Over the past few days, a bit of a controversy has brewed with regard to Kickstarter policy.
Specifically: an individual named Ken Hoinsky, well-known in reddit’s pickup artist (PUA) community, kickstarted the physical production of a PUA primer with the title “Above the Game: A Guide to Getting Awesome with Women.” Intending to raise $2,000, the project instead raised $16,000 before its finish on 19 June.
Shortly before the project ended, certain objectionable statements from Hoinsky’s in-progress draft of the material became widely publicized. Although not linked on the Kickstarter project page, he had made the draft itself publicly available at the “seduction” subreddit. Samples:
To many (full disclosure: this includes me) such comments paint the picture of a work that normalizes — encourages — sexual assault. A bit of a minor shitstorm ensued; calls were made for Kickstarter to cancel the project; petitions were drafted and signed. Kickstarter responded in the negative, citing their guidelines as well as the short time period between the problems being brought to their attention and the closure of the project:
This was part of a statement sent (at least) to Casey Malone, who I think broke the story in the first place. Link here. The shitstorm continued to gain steam until Kickstarter gave in:
Is there a context in which Hoinsky’s advice would not be suggesting that men try out sexual assault? I mean, if I understand him correctly he’s saying: “Let the woman know you won’t take no for an answer. Then physically force her to start a hand job. She’ll tell you if she wants to stop (although by that point you’ve already established that you really won’t take no for an answer, and forced her to grope you anyway).” I suspect the PUA response would be something like hey, this advice is for when you’re already getting into it hot and heavy, this is how you telegraph that you want to escalate the encounter. But isn’t there a better way to say “wanna have sexy times?” than letting her know YOU’RE IN CHARGE DAMN IT while forcing her to grab your unclothed penis?
What was the correct response by Kickstarter? It seems pretty widely agreed that its first hands-off approach was a bad call. However, before their mea culpa Malone (ibid) argued that the aggregate good of Kickstarter still outweighs the bad; Kickstarter remains “awesome”. Blogger Jeff Kunzler countered that the good of Kickstarter amounts (more or less) to enabling nerds to spend money on nerdy crap, while issues of potential sexual assault are of much higher importance — Kickstarter had perpetuated evil and should’ve been shunned entirely.
I’m torn. Although sympathetic to Malone’s view, yeesh, how could it be any clearer that Hoinsky’s primer advocated behavior at best skeevy, at worst downright rapey?
It doesn’t matter if there’s a context in which this advice is not advocating sexual assault. What matters is that there are contexts (probably a lot of them) in which it is. Is there a better way? Yes, obviously. It’s called ‘informed consent’, or possibly ‘using your words like a goddamn adult’.
Assuming that they really did find out about this issue with only two hours in which to decide and act, I think Kickstarter got stuck in a bad spot. Responding to reports of offending content on a site you run is something you need to have procedures in place for, and they need to be followed. They were rushed, decided that not acting was better than acting rashly, and then apologized when it was clear that they made the wrong call.
What they should do now is implement the ability to ‘freeze’ a project that’s been reported as violating their terms of use while it’s under review. That way, there’s no more of this ‘not enough time to investigate and make a call’ problem.
Definitely the right thing for Kickstarter to do cancelling the project. It was veering too much into rapey territory. They might have opened up themselves to a lawsuit if any women were harmed by someone using these techniques and traced it back to this project.
This is an excellent suggestion. They already have the ability to cancel projects. Technically, there should be no difficulty with adding a manual delay to submitting the payment claims connected with it.
I was upset when I read about the project, and emailed Kickstarter to have it pulled. I was upset when it was not pulled. I read the apology from Kickstarter and I feel it was sincere. Everyone makes mistakes, and they owned up to it. They are going to make sure it doesn’t happen again. So me and Kickstarter are cool for now, but they better have meant what they said.
Why not just NOT send him money? Why are you trying to say no-one else gets to send him money? Hell, I despise Ann Coulters and her books, and she has done more damage to women than this jackass ever has. But do I bombard Amazon with requests to censor his shit?
Kickstarter was right, and now they are wrong. Censorship is wrong. Even for this jackass.
Err…you can still send him all the money you want to. It’s not like Kickstarter has a monopoly on funding peoples projects. Just cut him a check.
Kickstarter’s not censoring him, they’re just not helping him to pursue a project that many people have told them they find abhorrent. That isn’t censorship.
What I’m having trouble with is the notion that he got $16,000 for what is clearly a retarded book. How can you be smart enough to read and think his book was in any way a good idea?
That said, what if people objected to Anita Sarkeesian’s kickstart for her damsel in distress series? I believe a lot of guys would have voiced stringent opinions about it, now that they know about it. Would we be so accepting of Kickstarter dumping her project?
Let’s be clear, there’s legitimate media criticism and there’s celebration of rape culture. Anita’s was ok, Ken’s was not. People on this board should be smart enough to not lump them both into the same “censorship” category.
Sure, but it was fiction. There is a difference between fiction and nonfiction. Are you watching a lot of Fox News lately? That can blur that line, I understand.
Guy puts creepy book on fundraising site, raises $16K, people rightfully say “Um, creepy and assaultive, yo” fundraising cite realizes its mistake, thread devolves into a discussion of “how creepy is too creepy? Is it REALLY assaultive, or are there ways that you can squint your eyes and make it about the oppression of free speech?”
The context would be that Hoinsky is correct that women are as sexually driven as men but are socially conditioned to act virtuous and sexually innocent (and to this point, there’s a decent argument to be made that he’s right), and that therefore they need men to act sexually dominant in order to relieve them of responsibility for having and indulging in sexual desires (that’s where it gets rapey and wrong).
If you believe the second part, then it’s not really rape, it’s ravishment, which is a recurring Victorian idea whereby rape can be a welcome deprivation of responsibility that allows a women to have sex without being a whore–she was just so perfectly, virtuously womanly that the man was driven bestial with lust.
You could do that if you want. It probably wouldn’t work, but everybody’s welcome to protest. And that’s the difference between Amazon, which is a store where the product is already made and you can choose to buy it and that’s the end of the transaction, and Kickstarter, a crowdsourcing platform that allows people to support projects that have not been completed in return for rewards. The pamphlet is creepy and does encourage, if not rape, harassment and sexual assault. It’s perfectly reasonable for me to say that maybe I don’t want to do business with Kickstarter if they’re going to allow that sort of thing, and it’s fair for Kickstarter to say that they don’t want this kind of stuff on their site either because it’ll cost them business or for the fact that it’s simply repulsive and advocates behavior that is at best disgusting and at worst illegal.
I cannot see how Ann Coulter has done any specific damage to women. Can you elaborate? I mean, her rhetoric is destructive to civilization, in my opinion, so everyone is (slightly) hurt by her vitriol, but I don’t understand why you singled out women.
But insofar as I do think Ann Coulter is bad for our society, I’d have no problem with Amazon (and all other booksellers) deciding not to carry her garbage. I do not consider it censorship when a private company decides to not use their platform to promote things they consider offensive. I don’t consider it censorship if a private company decides not to promote something just because they think they will lose more customers than they will gain. It’s only censorship if the government forbids the speech. We have a right to talk, not a right to be listened to.
You also agree with this, I think, you just draw the line in a different place. If Kickstarter decided they would not host funding for a book written by a KKK member about how to best discriminate against blacks and Jews, or a holocaust denial book, I doubt we would be having this discussion.
And, anyway, as has been pointed out, you can still send him money. Kickstarter didn’t kill him, or send him to internet jail. You just can’t send him money with Kickstarter’s help (anymore).
This isn’t an example of censorship. It’s an example of market forces at work.