The We Hunted the Mammoth Pledge Drive is almost over! Please donate, if not for me than just for the chance to SPITE THE HONEY BADGERS! Thanks!
The ongoing tragicomedy that is the Honey Badger Brigade’s Calgary Expo lawsuit continues to get even more tragicomical! Well, not so much the “tragic” bit, just that “comical” part.
The last time we checked in with the Brigade — that GamerGate-loving, feminist-hating gang of mostly lady YouTube blabbers — they had filed some sort of legal document charging the people in charge of the Calgary Expo with some kind of bad wrongness for tossing them out of the aforementioned Calgary Expo back in April.
They also charged The Mary Sue, a website in the United States that actually has no power over the staff of any expos in Calgary or indeed anywhere else in Canada, with somehow contributing to or causing the expulsion.
Well, The Mary Sue has responded to the Brigade’s legal filing, and the response is a doozy. Happily, the Honey Badgers have put it online for us all to enjoy.
The Mary Sue’s lawyer begins by pointing out that they are — ahem! — headquartered in New York, which is pretty clearly not located in Alberta, Canada, where the lawsuit was filed. (I am reliably informed that Canada is actually a whole other country from us.)
Then The Mary Sue’s lawyer gently reminded the court — and, more to the point, the Honey Badgers — that TIME MOVES FORWARD, not backwards, and that an article that appeared after the Honey Badgers were tossed from the Expo could not have caused them to be tossed from the Expo.
In regard to breach of contract, this claim is not just unfounded, but it is simply impossible based on the timeline of events. The Mary Sue could not have induced the Calgary Expo (“the Expo”) to evict Plaintiff because the aforementioned article was published after Plaintiff’s eviction.
Yep. Apparently the Honey Badger’s fancy disbarred lawyer got the dates mixed up. But hey, the law isn’t about these little details.
There’s more to The Mary Sue’s response, but that’s pretty much the best bit, in this Time-Space continuum at least.
Yesterday, Hannah Wallen of the Honey Badgers — she’s the one who isn’t Karen Straughan or Alison Tieman — posted their official response to the Mary Sue’s letter. It did not mention what we can only call the Honey Badger Time Paradox, but instead tried to distract readers with some new charges against the dastardly Mary Sue.
Mary Sue claims a lack of involvement in Calgary Expo’s choice to expel the Honey Badgers from the event. However, in response to questions on twitter following our expulsion, the expo’s staff referenced The Mary Sue’s article about the event.
Ok, but the Mary Sue article was published after the expulsion, so it could not have caused the expulsion.
The Mary Sue’s prior and existing relationship with Calgary Expo is further demonstrated by an April 15th article promoting the Mary Sue sponsored cosplay contest which was to take place at the event.
Ok, but the Mary Sue article was published after the expulsion, so it could not have caused the expulsion.
Mary Sue weekend editor Sam Maggs was the first person to respond to Britany le Blanc’s first tweet objecting to “MRAs in the audience” at the women into comics panel.
Ok, but the Mary Sue article was published after the expulsion, so it could not have caused the expulsion.
Sorry, Ms. Wallen, but your little sleight of hand is no more effective than this dude’s not-quite-flawless disappearing act.
Just a reminder: the Honey Badgers raised more than $30,000 to cover the legal costs of their patently ludicrous lawsuit.
In my last post I noted that
MRAs and other antifeminists … have wasted literally hundreds of thousands of dollars on causes and projects and people that have pissed away their money without accomplishing anything of value … .
This would be one of those causes.
If you’ve got money burning a hole in your wallet, here’s a much better option:
@ jenora
Glad someone got Pressdram -v- Arkell in there. I’ve used that a lot myself.
Margaret Pless being … David Futrelle? No?
Does Margaret Pless sometimes use the nick dhag85? No?
Does Margaret Pless comment regularly on WHTM under any known nick?
No?
What has this statement to do with WHTM again?
@PoM
I think Margaret Pless comments here under the name idledilettante. But, yeah, she’s just a commenter and not actually staff here.
https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2013/11/14/a-voice-for-mens-honey-badgers-ask-why-hasnt-anita-sarkeesian-been-harassed-more/
https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2015/04/17/rape-joke-loving-honey-badgers-booted-from-calgaryexpo-highly-ironic-tweets-ensue/
Here are two articles in which David Futrelle says the Honey badgers are part of AVFM and i’m sure there are plenty more.
Some people? Nope. All of the known contributors to HBB are also AVfM staff or regular contributors. All of them.
All HBB writers/speakers are also AVfM contributors, but not all AVfM contributors are HBB contributors. That’s why we accurately view HBB as a subset of AVfM. See how that works?
The video that orange tango drinker posted, which contains the claim that the HBB is (now) unaffiliated with AVFM, was posted on 7 December 2015 – that is, nine days ago. It’s over a hundred minutes long and I’m at work so I haven’t listened to it. It might contain something which contradicts what I’m about to say. It might contain the secret to immortality. I don’t know.
Those two articles which you reference, orange tango drinker, were posted in November of 2013 and April of 2015 – that is, many months ago, at which time the word on the street was that Straughan, Tieman and Wallen were still very much members of the AVFM clubhouse. They may have since left, but that does not affect the historical accuracy of Futrelle’s earlier articles.
EDIT: Let me give a f’rinstance of dhag85’s point because it’s a cogent one.
Alex Jones runs two websites, InfoWars and Prison Planet. Suppose he wrote a screed on InfoWars which offended many people. Would it be legitimate for Prison Planet to distance itself after the fact and claim “nope, we’re a different organisation?” No, because it’s the same human beings involved.
Similarly, We Hunted The Mammoth and Confused Cats Against Feminism are run by the same human (and presumably the same cats.) They may have different websites and put out different content, but it would not be legitimate for the one site to distance itself from comments made on the other, because once again they’re the same people.
Similarly, Daryush “Roosh V” Valizadeh has two websites, Return of Kings and RooshVForum. Again, they cannot be separated meaningfully because same human beings.
This is the situation that dhag85 has highlighted. Just because it’s two separate websites or Youtube accounts, doesn’t mean they can’t be tarred with the same brush unless they have meaningful differences in personnel and/or ideology.
Wrong. Karen and Alison are not part of AVFM. They said so in the video I posted.
I go to bed, wake back up and orange tango drinker is still here whining about the least important issue of our time.
Again I ask, why do manosphere subgroups get so mad when people mix them up when they have the same ideology and constantly hang out?
Getting back to that BBC program discussed in the other thread, they’re all mad because they think Roosh was being portrayed as a MGTOW when Reggie Yates never even did that!
Oh, and nobody is going to spend almost two hours of their lives watching a video about the subject. People actually listen to them every single day? I think my brain would dribble out of my ears if I tried that.
Go to AVfM. Hover over About, then click Masthead. Case closed.
These are people who all exist within the same tiny sphere. They support each other in everything they do. They retweet each other. They promote each other. They work together. Simply saying they’re not affiliated makes literally no difference. In reality, they are one and the same.
I care about accuracy. AVFM and HBB are separate groups and I posted the proof. Yes some people are involved with both groups but HBB is its own organisation, not a sub group of AVFM or an offshoot. It’s a proper pukka group.
@dhag85:
In fairness to orange tango drinker, if Straughan, Tieman and Wallen are now trying to claim that they have nothing to do with Elam then that’s news worth reporting. Ever since Esmay disassociated himself with Elam, we’ve been wondering which rat would leap off the ship next, and we may have found it.
Or it may not be true. Which may also be the case because as orange tango drinker said, Elam is not overly enamoured of the truth.
‘Those two articles which you reference, orange tango drinker, were posted in November of 2013 and April of 2015 – that is, many months ago, at which time the word on the street was that Straughan, Tieman and Wallen were still very much members of the AVFM clubhouse. They may have since left, but that does not affect the historical accuracy of Futrelle’s earlier articles.’
We’ve still got that time travel thing going on, it looks like. Also tango drinker, honestly no1curr. (Though this has been kind of funny to read.)
I know it still has Karen and Alison there. Because Paul never deleted their names off of it. so what?
@EJ
Sure. If there’s some sort of rift between HBB and the parent organization I’d be interested to hear about it. However, Straughan and Tieman simply saying they have no ties to AVfM, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, makes zero difference to me.
you dont need to watch the whole video. Its one of the first things they talked about from about 3 minutes 40 seconds to about 7 minutes 55 seconds.
I’ll switch off the Mongolian folk metal, then, and have a listen to it. My spreadsheets are running slowly anyway.
Orange tango drinker,
If Straughn and Tieman disassociated themselves with AVFM and Elam didn’t update his site accordingly, why is that “so what?” to you? Why are you so concerned with a couple of commenters here getting it wrong? Why aren’t you over at AVFM complaining about it? Why is it okay for Elam to deliberately post misinformation but so horrible that Dhag mixed them up that you have to spend hours here banging on about it?
@ EJ
I’d be very interested in any Mongolian Folk Metal recommendations; love stuff like that.
You familiar with Kontrust and/or Russkaja?
@Alan:
Tengger Cavalry. I’m currently listening to The Expedition; for my money it’s their best album. I don’t know Kontrust or Russkaja; I’ll look them up.
If you’re into folk metal, do you know Dalriada? To use a technical term, their shit is tight.
Okay, having listened to that snippet, I can’t avoid coming to the following conclusion: Karen Straughan and Alison Tieman are engaged in revisionism. Their main talking point is that
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasiathey were never meaningfully members of AVFM; that they had all been blogging and vlogging such content beforehand, met on reddit and decided to work together, and inasmuch as they were ever associated with AVFM it was only to use it as a springboard.The phrase they use is “we sprang fully-formed from the head of Zeus”, for which they deserve props for the classical allusion but then get those props taken away afterwards for it being unsupported by evidence.
This is, to put it mildly, unadjacent to the truth; and as such I have very limited amount of patience with it.
It is a little odd that someone would go on for 3 pages of comments making what is essentially a distinction without a difference.
HBB has always functioned as a sort of de facto Ladies’ Auxiliary to the manosphere.
*reads above*
Yeah, I’m not in a position to watch the video, but past evidence suggests that EJ’s interpretation is spot-on.
Is there an actual rift-rift now (as of a few days ago)?
Sure, why not.
Was there one a few months ago?
http://wa98109.us/graphics/elements/reply05.gif
At best, they may be described as “previously affiliated with but now adjacent to AVFM”.
Cheers EJ, my brief flirtation with television didn’t work out so some pointers for new music are very welcome. I know it’s a cliché but I love all kinds of music; it’s particularly interesting though when you get these eclectic hybrids.
Orange,
At this point it does seem that the HBB is largely separate from AVFM, which is why I didn’t actually mention AVFM in the post at all, but when it formed everyone in the group was very heavily enmeshed in AVFM, and the HBBs were heavily promoted by AVFM. Heck, I could swear that the HBBs used to use the AVFM logo in their videos, but I could be wrong.
In any case, I think it was eminently justifiable back then to regard the HBB as a sort of AVFM subsidiary or at the very least a spinoff.
Even today the group has a lot more than “bugger all” to do with AVFM, and if they want to make clear they’ve gone their own way they should post something saying so on their website. Putting it in the middle of a 2-hour video than no one but HBB fans will watch is not really an effective way to get the point across.
If you’re this concerned about the honey badgers being associated with AVFM, why aren’t you asking the HBB’s to make this clear on their website?
Why aren’t you pestering Elam to remove Alison and Karen from the AVFM masthead?
I mean, heck, if Elam can get away with putting them on the AVFM masthead without their permission, maybe I should put them on my masthead just for the heck of it. I mean, I don’t have a masthead, but I guess I could come up with one pretty quickly, especially if I’m allowed to include people who have “bugger all” with me.
Also you should probably go back in time two days and convince Hannah to not publish this post on AVFM
http://www.avoiceformen.com/feminism/feminist-lies-feminism/war-on-victims-of-female-perpetrators-goes-back-to-college/
I mean, being a regular contributor to AVFM does tend to suggest to people that one is connected to AVFM.