The Work of Seduction: Intimacy and Subjectivity in the London ‘Seduction Community’

Abstract

This paper explores negotiations of intimate and sexual subjectivity among men involved in the London ‘seduction community’, a central locus within what is more properly regarded as a community-industry. Herein, heterosexual men undertake various forms of skills training and personal development in order to gain greater choice and control in their relationships with women. As an entry point to this discussion I consider the international media event that enveloped American ‘pickup artist’ Julien Blanc in November 2014. Shifting focus away from the cultural figure of the ‘pickup artist’ and onto socially located men, I attempt to complicate a dominant narrative that characterises men who participate in this community-industry as pathetic, pathological or perverse. This analysis makes use of extensive ethnographic research undertaken within the London seduction community, and examines how men who participate in this setting engage a mode of intimate and sexual subjectivity ordered by themes of management and enterprise. Ultimately I argue that the central logics of the seduction community are not dissonant from but are in fact consistent with broader reconfigurations of intimacy and sexuality taking place in the contemporary UK context.

Post-postfeminism?: new feminist visibilities in postfeminist times

“…After decades of scholarship, activism, legislation and media discussion they still exist -animating school and social media cultures as well as sexual and intimate relationships in revitalized (though obviously not uncontested) ways (e.g. Ringrose et al, 2013;O'Neill, 2015b). This is but one example; there are innumerable others.…”

“…Indeed, alongside all these different iterations of contemporary feminism is an equally popular misogyny, seen most vividly in online cultures from the "comments" sections of news outlets (García-Favaro and Gill, 2015) to Twitter death threats to revenge porn (Salter, 2013), and trolling, flaming and ebile in their varied -ugly -forms (Jane, 2012;Thompson, 2016), but also evident "offline" in the terrifying scale of domestic violence and sexual abuse and assault (much of which has also become newly visible in recent years) and the banal cruelty of heterosexual "pick up culture" (O'Neill, 2015b;2016). Thus as well as thinking about newly visible feminisms, we need to think also of the proliferation of new and old misogynies (Smith, 1990;Banet-Weiser, 2015c).…”

Beauty surveillance: The digital self-monitoring cultures of neoliberalism

“…It is striking to note that in this postfeminist moment this has intensified rather than diminished, albeit wrapped in discourses that highlight pleasure, choice, agency, confidence and pleasing oneself, obscuring the extent to which aesthetic labour on the body is normatively demanded (Elias et al, 2016). The body and intimate relationships remain sites of profound asymmetry, suffused by power relations (O'Neill, 2015). Indeed, McRobbie has argued in a Deleuzian vein that patriarchy is 'deterritorialised', spread out and diffuse but is 'reterritorialising' in the 'fashionbeauty complex', an institutionally unbounded assemblage producing aspecific kind of female subject who is perpetually dissatisfied and unhappy with her body and appearance and thus compelled to embark on new regimes of 'self-perfectibility' (McRobbie, 2009: 62-3).…”

“…The most visible face of this is seen in the Quantified Self 'community-industry ' (O'Neill, 2015), set up by two Wired editors in California. Wolf and Kelly host a website, promote the development of new tools, run annual conferences and publish a blog documenting numerous selftracking activities and novel ways of representing these through maps, artworks, sound files and other creative exhibits.…”

Mediated intimacies: bodies, technologies and relationships

“…The first was developed by Rosalind Gill, in relation to the ways that discourses of intimacy, specifically sex and relationship advice, are mediated in women's magazines (2009). This conceptualization of the term has been taken up by a variety of scholars looking at sex and relationship advice in a variety of contexts (Barker, Gill, & Harvey, in press;O'Neill, 2015). The second meaning of mediated intimacies comes from Deborah Chambers' book on relationships on Facebook, and, building on a range of groundbreaking social media literature, refers to the sorts of 'personal connections' (Baym, 2010) made possible through the sorts of digital platforms designed to network people (as both individuals and groups) together.…”