> Also, would all women who have seen the full story and context call it assault? Would they call it assault in real life? Probably not.

The point of this exercise is to be proactive about not hurting people. "Would they call it assault?" is a question that should simply not be on the table.

This isn't a difficult concept.

Yes, because sensible people (men and women) wouldn't call a well-meaning, but miscalibrated and thus unwelcome kiss sexual assault.

Survivors of sexual assault and rape may most certainly call an unwelcome kiss sexual assault and it may be a hugely triggering thing that causes a relapse. You don't get to decide what someone's boundaries are just because you want something from them.

Now we're getting somewhere in this conversation. What you're advocating is that we should universally change established cultural norms to protect the very small minority who might be actually harmed by a misread signal. Most people wouldn't agree. Most people can accept the fact that miscommunications happen and brush it off as a fact of navigating a complex social world. It's unfortunate for those that can't do this due to past trauma or whatever psychological quirks they have, but that is not the problem of the entirety of society.

> What you're advocating is that we should universally change established cultural norms to protect the very small minority who might be actually harmed by a misread signal.

What I'm saying is that this kind of thing isn't necessarily an established cultural norm and that even if there is an established cultural norm people have a right to their physical space and safety. If we are willing to discards the concerns of marginalized people then we as a society are only ever going to support dominant groups and paradigms, which is not useful for handling systemic inequalities like racism, sexism, etc.

>What I'm saying is that this kind of thing isn't necessarily an established cultural norm

Of course, cultural norms can vary. So it is in fact an established cultural norm in a non-trivial number of places. I would go as far to say its the majority in the western world, but that's irrelevant to the discussion.

>If we are willing to discards the concerns of marginalized people

People who have psychological quirks regarding personal space are not marginalized people by any common definition of that word. People who absolutely do not want anyone breaching their personal space without express written consent yadda yadda usually have good ways to communicate this to the people around them. Perhaps they shouldn't have to, but then perhaps the rest of the world shouldn't have to alter their behavior on account of a very small percentage of people.

But anyways, this discussion has suddenly turned from a question of whether "seduction" techniques is morally reprehensible to whether we are morally obliged to collectively take into consideration the concerns of a very small minority of people. These are two vastly different questions. Under this new understanding of the issue, "seduction" techniques are by default morally neutral. The question becomes whether it is morally obligatory (rather than simply morally praiseworthy) to not use these techniques on the off chance that person will have an abnormal reaction to personal space being breached. This question is very much dependent on the probability of encountering a person who will sustain actual harm from this. I would wager that this probability is extremely low, and a few orders of magnitude lower in your typical social situations (bars, clubs, etc). It seems rather clear that constantly obsessing about this scenario is unnecessary.

They may...or if they've recovered, they may not. The goal is usually to become able to react to things normally again, not become permanently stuck in damaged victim status for forever. People do manage to get over their triggers with counseling, medication, & time.

Honestly, calling an attempted kiss a sexual assault is really insulting to people who have actually been sexually assaulted. I'm really not fond of how pervasively histrionic things have gotten about it, as of late.

You don't get to decide what everyone's boundaries are just because you want to mandate complete and total obedience to gendered ideology.

And yet, Kickstarter can decide that they want nothing to do with it or anything else for pretty much any reason they want.

Kickstarter is claiming that they won't allow seduction manuals period ("we are prohibiting 'seduction guides,' or anything similar, effective immediately."). They have the right to do that.

If you really need a seduction manual, you need to shop elsewhere.

Yes, I'm just refuting the post above mine which stated that the manual was a terrible moral wrong.