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The now-deleted Kickstarter page for Above The Game
kicked out

Kickstarter pulls 'seduction guide' after claims it promoted rape

Excerpts from the book urged men to “be dominant” and “don’t ask for permission”.

CROWDFUNDING WEBSITE KICKSTARTER has pulled a campaign for a book that promised to teach men how to get women into bed – but too late to stop the “seduction guide” being funded.

The American website apologised for not pulling the project, ‘Above the Game: A Guide to Getting Awesome with Women’, sooner. The book, a series of essays by writer Ken Hoinsky featured tips on picking up women, provoking a number of tweets from people who felt that it promoted rape and violence against women.

In  extracts from the book posted on Reddit, Hoinsky advocates “physical escalation” .

“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.

Physically pick her up and sit her on your lap. Don’t ask for permission. Be dominant. Force her to rebuff your advances.  Make her push your hand away as you get closer to her vagina.

Kickstarter staff were sent numerous reports on Wednesday about the content of the book, which was already over its set goal of $2,000, finishing on over $16,000. The website said in a blog post that they had made a mistake.

“We were wrong,” the blogpost said.

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. If we had seen this material when the project was submitted to Kickstarter (we didn’t), it never would have been approved.

The blog post added that the money had gone directly to Hoinsky after the project deadline had passed, that the project page had been deleted and that similar guides were now banned from the funding site effective immediately.

Kickstarter added that they will donate $25,000 to RAINN, an American sexual abuse charity.

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