Pickup Guides, Criminal Behavior, Kickstarter, Censorship, and me.

Via CaseyMalone.com and the Twitterverse comes this report of a disturbing kickstarter for a pickup artist guide that encourages men to commit sexual assault to speed up the seduction process. The evidence to support Casey Malone's claims requires some digging. The project itself is basically just binding the Reddit pages together into one volume. The Reddit page that contains the offending content, as of this writing, is down; fortunately, there is a Google cache of the incriminating content. The author of the book, Ken Honisky, is, among other things, encouraging his readers (socially awkward young men) to assume that their date is attracted to them, and, operating under this presumption, to grab their date's hand and put it on their dick in order to speed up the seduction process. Such an action, of course, is only sexy under very limited circumstances. The rest of the time, it's flat out sexual assault.

There is a campaign afoot to demand that Kickstarter revoke the project's funding and refund the backers, and to boycott Kickstarter if they can't or won't revoke and refund. I have mixed feelings about this campaign.

I actively hate the project itself. Ken Honisky is recklessly irresponsible for suggesting to young men with difficulty understanding unspoken social signals that they don't need explicit consent before touching another human being. The project is a catalyst for sexual assault and the continued victimization and objectification of women. Women have to put up with enough bullshit in our society without this being piled on to it.

Also, as a young man I found it extremely frustrating to connect with women in any context, especially the romantic context. This isn't uncommon among young men, but the pain still haunts me today. I personally resent projects that exploit this frustration. They are almost always snake oil sold by emotionally manipulative pricks, and this project is no exception.

The flip side, quite honestly, is that I hate censorship. It doesn't matter who the censors are. They could be the religious authorities, the government, a corporation, or, in this case, a secular social movement. I was taught from an early age that the First Amendment is sacrosanct, a lesson that reinforced itself through the days of the PMRC and the years after 9/11. The Manifesto of the OTO also states:

Man has the right to think what he will:
to speak what he will:
to write what he will:
to draw, paint, carve, etch, mould, build as he will:
to dress as he will.

I despise Honisky, as much as I despise the Klansman; but I am bound by creed to defend his right to his work. There is also the none-too-insubstantial fact that free speech cuts both ways. It is a principle that protects my writings from censorship, not to mention my wife's art.

Which brings me to Kickstarter, and Kickstarter's relationship with Amazon Payment Services. They're not making a conscious decision to sponsor and promote Honisky's views, but they are facilitating him in publishing those views, and profiting thereby. Neither company is a common carrier. In particular, Amazon stopped doing business with Unglue.it for legal and business reasons. Kickstarter's terms of service are vague here. The book itself is legal (it doesn't violate copyright laws, for example), but the content argues for criminal behavior. The product itself could be considered offensive, and that would be a violation of Kickstarter's terms of service; but that, again, cuts both ways.

So, by demanding that Kickstarter revoke and refund, and threatening them with a boycott if they refuse to comply, is the campaign engaging in censorship, or not?

I don't know.

And that's what bugs me.

Maybe Honisky will solve this problem by editing the book to not encourage illegal behavior. Then the book will still suck, but it will suck less.

EDIT: Honisky offers a kinda-apology here, which, at best, tells me that he doesn't get the point.