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]
This a million times over. I have only ever watched an entire GWW video twice. Both times was in short sessions interrupted by pauses and fits of laughter or to clean up my kitty’s bullshit induced vomits.
Her libertarian “conference” video is somewhat worthwhile. It’s funny because she can’t actually speak to “real” people (see a video of her being interviewed by Edmonton news for further proof).
I also watched a video of hers that was posted to /r/AskFeminists. I made up a response countering her arguments. Oddly enough, someone wasted money to give me gold.
Long story short. Gazing at a youtube frame filled with 80% GWW is detrimental to your cats health.
Speaking of GWW…
An anthropologist takes on GWW and the theory of male disposability.
I thought this was really good. Language is a little academic, but then it was written by an academic.
So the MRM is false-flagging themselves?
Just stop for a moment and think about how this looks to an outside observer to see the Men’s Rights Movement support the Patriarchy Party – someone who has no context of the MRM and how they think Feminists think about them.
Sure I can see that they’re trying to show that the mainstream public doesn’t support “The Patriarchy” so it must not exist, but that’s much the same as trying to show that violence doesn’t exist by running a Violence Party. And not only is the idea terrible from the foundation, now they’ll forever be known as the people that ran a political party on a platform of misogyny. At best people will see it as a joke and pass it over, at worst they’ve successfully associated themselves with (more) overt misogyny.
Dustydeste — but did he have to pay to get in?!
I love that movie.
As for the OP…*noptopuses away*
*noptopuses back* Baby-Q Pit! *dies* *revives* *zombie noptopuses away*
Argenti – Yesss that movie is awesome! I… I kinda love how everyone vomits blueberry pie filling even though they aren’t the ones eating blueberry pies? I’m somewhat unsure if that’s an acceptable thing to be enthusiastic about?
I’m kinda worried about the Baby-Q, though; we’re not going to feast on Falconer’s babies, right?! Because I don’t exactly want to devour them; I just want a tiiiiny nibble.
We should be careful of arguments from authority, which is kind of what the first sentence of it is, but that’s an interesting read. I was surprised at how much of it mirrored my own opinions (I am very much not an anthropologist.) and yet was entirely unsurprised by the responses to it.
You know… just READING the transcript was painful. I don’t know if I want to listen to it.
BTW, does anyone know what “Feminism’s Pimp Hand” means. I saw it a while back, and through I really want to know the details of the “argument” I also really don’t want to listen to GWW or TB’s voice. halp!
Part of me thinks that radio shows, podcats, vlogs, etc exist to deflect criticism by making it as painful as possible for critics to hear what you’re saying.
He makes me want to make Edmonton City Police to circulate his photograph to unsolved rapes, he’s so smug. But he’s probably a prince at skirting the line between what is rape and what can be charged as rape. Fuck that line.
It’s more of a chasm than a line, really…
Dustydeste — but what’s Pluto?!
And yeah, I think the blueberry thing is weird. Idk that I’d say “enthusiastic”, but I get your interest in
when the next train is dueit.Oh wow. That was a very uncomfortable moment. After that pause when someone goes “oh!” and then does that soft laughter it reminds me of when older family members chuckle at a bad joke a child makes just to humour them.
It’s exactly the same as when newscasters force a laugh when the weatherman makes a shit joke. Except this time it’s super-duper edgy-wedgy. If you’re going to do risque humour you should be funny enough to actually make people laugh out loud, not force a mildly approving giggle and an “oh.”
Seconding Katz. I tried listening to that podcast b/c I was curious what they were saying about Manboobz. But skipped around a bit and I didn’t hear what they said about Manboobz, and I’m not going to listen any to more of it because . . . podcast is boring awful hell.
@grumpycatisagirl
I know, right? I thought this type of humour was supposed to be all exciting and outrageous, not drawn out and dull.
Humour and graphic design: two things I never see done well in the MRM (as well as activism and other not as important things).
Argenti – Pluto’s a dog! But what’s Goofy!?
The blueberry thing just puts the scene over-the-top hilarious for me. I’m not sure why, but it’s definitely on my list of best things despite the fact that it’s disgusting. Maybe because it makes me think of the part from The Goonies where Chunk describes instigating a puking incident in a movie theater.
Aaaand I realize bringing that up makes it sound like I’m just really into people all vomiting, but I assure you it is not the case, and is more just my appreciation of synergy between great movies. Yes.
Honestly, even when it’s people I like talking about stuff I like, I find podcasts an incredibly tiresome format. I only even listened to Geekually Yoked once and that’s a Christian geek feminist podcast. It’s like it was made for me.
I think podcasts were made as a sleep aid. Glad to know I’m not the only one.
Or how about this one:
Yes, it’s fucking Dane Cook doing it right. If Dane Cook can do it right, none of these comedians have any fucking excuse.
I can listen to podcasts only when I am walking to and from work; at other times I will invariably become distracted by something else, and suddenly realize that I haven’t been paying attention to the podcast for like 10 minutes. Somehow I don’t think this podcast is going to make it into my regular rotation.
Dear diary,
I saw Dane Cook actually be funny today.
The only podcasts I’ve found that I enjoy are basically just stories-read-aloud deals, Escape Pod and PodCastle being my go-tos. (Pseudopod’s supposed to be good for horror stuff, but that’s not really my schtick.)
Welcome To Nightvale is good for a Lovecraft style not-horror-but-really-creepy-sometimes podcast…
I always try to listen to podcasts that challenge my own opinion, I have Reasonable Faith, Skeptico and a few others subscribed, but I have to really force myself to listen to them. I found one called “Skeptically Yours” a month or two ago, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to listen to them yet because… well:
ep 28: Rape is NOT funny! Well, maybe a little.
ep 30: Trigger Warning… Rape! Hehehehehe
ep 37: TRIGGER WARNING! No one was raped in the making of this podcast… sadly.
For some reason, I’m having a hard time mustering the desire to listen to them laugh at rape.
Another problem with podcasts is they can’t include links, obviously, so if they mention something and you want to find out more about it, you have to remember what it was called and then Google it.