Don't Bang Denmark

”Don’t bang Denmark” by “Roosh V” (Daryoush Valizadeih) is a book about a Canadian pick up artist trying out his techniques on Danish women and failing, because Denmark is too feminist and based. Given that I am a Danish woman, I feel I might be able to provide an interesting take on Roosh’s experience.

The pick up artistry movement has been criticized for being sexist, tolerant of abuse and rape, cringe and obnoxious. This book is all of those things; however, I feel it necessary to mention that Roosh has since shut his blog down, unpublished all his books, and converted to Armenian Orthodox Christianity. This is the seeming fate of these types of men, because the original author of “The Game”, the foundational text of pick up artistry, has since written “The Truth” where he apologizes for his earlier work and says the lifestyle it advocated made him miserable.

“Don’t bang Denmark” is one of many travel/sex guides Roosh has published. There is also Bang Ukraine, Bang Poland, Don’t Bang Latvia, and so on. In Denmark’s version, Roosh’s main thesis as to why pick up artistry doesn’t work here are these two and a half points:

1. Danish society makes it taboo to be an alpha male, and Danish women are thus not interested in them

2. Danish women are ugly and manly anyway

What is pick up artistry?

The book is not for the new pick up artist. There’s no rundown of terms, techniques etc in it, so I had to do additional research.

Pick up artistry is not to be confused with incels or “the blackpill”. Incel ideology assert that women only care about looks, and are all attracted to the same narrow percentage of modelesque dudes. You might earn a lot of money and act masculine and get the girl that way, but that will not make her genuinely attracted to you. Prepare for unfulfilling duty sex and getting your kids and assets snagged. Incel culture has its roots on the internet. At its worst, it is a kind of death cult with how much people talk about suicide on incel forums.

Pick up artistry, however, has its roots in the LA nightlife in the 90’s and 2000’s. Men wrote guides on how to pick up chicks, the one you have probably heard of being “The Game”. A couple of techniques include:

“Peacocking” – wear weird outstanding clothes to get attention
Negging – tease girls about their looks or voice or something else
Kino escalation – going from lighter non-sexual touch to more and more sexual
Push-pull – playing it hot and cold
“Inner game” – being confident and liking yourself

Probably, there is a lot of redeeming qualities to be found within pick up artistry. I’m in no way against charm school for boys. I’m not against men getting better at wooing women for casual sex. Those would be fine. I think measured overconfidence, working out and being slightly teasing is something many women appreciate.

Whatever is going on in this book is none of that.

Danish society makes it taboo to be an alpha male

By far the most interesting of Roosh’s assertions is this one. He writes:

“The Danish system of equality is further amplified by Jante Law, a set of cultural rules that is deeply engrained in every Dane. Its main tenet can be summed up as: “No one is superior to anyone else.” …

“It’s taboo to show off, brag, or even indirectly show your value. You can’t talk about how much you enjoy your job, how you bought an awesome brand new anything, or how generally happy you are with life—anything that might show how you may be better than your audience”.

So “Law of Jante” is a selection of satirical laws in the book En flygtning krydser sit spor by Aksel Sandemose, written in 1933. The book is satirizing the insular small town mentality of the Danish island Mors. In the book it is teasingly called The Ten Commandments:

You are not to think you are anything special.
You are not to think you are as good as we are.
You are not to think you are smarter than we are.
You are not to imagine yourself better than us.
You are not to think you know more than we do.
You are not to think you are more important than we are.
You are not to think you are good at anything.
You are not to laugh at us.
You are not to think anyone cares about you.
You are not to think you can teach us anything.

I doubt most Danes are aware of the satirical origin of the term, though. In my experience, it is almost exclusively used negatively: ie, “I just hate the jantelov in this place”. Other countries have similar terms, like the Australian “Tall Poppy Syndrome”. Roosh explains:

“The Danish egalitarian system and Jante Law feed on each other to form what is one of the most liberal, feminist-friendly societies in the world. Therefore, when it comes to getting laid, your American attitude and belief system will cockblock the fuck out of you before you even open your mouth. Since basically the entire point of game is showing you’re better than the next guy, something that Jante Law specifically forbids, it’s no surprise to find that game efforts will not be well received in Denmark, especially if you consider yourself an alpha male. It was amusing how often and how quickly I’d offend every Danish girl without even trying.”

Okay, interesting. What is he saying that offends the Danish girls?

For example, let’s take a look at this statement: “When I was in Colombia for six months, I studied Spanish. I got good at it, but now I suck again.” A pretty innocent way to show value to a girl, right? Not in Denmark. I’m implying that I’m more well-traveled than her and also more knowledgeable in the realm of language. I’m breaking Jante Law. The girl will punish me by withdrawing from the conversation”

I am very amused at this thought process. My guy, you are talking to a chick in her second language, and she is supposed to feel impressed that you suck at one?

Another banger:

I remember once I told a Danish girl that girls in Iceland have a lot of “slut guilt” from sleeping with guys so quickly (an innocuous statement, no?). She responded by yelling at me about how I’m wrong and that Icelandic girls are not sluts and everyone should be able to sleep with everyone. While I agree I shouldn’t have gone into that line of conversation, she reacted as if I had just called her mother a whore. Apparently in Denmark the insinuation that any girl could be a slut is a capital offense. Needless to say, I didn’t fuck that girl.

Apparently, the best way to sleep with women is to try to impress them with things that are not impressive and call other women sluts.

Danish women are ugly and manly anyway

“One feature of the Danish girl that bothered me the most was her masculine walking style. She keeps her arms still while hunching her shoulders over like a wild boar, as if she wants to barrel into something. Sometimes she tilts her head down to add to the masculine effect. I don’t know where they learned how to walk, but I can assure you it’s not feminine.”

“Their tits are of respectable size, but their asses are pancakes, not helped by their love of jeans so baggy that they often have to pull them up. If you’re an ass man like myself, you’ll be in tears by your second night in Denmark.”

“Things get even worse when you take personality into account. Danish women possess no flirting ability. They have zero charm and zero allure. Not a feminine drop of blood courses through their veins. They don’t know how to treat you well, cook for you, or make you laugh. They don’t know how to look sexy. They won’t defer to your masculinity. They can fuck you, but no more. What they do have are pussies and opinions you really don’t care about hearing. That’s it. Denmark takes top prize for having the most unfeminine and androgynous robotic women I’ve met in the world.”

Two entire chapters go on and on like this.

I don’t have much to add to it, except that my ass is super round and I make a mean ratatouille.

He has a couple of more objective criticisms, one being that he met some hypocritical racists (author says something generalizing and mean, Danish woman is offended and ask him to stop being mean, proceeds to say something racist about Polish people two seconds later), another that Danes will not take an ounce of criticism about Denmark from an American. This is correct. This book is solidly pre-Trump, so I can only imagine it is worse now. Europeans in general will be childish about the dumb stupid dumb-dumb Americans having any negativity towards us whatsoever. Fair enough.

Another interesting thing I’ve learned from this book is that women outside of Denmark are great rationalists. Danish women are “combative” and don’t like being called out on their hypocrisy and logical fallacies. Normally I’m an egalitarian, but perhaps we do need more affirmative action in the way of politics and governing if women who are not Danish readily and eagerly admit when they make mistakes. I’m gravitating towards thinking women outside Denmark just giggle and smile and entertain men they disagree with because they’re socialized to, but secretly disagree and internally roll their eyes; this is super biased and just a stereotype however, so I’d love if the author went more into detail on this, but alas.

In which the author admits the superiority of the Danish ways

Surprisingly, Roosh expresses much admiration for Denmark’s welfare system, which together with aforementioned janteloven is his theory on why pick up artistry doesn’t work in Denmark.

“The Danish welfare state is admirable: every citizen receives fully covered cradle- to-grave services. A Danish person has no idea what it feels like to not have medical care or free access to university education. (…) To an American like myself, brainwashed to believe that you need to earn things like basic health care or education by working your ass off, it was quite a shock.”

“(…) In spite of the negatives, I think the Danish economic and welfare system is superior to the American system for one simple reason: it’s fair.”

Like wealth, sex is redistributed in Denmark:

While the Danish government has made human rights more egalitarian, Jante Law has made sex more egalitarian. Instead of a few guys fucking all the women like in the States (while the sexual losers stay home and play World of Warcraft), you have more Danish guys getting laid, though with fewer partners.”

Danish guys do things like “going to parties where they already know people” and “have a big social circle” and “act nice” to get laid.

“Social circle is the main way Danish people get laid. One-night stands happen more from mutual introductions than cold approaches”(…) “This is probably why Danish guys love university bars so much—they’ll automatically know a lot of people.”

“The optimum night game to have is this: nice guy who approaches a lot and isn’t shy about going for the one-night stand. I understand that this is a bit contradictory, since nice guys don’t go for one-night stands, but that’s the best way I can put it.”

The author considers our egalitarian culture a trade-off. He prefers acting cocky and mildly insulting girls. He likens America to a jungle where each man must fend for himself, and Denmark to a zoo where you get taken care of.

“(…)That’s fine for most people, but I’ve spent way too much time happily surviving in the jungle to pack my bags and move into the zoo.”

To each his own.

What is this guy even doing?

Overall, this book leaves me confused as to how this pick up artistry is supposedly working outside of Denmark. He spends the much of the book talking about calling women annoying bitches to their face because he’s resenting Danish women so much for not sleeping with him or responding to his game, and being gleeful that he has offended them. He makes shit attempts at impressing them – I did not cherrypick the mentioned example, that is his only example. He actively admits that normal Danish guys have casual sex by having a social circle and going to parties with people they have some connection to, instead of brute-forcing randoms at bars, and that they have no need to be “alpha males”. Roosh instead feels the need to respond like a labyrinth to normal questions.

When a girl asked me what I was doing in Denmark, I would say, “I bought a farm in Jutland. It’s always been my dream to be a farmer.” Some girls would give me a stone face, as if saying, “Look, asshole, just cut the shit and tell me what the fuck you’re doing here.” In that case, if you still want to talk to her, you’ll have to be more “boring” with your conversation by giving direct answers. The younger girls usually get taken in by humorous responses, which you can milk for a while before revealing the truth.”

Why is all this working on women who are not Danish? Where are your spines?

Speaking of…

Does pick up artistry even work?

Towards the latter quarter of the book, Roosh writes about his “approach index”:

My approach index states how many girls an average-looking guy with decent game has to approach before he’s likely to bang a cute girl (not including Internet approaches). Since there are so many variables involved, the index is best used to compare easiness of one country with another. First let me share the numbers from previous countries, from easiest to hardest:

Iceland: 40
United States: 45
Brazil: 50
Colombia: 60
Argentina: 90

From these numbers, we can conclude that a man has to do twice as many approaches to get laid in Argentina than the United States. I attempted to count how many approaches to get my first bang in Denmark, but I stopped counting at around 50. I estimate I didn’t fuck until approach 70 or so, which for a liberal Scandinavian country is contrary to what you’d expect.

…Huh.

Imagine buying a guide on how to get good at taming horses. The author defines success as being able to tame about every 50th horse you try to break.

I’d want my money back.

My favorite blogger, Ozy Brennan, has a post titled The Dark Secrets of the Alpha Male Revealed. In it, Ozy analyzes the men that they know that has a lot of female sex partners. Some of these you have heard before: they’re funny and/or good at something interesting, they’re not needy. they’re not against banging promiscuous women and they like a wide variety of women as opposed to only going after female Magic: The Gathering Players because logistically there are just not that many female card game nerds, never mind female card game nerds who are chaste yet DTF with only you.

But, most importantly, they put a shit ton of hours into meeting women. Brennan observes,

In the time periods when they’re acquiring lots of new sexual partners, sexually successful men tend to keep schedules I find tiring. “Oh, I have a costume party Friday night,” they say, “and then a picnic on Saturday afternoon, and then I’m going to drop in briefly to a dinner before I go off to movie night, and then most of my Sunday is consumed with a LARP but I have choir practice in the evening and the board game cafe’s on the way so I think if I skip debrief I can squeeze in a game of Hanabi.” And then I’m like “and you’re resting on Monday night? Non-euphemistic Netflix and chill?” and they’re like “nah, on Monday I’m going to spend two hours on Tinder.”

And asks some hard questions:

Care more about having sex than you do about other things. There are sexually successful men who break every other rule I laid out: who are picky or boring or high-drama or mean or needy or nonvulnerable or who hate sluts or women or people. There are even sexually successful introverts. But if you want to be a sexually successful man, you have to care a lot about having sex.

“What?” you might say. “Obviously I care a lot about having sex. Who doesn’t?” But:

Are you willing to go out four times a week to meet women?
Are you willing to spend hours on Tinder?
Are you willing to strike up conversations with strangers you run into in your daily life?
Are you willing to risk being accused of sexual harassment?
Are you willing to learn about fashion and spend a bunch of money on nice clothes?
If you found out the women you’re attracted to really like men in dresses and makeup, are you willing to wear a dress and makeup?
Are you willing to dance in public?
Are you willing to do sex acts you don’t particularly like but that get your partner off?
Can you imagine yourself saying, “I’m not attracted to dicks, but this trans girl is dysphoric about her dick and doesn’t want me to touch it, so it was all good and I fucked her in the ass”?

Are you?

Conclusion (??)

Despite how utterly nuts this book is, I actually think the author is half right. When acting weird and annoying, you can probably bag one out of 50 women you approach.

What he says about having sex through social circles, and most young men having some amount of casual sex through said circles, rings true to me. Parties with alcohol, on school ground, start at around 16; and this is multiple times a year, not just the sober prom like in the States. It’s rare to have no party experience, even if you’re a huge nerd. This culture is indeed better for the average man wanting to get laid, I think. Women feel more safe with people they know, and that their social circle have at least somewhat approved of, than randoms from a bar.

Because we’re degenerate feminists, Danish women also have less shame about sex. Even in other liberal, secular societies, I’ve observed that people will still often see casual sex as immature, unhealthy or a sign of issues. People who have casual sex don’t know how to commit or settle down. Most Danes think casual sex is fine and healthy, and what starts as a night of casual sex often develops into a serious relationship. Instead of only having casual sex with aggressively overconfident strangers spending a lot of effort convincing her of the idea, Danish women fear slut shaming less and are fine having sex with people they know, even if all their friends will know about it.

I theorize that Danes do prefer bragging and “showing value” (barf) in more subtle ways than Americans do, although all of the examples this guy gave of him trying to brag made me face palm. There’s a way to show how interesting you are without sounding like you’re trying to land a deal with an investor.

Men are supposedly extremely sex driven, or so my female-to-male transgender friends tell me. Yet most men do not spend 10% as much time as these pick up artists do trying to get it on. I hereby forbid you from calling yourself an incel until you do.