“No Does Not Always Mean No”: The Discursive Representation of Female Sexual Rejection as “Last Minute Resistance” in Pick-Up Artist Communities

Abstract

This study examines the representation of female sexual rejection within pick-up artist (PUA) communities, which are groups of heterosexual men who aspire to become experts in the “art of seducing women.” Driven by critical discourse analysis, the study explores how PUAs share their strategies about how to overcome women’s refusal to engage in sexual activities during a date, which they refer to as “last minute resistance.” The first part of the study highlights how PUAs tend to disregard verbal or physical rejection, interpreting it as a form of token resistance that needs to be defeated. The second section analyzes the syntactic-lexical semantic interface between agency and the gender of the subjects involved in the corpus, showing how PUAs portray themselves as dynamic agents who “lead the game,” while women are the “passive objects” of their pursuits. By exposing PUAs’ distorted discourse, the study contributes to raising awareness about toxic representations of consent and promoting a more respectful approach to sexual interactions.