Earlier today, the illustrious Honey Badger Brigade was booted from the Calgary Expo, a major Canadian fan convention devoted to all varieties of geeky pop culture.
The Honey Badgers — a mostly female A Voice for Men spinoff group known for its unlistenable internet “radio” shows — was sent packing after conventioneers complained about their connections to #GamerGate — a nine-month-long orgy of harassment targeting outspoken women in gaming and their supporters — and their alleged disruption of a panel devoted to women in comics.
According to Calgary Expo officials, the group was kicked out for “actively disregarding” the Expo’s efforts to provide “a positive and safe event” for attendees.
The Honey Badgers love to claim that they “don’t give a fuck,” but apparently their fans give quite a few, and AVFMers and #GamerGaters are rallying to their defense on Twitter. Which has led to some, well, pretty ironic Twitter exchanges, like this one below between this, er, intriguingly named #GamerGater and the official Calgary Expo account.
PRO TIP: If you’re trying to convince the world that the Honey Badgers didn’t deserve to be kicked out of the convention for contributing to an unsafe space for women, you should probably not do so while referencing “MasculineRapeFingers” in your Twitter handle.
Or include rape jokes/threats in your actual Tweets:
https://twitter.com/nickwcoleman/status/589171826502213634
Of course, it’s no wonder the Honey Badgers have attracted fans like these, given how fond they are of rape jokes themselves. Their now-disassembled booth at the Expo featured a poster of #GamerGate mascot Vivian James — a character designed to reference a channer rape joke — hiding behind the Honey Badger mask.
And before Vivian James was even a thing, the Badgers sold t-shirts and other merchandise featuring a cartoon octopus they describe as “the world’s cutest rape joke.” No, really, here he is:
To see the full array of Mr. Tentacles merchandise available, visit their CafePress store. (Archived version here.)
I’m no lawyer, but it seems to me that this in itself would be enough to get the Honey Badgers booted from the Calgary Expo. A group that literally sells rape joke t-shirts and coffee mugs to raise money for itself is a group that doesn’t belong at a convention that’s trying to be “positive and safe” for its attendees.
Add to this their connection to #GamerGate — a hate movement — and A Voice for Men — a hate group — and it’s pretty clear that Calgary Expo officials had more than enough justification for their decision to send the Honey Badgers on their way.
EDIT: The woman behind the MasculineRapeFingers account insists “[m]y twitter handle isn’t a joke. I’m a female who enjoys rape fantasies.” I’m not sure why that makes the Twitter handle any more appropriate, but I’ve reworded the post accordingly.
Oh for fuck’s sakes. As someone who was a professional game artist for many years, this is disgusting bullshit. No professional artist worth his/her salt is the giant, oversensitive baby that GamerGate and the Honey Badgers insist we are. We can handle social critiques of our work. If we couldn’t handle criticism, we wouldn’t be professional creators. We’re not your shield, GamerGate, stop white knighting and using us, without our permission, as an excuse to attack people.
Oh, pro-rape women (a.k.a. “Honey Badgers”), you’re so ironic and hip and funny. NOT.
And I honestly wonder if you’d still be giggling like idiots if ever a real-life “Mr. Tentacles” sprung a little “surprise sex” on YOU.
And you’re so oppressed for being kicked out of a convention billing itself as woman-friendly and safe when all you came there to do was sell oppression in the form of an unfunny “joke”. NOT.
Ah, but see magnesium, they don’t care about YOU because you have an agenda (By which they mean you don’t swallow their bullshit wholesale)! They care about the game artists and developers who make the games THEY like and who agree with them.
This, by the way, is why I don’t think anyone who’s in GamerGate should bother trying to get into the games industry. If you’re so upset that someone criticized video games you just happen to like that you joined a fucking movement about it, you’re never going to have the intestinal fortitude to spend years of your life making a video game and releasing it to the public.
What are GGers gonna do when their boss tells them that their design looks bad, go do it over? That they changed their minds and had a different artist do the design? That there’s bugs in their code? That the code they worked 30 hours of overtime implementing is getting cut? Throw a GamerGate style tantrum? Good luck with that.
because reasons: someone might be due for a boyfriend change.
Lol, so true.
False pretenses? Reminds me of this:
https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/06/05/the-e-day-concert-that-wasnt-the-canadian-association-for-equality-turns-a-pr-disaster-into-a-pr-catastrophe/
@AllisonW
Time will tell. I think he’s like a lot of men who don’t hear the feminist side of things and weren’t raised with that point of view, so they eat up all this sexist BS and think that’s just how it is. They aren’t resourceful enough (maybe there’s a better word for it) to SEEK the truth or to even know that what they’re being spoonfed IS bullshit. I try to make him aware when I can and point out that this kind of crap is bad for men AND women…and why. He’s not a bad guy and I love him for many many reasons…so no, it’s not time to dump him just for this.
I’ll be at the Calgary expo tomorrow. Seeing these guys there would have been a unpleasant surprise ,glad they got the boot.
Magnesium, I’m happy to hear that – it’s the right kind of attitude for a creative person to have.
It’s been rather disheartening these days for me, as someone who like comics: many prominent artists in comics are crying about being “crucified” because…they have to deal with criticism involving race and gender. They self-victimize and act like people are trying to stop them, even though no one is stopping them – they just take anything less-than-congratulatory as some kind of personalized insult.
The Mary Sue recently did an article about Frank Cho’s Milo Manara-esque sketch covers which, yeah, one can argue isn’t exactly the best battle to choose (they were done for shits and giggles and won’t be published) – but the article is easily one of the most tame criticisms on Cho’s work you can find. The author even clarifies he is a fan of his work and just took issue with the sketch covers.
Of course, you’d think those artists and their sycophants wouldn’t have reason to complain over something so considerately stated – but they do. Other than the fact they were hostile to anyone making a negative comment at all, they were singularly obsessed over comments made in reaction to the article and just conflated the two…as if that makes any sense.
It makes me wonder the same thing, over and over again: do these people realize they’re working in an entertainment medium? They should’ve already learned that criticism and feedback, both constructive and non-constructive, comes with the territory. It’s about acknowledging what is helpful and ignoring what is not.
People in televisions, movies, stage productions, literature, etc. all know this and have to deal with it accordingly. A lot of these comicbook artists – probably forgetting their own beginnings as amateurs – think they are above all reproach.
If these people were really interested in fighting censorship they might participate in something like Banned Books Week (http://www.bannedbooksweek.org/) instead of disrupting and sealioning someone’s event like that. I mean, a feminist panel is proceeding from the premise that feminism is a good cause. Its merits aren’t up for debate at that point, because it’s not a Feminism 101 discussion.
Actually, they are throwing a tantrum all over twitter, although some of the goobergaters seem to have enough self-awareness to know how stupid the OMG MISOGYNY line sounds. They are trying to direct the narrative to say that the Calgary Expo folks are bigots, but not misogynists. It’s fascinating to watch.
The thin skins on some current professional comic book artists is pissing me off. I’m a professional artist, people dislike my work ALL THE TIME and tell me so. I learned a long time ago to take criticism in stride. I actively seek it out because as critical of my own work as I am if I don’t get outside critique there are things I will miss. I wonder if maybe these artists have been too insulated from criticism by working in an industry that has to produce content on deadlines that they’ve forgotten that it’s a big part of art. If you can’t take it then you have no business creating for a living because you can’t improve and adapt. Whether it’s about diversity, sexism, or nuts and bolts stuff like perspective and anatomy.
Translation: “I’m a male who enjoys rape fantasies because duh, I’m the PERPETRATOR!”
It makes me wonder the same thing, over and over again: do these people realize they’re working in an entertainment medium? They should’ve already learned that criticism and feedback, both constructive and non-constructive, comes with the territory. It’s about acknowledging what is helpful and ignoring what is not.
Oh, there’s nothing better than when they trot their theories about how creative industries should work in front of an actual creator and get the eyeroll. GGers and Puppies were in the comments on George R.R. Martin’s blog, telling him he should be on their side because A Song of Ice and Fire has been criticized by feminists and wasn’t that the worst thing that ever happened to him and basically the Holocaust? Martin responded that he was a big boy and could handle someone not liking a book he wrote. They were baffled by this.
I don’t know how they function in the world.
Also: feeeeeeeemaaaaaaaaales
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IezRRovPJQM&w=560&h=315%5D
Good lord, is there anything they can’t bore us to tears for an hour and a half about???
Getting a booth under false pretenses so as to “infiltrate”, and derailing a panel discussion, because ETHICS!
Wow. Even if I’m to take that at face value, just because you enjoy rape fantasies doesn’t mean your rape jokes are funny. Extremely few are, and I somehow doubt that you have the delicacy and comedic chops to pull it off.
Lots of feeeeeeeemales have rape fantasies, for a zillion different reasons. But that doesn’t mean that these people are allowed to disturb everyone else’s con to push this bullshit agenda.
Shaenon: I wouldn’t be surprised if many of them *don’t* function in the world.
“Blah blah blah censorship blah blah blah SJW blah blah blah how do I even get views blah blah blah.”
That sums it up, right? I haven’t watched it yet.
Not that’s I’d watch it.
Oh, probably. I wouldn’t press play unless I was boozed and/or medicated to the gills. And even then, I’d probably switch it off out of sheer boredom.
(An hour and a half. Jesus H but these gormless fucks are windy.)
they didn’t get a booth under false pretences, Karen Straughan explains in the beginning of that video
@Bina
If your video is longer than an episode of Game of Thrones, you might want to edit it down.