Life

Author: Put Your Dick In Her Hand. It Works!

by Jaleesa Jones

Sexism is no longer a base trait to be relegated to the frat bros in college basements. As reported by the Huffington Post, Ken Hoinsky, a self-proclaimed former nerd, has raised roughly $16,000 on Kickstarter to publish a book that advises men on how to get women to have sex with them. The premise? “Don’t ask for permission. Be dominant.”

Just when you thought rape culture was just for “the cool kids”, Hoinsky emerges as a paradigm that misogyny knows no boundaries—neither does he, apparently.

The HuffPo featured one of Hoinsky's Reddit posts on re-introducing himself to a woman after he's just "shoved her aside HARD, seemingly randomly": "I did this yesterday in a dance club. I re-open a girl by walking up, grabbing her, caveman-ing her against the wall & kissing her. Then I cast her aside and get a drink at the bar. The entire time she is staring like 'OMG who is this guy?' (in a good way). I come back to her with my drink. 'Come on, let's go.' I walk her to the corner, escalate kino, smalltalk a bit. Fast forward and guess who is getting a BJ in the dark corner of the club? THIS GUY!"

OK. Really, this sounds more like a fantasy sequence out of the Bangbros porn that I’m sure Hoinsky squeezes in between stints of Kingdom Hearts.

But on a more somber note, Hoinsky’s book, Above the Game: A Guide to Getting Awesome with Women, is almost primitive in its caveman approach. While he may not be explicitly advocating for men to club women over the head and drag them back to their studio apartments, his advice insinuates that this sort of behavior is necessitous, even desirable.

Hoinsky’s particular brand of misogyny is scary because it essentially asserts that women want to be dominated and are sexually enticed by hyper-aggression. Although some women may entertain rape fantasies, this sort of imposition is dangerous territory between two parties who do not know each other. At that point, it is not about sexual gratification. Rather, it’s about the power matrix between the sexes and coercion on the part of the male party.

That Hoinsky is shamelessly promoting approaches that reinforce the ideology of rape culture and (essentially) sexual assault is disturbing. This "player" needs to understand that women are not pawns to be controlled. We do not have cheat codes so stop heralding this Stifler-on-steroids bullshit as a means to unlock us.

As for Kickstarter, which declined to take down the project because the disparaging comments were found on Reddit rather than their site, I can only state my disappointment. Although it is questionable whether a company should extend its policy to other social media, I have to say that their response to the polemic is kind of contradictory.

According to Jezebel, the company said, "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. As stewards of Kickstarter we sometimes have to make difficult decisions. We followed the discussion around the web today very closely. It led to a lot of internal discussion and will lead to a further review of our policies."

So, basically, Kickstarter acknowledges that the material on Reddit (which is found in the book too) is "abhorrent" but not bad enough to sacrifice their 5 percent cut of the profits. Fortunately, as Jezebel reported, social change non-profit Do Something delivered the 47,000+ signatures received on a "CEO of Kickstarter: Refuse to Fund How-To Guide on Sexual Assault" petition to Kickstarter's office today. Their actions invoke the old saying: If you want things done the right way, you have to do it yourself.