One of the more interesting aspects of the Red Band trailer of IHTSBIH is how Tucker Max uses banter to irritate and humiliate in a situation where women initially engage him in either a seductive or challenging way, preferring the hot woman who plays hard to get. So he’s all about a certain type of performative masculinity and male-initiated seduction process rather than sex per se.

1.) I never claimed to be confident.
2.) I never mocked anyone.
3.) I’m pretty sure you’re wrong, and have added very little to the discussion. I implore you to find something in what I’ve written that’s mocking.
4.) Your metaphor didn’t do very much for me. It felt forced.

You might have noticed, had you not been inflating your ego like a steroid-junkie with a penis pump.

I think it takes a lot of confidence to turn down millions of dollars because you think you can do something better than anybody has ever done it before. Whether or not he’s right is a subject of some debate, but his almost cartoonishly inflated confidence, is, I think, not.

Rape is a terrible thing.

So terrible a thing as to never be a source for humor, you might argue. And if that’s your only argument, then the whole thing is little more than a disagreement over the level of transgressiveness you’re willing to tolerate in humor (and I DO believe there’s always a level of transgressiveness, even in something as unobjectionable as a lolcat). Such discussions are unlikely to be very fruitful, to be honest, and I think both sides of this argument are stuck yowling into echo chambers, but that’s not really my concern. Whatever makes you happy.

What I do have a problem with, as somebody who read the book (didn’t really like it that much, he and I have different senses of humor), saw the movie (deeply flawed, but with good to very good lead acting and a script rife with genuinely clever one-liners), and has done some research into Tucker himself (narcissistic, sometimes childish, but undeniably incredibly smart and motivated), is misleading and logically problematic arguments that seek to impugn huge categories of people you’ve never met.

Simply put, arguing that Tucker Max at all coerces women into sex, especially now, is just entirely wrong. If anything, women attempt to coerce him into sex; the idea that he’d have to get a girl drunk at this point is just silly. Furthermore, re: his fan base, you’re stretching logic to imply causation when there probably isn’t even correlation.

A lot of his fans are douchebags, and some of them might be misogynist. But to imply that simply because somebody is a fan of Tucker means that they’re a douchebag is simply wrong. Similarly, assuming that because seems to hold women in low regard that they’re a fan of him is also wrong. I don’t think we need a confusing, probably misleading explanation of Bayes’ theorem to agree on that.

Finally, I want to address this, because I feel like there’s a very easy middle ground, and both sides almost certainly agree on this point:

“The bottom line is girls don’t need an excuse to fuck. Most of us actually like to do it, so if we’re not doing it with you, it’s because we don’t want to. You don’t need to trick us. It’s that simple.”

This, if you didn’t know, is shockingly similar to what Tucker espouses. When he speaks about “game” ( a term I actually don’t like much), really all he means is “conduct without which the desired ends wouldn’t happen.” Most of the focus of his advice is internal — being more confident, better read, in better shape — it’s not about trickery or coercion. I implore you to read what he has to say about the subject, because it’s essentially the same as what you have to say, only from the perspective of a boorishly hyperliterate internet celebrity.

Thanks for reading this far.

I’d like to know a bit more about what you mean.

If I understand you correctly, you’re saying that while women are living in a hell-on-earth and being raped repeatedly in the Congo, we can’t compare our situation to what they are living through?

Over here, we’re not trying to make a comparison with the conditions and the safety of women and children the Congo, whose lives are at risk on a daily basis and swept into a civil war, to how women are living in America. That isn’t accurate or remotely useful.

What we’re doing is pointing out to Tucker Max and his fans that we women actually like sex, so you don’t need to trick, coerce or force us into it. Try talking or flirting or coming from a place of respect, that might work better!