Dr. Phil fallout, Magic Bullets review, and feminism

So there's been a lot written about The Don and I going on the Dr Phil show. Some people who hadn't previously heard much about dating science or Love Systems (formerly Mystery Method Corp) were upset..including a particularly negative perspective from Marie's Maine Weblog.

I don't generally care what anonymous or random people on the internet are saying, but reading through the comments on the post, it seemed that Marie was genuinely trying to engage discussion and wasn't dogmatic. When a few people suggested that she buy my book Magic Bullets and get a full sense of what and how we teach, I offered her a free copy - and today she published a full review of Magic Bullets, which was kind of fun.

One interesting thing Marie said when we were emailing to arrange for her to have a copy of the book is that she was a feminist, but not "a radical 'patriarchy is evil' feminist". I've been asked the feminism question in interviews before and I've never really seen any reason why being a feminist means one wouldn't accept dating science for men. I suppose it depends on how you define feminism, but if we're using the term to mean recognizing that historically women haven't had equality of opportunity with men, that it was right to make legal and political changes to move closer to equality of opportunity, and that this work isn't finished, then I don't think too many people involved with Love Systems would disagree with that. I also think that one can recognize where legislative or legal changes have gone too far or had bad consequences without negating the principle of equalty of opportunity based feminism. Point being, there's nothing about dating science - at least how we approach it at Love Systems - that is anti-women or even anti-feminist. Just like being a feminist doesn't mean you have to hate men or hate dating science for men.

OK, enough political theory. I've been watching the US election coverage too long.