A domestic violence charity had called for the end of Neil Strauss’ pickup artist book The Game – but dating guides aimed at both women and men are full of retrograde advice
Before writing The Game, Neil Strauss was a self-described “lump of nerd”. But his 2005 bestseller, which has shifted more than 3m copies around the world (270,000 in the UK), revealed the secrets of his midlife transformation into a ladies’ man, through time spent in the company of professional pickup artists. Techniques revealed by Strauss – practised long before his book, but never before exposed to such a big audience – included “negging” (making negative comments to lower a woman’s self-esteem so she’ll stay to earn approval) and “cavemanning” (aggressively escalating physical contact).
None of this reads very well in 2019 and this week, the director of women’s charity Zero Tolerance Rachel Adamson called for UK publisher Canongate to stop printing Strauss’s book. “The Game is marketed on the premise that men are entitled to women’s attention and affection,” she said. “It says women are something to be attained and then thrown away. These sexist attitudes perpetuate dangerous ideas and opinions that cause violence against women.” Canongate has declined to comment.
Continue reading...from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2DDfRhJ
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