Though they still misrepresent the concept of "negging," which is a stupid thing but isn't about "lowering women's self esteem" (or at least it wasn't back when I still found PUAs morbidly fascinating enough to even pay attention, I wouldn't be surprised if it was now actually). The old PUA vanguard were pretty explicit about it NOT being about that, the idea was/is that when you were talking to women you would rib them a bit to "prove that you were treating them as equals" rather than treating them differently than you would other men. In practice, of course, it just comes off as insecure and fake and awkward if not outright meanspirited, but it's (at least nominally) stupid in a different way than it's usually presented by PUA's opponents.


Details like this actually matter, because misrepresenting PUA just undermines the credibility of the people criticizing it, and there's more than enough legitimate criticism to be leveled at it. The We Hunted the Mammoth guy does this all the time, and it just helps perpetuate the antagonism on both sides.

I'm pretty sure perpetual antagonism is their goal.

It sure isn't concrete, practical results.

Nowdays I agree, but if you look back before they were getting much outside attention it was more complex. Now that they have a (nebulous, semi-imaginary) common enemy they've gotten into deeply weird, reactionary ideological stuff and seem to be a lot more monolithic than they once were, but I still think that it's important to recognize that there's more going on with them than the caricature the people who have made a lifestyle out of opposing them present them as (however close to home that caricature may happen to be).


What it really boils down to is that you can't change a person's beliefs by attacking them, much less a whole group of like-minded people. Also, just because a reactionary has the moral high ground doesn't mean they aren't reactionary, hence my distaste for a lot of the people who have installed themselves as the public faces/social gatekeepers for the antifeminist-backlash backlash.

N.B. the stuff I'm talking about mostly predates Paul Elam and Roosh and their ilk, who really pushed the whole thing a lot farther into the worst aspects of the old Mystery era that seemed more delusional than willfully malicous.