“How to Destroy A Man Now (DAMN)” has been taken down from Amazon.
My book, “How to Destroy A (Wo)Man Now (DAMN)” is still up.
One of the hardest things in this day and age is to put your name to something. When you put your name to something, you are responsible for what you say, and you will be judged by it. Not just by today’s culture, but the culture of tomorrow. It’s hard to anticipate how culture might veer off, especially when you look at today and think back a decade ago when many such as Paul Elam warned our culture would move this way and how many thought him insane.
Think about Kevin Hart for a moment. He made a joke before this outrage culture became a thing, and as Dave Chappelle pointed out, he got lambasted for the joke as a bigot. Kevin didn’t know that such a thing could hurt him one day, he was a comedian who made a joke, and a decade later, that joke was considered hate speech. Then there’s me, a writer who writes. What makes me different than Kevin Hart was that I purposely put my writing career on the line, and depending on how the culture went, I knew I could lose it all.
What is it that I did? I published, “How to Destroy a (Wo)Man Now” on Amazon. I used the handle most of you know me as, “mad_cat”, but it was still my Amazon account that I post my other books on, and Amazon could have decided to not only unpublish that book but to ban my account and prevent me from publishing with them ever again. Being a published author is one of my first dreams, and in spite of the stigma, I am proud to have self-published my works five times. Losing that privilege would be detrimental for me, and yet I put it on the chopping block to try to make a difference.
This all started when my friend, Elizabeth Hobson, told me of a book, “How to Destroy a Man Now”. I wasn’t shocked, but I was disappointed. We do, after all, live in a culture today where hating men is perfectly OK. Time Magazine celebrated #KillAllMen, saying it was just a joke, and celebrated its creator as a hero and not a hatemonger. Reading the book’s preview about Allison Allegation and Mary Media and how you don’t need evidence to make an accusation… how could Amazon publish this? I do know that publishing on Amazon is an automatic process, and you can publish anything you want, but I felt that some alarm bell somewhere should have gone off, and Amazon investigate this book.
Elizabeth knew I was a writer and suggested that I should write a book in response. I agreed that we needed to play the Feminists at their own game. I immediately bought the book; felt strange paying money for it, disliking anyone profiting from this a misandrist attack, but I wanted to do this right. It was $10 for what is effectively a 70-page book.
We don’t know who wrote this book, beyond it being Angela Confidential PsyD. Many speculated it was a Feminist (or a Male Feminist) in light of the #metoo movement, giving women a weapon to hurt men. Others suspect it is a spoof of the #metoo movement, showing how dangerous our world has become, and those who read it should have enough commonsense not do anything mentioned in the book. Surprisingly, many reviews from Feminists believe this was done by a hateful MRA to smear Feminism.
So we’ve hear that “How To Destroy A Man Now” is a bad book. Is it really that bad, though? Should this book be taken down? My answer: Yes, and yes. Understand right away, I’m not one for censorship, even some of the most hate-filled books should be available for purchase.
The difference here is that our right to free speech does not cover a call for illegal actions. This book contains advice on committing Defamation (both Libel and Slander).
For instance, the author encourages you to go to one of 53 websites to upload articles falsely accusing your target of abusing women, rape, getting arrested, having warrants out for them… any number of things. The goal is to affect Google search results. The more negative press you put out there, the more likely this is what will show up when their name is searched. Say, for instance, a prospective employer wants to hire the target.
Of course, there are ways to find out if these allegations are true, but then who really does their due diligence these days? How many boys were expelled from college on the allegation a girl made, even when found he couldn’t have done it? So long as there is a label of impropriety against a man, people will assume it is true. And you as a man can fight to get it taken down, but that is much harder than it sounds, especially as Social Media fights that it is both a publisher and a public forum.
Another method offered, say if your target works at the same company as you, is that you can go to HR with allegations. Now more than having allegations, you need to make sure HR knows that you intend to sue the company for a hostile work environment. The author tells us that money matters and companies fear lawsuits, but it would also tarnish their public image. Some companies might do the moral thing and investigate, but many companies would focus on the potential loss of money and engage in damage control, i.e., fire the target.
It’s things like this that make me question the idea this was written by an MHRA, because if one desires to hurt men, then this is really good advice. If this was intended as parody, then someone went through some extreme lengths for a laugh. No, this was done by someone who wanted to see men hurt and encouraged women unknowingly commit illegal actions that they could get away with scot-free.
In light of that, one of the key things I set out for in my book was that it contained no illegal information. Highly unethical, but not unlawful. Moreover, in the Introduction, I encourage people to read the Conclusion before reading the rest of my book. There it says not to do anything in this book, and that this book is meant to piss off Feminists in hopes they will push for Amazon to take it down, so then I can push Amazon to take the other book.
So my book was released, and I made some sales. The book currently stands at 4.2-stars (2.9 in the UK). Most surprising is that a few people point this out as a useful guide of what not to do in a relationship. However, the hype of both books soon fell silent.
Then enter Vic Mignogna and MarzGurl. I never heard of either one, as Anime is not my thing. He was a voice actor accused of sexual misconduct and was fired by many corporations on allegations alone. A result of that was Marzgurl, who’d lobbied a lot of hate Vic’s way. There are unconfirmed reports that Marzgurl had read “How To Destroy A Man Now” with further rumors stating that she had used or encouraged others to use the book against Vic. I haven’t found any source to substantiate any of that.
The result of those rumors caused attention to the first book and indirect attention to my book. Some of my reviews seemed to be for the other book, not knowing they were reviewing my book instead. Because of this and my advertising efforts, I had received some more sales. For those who know my situation, you can imagine that these royalty payments really helped me out.
A few days ago, I looked at both books. To my surprise, Amazon now lists the first “Out of Print – Limited Availability”. So I called up Amazon, and they told me that the book had been taken down. They have no reason stated, but the representative suggested this can happen due to lots of complaints.
I have mixed feelings about all of this. Right now, I am thrilled that this horrendous book has been taken down. I just don’t know if my book had any impact. Ideally, I wanted mine removed first so we could then make a campaign against Amazon. Not that I hate Amazon, I use them to publish, but maybe they should tweak their process a touch to prevent this kind of hatemongering trash again.
As far as my book, I’ve decided not to take it down as I originally planned, but instead alter it so that it becomes a Relationship Help Guide, renaming it “How Not to Destroy A Relationship Now (DARN)”. I can’t change the title on this page without losing my reviews, but I can change the cover and the content inside to reflect on the history of this book and things not to do in a relationship.
So what’s next for me? It’s high time I write a book for the movement. I got inspired by Paul, who allowed me the opportunity to format his ebook for Kindle. My next book is one I’ve been planning for a few years now. Not ready to say what the book is, but I can say it will be released sometime next year.
Special thanks to Modern Medusa, who is the girl on my cover.
