Kickstarter bans 'seduction guides' after Above The Game controversy

Crowdfunding website Kickstarter has apologised to its users and banned people from raising money for "seduction guides", after criticism of a book project named Above The Game that was accused of encouraging sexual assaults on women.

The project raised more than $16k – well beyond its initial goal of $2k – for a book billed as "A Guide to Getting Awesome with Women", but caused a storm with its advice on "physical escalation", which suggested men should "force her to rebuff your advances" when on a date.

Despite protests to Kickstarter and calls for it to ban the project before its funding deadline on 19 June, the site did not take action. In a blog post published today titled "We were wrong", Kickstarter apologised for that.

"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," explains the blog post, which goes on to claim lack of time and a bias "heavily toward creators" led Kickstarter to its decision not to ban the project immediately.

"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."

As soon as the project was funded, backers' money was transferred into author Ken Hoinsky's bank account, with Kickstarter saying it is unable to take action against him individually, other than removing his project page from its website after the event.

Instead, the site is banning all "seduction guides" projects, and donating $25,000 to anti-sexual violence organisation RAINN.

"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," claims Kickstarter.

"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."

Hoinsky himself had already responded to the controversy on 19 June by posting on the Pastebin website. saying he was "devastated and troubled" by claims that his book promoted rape.

"That couldn't be further from the truth. A handful of quotes were taken out of context and posted on Tumblr which steamrolled in a game of telephone where hardly anyone bothered to read the original version," he wrote.

"That cherry-picked advice, without that important context, makes it sound like I am advocating non-consensual sexual advances on strangers. I would absolutely never do such a thing. In fact there is an entire section on consent that the bloggers conveniently left out to paint me in a poor light."

Hoinsky added that the final book would contain a chapter devoted to sexual assault and rape "preaching men what not to do".

The ball is now in his court (not to mention the $16k in his bank account) to decide how to proceed now. Kickstarter's donation to RAINN suggests one way out of the mess, but Hoinsky has yet to confirm his intentions.