So you may have heard about that Kickstarter that raised $16,000 for a loathsome Reddit PUA’s “handbook on how to bully women who don’t like you into sex, while preserving your claims to believe you had consent should you need to tell the police,” as Amanda Marcotte aptly described it in her post on it yesterday. Slate’s Alyssa Rosenberg also has some thoughts on it.
I don’t really have anything to add.
There’s a petition up demanding that Kickstarter simply refuse to fund what is essentially a how-to guide to sexual assault. Last I checked, it had gotten nearly 60,000 signatures.
EDITED TO ADD: Casey Malone, who wrote the blog post that brought this awful project to the attention of people outside of the sleazier corners of Reddit, wrote Kickstarter about it and got a response suggesting that Kickstarter, while planning to go ahead and fund the project, will be reexamining its policies as a result of the controversy. Malone posted some further thoughts.
EDITED AGAIN: Kickstarter has offered an apology. You can find it here. But I’m just going to repost the whole thing:
Dear everybody,
On Wednesday morning Kickstarter was sent a blog post quoting disturbing material found on Reddit. The offensive material was part of a draft for a “seduction guide” that someone was using Kickstarter to publish. The posts offended a lot of people — us included — and many asked us to cancel the creator’s project. We didn’t.
We were wrong.
Why didn’t we cancel the project when this material was brought to our attention? Two things influenced our decision:
- The decision had to be made immediately. We had only two hours from when we found out about the material to when the project was ending. We’ve never acted to remove a project that quickly.
- Our processes, and everyday thinking, bias heavily toward creators. This is deeply ingrained. We feel a duty to our community — and our creators especially — to approach these investigations methodically as there is no margin for error in canceling a project. This thinking made us miss the forest for the trees.
These factors don’t excuse our decision but we hope they add clarity to how we arrived at it.
Let us be 100% clear: Content promoting or glorifying violence against women or anyone else has always been prohibited from Kickstarter. If a project page contains hateful or abusive material we don’t approve it in the first place. If we had seen this material when the project was submitted to Kickstarter (we didn’t), it never would have been approved. Kickstarter is committed to a culture of respect.
Where does this leave us?
First, there is no taking back money from the project or canceling funding after the fact. When the project was funded the backers’ money went directly from them to the creator. We missed the window.
Second, the project page has been removed from Kickstarter. The project has no place on our site. For transparency’s sake, a record of the page is cached here.
Third, we are prohibiting “seduction guides,” or anything similar, effective immediately. This material encourages misogynistic behavior and is inconsistent with our mission of funding creative works. These things do not belong on Kickstarter.
Fourth, today Kickstarter will donate $25,000 to an anti-sexual violence organization called RAINN. It’s an excellent organization that combats exactly the sort of problems our inaction may have encouraged.
We take our role as Kickstarter’s stewards very seriously. Kickstarter is one of the friendliest, most supportive places on the web and we’re committed to keeping it that way. We’re sorry for getting this so wrong.
That is an apology. Some people could learn a thing or two from this.
Oh fuck, THIS. I went through a time a decade ago when I wondered if I was lesbian, because I never felt any sort of sexual attraction to any men ‘cept Sir, and certainly felt more comfortable with women socially/emotionally. (This was a time when I was almost despairing of anything happening: I didn’t know if he was alive at all, let alone anything more, and I was lonely.) If I’d known the existence of asexuality, demisexuality and so on I wouldn’t have had that thought at all.
@hellkell – so, really there should only be gorgeous young gay men in Savage’s world?
Kitteh — you forgot cis white and middle class. His target audience is Very Narrow. (Like, you can google for yourself how much he sucks on trans* issues, I’m not touching it)
@ Cthulhu’s Intern
That’s where I know him from! I knew I’d seen his particular combination of pretentious, rather stiff tone and fucked up ideas about dating before.
Dan Savage also thinks that rape trauma and physical triggers are not an adequate reason to deny someone sex, and that having rape trauma/triggers means you are a selfish and self-pitying person who just needs to get over it for the sake of the person being denied sex. I’m not a fan. Agreed that he’d probably be a neocon (maybe a libertarian, maybe even a PUA??) if he wasn’t gay.
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaa
I’ve seen references to his scummy attitude there, and that he’s obnoxious enough to be glitter bombed (more than once, I think) … he really is a douche. Misogynistic, racist, trans*phobic, biphobic, acephobic, even homophobic (the whole “santorum” business). Nasty piece of work all around.
And the rape thing … I don’t even …
Fuck. I just read about his attack on that rape survivor. He’s a total shit and I hope he gets bitten by all the mosquitoes.
For those who like their Kickstarters a little less rapey, here’s a feminist sci-fi film: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1783641494/advantageous-the-feature
those with the biggest itch to scratch haven’t seemed to come up with a better mousetrap
OF’s use of the mixed metaphor shows us, I think, that he is an author so talented, so outre, as to be truly unencumbered by traditional notions of ‘good writing’.
‘If we can hit that bullseye, the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards. Checkmate!’
I’m going to be reading OF’s posts in a Zap Brannigan voice from now on.
I’ve never thought of using a mousetrap to scratch an itch … fortunately.
The author responded to the controversy.
http://pastebin.com/zwHYzCZe
He basically says it’s impossible for a man to sexually assault a girl who gave him his phone number, went on a few dates with him, and they both got to know her.
Also, that people apparently took his quotes “out of context.” I’d love (and by love, I mean hate) to hear the context in which pulling out your dick and forcing a girl’s hand onto it when she’s already said “no” is acceptable.
Boing-boing has a good piece on it, though I think there is something glossed (and we got called hipsters… which was to avoid [I think, a whole lot of, “what did you expects, in comments).
http://boingboing.net/2013/06/22/kickstop-how-a-sleazebag-slip.html
This is why I think Kickstarter only gets partial credit:
Kickstarter suspended a different project last week so they could investigate it.
It’s good at least that Kickstarter is capable of realizing when its made a mistake ansd apologising.
Too often when someone gets caught up in some questionable behavior the choice is to ‘double down’ on it and try to evade responsibility.
Speaking of floods and north-america-centricity, are any peeps from northern India? Because, holy fuck!
It’s not perfect, of course…but holy shit, that apology goes so above and beyond the expected that I’m tearing up a bit.
Also? Fuck PUAs. If your entire strategy for getting laid is “manipulate her into having sex with me when she pretty clearly doesn’t want to, with absolutely zero concern for her wellbeing or sexual fulfillment”, you are a rapist, full stop. You know what empathetic, halfway-decent men do when they want to have sex and no one wants to have sex with them? Literally anything other than that.
For anyone reading along at home, I’d strongly recommend not using a mousetrap to scratch the particular itch that OF was referring to because…ow, and also embarrassing to explain to the nice people at the emergency room.
Yeah, but they’ve probably seen weirder.
If anyone actually manages to shock the ER staff then I think they deserve some sort of award.
I have to say, I’m impressed they actually apologized. I just expected (if anything) for them to take down the page.
I haven’t read all of this thread, so forgive me if I repeat something here, but
Obsidian Files said…
According to Obsidian files: Preventing rape = less important than men not getting laid.
and i’m reading this on a two-day lag, so i’ve probably been beaten to the punch.
RE: emilygoddess
I had to stop reading that thread. It was entertaining but also made my brain hurt.
My god, humans are resilient creatures.
What I loved was the assumption that arranging ways for men to get laid ought to be something that feminism should focus on.
Wish I could say that’s the first time I’ve seen that particular variety of brain dropping.
My favourite variant is: “I tried to be a feminist/listen to feminists, but I didn’t have any more sex than I was having before, so I abandoned it.” Yeah, makes sense. If you’re a misogynistic douchebag.
I spent days at Occupy and I didn’t get a free car. Why should I continue supporting such a pointless movement?
(Some day perhaps these dudes will outgrow the idea that the whole world should revolve around their cocks. At that point I assume they’ll move on to consumer goods.)
Fade: According to Obsidian files: Preventing rape = less important than men not getting laid.
I wish it was only that bad. He argues that, unless a male is “Alpha”; or has Game, he needs to rape.