One of the reasons I like living in the Bay Area are the social occasions one rarely finds anywhere else. One such recent one I attended was Slutcon (more on the event here). When I first saw the event announcement showing up on twitter, I bought tickets without thinking it twice. A heuristic I live by is living as if you're the main character in some novel and do what would go along with the overarching story while being fun to read. And in this case the plot demanded that I go.

I didn't feel like writing an hour-by-hour summary of the event, but rather muse on what I think was the most salient common thread throughout: embodied authenticity or self-acceptance.

During one of the sessions, an acquaintance , a woman called I. commented that she hates it when men contort themselves (metaphorically speaking) into a shape just to please her, or when they try to figure out which buttons to press in her to get her to do what they want. When she said that I thought "that's it!" This is something that I can see why it would bother her and I can see why many men would not get why is it a problem. What she said reminded me of something Aella, one of the organizers, had written in the past:

But my body does not like them. One man talks about his failures in a tone that implies he's uncomfortable with himself, like somewhere deep down a part of him believes he's a bad person, and it seems that many of his bids for social approval are attempts to be reassured that he is in fact okay. [...]

Another guy… I’m not sure what his problem is exactly, but he seems to warp around me. He agrees with what I say a little too fast. He laughs at my jokes immediately. His hands twitch with nervous energy. He seems nice enough, but he seems afraid of me, and like he’s putting in a huge amount of effort to make himself seem not afraid of me. His body tension reminds me of the way I feel when I’ve appeared on high-pressure public shows and I don’t want people to know that I’m really scared right now. I feel as though my presence towers above him, and I have to be delicate with him, like if I speak too honestly he'll crumble in my hands.

In that very same session, the topic of "men don't ask women enough questions" also came up (as it does in the piece I linked). In that moment I also thought: yeah but many women like it when the guy expresses competence talking about some technical topic (which is at odds with asking questions during the instants where the infodumping is happening). Which way, western woman?

I personally sit more in the "I like asking questions" side of things (I mean my default existence is being confused/wonder at the world, generating, and answering questions and writing about them in this blog lol). I was somewhat serious when I told someone at the event "I want to know you as deeply as you know yourself and give you nothing about me in return (because I've done it many times and find it not super fun to do, but I love learning about people!)"

Once I found myself at a party barraging a girl, K. with question after question about her, I joked that it must feel like an interview and asked if she was enjoying it (she was). But I could also imagine some other situation where someone else might have wanted to just listen to me being smart about topics I know about. But this seems like asking: during a dance should the next step be X or Y? There is a skillful answer to that question in the moment, but one cannot foresee that upfront. Conversations are improvisational so you have to "read the vibe": If a joke doesn't land, that's information, if the other person looks bored, that's information. If they seem enthusiastic that's information. One could, in theory, be running an internal lookup table like "If enthusiastic then note what I was doing and do it again" but smart women will see through that.

Instead, the right thing to do is to not do anything. This will make more sense if one has tried to go deep into meditation where there are states that initially you want to reach that you can't achieve if during the process of trying to achieve them you really crave them. You can't jhana if you want to jhana once you get to a retreat but you can decide to go to a retreat, which will increase the odds of getting to that goal. You have to trust that they will come if you allow them, but be deeply okay if they don't come.

Essentially, if you trust yourself (or are fully self-accepting "all the way down") that will be reflected in body language, words, and actions. In the example earlier, someone who is fundamentally insecure about being single won't be deeply okay with being rejected and that lack of okayness then emits a bad needy vibe which keeps the person single (cue Joe Hudson's golden algorithm). This is even worse if one's somewhat on the spectrum or disembodied becuase then you won't notice.

"But I want a girlfriend!" one might reply. "Are you saying that once you stop wanting it you'll have it? That's deranged!". I'm not quite saying that; more precisely I am saying that craving it is what will keep you single. In the dance example, imagine someone really really really really want to do one of these dips, but the follow is not into it, maybe it feels unsafe. A good dancer will pick up the vibe and do something else. They deep down do want to do one of those dips, but they don't have to.

Isn't that, however, doing that "contorting oneself" move that gave I. the ick? Not really, but that is a really good point. The icky move would be to ask her what is every step she wants to do and then dance just that. That would mean you have no preferences, you are a mirror offering nothing but what she already has. The non-icky thing is having a range of options and being flexible the right amount at the right time. The non-icky thing is vibing without forcing yourself to vibe. It's hard to vibe "all the way down" if you are not really sure, in your bones, that you are enjoying that very moment. Ideally you are fullsending every moment of your experience with all your being, which means you are never bored.

To illustrate the importance of vibe, even the "ask women more questions" recommendation can backfire if done from a bad place. A while back I asked my now ex-roommate why did she like movies? . That annoyed her greatly. The reason is that, at the time, I wasn't asking it to undertand her better but rather I was in a mode of being where:

  1. I don't like movies as much as she did [I was aware of this]
  2. I don't understand why someone would like movies this much [I was aware of thos]
  3. Maybe she's wrong and she should like them less [I was initially unaware I was embodying this belief]
  4. Or maybe I'm wrong and I should start watching more movies [I was initially unaware I was embodying this belief]
  5. I have to get this information about what is there to be liked about movies from her [I was initially unaware I was embodying this belief]

ie I was craving the information, though at the time, in my mind "I was just asking questions", but probably the body language and vibe was letting through these not so wholesome intentions. This was one of the things that got me to start being interested in various forms of therapy. Switching my habit of asking questions from a place of fear to a place of wonder was something that makes life more pleasant and the first thing that made me go "huh therapy works". (That was with theo and georgina, if you want recommendations)

One of the workshops tried to teach this lesson of vibes and embodiment: The coach, Nick Grant asked some women to sit together and chat to each other, then he asked a guy to talk towards them and ask one for their number. Then he asked the women for the vibe they got. Then he asked the guy to push him repeatedly. Initially the pushes were kinda meh but after a few the guy was pushing with at least a hint of genuine aggression. After that he asked him to go again and everyone in the room noted that the vibe had shifted: the voice was a bit lower, the way they walked more confident, and what they said seemed more coherent with what they wanted, they seemed less timid.

They were not told how to walk or what to say or what vibe to embody, all they did was pushing someone a couple of times. In the initial approaches there was probably a bit of fear and anxiety, and that goes against the initial goal of "getting their number". They were not fullsending their intention with all their being, whereas the playful aggression got the guys in a more "I'm going to get what I want" mindspace. The point of that was not to have a wingman to push around (lol) but rather it served as an example that body and mind are one integrated system and that one can shift the state of the whole thing by interventions on one, the other, or both. Given this, one could imagine building an entire skill tree: being attuned to oneself to "know what you want" and not losing awareness of where one is (what other things one wants, what else is in the environment) to then take the skillful action. This all sound a bit like Alexander's Technique or Art of Accomplishment perhaps or Gendlin's Focusing if one wants to investigate more.

I have yet to figure out the theory behind that exercise; in a way it felt like having a Michelin-tier chef successfully teaching you how to cook a delicious dish, while leaving you to wonder the motivation behind a specific step in the recipe. I expect to find out over the coming months.