Absolutely not your sensitive therapist. Good advice alternates with banal observation. About 20 percent of what he has to say is applicable to the hobby. Another 20 percent for older men who want younger women in their lives. The other 60 percent, YMMV.

However, after personally enduring all that manipulative crap inspired by books such as The Rules, i.e. how to fuck with a man's mind until he doesn't know which way is up, this angle is remarkably refreshing.

"Announcing on the cover that his book is FOR THE MAN WHO REFUSES TO BUY OR BULLSHIT A YOUNG WOMAN, Steele points to plenty of things older men have that young women want. Young men don't give young women much of a thrill in bed, for instance. Part of a young woman's interest in an older guy, according to Steele, is simply, "the desire to be seriously fucked. Only a few young women have ever achieved orgasm as a result of a young partner's actions."

In a young woman's eyes, older men are confident, relaxed and in control.

"Mature men have a car that runs," laughs Steele. "To an 24 year old guy, spending $80 for dinner is impossible. A man like me says, 'Bring the lady another drink. Open a tab. Here's the card. Leave us."'

Steele, who calls his Los Angles-area stomping grounds, "a paradise full of young women," and figures by rough demographic calculation that he has approximately 10,000 fresh faced babes to choose from within ten miles of his house. What kind of girl might be interested in an affair with a man old enough to be her father?

"My kind of young women are rebels with no cause. They are intelligent, ambitious and brave enough to take a chance. They drive like maniacs, swear like sergeants, drink, smoke dope and flaunt their bodies at me and other males of any age. For entertainment they intentionally piss off their parents and their boyfriends."

or...........

"He strongly advises against "opening lines" that are the mainstay of How To Pickup Girls and the rip offs of that million seller. As Steele put it "Great title, but useless nonsense, written by guys who have never done it."

Steele continued, "Conversation absolutely must be natural as well as appropriate for the setting, so that a young women can relax when an older man is talking with her for the first time."

"Good looking young women are being hit on all the time," says Steele. "They're so used to flattery, they are bored with the same old shit when somebody's trying to pick them up. I use a different approach. The real conversation is conducted with body language and its nuances. A guy must know what is being said without words!"

what he lacks in depth he makes up for in breadth.....

the link takes you to his website, somebody, somewhere will benefit from this......

I don't get it.  The subject matter does not relate to our hobby - the purpose of this community.

I have no interest in "snagging" young women or manipulating their curiosity and emotions in public settings.  For one thing, the MAIN advantage of provider relationships is that they END the second you are out the door.  The last thing most of us hobbyists need is a young women who wants a relationship with us.

I understand guys wanting to learn how to pickup women, but quite frankly - this book appears to be about using women.  This post, and the advertising for the site/book, prey on a man's subconcious desire to be attractive to young females.  A mature man should see through this initial shallow premise.

Again - what's this got to do with our hobby or this site?

and admittidly, a lot of it is immature crap. As I said, about 20 percent of it is useful, and you are free to discard what doesn't apply to you. A great deal of knowledge lurks in unlikely places, or in forms that don't meet our preconceptions. You speak of "our hobby" as if you possess complete knowledge of what it is or how it applies to every person who participates in it. A mature reader has adequate filtering to know what is ethical and what isn't, or at least one would hope so. As a mature viewer of any movie might gain an understanding of something the movie portrays without having to act out every impulse depicted in the movie, or song, or book, or magazine, or erotic website, for that matter.
 If you took the time to investigate, you might, depending on where you are coming from, discover that there are fine points here and there that you aren't as well versed in as you might previously assume.
  If  your goal is to seduce and manipulate without conscience, then you fairly well fit the textbook definition of a sociopath. However, it could aslo be reasonably said that many men who participate in recreational sex with younger women for direct cash compensation (if you want to take the euphamistic gloss off language like "our hobby") do fit some of the behavioral and attitudinal models that you will find in literature such as this.
 I believe that it is too narrow to say that provider relationships end the second you walk out the door. Some do, some don't, some fall in between, some become akin to courtesan relationships, some become genuine friendships, some result in marriage.
 Do you think the typical customer of an escort does not have an unconscious desire to be attractive to young females ? If not, then what's wrong with inexpensive and readily available masturbation ?
 How do you account for the number of men who pay top dollar to have beautiful women accompany them in public areas, on dinner dates and the like, then offer them passionate, and ego affirming sex if this dynamic wasn't powerfully at work.
 If the escort exploits the man's complex of emotional and physical needs to extract significant compensation from him, then why do you not speak of "the hobby" as being inherently exploitive in that direction ?
 From personal experience, relationships DO happen, although hardly in the ways that Steele describes them. On the other hand, some of his observations ring true, and some of his advice makes sense. Its up to you to pick and choose.
 But since we are in a mood for moralizing, perhaps you feel like answering this one. If you agree to pay a girl for sex, and you don't know her motivations for offering her body at an hourly rate, are you more or less explotive than the author of these books ? What if she is desperate to pay her rent, obtain medicine, hire a lawyer to get her through her problems ? Does her desperation contaminate your involvement with her ? She's got an agenda, she sees you as a way out. Is this wrong to do ?

They should start offering online downloads of books of this nature.  I really won't send away and wait for that brown package with big type on the front -- HOW TO SCORE WITH BABES!

Otherwise, I'd read it.

i just bought this book at B and N.  Had to special order it thru a female clerk.  The look she gave me when she saw the title was priceless.  I had to cut the cover off of it so I can read it on the train, and I hope my wife never finds it.  If you are approaching 40,  bored with your ballbreaking wife, and have been in the hobby for a little while; this book has some insightful info in it that may help guide you as you make your way thru middle-age.

This discussion DOES apply to hobbyists. It's about the "system" of mating-dating that puts us on the "outs" all the time. Our desires as males (and females!) is consistently at odds with our culture's requirements as a system to perpetuate economically based female-to-male-enslavement (render as you see fit). I too reject that system, but only find the hobby to be a slightly better alternative. Don Steele tries to provide even greater opportunity, in an anti-male world, for males to have happy lives.

But I find his work to be shallow at best. It's good to read anything you can (as long as you have the time) on the subject of mating and relating, especially if you're bad at it, so in that sense I don't regret having checked out what he had to say. But he's essentially still WITHIN the framework of the old female-controls-dating system, which is precisely the problem. He's still in the same cage. He's knocking at the escape hatch, but he doesn't have the key.

I recommend several other resources -- Louis and Copeland's "How to Succeed with Women" is similar to Steele's book, but better and less hucksterish; Dutter's "The Shy Guy's Guide to Dating" is a load of crap. And the following website actually includes information that works, as long as you remember two caveats: (a) lots of posturing adolescents who don't actually know wht they're talking about, so you have to distill the good advice from some rather obvious bad characters, and (b) get the whole picture, read the whole thing, and develop the whole mindset, before pooh-poohing some of the admittedly ineffective specifics ... here is the link:

http://www.fastseduction.com/

I find the discussion boards (moderated! you have to sign up) the most useful and enlightening.

It's practically cured me of my hobbying, and given me a whole new view of human relations. And that's a good thing, since I only hobbied (as I said) in order to find a better alternative to the fucked-up system out there. Now that I have a SECOND option other than hobbying, I'm even happier.


-- Modified on 11/10/2002 8:40:17 AM

hobbying, being with escorts, call it what you want, has given me a healthier perspective on the man-woman thing than I ever anticipated. For starters, it has taken so much pressure off of my "straight" connections with women. The knowledge that you can obtain fulfillment of your limbic system drives without resorting to convoluted dating, cruising, negotiating on two or three levels at once takes a monsterous burden off social or business interactions. It also cuts a whole lot of pseudo sexual manipulative crap, like getting wrapped up in some bogus flirtation when you should be working out the terms of a contract. Way levels the playing field. If you've had thunder and lightening sex with two women in a row half your age the night before, all the cutsey pootsie rolls off your back like water off of a duck. Women can sense with their ovarian radars where you're at on a reproductive level. That's how nature made 'em. They KNOW when your getting lots of sex and when you're not... must be a bunch of subliminal cues they pick up on. Thing is, when you're getting exactly what you want, when you want, minus the BS, the run of the mill head games just won't cut it. I kinda suspect that's the real reason "society", whoever that is, doesn't like the idea of making sex to easy for men to obtain. You don't get roped in like you used to.
  Whatever. The other highly positive outcome is that when I do choose to be with someone on a romantic, or straight date note, I am much more focued on the total person, relaxed, and find communicating vastly more direct and fluid. I used to get flustered so much it was like a dysfunctional shyness thing. No more. No hormone and adrenaline rush mucking up my tiny little mind. Hang out, be together, listen to your story, sure, but without any need to get over. Women find that a little freaky and unsettling, because they're programmed to see guys as having sexual urges barely under control. If you're not gay, not horny, and obviously getting laid all you want within you budget and time, its like this great tense subtext completely vanishes, and is replaced with another one, along the lines of "I'm doing all this coy stuff that works on guys, so he should be at least a little agitated right now, and what ? Bupkis... could pass a polygraph test " Yeah, I know.

Hobbying gives you a better perspective on the boy-girl game, sure. I totally agree. It takes the pressure off, and eliminates the effectiveness of "cutesie pootsie" (LOL) as well. In fact, if you'd like to continue your forays into the "seduction" genre, and do read some of the link I posted, you might find, as I did, that there are LOTS of ways to get a better understanding of the boy-girl game.

I believe most women "instinctively" play at a game that most men aren't even aware exists. When we lose at that game, however, we tend to lose in terms of real-world rewards or punishments, and I think the hurt we experience is something (again) most women don't really credit with much weight. They're just naturally endowed with more manipulato-cortex and endoplasmic reMachiavellium than we are. Men who "figure out" that the game is skewed against them have only made the first step -- of realizing they're in a bad system. It STILL takes some further understanding (and motivation) to move on from SEEING the system, to CIRCUMVENTING it.

I frankly think the whole thing sucks. I like the idea of women wanting to fuck me as much as I want to fuck them, and frankly I just know (from instinct, and from the Discovery Channel, both!) that they do. But they have something to gain by hiding it -- so they do. That society says that their manipulation would be OK, but ours would be evil, is just another man-hating thingamajigger that society is doing again. But hobbying doesn't solve the problem for me. Sure, it gets my rocks off, but it doesn't help me to feel that SHE chose me as much as I chose her, because I still gotta pay her. There are advantages to getting your rocks off for pay, I'll freely admit. You've named some good ones. But to me, it's a different problem I'm seeking to solve.

The "seduction materials" are one step in that process.

they are parallel universes connected by wormholes ! Hobbying demystified certain aspects of feminine psychology.. it's not quite the "black box" that it used to be, but I hope the process hasn't also stripped me of some of the romantic innocence that I once had. One goes through phases, a lucky string of great provider experiences and you're boosted up to a new level, resilient and full of good humor, then have a few bad ones and you're cynical, edgy, and irritable for a while. Took some serious introspection to learn how to negotiate all the ups and downs without personalizing it too much. Closest analogy is switching to off road shock absorbers. Back on Straight Street the interactions don't have quite the same punch as they once did.

Here's a suggestion. It is something I think about a lot, and am not a TOTAL master of, but do believe we should all try to get a handle on as we mature and develop.

You are allowing outside, external events (the positive or negative nature of a hobbying experience) to change your demeanor. I would suggest, that instead of having REACTIONS that turn into your emotions, you PROACTIVELY CHOOSE which emotions to have.

This characteristic is described on the seduction boards at fastseduction.com as "state management" or "emotional proactivity." I am not very good at it. But it is an excellent antidote to feeling like the world, or the misandrist "game" of boy-girl relations, is tearing you apart.

With a development of emotional proactivity supposedly comes a sense of power, a knowledge that one dominates one's own circumstances and one's own sense of wellbeing and sense of self-esteem. And, as an added bonus, when you DO have that positive state of self-actualization in hand, other humans recognize it in you (women in particular; they have more subtle sniffers in social interactions) and you find that the rewards you seek come to you simply because you seem to others to be a happy person. Suddenly, by behaving like you don't care if hot chicks approve of you (and actually not NEEDING their approval to be happy about your sex life), hot chicks start seeking out your company, for example.

Thus, life becomes NOT a series of tactical actions geared toward getting results which are themselves geared toward making you feel rewarded; but rather, a series of feelings of rewarded-ness which lead naturally toward actions that you don't even have to think about, which then lead to further rewards and further feelings of rewarded-ness. It turns the whole paradigm on its head and says, "You are in charge, not external circumstance."

I don't think it would work very well if your mother died. But when you have a lame-ass hobbying experience, for example, you can be HAPPY to have learned from it, or whatever; rather than getting edgy. You can move on, to further CONTROL of your own happiness. And so forth.

Just a suggestion ... I larned it from the fastseduction.com stuff.


-- Modified on 11/11/2002 1:37:05 PM

all well enough in theory. I know what you are talking about when you refer to state management. The two worlds aren't tearing me apart. The experience in one world is deconstructing a web of fictions that is integral to the other world. Sooner or later you discover that you can operate comfortably without the fictions. This does lead to unexpected conversation, as the other evening while I was sucking on a nice tit and discussing psychoanalysis and the repatterning of fantasy processes all at the same time.