By Tolula Dada

The seduction community is an internet-based subculture where men exchange tips and advice on how to pick up women. It rejects the conventional dating advice that says men should impress women through flattery and spending money on them, proposing that adherents work on their "game" by improving their conversation skills and physical appearance instead.

"World's Greatest Pick-Up Artist", Neil Strauss, concedes that seduction techniques "can be used for good or evil", but are ultimately “just a way for a guy to get his foot in the door so that if a woman connects with him, she can still choose him."But the very existence of a seduction community, where members can learn techniques ranging from amusing anecdotes and magic tricks as ice breakers, to neurolinguistic programming (a minor form of hypnosis) and using backhanded compliments (“neg”s) on attractive women to lower her self-esteem and prevent her from detecting a male's interest, begs the question of whether these methods and their inherent ideologies are helpful or harmful to women and our society?

The game of love, or more precisely the prolonged looks, preening and pitiful one-liners of which it is comprised, is quite possibly one of the most complicated games we humans play. And whilst there are no cut and dried rules, there are many obvious dos and don'ts involved when approaching the opposite sex.  Here's a textbook example of what not to do:

An averagely attractive male saunters over to my girlfriends and I, on a typical Saturday night. He looks deep into my friend's eyes and says “I find you very attractive, will you go to bed with me?”  She gives him a withering look, sighs wearily, and we collectively turn and walk away.  The guy remains standing there, daunted for a moment, before spotting his next prey, and sidles up to another group of women. Once at a safe distance my friend rages, “What does he take me for? Call me old fashioned, but a guy should at least buy me dinner before I go to bed with him!”

This true story illustrates two things: firstly, some men are utterly clueless as to how to appropriately approach women. Secondly, women are not the passive victims of predatory males of The Game believe them to be. Ask any sexually frustrated male struggling to get a date - women can and do reject men all the time. In doing so, they smash the outdated social stereotype that defines men as aggressive hunters pursuing their defenceless female prey. The assertion that “men have sex, and women give sex” is completely right, only if you believe that women never enjoy or initiate sexual encounters.

The very existence of a seduction community has understandably garnered criticism for being misogynistic.  It is also incredibly naïve to assume that all its members are socially inept but well-meaning males looking for girlfriends, particularly when pick-up-artists employ terms such as "bitch shield" and "chick crack", to describe female defense mechanisms, and qualities that women go crazy for, respectively. But the notion that women can be manipulated must be tempered by the fact that women also manipulate men, only it is so much a part of mainstream culture, in women's magazines, self-help dating books, among other media, that goes largely unnoticed, or derided as "chick-lit" and "chick-flicks".

The male seduction community can be seen as evidence of an increasingly metrosexualised male culture, where men are required to make just as much effort as females in order to find a mate.
Many females wouldn't mind being approached by men, in an appropriate social setting (e.g. a bar or club) if the man had something unoffensive, amusing, or generally worthwhile to say.  

In truth, the game of love is one of the few instances where men and women posses equal power, so winning it is simply a matter of recognizing this fact and wielding it to one’s advantage. And until one has  mastered that trick, we should just take the advice of many a good pimp: don’t hate the player, hate the game.

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