Seduction: men, masculinity, and mediated intimacy

"Within the so-called 'seduction community', the ability to meet and attract women is understood as a skill heterosexual men can cultivate through practical training and personal development. As a cultural formation it has been the object of media speculation - and frequent sensationalism - for over a decade, but remains poorly understood. In the first book-length study of this fascinating community-industry, Rachel O'Neill takes us into the world of seduction seminars, training events, instructional guidebooks and video tutorials. Going beyond established understandings of 'pickup artists' as pathetic, pathological, or perverse, she examines what makes the industry so compelling for those drawn into its folds. Based on detailed ethnographic fieldwork, Seduction vividly portrays how the twin rationalities of neoliberalism and postfeminism are reorganising contemporary intimate life, as labour-intensive and profit-orientated modes of sociality consume other forms of being and relating. It is essential reading for students and scholars of gender, sexuality, media and cultural studies, as well as anyone who wants to understand the seduction industry's underpinning logics and internal workings"--

"In the first book-length study of the so-called 'seduction community', Rachel O'Neill goes beyond established understandings of 'pickup artists' as pathetic, pathological, or perverse, and examines what makes the industry so compelling for those drawn into its folds"--

Introduction. The spectacle of seduction; Researching the seduction industry in London; Seduction as mediated intimacy -- 1. The Work of Seduction. Cultivating a sexual work ethic; Anxious attachments; Desire and discontent; Intimate ambitions; Aspirational bodies; Intimate enterprise; Branding the sexual self; Professional imperatives -- 2. Pedagogy and Profit. Men, sex, silence; Styling masculinity; Making men; Masculinising spaces; The seductions of community; 'Professional friendship' -- 3. Manufacturing Consent. Systematising sex; Sex in the social factory; 'Last-minute resistance'; Buying in; Masculinist sex; Claiming truth -- 4. Seduction and Sexual Politics. Articulating aggrievement; 'It's just evolution of the species': evolutionary imperatives; 'Your whole masculinity gets lost': masculinity undone; 'You can't have it both ways': intimate inequality; After the aftermath, into the wreck -- Conclusion: Against Seduction. What gets between; Patching the system; Going forward -- Postscript: Power and Politics in Feminist Fieldwork. Negotiating femininity; Injurious intimacies; On being complicit; (En)countering others.