Date Rape manual gets funded on Kickstarter

[Nekojin]

I'm pretty sure that we've covered Neil Strauss, self-proclaimed pickup artistry expert and author of the book, The Game, on Fratching before. How the book is little more than a shallowly-disguised date rape manual, advising men to forget about petty little things like consent and consideration, supposedly showing how to "program" women to be receptive to the reader's unwanted advances.

Neil Strauss's Reddit posts include such gems as:

Decide that you’re going to sit in a position where you can rub her leg and back. Physically pick her up and sit her on your lap. Don’t ask for permission. Be dominant. Force her to rebuff your advances.

Pull out your cock and put her hand on it. Remember, she is letting you do this because you have established yourself as a LEADER. Don’t ask for permission, GRAB HER HAND, and put it right on your dick.

Well, he went and made a Kickstarter campaign for a sequel book to The Game, entitled Beyond the Game, which was undoubtedly filled with more such "wisdom."

With only hours left to go in the Kickstarter campaign, some internet crusaders complained to Kickstarter about the author, his content online, and the expected content of his book. Kickstarter declined to act quickly, and the book's campaign succeeded, with somewhere north of $16k backing.

Kickstarter's statement about their decision not to kill the listing is as follows:

This morning, material that a project creator posted on Reddit earlier this year was brought to our and the public’s attention just hours before the project’s deadline. Some of this material is abhorrent and inconsistent with our values as people and as an organization. Based on our current guidelines, however, the material on Reddit did not warrant the irreversible action of canceling the project.

My source for all of this information.

Now, Jeff Kunzler (the author of the blog I linked above) and others are calling for a total boycott of Kickstarter for their failure to kill the project, and listing the names of all of the backers.

Personally, I think that's going too far. While I find the material and its author to be completely abhorrent, I don't expect Kickstarter to be responsible for every listing on their service, and certainly don't expect them to act swiftly to kill listings. If they'd been notified sooner and given days to investigate instead of hours, perhaps they may have decided to kill the listing.

I strongly support the principle of freedom of speech. While I think that Neil Strauss is scum, and quite probably a date rapist, I think that he has a right to say what he wants. I also think that anyone who follows his advice and attempts to force their unwanted attentions on women deserve a visit to the Grey Bar Motel.

I think that outing the names of all of the backers is probably legal (since they're on a public site), but questionable - it's likely that some of the backers threw in a buck just so that they could post on the Kickstarter about how it's terrible and misogynistic.

And lastly, I think that Jeff Kunzler's declarations that this is destroying thousands of years of years of work standing up to misogyny to be a bit... hyperbolic. A few hundred backers for a book that likely won't ever reach bookstores does not exactly equate a groundswell of support for misogyny.

TLDR: Kickstarter for misogynistic date rape book succeeds, Kickstarter declined to kill it, and some people are boycotting Kickstarter as a result.

[Ginger Tea]

With only hours left to go in the Kickstarter campaign, some internet crusaders complained to Kickstarter about the author, his content online, and the expected content of his book. Kickstarter declined to act quickly, and the book's campaign succeeded, with somewhere north of $16k backing.

Personally, I think that's going too far. While I find the material and its author to be completely abhorrent, I don't expect Kickstarter to be responsible for every listing on their service, and certainly don't expect them to act swiftly to kill listings. If they'd been notified sooner and given days to investigate instead of hours, perhaps they may have decided to kill the listing.

I've begun to question Kickstarter and it's saturation when someone posted about a campaign to get a remote controlling kit to glue onto cockroaches, because science.

But yeah give them a few hours to investigate and see how little gets done short of knee jerking measures that could damage their business model far more than one campaign with very questionable morals.

These things last for a month to gather backing, sadly if those that are outraged find out about it at the eleventh hour then it is too late to do much about it, if they had seen it on the first day then they would have stood a better chance at bringing it to the right persons attention for a more thorough investigation on it's merits.

[Andara Bledin]

I have to ask: If you publish a manual that instructs people to commit sexual assault, isn't that a criminal act? Why has this guy not been prosecuted?

[bara]

OH FFS!

"Force her to rebuff your advances"... really. I have no idea how to properly convey my complete disgust and absolute revulsion that anyone, would think this acceptable.

[Ladeeda]

I have to ask: If you publish a manual that instructs people to commit sexual assault, isn't that a criminal act? Why has this guy not been prosecuted?

No more than publishing a book on home-made bombs is illegal. Making/setting off said bombs, however...

Let's just say, "Because *book* told me to" is not going to fly in court.

[Andara Bledin]

No more than publishing a book on home-made bombs is illegal. Making/setting off said bombs, however...

Let's just say, "Because *book* told me to" is not going to fly in court.

Those aren't equitable situations.

A book on how to make and set off bombs is not actually saying, "Don't bother asking if they want their shit blown up, just do it."

This scum, on the other hand, is specifically calling people to commit actions that are outright illegal. As far as I'm aware, that's actionable anywhere in the US and probably many other nations as well.

[Ladeeda]

Instructing people to make bombs is dissimilar from instructing people to commit sexual assault, and yet following the instructions of the first is going to get you arrested a lot faster than following those of the second.

So, yeah. Pretty similar.

After all, it's the reader's choice to do it or not. This guy isn't hypnotizing anyone or threatening their families. Just giving a very sleazy How To. Might as well arrest me right now for saying "Go kill your dog and disolve the body with lye".

Didja do it? If so, that's your fault for doing it, not mine for telling you to.

[Andara Bledin]

Telling someone to do something that is a criminal act is, in itself, illegal.

Using the dog example is not only a straw man, but you're moving the goalposts at the same time. The question of enforcement is mostly irrelevant to the current debate. Just giving a how to is protected speech. Telling someone to do something that isn't illegal is irrelevant.

Telling someone to commit sexual assault as part of a how to is incitement.

[Akasa]

Strange man puts my hand on his cock he better be prepared for me to twist it off!

[Panacea]

I have to ask: If you publish a manual that instructs people to commit sexual assault, isn't that a criminal act? Why has this guy not been prosecuted?

He can claim it's a sexual fantasy, not meant to be taken seriously. It would be a hard case to prove unless someone complained that their rapist used the book as a manual in their rape.

One of these days Mr. Strauss is likely to meet a young lady whose response to being sat on his lap and having her hand put on his dick will be to pull it out at the root. I wouldn't be surprised if some of his readers haven't had that experience already.

[HYHYBT]

On general principle, I like "we didn't have time to investigate properly, so it stayed up" much better than the more usual "someone complained, so we took it down immediately and maybe locked your whole account as well; if you pester us enough, we *might* eventually look into it and see whether the complaint was valid or not."

[Ladeeda]

Telling someone to do something that is a criminal act is, in itself, illegal.

Which law? Quote it.

[lordlundar]

Telling someone to do something that is a criminal act is, in itself, illegal.

Correction needed. Forcing or coercing someone to do something that is a criminal act is, in itself, illegal.

Until people are required to do the actions in the book it is purely up to the person reading it.

Now that that nonsense is dealt with, let's go back to the Kickstarter issue. This incident is an example of the fallacy of Kickstarter. The company is only required to evaluate what has been submitted to them to determine whether or not to allow it to pass. What was put up on Reddit that started this was not submitted to Kickstarter at any point and by the time KS actually reviewed it the deadline had passed.

I'm not going to blame KS over this, though their process could stand a revamp in the oversight area. Hopefully they learned from this. Who I do blame however is the drek that calls himself an author and the morons that fed this abomination. This crap received 800% of it's goal by the deadline and that money did not come from KS or magically appear.

[Andara Bledin]

Which law? Quote it.

It would be nice if, once in a while, people looked up stuff on their own rather than demanding others do their homework for them. This is like the third or fourth time you've basically stated that you can't be bothered to do any research at all.

It's called incitement. It's on the lawbooks. If you actually care, you can look it up. It's why Palin got in trouble at some of her rallies; she was calling people to violent action, which is incitement. A landmark case involving the KKK cleared them of incitement because while their leader stated that violent action may become necessary, they did not encourage anyone to commit that violence.

[Ginger Tea]

IANAL and also not in the States so I have no idea which states agree with others in regards to these things.

But, I see incitement as a here and now thing, a rally, a speech or a march calling for action and expecting action to be forthcoming.
A book saying the same things can be read years later, there may be a rally call printed, but unless anyone acts on it, it can go unanswered for a long time. Someone with a megaphone and an audience riled up enough can cause a riot.

You cant whip up a frenzy in a book, you can have a frenzy whipped up because of a book, but that's because someone is forcing the issue to come to light .
No one would have bothered reading the satanic verses if it wasn't being burnt outside whsmiths.
I read it and was underwhelmed, I didn't see where they were coming from, then again I didn't share the religious or cultural background of those offended, again those most upset probably had not read the book either.
But the book itself was not making people burn it, it was someone inciting people to go into the shop and take the books off the shelves to burn, that is theft, burn the book if you must but it's £12.99 hardback TYVM.

A book telling you to commit a crime is not the same as someone telling you to commit a crime and even then there are many levels of coercion involved.

"Kill yourself." that can just come off as a go fuck yourself when spoken, or it could be used with a larger set of put downs that could bring the other party to contemplate or even act on suicidal thoughts
I've told people to "Go rob a bank" and not once has anyone had me arrested for planning a bank robbery.

What the book suggests the reader should do and the key word would be suggest, unless I read the full un edited chapters in question, I'm taking them as a suggestion than an order.