy and vitality (people notice that stuff).

The elephant in the room is social skills. Hardly anybody talks about this part. It’s no good having a sparkling personality if it remains buried under years of accumulated reticence. Instead you hear platitudes like ‘just be yourself’ on repeat. It was advice like this that led me to sign up for a pickup artist boot camp back in 2006 when I was 23. As I write in my book:

Even the relationship advice given to me by well-meaning friends was questionable. People told me to be myself when what they really meant was ‘be attractive’. Things would ‘work themselves out in the end’, they reassured me – but why would they? Confidence was said to be attractive but what was that when you broke it down into its component parts? It was a sort of faith that things would go well because they had gone well before. But what if they hadn’t gone well before? From where was this magical property supposed to spring? In truth, the pickup artist adage – that if we kept doing what we were doing we would keep getting the same results (or lack of) – sounded more realistic to me than the soothing bromides I was constantly hearing from the people who loved me.

Not my proudest moment. The seduction community was suffused with misogyny. However they were right about one thing. Our personalities are not as immutable as we tend to think. The ‘authentic’ you is a mental construct. You can learn to become a better conversationalist; you can imbibe the grammar of humour (there are even classes for that sort of thing); and you can learn to be more assertive. Putting wishful thinking about how things ought to be to one side, most women still expect men to make the initial approach. Therefore unless you are extremely good looking or plan to rely on the vicissitudes of dating apps, it behoves you to learn how to assert yourself when the situation demands it.

The manosphere convinces men that mainstream society is feeding them sentimental bullshit in lieu of the unvarnished truth. The last thing we need is for progressives to start gaslighting them even more.

Lost Boys is out now with Atlantic Books

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I recently went on Modern Wisdom with Chris Williamson to talk about my new book. You can watch the episode on YouTube or listen on Spotify.