Communication games: dating coaches, masculinity, and working at play in Seduction Communities

Abstract

This article examines the work of affective labor in remediating experiences of inhibition and insecurity among heterosexual men in 'seduction communities': communities of men who train each other in embodying seductive masculinity to pick up women. Considering how men in seduction communities construct and enact symbolic boundaries in their performances of seduction, this paper will seek to answer the following question: what do seduction communities reveal about the vulnerabilities and frailties of masculinity in the US today? Based on original ethnographic fieldwork carried out in New York City, I examine the ways in which men experience states of cognitive absorption, affective license, and also of disability and abjection in fashioning themselves as objects of female desire through rituals of shared affective labor among men. I argue that men experience culturally based ambivalences around norms of self-help -including ideas of freedom, dependency, and addiction -in ways that complicate heteronormative masculine identities. I furthermore assert that self-fashioning through seduction training invokes ideas of work and play in order to differentiate contradictory ethics of persuasion and self-expression, and that these ideas in turn instantiate different technologies of embodiment that reproduce inequalities between men along lines of race and class. ARTICLE HISTORY

“I Haven’t Done Anything to Be Polarizing”: Jeremy Lin’s Strategic Appropriation of Black Masculinity

“…Fang (2014) draws parallels between Rodger's misogynistic logic and internalized racism and the popularity of the men's rights movement and seduction community among a sizable portion of Asian American men. The seduction community, which has experienced an explosion in global popularity since the publication of the infamous pickup-artist's handbook The Game in 2005, consists mainly of heterosexual men who seek the guidance of dating coaches in how to successfully flirt with, and ultimately attract, women (Wallace, 2017). These men "typically selfidentify as nerds and are employed in the white-collar service sector" (Wallace, 2017, p. 287), a demographic which sounds strikingly similar to stereotypical depictions of Asian American men.…”

“I Haven’t Done Anything to Be Polarizing”: Jeremy Lin’s Strategic Appropriation of Black Masculinity

“…Fang (2014) draws parallels between Rodger's misogynistic logic and internalized racism and the popularity of the men's rights movement and seduction community among a sizable portion of Asian American men. The seduction community, which has experienced an explosion in global popularity since the publication of the infamous pickup-artist's handbook The Game in 2005, consists mainly of heterosexual men who seek the guidance of dating coaches in how to successfully flirt with, and ultimately attract, women (Wallace, 2017). These men "typically selfidentify as nerds and are employed in the white-collar service sector" (Wallace, 2017, p. 287), a demographic which sounds strikingly similar to stereotypical depictions of Asian American men.…”

“That’s creepy, dude": Disciplining desire and making masculine selves in the sexual moment

“…My evidence, presented below, suggests that seduction is far from obsolete (Almog and Kaplan 2017;R. O'Neill 2018;Wallace 2017) and that the complex process of seduction, particularly as it is organized by the figure of the creep around fears of sexual violence, are still quite relevant to the way (men's magazines argue) men should be organizing their pursuit of women in public arenas. For Dunn, seduction scripts are productive in that they allow men to walk the fine line between achieving a romantic connection and being seen as a "stalker" or sexual predator (1999).…”