So a helpful Twitterer told me that I was a frequent topic of conversation on A Voice for Men’s Honey Badger “radio” show last night — that’s the one hosted by Karen Straughan (Girl Writes What) and Alison Tieman (Typhon Blue) and a newer addition to AVFM’s FeMRA stable named Della Burton. Bored, I went over to take a listen to the archived show. Well, bits and pieces of it, anyway. Life is short, and every minute of this show felt about an hour long.
Anyway, I missed most of whatever it was they said about me, but I did manage to force myself to sit through a good chunk of the segment featuring none other than Nick Reading, the guy who’s running a joke campaign for city council of Edmonton Alberta as the “Patriarchy Party” candidate. You know, the dude we talked about just yesterday.
The gals did their best to play along with his over-the-top patriarchal schtick, proclaiming themselves submissive inferior females unworthy of his manly phallus, and so on. It was as gratingly unfunny as you might imagine, and it went on and on. Even the Honey Badgers, perhaps wondering if this whole segment wasn’t a rather apt metaphor for their own role within A Voice for Men and the Men’s Rights movement at large, couldn’t quite bring themselves to laugh at any of Nick’s, er, humor.
At least not until, about 49 minutes into the show, he brought out the rape jokes.
Take a listen:
Paul “The Thought of Fucking Your Shit Up Gives Me an Erection” Elam, meet Nick “If They Didn’t Scream No, How Else Would I Get an Erection” Reading.
In case you weren’t able to make all that out, due to the clear-as-mud sound engineering job of AVFM’s James Huff — you may remember him as the guy responsible for this amazing rant — I have transcribed the exchange below as best I could, cutting out a few repeated phrases and ignoring some remarks that got buried under other remarks.
Nick Reading: No never means no. It only means yes. That’s an understanding that we have within the patriarchy.
Karen Straughan: It is.
Alison Tieman: That’s true. Actually “no” should be stricken from the English language because it simply makes no sense. How could any woman ever say no to the holy phallus unless she was criminally insane?
Nick: Criminally insane, yes.
Della Burton [?]: Criminally, yes.
Karen: But, but we shouldn’t strike “no” from all the dictionaries and the lexicons of language simply because there are numerous times in the course of a day when a man loves to say “no” to a woman.
Nick: I would almost insist on striking it from the non-male vernacular but if they didn’t scream it, how else would I get an erection?
[Awkward pause]
[Laughter]
Della [?]: Oh my goodness.
Karen: Right, you’re right.
Della: I hadn’t even thought of that.
Karen: So no is still in.
A Voice for Men: Promoting Human Rights, One Rape Joke at a Time
EDITED TO ADD: Below, a video on YouTube about this episode of Honey Badger radio, which not only looks at the show itself but at what was going on in the official chatroom for the show at the time, which turns out to be even creepier than the stuff said by Nick Reading on the show itself.
Along with the standard MRA misogyny from some of AVFM’s regulars, there were bizarre sexualized comments directed at the so-called Honey Badgers themselves: one commenter went on at length about how he wanted to use Karen Straughan’s breast milk in his coffee (and spike her coffee with his semen). Palani provides screenshots and everything. Some of her commentary is a bit problematic — she refers to them as “retards” at one point — but if you’ve got 15 minutes it’s worth a watch.
[VIDEO REMOVED BY REQUEST OF VIDEOMAKER]
Who is this person and why is zie throwing a tantrum?
I think it’s the woman in the video. Earlier in this thread someone said that she was a TERF (or used to be, and that commenter was not aware whether or not she still was one). And then she came on here to say she wasn’t a TERF but in a over-the-top defensive and accusatory way that seemed, to say the least, unmerited.
Ally (I think it was her) mentioned someone she knew of as a TERF and this person claims to be them, and is ranting at Ally for being some Minion of Her Enemies.
Or summat.
grumpycat – not to mention the sense of “protesteth too much” I’m getting from all this shrill “I’m not a TERF and only ebil people say I am!”
Oh, it’s her…word of advice, dear friend. Striding into a virtual room full of strangers and accusing some of them of being the minions of one of your countless enemies makes you appear to be a. a little reality-challenged and b. rude. When entering a new online community, try not to piss on the rug before even introducing yourself.
Yeah, if we’re minions of anyone it’s
a) The Dark Lord of ferretcatsuits
b) Basement Cat
c) Cathulhu
d) all of the above.
joyintorah: we’ll back off if you fuck off. Deal?
What is up with people who say something, and there’s a clear implication in the words, and then they turn around and say they didn’t explicitly say it and you’re just reading into it too much…? idgi, it makes no sense to me, are people that oblivious to how they sound or are they deliberately being obtuse?
joyintorah18: Get a clue. Telling someone to, “back off” is, at the very least, hostile.
It’s unwarranted, if you are (as you say) not TERF. But if you are, and you can prove it, then you would be better served doing that, than doubling down on the aggressive rhetoric.
Because you can’t make it stick, which makes it hollow (and pointless) bluster. good for nothing but convincing the audience that you are a defensive twit who doesn’t have a moral leg to stand on.
Since you followed it with a bald-faced insinuation of bad faith… I’d say your best course of action now is to shut the fuck up, or apologise for being a jerk and see if you can mend fences.
Otherwise, you’re going to get the hostile response your entry merits.
The whole aggression and ranting sounded very TERFish to me, curiously enough, possibly because of who it was directed at. Coincidence? Maybe, maybe not.
Here’s my burning question — how’d she even end up here in the first place?
Also, how can anyone hate mangos?! ^.^
Something to do with that video? I’m not at all sure.
I’d guess a google alert. Perhaps a string related to name:TERF.
Kitteh’s I think the target was co-incident (though the awareness of the potential TERFness is probably not co-incidental).
The vehemence of response isn’t, in itself, probative. The lack of defense against the imputation is more condemning. If I were regularly accused of something (say racism), and I weren’t I might be a bit touchy.
If it were something like TERFness (which is easier to defend against than racism), I’d just point to my history of active comment on the subject and say, “make up your mind, but I dispute the allegation.”
She’s not doing that. She’s telling is,”I’m not, shut your mouth.”.
Not a good tactic in a place one has no credibility.
Yeah, I was thinking it was probably a coincidence, but a strange one. The whole rant is so eyeball-rolling (good thing Falconer’s hanging onto any spares).
Touchiness I can understand, but like you said, leaping in on a forum where you’re totally unknown and having a shitfit sure doesn’t help her cause. An “Oh gods I’m so sick of hearing this everywhere – look, here’s what I said” with links or some sort of evidence would serve her a lot better.
I dislike mangos. >.>
I’m indifferent to mangos but I really dislike their price.
It’s the “everyone is out to get me, I know it!” from a feminist to a bunch of random people on a feminist forum that raised my eyebrows. I’ve seen that before from radfems who have issues with trans people, not sure why, but there seems to be a connection.
Oh man, the “I was only talking to one of you so everyone else stop talking to me it’s not faaaair!” trolls are my favorite!
So you’re just being a douchenozzle on purpose, then?
Okay, we’ll stop calling you a TERF. We’ll come up with another name for you. How about Blatantly Ableist Radical Feminist, or BARF for short?
Yeah, the tone put me in mind of the bits and pieces I’ve read on
BizarroworldRadfemhub.(Got thrown in moderation for quoting the R-word. Trying again.)
The person who made the initial comment is who I’m responding to. Not the entire forum. Got it?
Oh man, the “I was only talking to one of you so everyone else stop talking to me it’s not faaaair!” trolls are my favorite!
So you’re just being a douchenozzle on purpose, then?
Okay, we’ll stop calling you a TERF. We’ll come up with another name for you. How about Blatantly Ableist Radical Feminist, or BARF for short?
Gah, not doing well tonight. First line is a quote.
I guess she thinks that intersectionality is like the Tooth Fairy.
I like BARF.
I’m mango neutral.
BARF, I like it!
(The acronym. Not the activity. Well, unless a PUA’s shoes happen to be in my line of fire.)
W00t! I was as un-obvious as she was!
That was, as surely some of you can guess, aimed at pecunium. Cuz if I can’t convert him to mango juice and vodka, I’m walking! (To pnc before his place cuz holy shit my Pittsburgh bank is around the corner from grand central!)