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]
Karen GirlWritesWhat video blogs from that same kitchen as Nick is pictured in. Is that her home, or some secret MRA headquarters? Maybe I’m talking out of my ass because I don’t really know, but is it possible that “Nick Reading” is her son? Wow, what upstanding, nice citizens she is raising. Not only is he joking about raping women on the radio, but doing so with the praise of his own mother? Yuck. Disturbing. I wonder what they talk about at the dinner table. SaelPalani also said that a female voice called Nick Reading during the radio show and she thought of it as his mother calling, but Karen was also hosting the broadcast at the time so I guess it’s possible that she isn’t his mother and he simply took his picture at her home.
cloudiah – Well, you know what they say. Only seeing male police officers working close to your location for a few hours is MISANDRY!
Uh…hi?
A bit late but “Piece of Cake” – damn, that was a great TV series.
@ Argenti Aertheri That is not a thing that is legal. It is here. There are veritable line ups of Feminazis waiting for their late term abortions. Or, like, not. In fact, our overall abortion rate is lower. It’s almost as if factors other than the availability of abortion were at play.
@ myeyestheyburn Given their lack of physical strength, a woman on her own should be frightened as hell without men to protect her. The invention of firearms dealt with that problem quite effectively. I’m a pretty good shot with a bow, too.
@ auggziliary When the only way you can justify something is through an apocalypse, it’s probably pretty wrong already. *waves at Orson Scott Card*
Funny, isn’t it? They whine about us suggesting that rape is somehow not a wonderful thing, because of how it demonises all men as rapists despite saying nothing of the sort, but they’ll happily assert that all of us would turn feral and roam the streets raping everything with a vagina – yes, even left over porn magazines – because that’s the natural order of man. Yep… we’re the ones demonising men, yessir!
Like what you like (of course!), but my two cents: I hate Louis CK, and I hate that joke. My general hatred of him is based on his support of Tosh and his vile program, his appearance on the Daily Show to explain this support and his hitherto basic lack of interest in women’s lives, the episode of his show where him being raped by a woman was played for yuks, and several other unfunny rape jokes he’s told over his career.
That particular joke on the one hand implies that Louis CK has put some thought into the whole Schrodinger’s rapist idea (which is a step in the right direction!), but really underscores the totally patriarchal ideas that (1) women who go on dates with men do so at their own risk, (2) men are slavering beasts, and (3) there are only two genders. It’s basically victim-blaming/disappearing T*IQ people masquerading as empathy.
Maybe I’m going a little too far, but my gut reaction when I was watching that joke was purely visceral. I had to really think about why my shoulders were up around my ears by the end of it.
The average male has ten percent more muscle mass than the average female. TEN PERCENT. Not, like, hundreds of percents (MRA math)– just ten. And that’s just averages. So there are obviously some guys who have a lot more muscle mass than some women (and a lot of other guys), and there are obviously women who have a lot more muscle mass than some guys (and other women).
What mystifies me, though, in these weird daydreams about rapey apocalypse, is that there are no guns, apparently. Guns don’t require phenomenal upper body strength to lift and use. It’s like they think if there’s a magical point where all law and order and human decency collapse, along with that, we are suddenly all plunged into “Game of Thrones” instead of, um, like, NOW.
Athywren, seriously! It’s such a dismal outlook on your own gender, on the way that humans interact. What kind of people survived this apparent apocalypse?! I’m pretty sure that even I could organise a relatively peaceful and cooperative society, and I’m the first to admit I’m weak as all fuck physically. Shockingly, I don’t think it’s the important thing when it comes to organisation of societal rules… I mean, I think Schwarzenegger is the exception, not the norm.
Bee: Ugh, that is unpleasant. Here is the clip for anyone who cares.
I listened carefully to the sound clip, and no, the pause in question was not “awkward”. It was reflective. They were just processing slowly, and mentally chewing on it. I speak with authority as an insider. I know these people well, so my analysis trumps all of yours.
That was… legible… Utter bullshit, but bravo, legible full sentences.
@SittieKitty
I think it’s a marked improvement over his twitter posts. Does anyone have a gold star to give to Fidley?
They were reflecting on the horror their lives have become, apparently.
Reflective pause indeed.
When this misguided morons go on about how women will be forced back to servitude when society collapses they for get Samuel Colt.
God created all men [persons] equal, Sam Colt made it stick.
Women aren’t stupid, and it doesn’t take brawn to close a finger ’round 5 lbs. of trigger pull. This shortsighted idiots are in for a rude (if brief) awakening before it’s lights out.
Of course these yahoos won’t understand why the “apocalypse” doesn’t happen. When there are disasters, people pull together. They help each other (even strangers). It’s outliers who go on rampages. And it’s decent people who stop it.
And they do stop it.
fidelbogen: I speak with authority as an insider. I know these people well, so my analysis trumps all of yours.
I’ve read your writing. You can’t do analysis. My little sister (who is 15) makes you look like a toddler trying to master comparative structures (e.g., This is betterer than that).
Try selling your authority to people who’ve not looked at what you fob off as writing.
I think his point was that they’re idiots who needed that much time to process the depth of humour being presented to them.
Is that taking into comsideration the fact that women’s fitness regimes are geared more toward slimming than building strength, or is it a kind of base level thing?
To the poster who called me a TERF:
I didn’t even know what that meant. Oh and you’re wrong about that btw. Totally wrong. Instead of spreading vicious crap about me it’s better if you just ask me and I will tell you what I think. It’s no secret that I am a radical feminist in the sense that I’m against the selling and purchasing of women for sex and am also against pornography. My arguments on that can be found in my video catalogue for anyone interested.
I am not a TERF. I am NOT. I don’t think transwomen aren’t women. That little rumour got started by the same woman who spent an hour talking about my vagina in the blogtv room and who then made a youtube account pretending to be an abused young girl in order to gather dox of all the radical feminists she could find on Youtube. This is also the same youtuber who called the damn cops on me because I exposed her fraudulent account she used to gather dox.
IOW, quit perpetuating this crazy bullshit b/c I can back up EVERYTHING that I’ve said here.
Oh and the pro-porn, pro-prostitution Youtuber who started all these rumours about me, did the blogtv, made the fraudulent account was Divinity33372. There is no love lost there. I can’t stand her. She hasn’t been on Youtube in a long time. Hell, you just might be her for all I know or one of her minions.
Back off. Got it?
For those who think it’s merely fierearms… Julie D’Aubigny… La Maupin
There was meant to be a generally in that last sentence… I appear to have left it in reserve.
joyintorah18: You’d be doing your case better credit if you weren’t making completely baseless accusations of sockpuppetry/false pretenses by way of your defensive ranting about your non-terfness.
I have spoken with TyphonBlue, and she very much concurs with my previous remark about the “awkward pause”.
This is the longest response to multiple comments ever. I’m sorry in advance.
@myeyestheyburn fuuuuuuuuuuckkkkk. After reading articles like that it is so difficult to even think about trusting men when I know for a fact that he’s just an embarrassment to men and doesn’t represent them all or even most of them. It’s the same issue I have when reading youtube comments sections, having to remind myself that decent people exist in this world, these are not all people. It’s just so depressing. Why do some people seemingly exist just to make you doubt all that is good in the world?
And when he talks about how it’s not attractive that a woman could take him or leave him, it’s like, he doesn’t get that he’s such a repulsive human being that no woman has ever felt passion for him as a partner. Someone who really loved him wouldn’t be thinking, “Meh, I could take him or leave him.” Someone who was using him for money and security might though because maybe she could always find an upgrade.
@quackers, I don’t know who started the rumor that women don’t get turned on by the sight of men, but it’s obnoxious that it caught on like wild fire. If I see a guy who is well dressed, hair that brings out his bone structure, his thin but toned arms, etc, I’m gonna think, “Damn, he’s hot.” I’ll probably even think about him in class or at work when I should be focused on other things. So what is my solution? No hot men allowed in my presence lest they distract me? Guys are gonna be distracted by girls they find hot in the exact same way, whether they’re wearing a short skirt of not. There’s nothing we can do about this human condition besides learn to cope with it. Hiding women’s bodies away from men is certainly not going to make them learn how to cope when they’re adults with jobs. The problem, also, is that it’s not the fact that you find someone attractive that is wrong, it’s how you act on that attraction. Just like I don’t sit there slack jawed and drooling when I see a good looking man, men can do the same.
If I can’t wear short shorts next summer, I better not see any guys walking around shirtless. I’m Irish in a hot climate. I NEED short shorts to survive.
This is the part about chivalry that sets me off because my family’s history was full of women being abused by men. Women having to be at their husband’s beck and call because they could have them involuntarily committed at any time. Women being beaten and raped because they had no other choice. Chivalry was probably a pretty great trade off for a woman who had a loving and supportive husband, but for those whose husbands took advantage of their power in society, chivalry just meant being beaten and raped by your husband in exchange for not getting beaten and raped by a stranger. It’s hard to convey to people who currently miss chivalry that it was a system put in place for men to protect women from other men. Something that some men perpetuate and exaggerate knowing it gives them power. There is so much wrong with it when it becomes something that is owed rather than something that people do out of love or common courtesy. I don’t know if I explained that well, I’m getting so many thoughts rushing through my head about it that I could write an essay right now.
@Dvärghundspossen I struggle to discuss the “white women had the same rights as slaves” issue because I can’t figure out a way to discuss what it really meant for so many women without it being a slap in the face to actual slaves. It’s a topic that I don’t know how to approach as an intersectional feminist because I’ve been told that it’s an insult to discuss white women’s lack of rights when slaves had it so much worse.
One specific instance was where the conversation started off about me talking about the plight of my female ancestors at which point I was told that I was being insensitive to black people for even complaining, because they had it worse. The person who brought this up was a black, anti-feminist man. He said to me, “women couldn’t own property, but black people were property,” so any word that alluded to property was completely off limits when discussing anything but black slaves. When I told him that there was more to it and that writing their suffering off completely with the fallacy of relative privation wasn’t cool, he told me I was a typical white feminist accusing black people of being divisive. It didn’t seem as though he was speaking to me in order to share his experience, but that he just hates feminists (this wasn’t the first time he’d come at me for being a feminist) and wanted to take that opportunity to silence me.
While I honestly don’t believe HE was arguing in good faith, I do want to avoid being completely insensitive to those that are. I KNOW the very clear difference between the two, and wouldn’t dream of saying they were exactly the same. So my issue is, how do I discuss these circumstances without using words that could be misinterpreted as me believing that white women had it as bad as slaves?
This is exactly the problem with things like the free trade. It’s hard because I’m more of a libertarian in spirit, but in reality it just doesn’t work.
@ignotussomnium I need to see this and link it to every MRA ever. What was the show called?
@SittieKitty Maybe MRA’s watch way too many Mad Max, post-apocalyptic movies and shows where society completely devolves. The don’t understand these movies are fiction. It also says a lot about their individual states of mind. They don’t do bad things because they’ll go to jail for it, not because they believe it’s wrong.
Um, wow. Could “no, I’m not a TERF. Your information is not accurate and I can show you the information that is accurate” not have sufficed?
We definitely value what TB has to say! Not.