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]
I think most war movies have anti-war themes; in the WWII-to-Vietnam era we probably had more of a heroic theme, but both earlier and later cinema was influenced by wars that sucked and clearly had no redeeming values. Even something like War Horse, which is highly romanticized in some ways, also has a shitton of scenes like this that are bad stuff happening to people (and horses).
The only thing I feel like saying at the moment is, I have a very mixed feeling about war movies, and the one’s I like are often graphic, and what I take away from them (and want to see) is probably quite different from what most want to see/take away from them.
And yeah, most of war (even WW1) is tedium, and grunt work.
But the parts that aren’t, really aren’t.
Louis CK also did a joke about going back in time and raping Hitler. As opposed to killing him. I think it was intended to be unsettling.
WTF is with the MRA/PUA crowd thinking that freedom of speech consists mainly of calling women c*nts on twitter, making rape jokes, or using the n word without facing any public humiliation or professional repercussions for it? Do you REALLY this puerile level of trolling is what Thomas Jefferson had in mind when he wrote the Constitution and Bill of Rights?
Paul Gross (Slings and Arrows, Due South) directed a WW1 film. It’s called Passchendael. The ending was a bit over the top, but the middle bits were out-fucking-standing.
The big exception is airplane movies. I have never seen a fighter-plane movie that didn’t romanticize war. Because airplanes are cool.
The series, “Piece of Cake” doesn’t. Not a movie, and done by the BBC. Based on a great novel.
Sorry, I should have been less emphatic. I didn’t find it so.
I watched a few war movies. They tend to be about the Spanish Civil War.
WRT The Train: Looking forward to The Monuments Men? The book was well-researched by not that well written, so I have high hopes.
A further thought on all this: when the ShitRedditSays people satirize what people think of them, they make funny graphics filled with in-jokes about rubbery purple dildoes and mean angels stealing internet points.
http://manboobz.com/2012/05/25/shitredditsays-has-an-art-attack/
When AVFM/Men’s Rights Edmonton tries to satirize what they think feminists think of them, they make rape jokes.
Also: auggz, I think the FeMRA who made the “battered women” joke was Erin Pizzey in her Reddit AMA.
No, Kristina Hansen is TheWoolyBumblebee. Erin Pizzey is a woman who started one of the earliest DV shelters in England, who also holds very traditional ideas of masculinity and femininity, and argues that domestive violence is completely reciprocal.
I have to go pack, now.
No it was a women’s shelter, she just came to think that these women wanted the violence on some level and so therefore they would provoke it.
Pecunium — first, you have no idea how often you make me want to hug you do you? And I realize that’s not what you were going for there, at all, but yeah. Second, put one one the next time I’m there, I’m game (I can read EMS manuals with pictures of what hay balers do to arms while eating, don’t worry about the gore factor)
Third, is iOS 7’s autocorrect giving you hell about contractions? Like “that’s not” became “that’ snot”
Cassandra, Nat — I will take your suggestions under advisement, my mac is still focused on VtM:B!
*one on
I am not liking this upgrade to autocorrect.
I just added a video to the OP with more about this particular espisode of Honey Badger radio — most interestingly, what was going on in the official chatroom for the show at the time. It wasn’t pretty.
In the interests of full disclosure, some of my all-time favorite video games are historic air war flight sims like Red Baron, European Air War and Il-2 Shturmovik, and I think war is awful and frightening and I didn’t want us in Iraq or Afghanistan to begin with.
So Imma bow out of the Futility of War discussion as a big ol’ hypocrite.
Apropos of nothing, the spellcheck on my Firefox thinks Shturmovik is supposed to be Moisturizer or Turmoil.
OT, but I just found one of the shittiest defenses of the “male disposability” idea ever: http://siryouarebeingmocked.tumblr.com/post/60228846405/an-anthropologist-on-girlwriteswhat-and-male
Blackadder 4 is so good. And I’ve heard really good things about the grave of the fireflies, but I haven’t gotten up the gumption/emotional ambition to watch it yet.
That SRS Fartistry contest had some great submissions.
That’s pretty on topic Ally, the original post that person is referring to has been linked earlier in the thread.
He quotes a verse from the Bible in which women are compared to rubies in regards to value, yet ignores the verses that relegate the status of women to chattel.* WTF?
*I know not all interpretations of the Bible are sexist, but if he’s going to pull out quotes from the Bible that way to prove his point, I can, too.
Falconer — I actually really like the original Bloodrayne. The whole slaughting Nazis thing. I get real weird about the ones cowering in corners though, if I can get them to run, I will; if it’s the daemite mines and they won’t flee, I drain them dry as a mercy killing.
Pretty much the only KILL ALL THE THINGS game that I’ll play, and it’s a dhamper with blades killing (zombie ish sometimes) Nazis…somehow slaughtering Nazis appeases my “no, killing is wrong”.
VtM:B…you play it at all yet? Figuring out how combat heavy you can go versus how diplomat? (Hell, leave the apartment and gain a humanity point for giving a bum a buck?) I kee trying to play a low human try character to see the dialog options and being unable to take to courses of action that would get me there. I am not okay with collateral damage.
Even in video games.
Rayne…it’s the moves and those blades that get me. Fell for that watching my brother play it.
Actual war though? My thoughts on our (US) mess are long and complex, but sum to fuck this shit.
Pecunium, when you answer that catholism quesiton, can you keep it short? Cuz I wantchecanswer (wtf autocorrect? I want the answer) but not That Discussion. Thanks 🙂