Do you have any knowledge on whether men and women into S&M are more confident in life because they accept their fetish(es), or is it just about the same as anyone else when not in the bed?

Yep, there's actually evidence that men who do S&M are slightly happier than men who don't. Documented in this study.

I compiled all the research I'm aware of about S&M here.

Also, do you know of any linguistic studies other than kinesics that have been done on the PUA scene?

I don't, if anyone hears about one then they should contact me. I'm curious too.

Do you turn the tables and mess with guys when they try to use any pick up arts on you because you know more about it now?

Sometimes. Some of that is in the book I keep promoting :) I haven't been out in the dating scene as much this year though, because I broke my neck last year and I've been in recovery a lot. I've also been traveling.

Dude, that is so not a neg. That's an invitation.

I talked a LOT about the guys who are drawn to the industry in my book. It's hard to boil it all down, because I wrote so much. But in Chapter 1, I start the conversation by giving a Typology Of PUAs:

(please note that people can belong to more than one category)

TYPE 1: THE ANALYSTS. Questioning Gender. A few guys who look at PUA materials are deconstructing them. They see the whole PUA community as a bunch of data to help them understand sex and gender.

TYPE 2: THE FREAKS AND GEEKS. "Average Frustrated Chumps." "Average Frustrated Chump" (AFC for short) is a PUA term used to describe dudes who rarely get laid and haven't bought into PUA theory. PUAs also talk about "below-Average Frustrated Chumps" (bAFCs) -- guys so shy and awkward that they've never had a single date. The Freaks and Geeks are AFCs and bAFCs who are learning social skills that men in their peer group learned earlier than they did. Some of these guys also find good friends and social support among the other men in the community.

TYPE 3: THE HEDONISTS. Seeking Pleasure. Some folks got into pickup, or stayed in the community, because they thought it was just plain fun. Those folks weren't always guys; I've heard that groupie girls exist, though I never met any (unless I count myself). Like any type of pleasure-seeker, PUA Hedonists can be as harmless as a casual wine-drinker. But they become harmful when they value their pleasure over other people's boundaries.

TYPE 4: THE LEADERS. Community Organizers. Along with AFC and bAFC, there's the term rAFC: "reformed Average Frustrated Chump." Every once in a while, a guy who is "saved" by pickup artistry will turn into a kind of PUA evangelist. Other Leaders were never AFCs in the first place, but they find other value in becoming community organizers. They may simply enjoy having high status among PUAs. Or they may have moral feelings; for instance, one such gentleman told me that his goal was to "make men better men through pickup."

TYPE 5: THE SHARKS. Out To Make A Buck. Most organizers in the seduction community aren't paid for the work they do. But as the seduction community has gotten bigger, it's also become quite commercialized, with lots of guys (and a few women) selling their services as dating coaches or event marketers. Some of these folks seemed nice enough when I met them; others struck me as rather predatory.

TYPE 6: THE DARTH VADERS. Seeking Power and Revenge. The worst PUAs make it obvious that they mostly feel resentment, contempt, and distrust for women (although of course they still want to bang us). Not just that -- they often belittle other men a whole lot, too.

Obviously this is somewhat stylized, and I talk a lot about the nuances in the book. Mark Manson also contributed his own take on different guys in the industry. It's an appendix in the book. So in short, RTFM

Hey Zac, sup, nice to see you here.

(1) This is kind of what they were trying to do when they named it "gender studies" instead of "feminism." There were debates about it. Unclear whether it worked.

(2) I've been thinking a lot about media because of my upcoming awesome anthology about rape in gaming. It's a really knotty question. Sometimes the media influences culture, sometimes culture influences media. I usually focus more on practical everyday concerns (like how to have a conversation with a sexual partner that's open and honest and fair) rather than media analysis. But the media influences how people talk to each other!

I guess the answer is that I'm not sure. I try to create new media through my writing that I think will both appeal to people and get a good message across. It's a really hard and delicate process. One key is to just be aware of the pressures on everyone, which is why I have sometimes written articles like the Sex-Crazy Nympho Dreamgirl article. And it's also part of why I was interested in the PUA community. The community is a real showcase of some pressures on men, and masculine anxieties.

(3) I haven't really been in the community since a while before my book was published. I kinda walked away. I guess I sort of already answered this question above, in this comment.

(4) This is also a really hard question because different media appeals to different people. The first time I read the feminist book Yes Means Yes, I was totally stunned and overwhelmed by how TRUE and IMPORTANT and EDUCATIONAL it felt for me. But then I convinced Mark Manson to read it and he had this super knee-jerk negative reaction. So I don't know.

With Confessions I was partly trying to write a book that might help PUAs understand more feminist concerns. I don't know if I succeeded.

(5) The legal line is different for different states. In Illinois, you can give consent for someone to hurt you physically. But there are states where you can't give consent for someone to hurt you physically. Operation Spanner is a famous S&M case in the UK where some gay masochist dudes were sent to jail for "aiding and abetting" THEIR OWN ASSAULT. So if you're into S&M, you should keep this in mind and be a little careful. Know the laws in your area.

The S&M community is a big place, and there are different standards in different sections. I personally don't have a problem with people doing fairly severe harm to each other with S&M, but I think that society is correct to be concerned about it. Here's an old post of mine about S&M and abuse.

Re: walking across the street:

Not sure what you mean by overkill ... in terms of me actually being afraid of dudes on the street, it depends on the context. I feel much more threatened by a lone man if we're on an empty street in the middle of the night in a bad neighborhood, than I do if there are other people around or it's daytime or it's a good neighborhood. Sometimes when I'm out alone at night and I see a man (or a bunch of men) in the street, and the whole place is totally empty, I get nervous. I dunno if it's their responsibility to cross to the other side of the street though. I think it's mostly their responsibility not to attack me. :p

I guess if I was alone at night, and a guy crossed to the other side of the street, I might feel relieved. But I might also worry that he was coming around behind me or something? Not sure.

"This is nice and all, but are you hot?"

I'm not sure how hot I am. I'm definitely not as pulchritudinous as Kezia Noble, but I'm smarter.

Different guys have different preferences -- some guys are really really into me, and some aren't. It also depends on the city or subculture I'm in (the comparison effect). I think that on the street, I'm generally around a 7 ... but I don't like to think about it too much, because beauty is fucked up emotional territory for women. I talk about this more in my book, like everything else.

Can you go into detail the politices of seduction and PUA within the S&M community? I'm curious to know if its similar to the gay community.

A lot of people in the S&M community, men and women, go there because they want to experiment sexually and talk about sex. This means that you can't signal that you're flirting by talking about sex. (I have often found myself miscalibrated for a given environment for this reason -- I usually default to assuming that conversations about sex are intellectual are friendly, rather than flirtatious.)

It's also much more possible to do something like walk up to someone at an S&M club, have a short conversation, and say "Want to try being tied up?" or "Want to try flogging me?" But the game matters in the S&M community, like everywhere.

Okay, so seriously, I know I've been saying this over and over again, but you have to buy my book. You're already reaching conclusions that it took me a while to reach!

This is another situation where I'm gonna quote straight from the Psychology Today interview:

CLARISSE: "Strategic ambiguity" is a phrase that I devised in Confessions to describe the contrast, challenge, unpredictability, and novelty that can make romance more exciting. Some couples seek ambiguity by doing novel and challenging things together, like playing difficult board games together or attending new events. Some people explore new forms of sexuality together. S&M creates intense ambiguity sometimes, especially when people really challenge their boundaries together; the boundaries of physical pleasure and pain are never simple. And I think that "the game" described by pickup artists fits somewhere into these activities as well.

Some people want a more straightforward romantic interaction, but a lot of people enjoy being a little uncertain about where things are going or how things will work out. Many people seem to like setting social tests for each other, verbal sparring, et cetera. At the same time, if these interactions become too ambiguous, then they're toxic. I like pushing myself in some ways with S&M, but if I never have a clue what my S&M partner might do, or if I'm afraid he might break my leg or something, then I'm not interested. The ambiguity has to be contained, and there has to be some amount of mutual understanding and boundary-setting: it has to be strategic.

haha, yeah, it happened a few times. One guy ran a bunch of classic routines on me, like The Cube, but we both knew what was going on so it was just funny and awkward and kind of charming in a weird way. Another guy tried to run some hardcore game on me (like when I said "I'm not going to have sex with you" he was like "there are so many definitions of sex"). It didn't work, though I did fuck with his head a little bit. It's all in the book.

A dude named @BasementBoi on Twitter asked me to answer this question on the thread: "Well does #PUA reinforce old (male) role models and therefore the patriachy? Or are there 'progressive elements' in it?"

I know you're all getting tired of hearing about my book, but in fact I talked about this A LOT in Confessions. There are some progressive elements in PUA, like the recognition of Anti-Slut Defense and women's fears of being pigeonholed for our sexuality. But yeah, it has a ways to go, and some PUAs are terrible people while others are totally decent and awesome guys.

There's an entire chapter in my book that deconstructs Heartiste :)

I don't link to his stuff very often because I don't want to promote him. I imagine that's the same reason he didn't review my book.