“High Value Woman” Culture Is Just Prostitution In Disguise—Here’s How

Flirting with a woman used to mean complimenting her, showing off your charm with a joke, or relying on some physical chemistry. Now, a certain subset of dating advice advises asking women for their Venmos to send them money, replacing affection and charisma with a move that begins relationships on a transactional note. With self-proclaimed high-value women saying they won’t accept coffee dates because they “aren’t enough of an investment” on the man’s part and other women making lists of dinner locations they’ll refuse, women have begun to make it clear that they see their own value reflected in the amount of money men are willing to spend on them. Perhaps then, it’s no wonder manosphere influencers have begun seeing modern dating as a transaction with cash on one side and sexual favors on the other.

This trend arises as women have been searching for ways out of hookup culture, recognizing, correctly, that the current state of affairs has nothing to offer them. As a result, many have found their way to the “high value woman” movement, an approach to dating that’s somewhere between a mindset and a tactical strategy for the modern dating market. While believing in your value as a woman is great, the advice that often comes from “high value dating” accounts tends to be focused on getting a guy’s commitment by being extremely materialistic, often treating him more like a prospective ATM than a potential partner. Hookup culture definitely needs to go, but is making men pay for access to your heart and body really an improvement? Or is “high value dating” just prostitution with extra steps?

Back to Basics

Today’s high value woman trend predates TikTok. Much of it can be traced back to a movement called “Female Dating Strategy,” popularized years ago on Reddit. Female Dating Strategy, or FDS, takes an antagonistic view of men as enemies on the opposite side of the dating game, resulting in what’s basically the female version of “red pill” ideology for men. FDS now runs a website and podcast, among other accounts, featuring an entire section titled “Lies Men Tell” with articles like “All Men Have In Life Is The Audacity.” FDS is at its heart a feminist ideology, seeing men as opponents to be strategically conquered in a game of hypergamy. The patriarchy, they argue, thrives because women don’t hold men to high enough standards. Dismantling it, then, involves cutting men down to size by treating them with skepticism and showing them they’re not worthy of you. 

Women have begun to make it clear that they see their own value reflected in the amount of money men are willing to spend on them. 

Just like red pill men, for people who claim they’re “going their own way,” FDS adherents give their opposite-sex enemies a lot of rent free space in their heads. They also see women who don’t think men are inherently bad as “pick mes,” and the unhinged but official FDS handbook dedicates entire sections to “Pickmeisha Rehab” to help women understand that men are not our friends. A lot of their vocabulary is directly inverted from the manosphere: “Realize that AMALT (All Men Are Like That)” the handbook reads, “Thinking ‘Not all men’ is DETRIMENTAL to your safety.” The Strategy routinely refers to men as “scrotes,” a derogatory term for men derived from male genitalia, and includes material that feels not far removed from self-hypnosis: “...realize that you have been surrounded by men who exhibit microaggression towards women, you have been brainwashed by other PickMe's … Think about the men who try to control our bodies, who use us to fulfill their sick fantasies, the statistics on violence … we are meant to be meek, feeble and to endure abuse.”

Female Pick-Up Artists

FDS, as the intellectual grandmother of high value woman culture, may be unique in its outright hatred of men, but the advice coming out of the high value woman realm is essentially just FDS rebranded. High value woman culture is masquerading as teaching women to be conservative wives, but in reality, the result is anything but. Again, it’s crucial to stress that a lot of the tips aren’t actually bad advice, like telling women to avoid one-night stands or sleeping with men on the first few dates, or telling them that men who are serious about you don’t send 2 a.m. booty call texts. Other advice about looking for men with their lives together or dating with marriage in mind is similarly solid on the surface. Unfortunately, high value dating was always more about hypergamy and using men more than moral values, and it’s starting to show.

High value dating only pretends to be conservative to use it as a form of manipulation to manufacture scarcity. Rather than not sleeping around because it’s bad for you mentally and emotionally, is morally wrong, and could damage your future marriage, high value dating chooses instead to give men the key to your body once they’ve invested enough monetarily, not emotionally or with a commitment like marriage. Ultimately, this is trying to get all the benefits of actual conservative dating by treating it like pickup artistry. Rather than having your own morals and principles that keep you away from heartbreak, you just try to fake it by setting random standards that women online make up. Just like pickup artistry, high value woman advice largely tries to take shortcuts to self-confidence and morals, treating the opposite sex as a game to be played rather than a human being.

High Value Inflation

These manufactured standards are getting out of control, and they’re getting closer and closer to straight up asking for money in exchange for sex. One high value dating maxim that originated with FDS is that “walk dates are for dogs,” the idea being that serious men who make serious money can afford to take you out to a sit-down dinner on the first date rather than grabbing a coffee or drinks, or doing something activity-based like going for a walk.

Others have extreme standards even for men who do take you out to dinner, as was the case with the viral list of restaurants one TikToker swore women should “absolutely refuse” to go to on first dates.

Increasingly, others are beginning to cut right to the chase, arguing for an exchange of literal cash from men. Even once in committed relationships, many women effectively want to be “rented,” expecting their men to pay standard fees for their hair, nails, and even bills, for the privilege of dating them rather than dates or flowers as a spontaneous gift of love and affection. 

You Are Not a Product

Ultimately, “high value dating” didn’t start with TikTok, and it didn’t start with FDS. It’s the oldest profession in the world. There’s a word for when women offer sex after a certain monetary investment: prostitution. Holding off on sex because you don’t feel a strong enough emotional connection or because you want the commitment of marriage is a very good idea. But holding off because female pickup artists tell you he hasn’t spent enough money on you yet is effectively putting your body up for sale. Ultimately, the problem with reducing men to their wallets isn’t just about how you’re treating them, it’s that you’re seeing relationships as transactions. 

Just like pickup lines don’t work on mature women, high value dating tricks don’t work on men who are actually husband material, and trying to game the system is only going to keep you from finding good men who are too mature for those kinds of games. Seeing men through red pill-colored glasses is self-defeating too. If you’re basing how you value a man exclusively on his income, not whether he’d make a good husband and father, you’re just going to end up marrying for money rather than a connection.

Closing Thoughts

While there’s nothing wrong with wanting to be treated well by your man, optimizing for the amount a man has (and will spend on you) rather than his personality is effectively asking him to do the same. Treating men like ATMs is telling them that what you each bring to the table is money and sex, not your morals, ambitions, and personalities. If you don’t owe the men you’re dating access to your body (and to be clear, you don’t), they don’t owe you their bank accounts, either.

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