With predatory pick-up artists still around, women have the right to be angry

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By Clara Umali

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Pvblic News

For years, women have been dealing with oppression from men.

from all the sexism to sexualization, women’s anger has always been valid and continues to be as these cases don’t seem to go away, even as time passes by.

Female rage has been a term that has been going around social media to describe how women find power in their anger. Often shown in films, ‘The Menu’ actress Anya Taylor-Joy has been open about the portrayal of feminine rage in Hollywood in an interview.

Not straying away from the topic of Hollywood, the disparity between the pay of female and male creatives has been a topic openly discussed, showing that actors and male directors receive more than actresses and female crew do, and that is not the only thing women have to face in show business. Recently, ‘Stranger Things’ breakout actress Grace Van Dien, opened up in a Twitch live stream about how she has been turning down acting offers due to her experience with sexual harassment with an unnamed film producer.

That is only touching the tip of the iceberg in a very well-known industry. Women every day, in different situations and set-ups also face these and more. In fact, cases of domestic violence have risen during the COVID-19 lockdowns, impacting at least 1 out of 3 women and children based on supported data.

These things that women go through have been reported and tackled for years, and as much as it is upsetting to hear about these on the news or when a girl shares her experience on any regular day, it is even more frustrating to hear cases of women facing these issues on women’s month.

The rage against pick-up artists

In the Philippines, a group of pickup artists from the once controversial PUA Academy—now called “Smooth Coaching” have resurfaced. Women are again voicing out how they have been victimized by these men.

A tweet made by Twitter user @Hello_Kuting reignited this conversation. Last March 14, she shared on the platform how a man was following her around SM Bicutan. She then asked women who live around to be vigilant as the man seen on the media she attached had allegedly been following her since she was in High School, and now she is 25 years old. She followed it up with an incident report she did and the tweet later went viral.

But to her surprise, as more people began seeing her tweet, she found out she was not the only victim of the man seen in the video. As it also seems, he goes to different places to stalk other women too.

More women began speaking out about their uncomfortable experiences with the man and some users were even able to trace back a case he did in 2018.

Apparently, he has been doing this for years and is part of a larger group of men that do this to women.

According to a post that claims to know the man personally, he goes to Pick-Up Artist Academy, more commonly known as PUA Academy, which supposedly teaches men how to get girls. However, in reality, they allegedly have really problematic and misogynistic lessons that teach men how to “pick up” girls and get them to sleep with them.

In 2018, a victim came out about her experience with PUA Academy through a tweet, which caused the group to receive backlash. With so much proof, the Internet showed so much disgust against the practices and the men involved.

They were receiving so much heat that their founder, Ssein Meneses released a statement claiming the contrary of what the victim came out with.

However, the Internet continuously called out the PUA Academy for seemingly displaying toxic masculinity and glorifying sexual assault against women through their lessons.

Although it has been reported that the PUA Academy’s social media have been taken down, they seem to be making a comeback now through Smooth Coaching which still teaches the same twisted behavior to desperate men.

What they teach is not how “shy men” would approach women, as they claimed to be “Asia’s leading dating company”, instead it is a way how to be predatory and creepy.

Not only is stalking women and doing learned and practiced “tricks” to get them to sleep with men very harmful but PUA Academy shoving this false notion on their students that “women like to be forced into sex” and other false misogynistic stereotypes, further feed into the sexism and systemic oppression women face every day.

One would think that with the sign of the times and how advanced society seem nowadays that such dated beliefs and toxic practices would be gone at this point. However, things like these still happen every day which further proves the need for feminism.

banner by: @justdrawrin

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