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.
There’s one bit that sums up the whole panel for me. Tieman argues that the romance novel industry discriminates against men because it’s female-dominated and the male characters are objectified.
Tieman: If you’re going to say you’re victims of this comics culture, are men victims of being excluded from romance fiction culture?
Panelist: Sure, why not?
TIeman: But– but–
Panelist: We’re not really saying we’re victims. We’re just saying, how can we raise our profile and how can we–
Tieman: But that’s– everybody’s doing that!
Gerard: That’s marketing.
Tieman: Yeah! That’s marketing! That’s what everybody’s doing!
Panelist: Change doesn’t happen when you do what everybody else is doing. Change happens when you fight the norm.
I can’t make out the next few seconds due to the quality of the recording (it sounds like the recorder is hidden in a backpack or pocket, which fits with Gerard’s thing for playing spy), but the Honey Badgers give up on the conversation around there. By the time the sound comes back, the panel has moved on to another topic.
This is the point at which Tieman and Gerard sound most outraged, and it’s when the panelists a) agree with them, and b) reveal that they’re normal people doing things everyone does. The Badgers seem totally baffled that real feminists aren’t screeching alien entities, and the panelists seem baffled by all the talk about men vs. women and victimhood. There’s not enough common ground for a coherent argument.
venny sez:
Post hoc, ergo propter hoc!
Maybe those alterations happened after GG because people who actually give a rat’s fart about ethics in games journalism wondered aloud why the GGers were losing their minds over shit Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian didn’t even do but completely failing to say a word about Shadow of Mordor refusing to issue review copies unless they were promised positive reviews and other actually unethical behavior.
Misandry alert: my husband is very annoyed at me for wasting an hour listening to this panel when we could have been watching the Mick Foley Santa Claus documentary.
He also said, after listening in for a few seconds, that he would slam his head in a car door rather than deal with anyone who talked like Sage Gerard.
As someone who has gotten booth space at more than a few conventions, that excuse doesn’t hold up. When you apply for booth space at a con they ask you to provide what name you are exhibiting under (either your own name, your comic, your business name, etc) as well as a description of what your booth will display and/or sell, and your website. You don’t just provide your name, email, and money for the booth. While the exhibitor list does show the “Honey Badger Brigade” it links to the webcomic not anything to do with the honey badgers themselves. http://www.calgaryexpo.com/exhibitors/ They can make all the excuses they want but I’m sure they did not put anything about being MRAs on the exhibitor registration because there is no way they would have been given a spot and they knew that which is why they used the comic as a pretense.
And bless your face for your sacrifices, Shaenon. I couldn’t do it. I don’t want to give them the views.
And thanks for adding some expertise and clearing everything up, Noadi.
I’m about halfway through the audio and all those MRA questions are soooo canned. Did they practice all their rhetorics in a mirror or something? Not to mention a lot of the questions are loosely related to the subject being discussed at most. It’s almost like they tried to prepare for only certain responses and shit. When they break, they stutter and flail to base arguments and it’s hilarious.
So, according to Venny, if something happens chronologically after another event, the former is immediately directly responsible for causing the latter.
Good to know that the inventions of pop-up toasters were responsible for the passing of Roe. V.S. Wade. We clearly owe a great debt to warm and crunchy bread.
…Yeah, I’m getting into non-sequitor territory here. This is what I get for staying up past my bedtime.
Okay, I think the best part of the audio is when the panel is discussing censorship and how much it sucks.
And the silence of the Honey Badgers is just hahahahHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Even the whispers they have between each other sound practice and barely have any connection to what is being said in the background.
BTW, the panel discussions were actually really good. I’m happy I listened to it just for that.
Nuclear wars caused meninists.
The discovery of viruses caused the MRM.
The domestication of cats caused women’s suffrage.
Simple, really.
Venny:
Hmm how do you know it was really gamergate that did this? Just like Gamergaters say there’s no proof the harassment is coming from Gamergate, how do you know it was Gamergate that caused these changes? Even Sargon said in an interview that because Gamergate is made up of individuals, you can’t attribute their actions to the whole of gamergate… So that should be universal.
OK, let’s say this is 100% true… Was this a goal of Gamergate? To get journalists who disagree with Gamergate fired? So to Gamergate, one aspect of “ethics” in game journalism is not saying anything bad about Gamergate? Interesting.
“he also showed examples of anti gamer gate writers who resigned from senior jobs at popular websites who are now working for smaller websites which sounds suspiciously like they were FIRED”
And that’s a victory for the movement that thunders about free speech and complains X is trying to silence people?
Going off on a tangent here, but I always find it suspicious when someone focuses on “not having broken the rules”. Whether or not that is true is irrelevant. Because the rules are not the fucking point.
A community with rules, much as a society, is not a competition to see who gets away with the most outrageous things without outright breaking the rules (the actual definition of capitalism, IMO, but that’s another can of worms entirely). It’s about respecting and treating your fellow human beings as fellow human beings, not entertainment or tools for yourself. Other people are not there to do what you want, to listen to you, to talk about your pet issues, to provide you with a platform, to give you their precious time to let you whine about your conspiracy theories, to quietly submit to you doing anything you bloody well want as long as you’re “not breaking the rules.”
That’s not the behavior of an innocent, decent person, that’s the behavior of a bully. Even if you’re not physically violent, you’re showing the behavioral patterns. And as a victim of childhood bullying, I am unspeakably happy to see communities taking action against such behavior, showing that bullying is wrong wrong wrong. Trolls are bullies. Men who catcall and take pictures of cosplaying women without their consent are bullies. People who sneak into cons to make other people feel unsafe are bullies. Bullies should not be welcome anywhere until they learn that other people are people too, and do not deserve to get shit flung at them by someone who thinks the world should cater to their whims.
What I’m trying to say is: Whether or not the Honey Badgers broke the rules or not is, ultimately, irrelevant. Other people didn’t like them. They were creating a hostile environment. They weren’t sincere. The organizers, not being part of the eeeeebil gubmint, were fully in their right to show the door to people who were making others uncomfortable. I would never welcome a bully in my home, and I would not be quenching freedom of speech in doing so; same goes for the Calgary Expo organizers.
/ramble
As one of many who’s been talked at by Alison (Typhon Blue) in women’s rights/ rape support hashtags. Been dogpiled by her with AVFM/MRA lies then had any intelligent response by you met with a horrific screenshot of a screaming bloody infant undergoing genital surgery..(screencapped by many) which is somehow feminism’s fault?… I find any debate of the “integrity” Honey Badgers theater. These people are disgusting, intellectually dishonest scumbags.
Hi
Haven’t had time to go through this thread properly so apologies if this has already been posted.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/18/hugo-award-hijack-just-proves-progressives-right
Seems vaguely on-topic (I hope!)
Going back to this because it’s a sore spot with me.
I’m a web designer. I get feedback and criticism all the damn time. I welcome it. Hell, I seek it out. It helps me become better at what I do.
In improv, after a show you generally do a post-mortem and get notes from your director/team leader. Feedback and criticism. It’s not about telling us what to do and what not to do, it’s a discussion if what happened, of choices we made, of pointing out strengths and weaknesses. The goal is to help us become better which, it’s assumed, is what we want. Being on a team with a performer who does not welcome feedback and criticism is HELL, because they seem to feel that what they create in the moment is somehow sacred and personal rather than something shared with their teammates and with the audience.
Scripted theatre, same thing. I’ve been in and directed plays, and the whole point of giving/getting ‘notes’ (ie: feedback and criticism) is to help you think about your character, about your goals, about your technique etc and make choices that strengthen and support the end product (the play).
People who make any form of art who feel that what they do is untouchable, is a unicorn they release into the world, who reject any feedback and criticism for those reasons (I include the many writers I’ve met who feel that first drafts are somehow sacred bc it’s how the work came out of them and should therefore be left unfettered by revisions*) tend to be shitty artists. IMNSHO. Like, if you don’t want to hear HOW your work affected people, don’t put it out there. Stick it on the fridge.
/end rant
*I actually lost a friendship bc a writer friend who felt this way asked me to read his book, and I had some questions about the characters. He exploded. It was not pretty.
Also Shaenon, ty for watching the video – it actually sounds like a good panel!
Well, I’m sure it was very pleasant for HER, accomplishing her mission of coming in under false flags, misrepresenting herself, trolling and being generally disruptive and causing a derail when she should have been blackballed on sight, per the con’s own rules (which I won’t repeat; they were already iterated above by Paradoxical, and you can go back and read them yourself if you didn’t understand them the first time.) But just because SHE enjoyed trolling, doesn’t mean anybody else enjoyed her being there to troll. You seem to forget that what is pleasant for one party is not necessarily pleasant for others. And in this case, it was of necessity UNpleasant, because GamerGomers’ whole mission is to harass, disrupt, derail and destroy. NOT promote ethics in anything. If they were really about ethics, one would think they’d be glad to see women, non-whites, LGBTs, etc. in gaming, because it is ethical to INclude, not EXclude persons traditionally disenfranchised. What’s UNethical, is preserving and promoting a sexist, racist, LGBT-phobic status quo. And GamerGoop is all about that, and nothing more.
Now shoo.
Speaking of bad rape jokes, I just saw a bus stop bench that had an ad for something called Rare Form on it. Somebody spray painted a Problem over the R so it said Rape Form. I hope that wasn’t an adult who thought it was clever.
Y’know, just to chime in on the subject of criticism –
I attended the opening night of a new play that my relative, X, is in. X asked me afterwards for criticism – whether I could hear xir from the back, whether xie seemed nervous, whether the audience liked xir character, and what I thought of the script as a whole, whether any of the cast stood out in particular.
This is an important part of X’s work as an actor, in order to improve. Some of the other cast members also asked me for my input, and the ones who asked in genuine good will were the ones I could fault the least. The actors who dismissed my opinions, or tried to ‘splain to me why I was wrong, and seemed convinced that the whole thing was perfect, were the weakest cast members, and I found the least pleasant to talk with.
And being well-liked and able to take criticism on board is everything in the world of acting – it’s what keeps people in work.
Criticism isn’t about being mean. It serves to help actors improve their craft, to help the public decide whether something appeals to them and is worth shelling out for, to help content producers appeal to their audiences and stay relevant.
Every high-quality piece of entertainment you see on TV relies on criticism to stay in production. And the same applies to every other creative medium as well.
And if that criticism is based on social justice, that’s still relevant, because people don’t want to support franchises that contribute to their oppression. SJWs are still content consumers, along with everybody else, and they are often fans of the things they criticise.
Thats the respnse from a youtuber user to a video about date rape.
Hopefully you can understand it. I just put the german version into ”google translator”-
””’You have a serious problem with your head, sorry! First you comment ALL comments below the video and think the smartest of all to be ?! Sorry, but your attitude is as valuable as a piece of shit! NATURALLY are most to blame if that attract even like a bitch, pounds, clap makeup face while the rumposaunen do not need to hide! Honestly, I have no sympathy for those left! Such subjects are based on their appearance are assessed and treated. SUCH AS YOU OR DRESSED IN Such “WOMEN” have the word decency and honor and forget completely twisted. CASUAL FASHION + + ironieoff will ONLY be raped women in such situations, which meant: Disco, middle of the night, wear a Bitch and striking inebriated behavior of a drunken sleeps + pe. That’s it! Not a single girl with such a setting as my ever raped (out of wars, or DISASTERS) and why? Because that can behave! A woman has the enough sense not the point either in the disco or RELIABLE MONITORING appearance and reasonable! Such as you and me Julija go with their livers something of the Ar + sch over, do not you believe me as much! I have to answer made me the trouble, because it might be read 13/14 year old girl, in which the normal girls hope to stay still is not gone! I have my happy life forbid, my PURE BODY AND MY GOOD REPUTATION and verschwede no idea of who is like you. You can then rumheulen and try “more stupid and greatly to be” not scratch me the bean. Continues in Terapie and continues to scream around by not hide and strong beleiben much fun here.””
According to her all sluts with ”a bad reputation” and much make up on are asking for it.
Don’t forget the victim had to read this…..
AltoFronto, good point. Focus groups are often used by developers, whether for movies, TV or games. Their interest, or lack thereof, determines how the work gets revised and brought to market (if it comes out at all). If GamerGators are all about ignoring what the consumers say (those consumers who aren’t cis-het, white, male, between the ages of 13 and 30, that is), then what they’re really arguing for is bad process. Developers immune to all criticism, however constructive.
It sounds like a really bad way to do business, all in all.
I was disappointed to be unable to make the Expo this year, but I am glad to see that they are committed to safety and good times for their con-goers. I hope the GG backlash doesn’t do the event any harm.
the good thing is that most people don’t agree with this person.
I bet she just don’t like sexually open women. Thats her problem. Sexual men are totally fine, of course. they don’t need ”honour” at all…
Linux, that poor victim. Or should I say survivor? I really don’t know what the code is for which term to use.
Anyway, garbled English aside, it’s not hard to see what the asshat commenter is saying. But did she really state that women don’t get raped during war?? Idiot!