He was paid $8,500 to speak at OSU. $8,500! And people actually had the nerve to claim that protesters who interrupted him with airhorns were violating his right to free speech. Sorry, but that is not free speech, that is very profitable speech!

Btw, as a result of the protest, and continued pressure from campus feminist organizations, the OUAB has agreed to never invite Tucker Max to speak here again.

Then I read more about him being an ass, and I didn’t like that, but still chuckled.

And then I read a few that made me downright sick, like when he hired someone to video-record a sex act he had with a woman–without her consent.

If he came to my campus, I doubt I would actually protest picket line style, but I’d register official complaints with the school, and tell my friends not to see him. Enjoy him on your own time, and your own money. He’s a mean dick, and while that is compelling to many people, it’s not the kind of thing a fucking COLLEGE should be using to entertain. What’s next, typing up bears and poking them with sticks?

Yes. You read it right. This isn’t making fun of people anymore. This is wishing death and ill health on beautiful, strong women who reject the beauty norms that everyone knows are impossible and oppressive. He’s not just doing it to his friends but paying millions of dollars to broadcast that message to anyone who might see it.

I don’t know what to do about it.

I was a sophomore or junior in college when I first encountered Max—his website was sent to me by my best friend. She and her friends at school routinely read and laughed at how revolting and absurd his stories are. I read them all and we laughed together at what a douchebag he seemed like. But I never thought anyone was taking him seriously, or actually thought he was “cool.” I was wrong. I should have known.

He’s a bit of a difficult case. You know, when we’re talking about Glenn Beck … we can debate the merits of whether or not it’s worth the time criticizing what he has said, but the “you’re giving him more attention” argument doesn’t hold, because it’s not like Glenn Beck is just going to go away at this point. Tucker Max, I had never heard of before until this college tour. And when I first heard of him — I think through an older blog post of yours, actually, and then a few other places — the fact that it was a college tour is then what infuriated me. The thing is, while it makes you a shitty person to do what Tucker Max does, there will always be someone willing to do something like that as long as people let him.

And so, you think, “am I just telling more people who Tucker Max is?” But, on the other hand, apparently a whole lot of people already know who he is. Or he wouldn’t have a goddamn college tour. Tucker Max is an absolute nobody to me. If he’s getting thousands of students at each campus trying to get into his shows, though, he’s clearly somebody to them. And so the issue becomes, do we ignore it and prevent more people outside his demographic from knowing who he is, even if it means that no one is talking about what’s going on with his demographic? It’s a shitty choice, as it pretty much always is.

I have no desire to ever write about this dickwad again. And I had no real desire to write about him in the first place, and was much more interested, as I tried to make clear in the post, in school responsibility and appropriate student response. And I don’t want to give him publicity, just as much as I’m sure you don’t, but the thing is that the issue of him, whether it’s him or someone else, sadly isn’t going away anytime soon and is one we need to figure out how to deal with. And like I said in the post and you said in your comment, it makes sense to me to not try to use the appearance as a visibility event, but to launch other action prior to his appearance.

As for Tucker Max and rape culture: one, I think that making it into a question of whether Max has personally sexually assaulted anyone is legally risky and potentially conversation-derailing. Which is fine, since we don’t need to talk about his personal actions (I don’t know the man, and the veracity of his stories has been called into question, publicly) when we talk about how his work strengthens rape CULTURE. He writes about having sex while trashed, and he oozes contempt for women in general and his sexual partners in particular. Furthermore, he’s cavalier about bodily harm to women in general and seems to think upsetting them, disrespecting them, or violating their boundaries is funny, even or especially within a sexual context. (Like, that “I’m trying to get you drunk” comment: I think that was a “joke,” but since a Tucker Max “joke” consists of “saying things that an asshole would say,” and since EVERYTHING he says is what an asshole would say, it’s pretty much impossible to tell.) Men who have their judgment and perception altered by alcohol are more likely to misread or fail to respect a woman’s sexual boundaries, and his attitudes contribute to a culture of male sexual entitlement and aggression towards women. Rape culture, in other words. Tucker Max could be made of sunshine and puppies in his private life, for all I know, but the messages he’s sending are likely to give some dudes seriously bad and scary information about how to treat girls. I’m in agreement with the protesters on that point.

What I’m worried about is how we can have that conversation without contributing to the Myth of Tucker Max. I honestly think that protests keyed to his appearances bring him attention, make him a media event, and strengthen his brand. Direct action taken when he isn’t on campus, against the organizations that are hiring him with student funds, doesn’t have that side effect. Calling people out in our own lives when they exemplify the attitudes or “humor” of the type that’s found in his work, and engaging directly with Max readers about what is fucked up in his stories – that also doesn’t have that effect. I honestly think that protesting rape culture (which Tucker Max, along with many other people, promotes through the glamorization of misogyny and the linking of debilitating amounts of booze to sex) is necessary, but that a protest of rape culture pegged to a Tucker Max appearance inevitably becomes some “FEMINISTS OPPOSE TUCKER MAX” mini-media-circus that doesn’t convey any of the larger points that the protesters may have been trying to get across, and strengthens the public perception that Max is somehow a rebel against the dark forces of PC or whatever.

Like: to me, Tucker Max is equivalent to the “abortion episode” of Family Guy. (Also pretty misogynist! And, I’ve heard, it comes with rape jokes!) The creators probably KNEW that it would be OMGSOCONTROVERSIAL that it wouldn’t get aired. The plan apparently worked, and everybody was atwitter about the forbidden, extra-edgy Family Guy episode, and the result was that Family Guy got covered in outlets that normally ignored it and also DVD sales will probably benefit when it is included on the set and people decide it’s something they just have to see. Manufacturing offense is easy. And it often benefits the manufacturer. And those of us who seriously do want to talk about why abortion is being framed in this misogynist way and how fucked-up that is get fooled into becoming unwitting marketing tools for something we would never in our lifetimes actually support or wish to see prosper. It sucks. I just hope there’s some way to oppose the culture that Max represents without his getting a bad-boy mystique from it.

As for where the organization gets its funding, colleges and universities often provide at least some funding to any and all student groups. I agree that if I were a student there, I’d take issue with my student fees going to that group in particular, but they seem to raise much of their money with ticket sales, and I couldn’t argue against giving them any university funding at all, without also letting students object to student fees going to support pro-choice student groups, for instance.

As for university censorship of student groups, that’s usually a protected activity, and at public universities, the law actually prevents university administrations from interfering. Obscene views should be protested, but people shouldn’t be forbidden to express them or to listen to those who do, and it’s a violation of prevailing academic standards, and often the law, for universities to try.

I don’t have a citation handy for the KKK, but David Horowitz, for instance, can speak if invited to a campus, without regard to university policies or student protests. The same with any other controversial speaker.

If I were advising students on a campus where this guy’s speaking, I would suggest pursuing whether his stories amount to confessing to rape. It sure sounds like it.