What Role Should Women Play in the Mating Game?

Commenting on “What to Do When a Girl Won’t Go Home with You”, Blogster asks about what women’s responsibilities are in the mating game and where a man must “draw the line” when it comes to trying to make a girl his:

“Do take your point on this one. However, at what point does all the game advice for men cross into the territory of a woman’s jurisdiction?

With each piece of advice about how to handle situations and tighten your game, it sees more and more of the woman’s responsibility being transferred over to men.

One of the admirable traits of men generally is that we are self-motivated and proactive and take charge. We look for our own mistakes and correct. However I feel the manosphere and valuable dating advice sources such as girlschase makes the mistake of swinging too far with the attitude of ‘if it didn’t go well, you the man did something wrong, or should of done something better’. Accountability is good, assuming complete agency is ridiculous and unrealistic, as it assumes the man has the capacity to control all relevant circumstances affecting a pickup and that by improving and fine tuning technique results will come.

The implications for this are obvious – women are just automatons and have no individual preference, attraction will occur reasonably successfully if you master the right techniques smoothly and ultimately, that women have no agency as adults.

It also plays into and reinforces current societies frame regarding relationships – that the man must do all the work and its the man’s fault if something goes wrong or the seduction doesn’t occur.

Increasingly also I see double standards in advice being doled out. For example, a recent post spoke about how to deal with judgement. It says its crucial not to judge women, yet women are by far the more judgemental sex and constantly do so on a broader range of factors.

A man is expected to skilfully disarm a woman’s judgements, but a woman is not expected too because otherwise she ‘won’t open up’. Does it occur to you that maybe men don’t open up because of female judgement and thus lose out? Yet the onus seems always on the man. Put it this way, if your friend was constantly dodging responsibility and being unnecessarily judgemental would you pander to him?

A man is expected to overcome his approach anxiety by himself. Is there any advice anywhere that says about how women should ‘help the man through his approach anxiety’? Of course not, yet there is plenty of expectation that a man should smooth and ease the women in the last moments before seduction.

In this instance, I feel it pushes the ‘responsibility balance’ of game even further towards the man. Soon all the woman will have to do is show up!”

This comment no doubt reflects a lot of men’s frustrations over the travails of mating – I’ve heard them the world over, in any number of different cultures, and if you read back through history you can read of men from all ages complaining of the same things.

So what are women’s responsibilities in dating and mating? Do they serve as just passive recipients of men’s advances? And if at first you don’t succeed – how many times should you really try and try again?