You remember that lawsuit the GamerGate-loving, feminist-hating “Honey Badger Brigade” was apparently going to file against the Calgary Expo (for tossing them out) and The Mary Sue (for saying mean things about them, or something)? You know, the suit that they raised more than $30,000 to finance from their angry and apparently quite gullible fans?
Well, apparently they’ve filed the suit?
I ended with a question mark because they’ve been a teensy bit vague about what exactly they’ve done.
Rather than go with the traditional press release, you see, the Honey Damsels Badgers have decided to let the world (and their donors) know about this new development by obliquely referencing it on Twitter, nearly a week after the fact, and then pretty much refusing to answer any questions about it.
Like, for example, what exactly they filed, and where, and how exactly they think they can sue a website headquartered in the United States for allegedly getting them kicked out of an expo in Canada. Especially if they don’t actually file a separate lawsuit in the US.
Here’s how things went down on Twitter.
We're waiting on @Calgaryexpo and @TheMarySue to respond. They now have 18 and 40 days respectively. https://t.co/CaSgh0qC0h
— Honey Badger Radio (@HoneyBadgerBite) September 6, 2015
Breech of contract, injurious falsehood; filed last monday @scbritton @Brackstone
— Honey Badger Radio (@HoneyBadgerBite) September 7, 2015
I asked a few followup questions, trying to nail down some details about the filing — if the disbarred lawyer they got to help them with “research” was involved in the filing, and whether they had filed a separate claim against The Mary Sue in the US because, you know, the Mary Sue is based in the US.
@HoneyBadgerBite @Calgaryexpo @TheMarySue What did you file and with whom? A Statement of Claim? Was Kopyto involved in writing/filing?
— David Futrelle (@DavidFutrelle) September 7, 2015
@HoneyBadgerBite I'm just asking what you filed. So I won't have t report, 'the HBBs said they filed something but won't say what."
— David Futrelle (@DavidFutrelle) September 7, 2015
@HoneyBadgerBite Also, the Mary Sue is American. Did you file in NY state?
— David Futrelle (@DavidFutrelle) September 7, 2015
Well, so much for that, I guess.
I also sent a note to The Mary Sue to see if they had any statement or if they had even been notified that the HBB had filed anything. I haven’t heard back from them yet.
Given this dearth of information and the HBB’s apparent unwillingness to answer questions, my best guess is that they filed a Statement of Claim in Alberta based at least loosely on the “Legal Draft” posted on the HBB website back in July, prepared by the aforementioned disbarred lawyer, Harry Kopyto.
In that draft, the HBB’s declared that they were seeking
damages in the amount of $50,000 jointly and severally against the Defendants Alberta Comics and Entertainment Expo Inc. and The Mary Sue for injurious falsehood and also against the Defendant Alberta Comics and Entertainment Expo Inc. for breach of contract and against The Mary Sue for inducing breach of contract.
The Legal Draft describes The Mary Sue as “a daily internet newsletter which promotes itself as the premier destination for entertainment geeks.”
How do you do, fellow entertainment geeks. Could you kindly direct me to the nearest daily internet newsletter?
And it goes on to declare that
the false and disparaging comments published by The Mary Sue also dissuaded persons from engaging in and refusing to have any contact or purchasing merchandise from the Plaintiff.
Can I get in on that? No one bought anything from me that day either, and I’m pretty sure The Mary Sue was to blame. I’ll settle for $60,000 or maybe just a fruit smoothie.
If the HBB’s actual filing looks even vaguely similar to this draft, it will be interesting to see how one goes about suing an American entity in a Canadian court for allegedly saying things that allegedly stopped alleged persons from buying Honey Badger merchandise at a convention in Calgary.
I’m no disbarred lawyer, but somehow I just don’t see this working out for them.
Oh, and how do you “dissuade persons from engaging in?”
Engaging in what?
I chimed in early, but didn’t read the rest of the thread so I don’t know how the conversation went later. My view was that “oh yeah, that’s true, ‘nut’ pretty much does have the same connotations towards mental illness that ‘crazy’ does. Probably better not to use it, for the same reasons.”
If I were to say where you’ve gone wrong, it’s that you’ve decided on a boundary between words that isn’t the common view, and you’ve decided personally on a justification that others don’t share.
Also, you appear to believe that some types of ableism are only bad if they directly reference a modern mental illness. That really isn’t the point… the point is the general context of ableism that disparages people with mental illnesses. Doesn’t matter if nobody has been diagnosed with “lunatic disorder” or “hysteria”, using them as insults still contributes to the general atmosphere of mental illness being scary and bad.
The scientific community doesn’t use “negroid” as a race classification anymore. Doesn’t mean the people who generally use the word aren’t being racist by using it.
The “euphemism treadmill,” in my understanding, occurs because changing the syntax doesn’t change the semantics. Use whatever word you like, or make up an entirely new one; as long as you’re disparaging someone by implying they are some sort of crazy, the new word you’ve created will probably eventually be considered an ableist slur.
If you truly want to stop the “euphemism treadmill,” stop looking for acceptable ways of insulting people for acting “crazy.” It’s not about the words, it’s about the intention and the meaning behind the words. That doesn’t mean you should be able to say whatever you want because you think your intentions are good, it means that you need to approach the idea of ableism in a fundamentally different way.
In Australia, or at least in my part of it, “Nuts” and “Lunatic” are used to refer to the mentally ill. Constantly. Even by doctors (which is fucked up).
@ Kirby
I see your point but then that gets me thinking about ‘idiot’, ‘moron’, ‘cretin’ etc. and their derivatives.
Does there come a time when a word’s modern meaning is so divorced from its original usage that the old form is just an interesting bit of historical trivia? Might that happen (or already have happened) with ‘lunatic’ and’ hysterical’?
We now interpret words like ‘punk’, ‘hussy’ and ‘slut’ based on their contemporary usage.
Notwithstanding that I’m quite happy to abide by the house rules here and can see the reason for them, I suspect that those problematic words will evolve the same way.
I realized as was typing it that I could be interpreted that way, but I figured my post was long already without expanding on that. I certainly would not say that any word which is not used in psychology is fair game. There’s actually a multiprong test that “lunatic fringe” and “lunacy” pass. I’d say it’s something like “it is acceptable to use a word as a synonym for disturbed, unbalanced, dangerous, or deluded if (a) it is not now or in living memory a psychological term of art and (b) in popular usage, it does not imply the presence of an organic defect, but rather (c) either describes behavior without suggesting a cause, or implies that the described behaviors or beliefs are learned, trained, or chosen.”
“Hysteria,” incidentally, I would not use.
Also, to be clear, I am pretty much to set aside any particular language that, I don’t know, 3 or more people ask me not to use. I just want to get a better sense of the rationale and present my own values.
@Alan Robertshaw:
Yeah, words change and become divorced from their original meanings. And when they do, it’d be pedantic to insist that the original usage is the be-all end-all of the meaning.
However, something I’ve noticed with people who get philosophical over stuff like this, mainly when talking about things like racism and sexism, is that they are very eager to jump the gun and declare that a certain meaning or usage is officially obsolete when it really isn’t. Nobody can decide when a word’s meaning has changed; all they can do is notice it.
This is a really good point and I’m ashamed that I didn’t make it. Kirby, you have a sexy, sexy brain.
@Alan Robertshaw:
Addendum; I think you might have misinterpreted my point? The modern usage of “lunatic” and “hysterical” don’t refer to specific diagnosed illnesses anymore, sure, but I brought that up specifically in response to Orion’s sentence:
In this context, I’m actually recognizing the modern usage of the words, rather than saying they are slurs because of their historical meaning. ‘Lunatic’ is ableist because of its modern definition as ‘a crazy person,’ and isn’t really related to its original usage as a diagnosis. That’s more what I was getting at.
@ Kirby
What’s interesting, to me anyway, is that in legal work words get preserved in aspic based on their original meaning at the time a law came in to being.
The language generally however can drift away from these original meanings; often quite a way.
So ‘malicious’ for a lawyer means something completely different to a layperson. (Just to make life fun, the word ‘malice’ has at least three different meanings in law, depending on what bit of law we’re considering at the time)
@ Kirby
Yeah, I getcha. I see how lunatic can still be problematic became it moved from a specific (now discredited) diagnosis but is still used in a generic sense to mean mental illness.
Yeah, I remember you mentioning that in a different thread. Fun times. Do movie and TV lawyers try to mimic the same language, but acting as if the words had the modern meanings? That could be pretty funny to watch if you were in the know. As if the lawyer were legally saying something like:
“this man walked into this store, picked up a news paper, and paid for it at the counter!”
*court room gasps*
Isn’t that how the
victim blamingdamage control goes after another racist cop murders an unarmed black guy?@ Kirby
Well, it’s a common legal myth that the word “person” means penis in law.
It’s true that there is an old statue about ‘exposing one’s person’ but there are also plenty of other definitions. Corporations are ‘persons’ in law and we also use the everyday meaning. In fact we now use ‘reasonable person’ instead of ‘reasonable man’ for instance. Misandry!!!! What was wrong with the interim definition? “A reasonable man with the same characteristics as the defendant; including gender”
Like most people seeing their professions on screen we do have a bit of a laugh. ‘Rumpole of the Bailey’ is pretty spot on though, and ‘A Few Good Men’ is a very accurate depiction of Court Martial procedure apart from the venue. They normally take place in drab Nissan Huts or Portacabins.
“My Cousin Vinny” is also surprisingly accurate.
One common thing in court is to try to sneak in words or phrases during boring trials (e.g. Soap Opera characters) The police do that too. One copper got caught out inserting song titles into his evidence.
See here:
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/nov/02/mark-saunders-song-titles
Mike Mansfield (famous lefty barrister) was challenged to get certain phrases into the Diana Inquest, including ‘Phil the Greek’ (a press nickname for the Duke of Edinburgh). Some people were surprised that such a radical would give a glowing account of the Duke’s military service and how the Duke had managed to “Fill the Greek people with pride”.
I wish we still used the construction that gave us phrases like court-martial and surgeon-general.
@ Orion
Oh yes, I love that, it’s mainly a Norman French thing.
Speaking of Norman French, in every English courtroom, there’s always a seal on wall saying “Honi soit qui mal y pense”.
Literally that means “Shame on he who thinks this evil”. It all dates back to an incident with a lady’s garter.
Oh, and the ‘martial’ in Court-Martial *isn’t* derived from the old ‘Mars’ God of War thing. It’s from the time that the Sheriff-Marshall had jurisdiction over military offences and used to be ‘Court-Marshall.
All right all you good folks! I just finished my own Pottermore test and it turns out I’m all green like I always know I was! I’ll just wait here and get all your unadulterated love and adoration that I’m entirely entitled to.
No pushing! A single, orderly line please 8p
On a positive sidenote, this was also the same Expo that led to Anne Wheaton donating to 3 different charities (Feminist Frequency, ACLU National and Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network) with the help of Gators.
Who says they are good for nothing? A round of applause please (for Anne, not Gators)!
So…am I the only Slytherin here?
Welp, I wrote too soon! Ssssslytherins! *snaky handshake*
@Pandapool
I might be a snake too! I say “might” because whether I come out snake or birdie depends on my mood, pretty much…
@ andiexist Birdie is referring to two houses though! So which is it?
@Pandapool *HANDSHAKE* Welcome to the best house here with the least discriminated mascot! As you know, as part of our grand scheme of things to create confusion and discord in the world, we must pretend to like the ‘Grifters’ and ‘Puffers’ and ‘support’ their various ‘righteous agendas’ in our to further our own plans.
What do you mean that anyone could read this? I DID THE SECRET HANDSHAKE THAT BLOCKS THEIR SIGHT!
Ah I see. Well, we will just call this comedy so no one will take us seriously! MWAA HAAA HAAA HAA HAAA!!!
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y75/leafy_lane/avpmdracototallyawesome.gif
@reallyfriendly
By “birdie” I mean Ravenclaw.
I like Slytherin better, though. Slytherin has the sneckernoodles! 😀