And now, this week in rape culture–and speaking out against it

[annathepiper]

A lot of you may have seen the explosions going around the Net about a Kickstarter that got funded in the last couple days, one based around a guide to getting women that is pretty much promotes trampling all over consent. That, yes, pretty much is a step-by-step manual for how to rape a woman. The guide’s described in quite a few places, but I’ll point you over to the article about it on The Mary Sue, which provides a few telling screenshots and gets into discussing what this means for Kickstarter’s overall policies for what projects it will and will not allow.

(For obvious reasons, before you click over, especially before you go looking for the actual project page, trigger warning for deeply sexist, rape-promoting douchebaggery. I’m not linking to the project.)

I’d just like to state categorically and for the record that if Kickstarter can’t commit to saying that yes, this project does in fact violate its guidelines, that it actively promotes harm to women, then the next crowdfund project I run–likely to be for Book 3 of The Free Court of Seattle, once I finish squaring away Rebels of Adalonia as well as all pending rewards due to the patiently waiting supporters of my first project–will be either on IndieGogo or Peerbackers.

Because this shit is NOT OKAY. I’m disgusted that Kickstarter let the project onto their site to begin with, and even more disgusted that apparently it found enough backers to make well over its target goal.

I don’t want to leave you with that rancid taste in your mouths, Internets, so here, have another link: Jim Hines laying out exactly what rape culture is in his own response to this mess. To which I’ll add: yes, exactly what he said.

ETA 6/21/2013: ariaflame has just brought to my attention that Kickstarter has owned up to their being wrong, and have issued an excellent apology on the matter. Moreover, they are donating to RAINN. I would like to publicly thank Kickstarter for doing this, as this goes a long way to restoring my faith in them.

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

Comments

[rmd.livejournal.com]

The beginning of the Hines link is b0rked. Probably needs http:// or something. Lj is treating it as a relative uri

[annathepiper]

DOH. Fixed. Thanks for letting me know!

[maellenkleth]

Thank you for this. Rape culture is something which I very ardently wish to outlive.

[annathepiper]

You're very welcome!

[ariaflame.livejournal.com]

Hey, did you see this? Kickstarter actually knows how to make an apology! One that actually sounds real, not a notpology or guff. And are going to ban any future projects like this, and are donating a sum larger than the project got to an anti-sexual violence organisation.

http://www.kickstarter.com/blog/we-were-wrong

[annathepiper]

_Awesome_, I hadn't seen that, no! Thank you for bringing this to my attention, I'll add this link to the original post.