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We were wrong

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Re: We were wrong

#201

Post by jenius »

angersock wrote: post #150
ebbv wrote: post #107

Dear fellow HN dwellers, If you read the writings of the Guide's author and do not recognize that it is misogynistic and advocating sexual assault, you have a problem. That problem is that you are mistaking sexual assault for "taking the first step." You do not need to resort to pulling out your dick and forcibly placing the woman's hand on it in order to "make a move." There's literally hundreds of other things that…

Have some context: http://pastebin.com/zwHYzCZe Sincerely, A HNer who is ashamed of the lack of reading comprehension of this community right now.

Woah, really big difference here. I wish this was up towards the top of the comments so people got both sides of the issue before pointing fingers.

Re: We were wrong

#202

Post by BCM43 »

rlt wrote: post #175
ebbv wrote: post #107

Dear fellow HN dwellers, If you read the writings of the Guide's author and do not recognize that it is misogynistic and advocating sexual assault, you have a problem. That problem is that you are mistaking sexual assault for "taking the first step." You do not need to resort to pulling out your dick and forcibly placing the woman's hand on it in order to "make a move." There's literally hundreds of other things that…

If I'm in a club and I pull my dick out and forcibly place a random woman's hand on it, then of course that's sexual assault. If I do the same thing in a bedroom with a woman who I've already been (consensually) fondling, is it?

If you do it without asking, then yes.

Re: We were wrong

#203

Post by loumf »

cm2012 wrote: post #143
ebbv wrote: post #107

Dear fellow HN dwellers, If you read the writings of the Guide's author and do not recognize that it is misogynistic and advocating sexual assault, you have a problem. That problem is that you are mistaking sexual assault for "taking the first step." You do not need to resort to pulling out your dick and forcibly placing the woman's hand on it in order to "make a move." There's literally hundreds of other things that…

First off, I'm also married and have never read a seduction book. However, I'd like to quote some other comments from this thread to refute you. > The thing that the commenters on social media are leaving out is that the advice was taken from a section in the guide offering advice on what to do AFTER a man has met a cute girl, gotten her phone number, gone on dates, spent time getting to know her, and now are alone b…

And yet, Kickstarter can decide that they want nothing to do with it or anything else for pretty much any reason they want.

Kickstarter is claiming that they won't allow seduction manuals period ("we are prohibiting 'seduction guides,' or anything similar, effective immediately."). They have the right to do that.

If you really need a seduction manual, you need to shop elsewhere.

Re: We were wrong

#204

Post by Paladiamors »

I don't think Kickstarter's response to this incident is incorrect.

We're talking about the legitimacy of a single blog post vetoing 686 backers (according to the cached link on the kickstarter post) from what it looks like from the kickstarter post.

I don't think that this response was particularly measured:

-1) Does it only take a single blog post to have kickstarter ban a project?

1a) Can we be certain that the blog post did not take the passage out of context?

1b) Can they be sure that the seduction manual was intentionally promoting the alleged "sexual violence"?

1c) Was there any reasonable attempt to communicate with the author to address the paragraphs in issue?

-2) What number of the kickstarter community reacting negatively to this project?

2a) Was "Sexual violence" the only controversial topic?

2b) Was a specific (kickstarter) clause for violation cited?

2c) Was any law broken because of this project?

3)Can malicious intent be proven?

[1] If you actually look at the link to reddit comment link I don't even see conversation that could be taken as people taking this as "sexual violence" and there is even one comment from a female user (derina585) that recommends changing the language and offering advice.

This reaction to lynch mob the guy is unwarrented and is somehow legitimized by kickstarter's "apology." I think that we need to take a closer look at the information before jumping to conclusions here.

Re: We were wrong

#205

Post by cwp »

scrrr wrote: post #50
gilrain wrote: post #15

I won't touch the issue of whether the action was right or wrong here on Hacker News, but I think everyone has to admit that this is a brilliant example of an apology done well. They do not equivocate (the "sorry you were offended" apology) and they take direct action to fix what their users felt was wrong (new policy made) as well as somewhat atone for the original offense (donation to RAINN). It's also written simp…

You are right about this being a good apology, but I think placing to much value on a good apology is not healthy. We are already living in a world where words, promises and good intentions matter too much. In the end, actions matter most. In fact, they are the ONLY thing that matters. I prefer a company with a good track record that issues bad or no apologies to a company with a bad record, but great apologies for a…

You're right that actions matter. Part of what makes this a good apology are the actions that back it up. They took meaningful action to redress the harm they caused, and put a policy in place to prevent the mistake from recurring. It's awfully hard to build up a record of bad actions followed by good apologies, because good apologies are more than just words.

But I think words are important too. The folks at Kickstarter clearly regret not having cancelled the project before it was funded, and that comes through in their apology. They gave the reasons for their failure, without turning them into excuses. That kind of sincerity is rare, and it's important. I'd rather see companies defend their actions when they believe they were right, sincerely apologize when they believe they were wrong, and never issue insincere non-apologies.

Re: We were wrong

#206

Post by mindcrime »

ebbv wrote: post #107

Dear fellow HN dwellers, If you read the writings of the Guide's author and do not recognize that it is misogynistic and advocating sexual assault, you have a problem. That problem is that you are mistaking sexual assault for "taking the first step." You do not need to resort to pulling out your dick and forcibly placing the woman's hand on it in order to "make a move." There's literally hundreds of other things that…

If you read the writings of the Guide's author and do not recognize that it is misogynistic and advocating sexual assault, you have a problem. That problem is that you are mistaking sexual assault for "taking the first step."

Seduction is not inherently misogynistic, even if some seducers are misogynists. And whether an action is "sexual assault" or not is heavily context dependent.

Let me ask you this... every time you go to kiss your spouse, do you ask "May I kiss you" first? If not, then by the standard you are setting, you are assaulting them every time you initiate a kiss.

Re: We were wrong

#207

Post by scarmig »

garethadams wrote: post #128
ebbv wrote: post #107

Dear fellow HN dwellers, If you read the writings of the Guide's author and do not recognize that it is misogynistic and advocating sexual assault, you have a problem. That problem is that you are mistaking sexual assault for "taking the first step." You do not need to resort to pulling out your dick and forcibly placing the woman's hand on it in order to "make a move." There's literally hundreds of other things that…

It's a good job the "pulling out your dick and forcibly placing the woman's hand on it" advice comes in the section of things you do after you're hundreds of moves down the line and you're alone in an intimate setting with a girl, after a number of dates then. The counter-article writer doesn't make clear that he's picked quotes from all over the guide, they aren't all "the first thing you should do" quotes

”5) Get CLOSE to her, damn it! To quote Rob Judge, “Personal space is for pussies.” I already told you that the most successful seducers are those who can’t keep their hands off of women. Well you’re not gonna be able to do that if you aren’t in close! ” “All the greatest seducers in history could not keep their hands off of women. They aggressively escalated physically with every woman they were flirting with. They began touching them immediately, kept great body language and eye contact, and were shameless in their physicality. Even when a girl rejects your advances, she KNOWS that you desire her. That’s hot. It arouses her physically and psychologically.” “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.”

I really can't believe I'm getting into this argument when a much more interesting discussion is whether platforms have a responsibility to be open to all comers, but alas.

You boys need a lesson in basic empathy.

Imagine you're in a bar, and a super built gay guy reeking of booze comes up to you and sits uncomfortably close to you. His face is inches away from yours but as you try to pull away he scoots himself forward. His hand brushes lightly on yours. After a couple minutes of ignoring your obvious lack of interest he places his hand on your inner thigh, which you brush away and tell him he's being a creep, and walk away to a different area. But he KNOWS that even as you reject his advances you're really getting turned on, that you're aroused physically and psychologically. So he follows you, sits next to you, and picks you up and puts you on his lap.

Now, don't skip that scenario: I want you to stop and think about it in detail. How would it make you feel? Do you feel turned on? Do you feel violated?

Re: We were wrong

#208

Post by jmduke »

A lot of comments are getting into the issue of whether or not seduction stuff is appropriate/misogynistic/etc., which I think is missing the point.

Kickstarter received a vocal outcry against the material. They responded quickly and fairly to remediate the issue. There are tons of times that a business is pressured/advised to stop doing something when that 'something' isn't strictly illegal or immoral. How they respond to those opportunities defines them going forward.

Part of Kickstarter's value proposition now is a certain level of content curation: moving forward, they're much less the 'anything-goes' crowdfunding platform than they used to be. I suspect they're okay with this, given how much they're pushing the social networking aspect of their site (and for good reason -- their stats on how many users went from funding the Veronica Mars or Zach Braff kickstarters to other initiatives were pretty impressive.)

Free enterprise, of course, also dictates that now there's a vacuum for a competitor which has less (or no) qualms about stuff like this.

Re: We were wrong

#209

Post by Inufu »

boldpanda wrote: post #130

This book will sell more copies now that it's been banned by Kickstarter. I'm curious how the funding was going before this, I can't imagine it was getting much traction. I quantify this as a paranoid over reaction by Kickstarter, if the post wasn't breaking any of their terms of service.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:X5RDu8S...

Re: We were wrong

#210

Post by shiven »

bmelton wrote: post #110
tomjen3 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see it as brilliant, I see it as a giant foot-in-mouth situation (which may be colored by the fact that I don't have a problem with seduction guides in general, and haven't seen the material in question) - until now Kickstarter has been neutral on legal content so if I see something I don't like, well too bad, but now there is a precedent for removing something because somebody finds it offensive, but others…

Agreed. The more dangerous precedent is that they are willing to cave to a vocal group who may or may not be right. Without defending the material, because I frankly can't, I am troubled to see Kickstarter imposing its own value judgements on projects, and even worse than that, now subject themselves to the value judgements of whichever populace can prove to be the most vocal.

Private company. They are free to cave in to demands from a vocal minority if they so choose. They are free to ban anything remotely non-religious or atheistic, if they so choose.

If you feel so strongl about it, start your own company that will publish and market products in line with your values, get together with like-minded people to start an advocacy group and most importantly, vote with your dollars and encourage others to do the same.

It is easy to cry Free Speech, but hard to take actions to defend and strengthen it.

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