In the early days, PUA only shared how men approached and accosted people they liked through applied skills and psychology. In recent years, with the increase of interested people, PUA has gradually commercialized and industrialized, becoming a lucrative industry, which also breeds the concept of materialized women. By teaching "emotional manipulation" skills, women can do whatever they want in emotional relationships. Many people think that this kind of "emotional manipulation" is immoral, vulgar but not illegal.
The reporter interviewed Kong Weiwei, the head of Little Red Riding Hood, a public welfare organization dedicated to exposing the truth of bad PUA. From March of 20 18 to the end of 20 18, she conducted an industry survey on PUA industry, invited 600 PUA learners and contacts to fill it out, and ensured the authenticity of the results through the design of polygraph and the setting of neutral attitude questions.
Kong Weiwei said that the dark side exposed by PUA is just the tip of the iceberg. Judging from the materials in her hand, the bad PUA involves at least "seven sins": uploading indecent videos between couples to the Internet, suspected of committing crimes involving pornography; Uploading female photos, occupations, families and other personal information without permission for showing off, which is suspected of infringing on the privacy rights of others; Selling photos and videos of women's lives as "tutorials" for profit is suspected of infringing on the portrait rights of others; Some PUA instructors belong to the high-risk group of infectious diseases because of their professional nature, knowing that they have infectious diseases, hiding their medical history and actively developing multiple sexual partners.
Deliberately spread the disease to more people and infringe on others' right to health; A lot of jargon, terminology and even ecstasy have been developed in the bad PUA industry, which makes women induced or forced to have sex without knowing, unable or afraid to resist, suspected of sexual assault and rape; PUA's main skills, such as "squeezing technology, reverse rationalization, exaggerating mistakes, pushing and pulling", violate the spirit of anti-domestic violence law by hurting cohabiting partners physically, mentally, sexually and economically; Some PUA courses spread such remarks as "polygamy", "training women into dogs" and "encouraging drug abuse and prostitution", which seriously violated public order and disrupted social order, and did not provide related services in the name of psychological counselors.
"It is of symbolic significance to impose administrative penalties on the dissemination of illegal PUA tutorials." Zhu Wei, deputy director of the Communication Law Research Center of China University of Political Science and Law, and Chea Chang, a lawyer of Guangdong Gufa Law Firm, said in an interview that PUA, as a brainwashing marketing, inspired and promoted some behaviors wandering in the legal gray area, and even had the characteristics of a cult. The judicial organs should take this opportunity to standardize and purify the whole industry.
Taking the clear application of law as a breakthrough to crack down on PUA bad organizations
The punishment of Jiangsu network police for publishing illegal PUA information is five days' detention and a fine of 50 thousand yuan. In the opinion of the interviewees, such illegal consequences are not directly proportional to their social harmfulness. Although PUA seems to be suspected of multiple crimes, it faces problems such as difficulty in obtaining evidence and vague application of law, especially PUA organizations, which are more difficult to be investigated for legal responsibility.
"Compared with before, this administrative punishment has been a great progress. Considering that the parties concerned have not caused serious social consequences and the existing evidence, I think the police's punishment is still appropriate. However, PUA has long been based on vague moral and legal boundaries, and there are still many unscrupulous PUA employees at large. " Chea Chang said that some PUA practitioners advocate abusing women and control them by cheating and encouraging women to commit suicide, which is suspected of intentional homicide, while instructors strongly abet and encourage students to commit crimes, which is also suspected of abetting. However, due to the secrecy of PUA communication means and the cloak of falling in love, victims often can't save evidence, so only a few PUA personnel and organizations have been hit by the judiciary.
"As far as I know, the proportion of PUA-related cases entering criminal proceedings is less than 1%. Some victims just filed civil lawsuits, and more people admitted that they were unlucky. " Kong Weiwei believes that in order to crack down on PUA organizations, we must first understand their industrial chain structure. One is the "selling results" mode, that is, the indecent videos of successful women are burned into CDs for profit. In this mode, the police can directly find the source PUA organization, which is easily identified as a crime; The other, more complicated, is the "trafficking process" model, that is, the process of hitting on women is made into a lesson plan or a video course, which is the most common form in PUA industry at present, and it is also the most headache for the police and regulatory authorities.
"They claim to provide knowledge services, which can be skills, culture or values. Although the course may be obviously distorted, it is only a' teaching process'. What is the final effect? It depends on the result of the individual's behavior, and the legal responsibility is borne by the individual. It is difficult for the police to take action at the source, especially it is difficult to link the criminal behavior of students with the organization. " Kong Weiwei said that this is also the positive significance of the Jiangsu case. The police directly cracked down on websites and platforms that spread PUA illegal content, which directly affected the source.
Zhu Wei also stressed that in order to strengthen the crackdown on PUA communication platform, the platform should also bear legal responsibility if illegal content is spread in the platform under the circumstances of knowing, should know and should know, and measures are still not taken to deal with it. In his view, the handling of PUA cases now is indeed facing the practical problems of difficulty in obtaining evidence and qualitative determination, and may be somewhat conservative in judicial handling.
"Therefore, I suggest to study the applicable charges as a breakthrough to provide guidance for judicial practice." Zhu Wei introduced that students commit crimes such as fraud, rape and illegal detention according to what they have learned. PUA organizations may be suspected of illegally using information networks and teaching criminal methods. They should study the application of these two crimes to deal with their illegal behavior. In addition, the PUA organization claims that the learning effect is very good, which ensures students' emotional achievements. The actual teaching may be fabricated so-called psychological knowledge or even vulgar and illegal words and tricks, which may violate the advertising law and be suspected of false propaganda or even fraud. All these need to be handled through typical cases or judicial interpretations, so as to strengthen the understanding and characterization of such crimes.
Comprehensively evaluate the social harmfulness and accurately crack down on illegal crimes.
Respondents believe that the crackdown on bad PUA is not enough now. Although the public has long been uncomfortable with the values of marriage and love advocated by PUA, its illegal cost and social harm are obviously unsuitable.
Kong Weiwei emphasized that the bad PUA damaged or even destroyed family and marriage concepts and social values, and its social harmfulness could not be explained by simple crimes such as pornography or rape. Her survey shows that the harm is two-way, and people who are addicted to PUA will also have interpersonal obstacles. Repentance after deep poisoning requires psychotherapy to restore normal thinking. Previously, some PUA students learned to be possessed. Because of illegal intrusion into the woman's house, she was finally sentenced to six months' criminal detention by the court for illegal intrusion into the house. The survey data also shows that 56% of the students studying in PUA are teenagers aged between 15 and 24, 65% of PUA contacts have bachelor's degrees, and 16% have master's or doctoral degrees. "These learners are the backbone of the future society, and their values of marriage and love should not be polluted by the PUA industry with bad ecology." Kong Weiwei said.
"The social harm of illegal PUA has already exceeded the negative impact brought by individual cases, and the contents and characteristics of anti-society, abnormal condition and cult doctrine contained in it will cause immeasurable hidden harm to society." Zhu Wei suggested that judicial organs should strengthen the source governance, expand reporting channels, vigorously crack down on organized PUA crimes, and actively establish a systematic PUA social harm assessment and monitoring mechanism to improve the accuracy of the crackdown.
Do you need PUA industry? Chea Chang believes that PUA industry also has its own soil, which meets the needs of young men and women in China. However, if this industry wants to exist legally, it must change the values aimed at extracting the opposite sex and put the cultivation of a correct, positive, scientific and legal value system in the first place.