Pickup artist Ken Hoinsky has been the subject of a lot of debate and criticism lately, and his Tuesday "Ask Me Anything" on Reddit is certain to generate more conversation about the would-be self-help author.
As has been well documented on Salon and elsewhere, Hoinsky's "seduction guide" offers dubious and sexually predatory advice that many feminist writers (hi) have denounced for encouraging sexual assault and violence against women. But as one Redditor pointed out on Tuesday, the advice threads that didn't make it into Hoinsky's book proposal are far more troubling than those that did, as this archived "field report" from Hoinsky shows:
Her last train is coming soon and she has to decide what to do. I tell her she can stay in Shibuya and I'll make sure she has a warm bed to sleep on. However, I tell her I won't take her home with me because "I only bring girls home if we're going to have sex and there's no way I'm f--cking you tonight.
Hoinsky goes on to document (in minute-by-minute detail) his efforts to "physically escalate" with the unnamed woman, who rebuffs and rejects him over the course of an evening that ultimately ends with Hoinsky initiating, and quickly being told to stop, having penetrative sex with her.
When asked about the incident, Hoinsky called it unfair to question him about "non-canon observations from one of my nights out almost 3 years ago" and said there was "nothing remotely resembling that post in the book."
When pressed to address a separate incident in which Hoinsky shoved a woman ("caveman-ing her against the wall") in a club and later boasted on Reddit that his tactics resulted in him receiving oral sex "in a dark corner of the club," Hoinsky avoided the question entirely:
I'll be honest, I'm not ready to comment publicly on things like that. It works as a seduction move but I haven't had the time to talk to the women's rights people about how to justify that. Maybe it's okay in certain situations, maybe it's not! This is why I am trying to start the dialogue instead of censoring it as usual.
Hoinsky has said he intends to work with women's rights groups (he avoids saying "feminists," he adds, because he sees it as a "loaded" term) to ensure his book doesn't promote predatory and potentially abusive behavior, but judging from his sexual history, it's clear there is a lot of work yet to be done.
Shares