I learned some things today » « Lunch with @ChrisWarcraft

Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of honeybadgers

The ‘Honeybadgers’, a group of women affiliated with the MRA brigade at A Voice For Men, infiltrated the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo, applying for a booth by pretending to be somehow affiliated with nerd culture, instead — they were Fake Geek Girls, for real (although at least one of them authors a webcomic, so not totally fake)! Apparently they set up a booth promoting Gamergate and their version of ‘ethics’ and being anti-censorship before derailing at least one panel on Women in Comics with a lot of “What about the Menz?” and victim blaming.

I truly believe in freedom of speech, but coming to a panel with the entire purpose of derailing it and shooting down the voices on the panel isn’t constructive. It appears that was their plan for the expo, to come and to loudly take over the spaces of other people – although it was not violent or threatening, it’s disrespectful, disappointing and offers a prime example of why these panels need to exist in the first place.

Charming. They’ve now been kicked out of the con.

Also charming: they raised about $10,000 crowdsourcing their invasion. At least that’s $10K drained from the MRA budget on an embarrassing flop.

I learned some things today » « Lunch with @ChrisWarcraft

Comments

  1. jambonpomplemouse says

    So, do those women actually give a shit about GamerGate or were they just using the logo to shit disturb? Obviously they were shit disturbing the panels on purpose, but I don’t follow them to know if they give a damn about video games, and MRA’s have a habit of using logos without permission (although I don’t know who you’d get permission for a GG logo from?). It’s obvious from the get-go that they wanted to get kicked out to look like victims to their fanboys who are constantly “defending” the poor dears from criticism in every comment section (I’m sure you’ll be stuck banning a bunch of them any minute now) on the internet while they go around accusing other women of trying to be victims.

  2. anteprepro says

    Wait, “What about teh menz” and victim blaming is considered a derail from the topic that is Pro-Gamergate? Sounds on topic to me. Revealingly on topic, as usual, and again making it clear that their “ethics” figleaf of choice is very, very flimsy.

  4. anteprepro says

    Hey, look, here’s some bullshit!

    Once there we will start distributing the totalitarian message that nerd and gamer culture is… perfectly wonderful just as it is and should be left alone to go it’s own way.

    That’s it folks.

    As men’s issues advocates and defenders of creator’s rights to create unmolested, that’s what we have to say to the nerds and geeks and gamers. You are fantastic as you are, carry on.

    Yep, in today’s political climate that’s considered an extremist position. Just letting creative communities create; consumers consume what they want; and gamers get down to the business of vidya without being judged……..

    “The Honey Badgers are a diverse group of female gender apostates–women who oppose outdated ideas of gender, particularly the association of womanhood with weakness. We offer an alternative to the damaging portrayal of women as victims of geek and gamer culture.”

    They also accused us of presenting all women as victims, which was an outright lie and derailing tactic.

    Their questions did take up quite a bit of time at the panel and served to derail the topic onto another tangent, which was frustrating for the panel and for those in the audience. It’s what they came to do, and in part, they succeeded……

    It’s disappointing that they weren’t there to have a conversation or to listen to what we, and members of the audience, were saying. They wanted to stand up and have their say, but not to listen or try to understand the points of view other people in the room had. This was further proven by the video discussion they posted later last night, in which they mentioned our panel and that we were “donning the ball gowns of our victimhood”, which I’m not even entirely sure how to take.

    Day2 Of #CalgaryExpo and our booth is being shutdown because being anti-censorship is bad #GamerGate

    Basically, they are just anti-feminist trolls. Surprise surprise, I know.

  5. anteprepro says

    Oh Jesus fucking Christ, I missed this tweet. From a male gator:

    So @CalgaryExpo LITERALLY told a gamer girl to go home. When do expo execs start brutalizing women? #LawAndOrderSVU #GamerGate

    Fucking scumbags.

  6. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    The Honey Badgers are a diverse group of female gender apostates–women who oppose outdated ideas of gender, particularly the association of womanhood with weakness.

    bwahahahahhahahahahahahhah!

  7. says

    who oppose outdated ideas of gender, particularly the association of womanhood with weakness. We offer an alternative to the damaging portrayal of women as victims of geek and gamer culture.

    This equivocation needs to go away. Being wronged (by geek culture or anything else) does not mean you are weak or lesser. It means someone other than you wronged you. That’s it.

  8. anteprepro says

    Also PZ’s might OP might be inaccurate: the only part in the linked piece about them being fake and infiltrating gamer culture is from their own quote. If you read it the quoted part in the link, it sounds like they are being sarcastic (it comes right before snarkily saying their message is “totalitarian”). They mention that part of their infiltration has been being involved with games and comics for decades. As in, they are genuine “nerds”.

  10. gijoel says

    It’s disappointing that they weren’t there to have a conversation or to listen to what we, and members of the audience, were saying. They wanted to stand up and have their say, but not to listen or try to understand the points of view other people in the room had

    That says everything about MRAs and gamergate.

  11. anteprepro says

    brianpansky: It does need to go away. But it is broader than just that. The insinuation that “being a victim” is a character flaw, or a cynical attempt to get sympathy or leverage, and shit like that also has to go. People on all kinds of issues talk about how terrible it is that people point out how they are treated unfairly by saying that they are “playing the victim”, playing “the victim card”, or just use the word “victim” in general with a sneer. Because either they aren’t Real Victims, or they haven’t suffered enough and life ain’t fair anyway, so suck it up and move on. It’s bullshit. It’s a sneering, knee-jerk defense of the status quo and an attempt to excuse a person’s lack of empathy or to prevent themselves from taking accountability, or to simply justify their apathy in regards to righting wrongs. It is literally fucking everywhere, from the issue of rape to the issue of poverty to the issue of police brutality. That’s how the assholes work and it is how the unthinking “moderates” reflexively follow suit: sneering at the very idea of victimhood. It is fucking disgusting.

  12. anteprepro says

    brett:

    What’s the psychology with this crowd? Cool Girl-ism? Conservatism?

    Lot of the former, dash of the latter. Looks like maybe a little bit of gibbertarian Freeze Peach and 4chan lulzification sprinkled on top.

  13. oolon says

    Probably not that much of a flop though, they’ve riled up the GamerGoats with a “censorship” by “SJWs” narrative now. So their next invasion of a con will probably be even better funded by the reactionary goats. That this shows GG and a hate group, as defined by the SPLC, are one and the same. That GG actually pretend to be geeks so they can invade nerd spaces to spread their conservative ideology. etc. etc. Will be lost on them, just freeze peach! SJWs! Arglebargle!!

  14. anteprepro says

    And look what I found when I googled these folks: http://honeybadgerbrigade.com/2014/09/25/honey-badger-radio-shit-feminists-say-gamergate-edition/

    Warning: Not just anti-feminist, also rape apologetics!

    Also, podcast about the Sad Puppies: http://honeybadgerbrigade.com/radio/badgerpod-gamergate-11-sad-pound-puppies/

    Claiming that the term toxic masculinity is dehumanizing: http://honeybadgerbrigade.com/2015/04/06/toxic-to-the-xtreme/

    Also what in the name of fuck:
    http://honeybadgerbrigade.com/badgerfesto/

    When you put our two conceptions of gender issues together you get gender apostasy, a system of analyzing gender that falls outside the traditional approach of man as actor and women as acted upon. Culturally we see men as an active, oppressive agent and a woman as a passive, weak victim (This Gender Dynamics Index gives a comprehensive rundown of the tropes used to portray male and female characters in fiction and how they interact). We stopped giving a fuck about that traditional outlook and adopted the idea that men and women are people with thoughts and feelings.

    …….We express ourselves through several media, but we are best known for our weekly call-in radio shows. The Honey Badger Radio show is broadcast on A Voice For Men’s Live365 Channel and made available on YouTube and Libsyn thanks to independent donors who are both patrons of the arts and visionaries of a more equitable future.

    Although we’re not the type to shy away from a fight we also believe that the future lies not in attacking the status quo but building a new mythos. As such we promote and create art that embodies the principles of gender apostasy–challenging the traditional moral typecasting of women as victims or damsels and men solely heroes and villains.

    If you want to escape the tropes of old and write a new story, then come with us. We are the myth makers, the dreamers of dreams, the geeks, the nerds, the outcasts and those who hunger for the horizon.

    So they literally say the same thing as people like Anita Sarkeesian, while hating people like Anita Sarkeesian because feminism sux and CENSORSHIP.

    By god.

  16. says

    If you want to escape the tropes of old and write a new story, then come with us. We are the myth makers, the dreamers of dreams, the geeks, the nerds, the outcasts and those who hunger for the horizon.

    Problem is, they don’t want to write a new story, they just want to write the old story and pretend it’s not true (instead they claim victimhood for the menz, which is about as old as patriarchy itself)

  17. consciousness razor says

    Marcus Ranum:

    At least AA didn’t troll CPAC. Otherwise it’s part of an honorable tradition of going where you’re not wanted.

    Well, that’s not crystal clear either….

    August Berkshire:
    Greta, what do you think of the argument Dave made at the AA convention that if the secular conservatives could be split from the religious conservatives that it would so weaken the conservative movement that progressive secular liberals would win?

    I have no doubts whatsoever that (1) this plan is utterly preposterous, and that (2) Silverman doesn’t actually want progressive secular liberals to win.* But if that was one of the many farcical motivations for the organization generally, then “trolling” fits pretty well.

    Or maybe Silverman was trolling his own convention. I don’t know.

    *Except, possibly, with respect to some very limited items, mostly related to first amendment rights. In any reasonable sense of the words, he doesn’t want progressive secularism.

  18. Funny Diva says

    It’s disappointing that they weren’t there to have a conversation or to listen to what we, and members of the audience, were saying. They wanted to stand up and have their say, but not to listen or try to understand the points of view other people in the room had

    Hmmmm…
    I’ve never been to a con, but I have a hard time believing that in that universe “Panel Discussion” is an exact synonym of “Open Mic”.
    IOW, I could be wrong but [I don’t think so!]: that panel was INVITED to have their say, and the attendees were there to listen to the panel, dumbasses. Then maybe have some of their reasonably-informed questions answered by panelists…not listen to your rambling, gotcha diatribes-masquerading-as-questions.

    Jeebus.

  19. says

    @14, anteprepro

    Their words you quote will probably mislead a lot of people. It looks like they stand for good things….until you notice they are talking about “a system of analyzing”, and not a goal to achieve. Basically I think their “system” means they look at the current media out there and simply don’t “see it as” being wrong in any way.

    The part you bolded looks nice, but notice what it says right before it. They don’t want to oppose the status quo. Do you know what that means? It means the part you bolded is a very weak statement indeed. They will “promote” whoever makes egalitarian games (I guess), but that’s it. They won’t voice any opposition to any games that are indeed sexist. Hush, no criticism. At least that’s what it looks like to me.

  21. says

    *well I might be wrong in my second paragraph there, they do say they won’t “shy away from a fight” after all…so it might not all be hush. But it just looks like their fight won’t be about criticizing sexist games. Their fight will be criticizing people who criticize sexist games. Which is not great. Unless I’m still reading them wrong…

  22. says

    Ah, from their Men-ifesto:

    we oppose those who seek to restrict freedom of expression to expressions that don’t step on their very wide and very long toes. In fact we suspect the joy for these individuals is not in expression or sharing expression or even critiquing it but in rejecting it as immoral. Once they infect a creative community, they eat through it by ejecting more and more artistic expression as impure and sinful till all that remains is a burnt out husk populated solely by individuals trying to throw each other out of it.

    […]

    The main women’s issue we grapple with is how the politicizing of female victimhood through misleading or outright false statistics traps women in an emotionally abusive web of punditry and public manipulation.

  23. Funny Diva says

    from my earlier comment @18

    I shouldn’t have comic-sans’d that quote. It’s from a panel member talking about the HoneyBadgers, not the HoneyBadgers playing the victim card. Which still doesn’t make the HoneyBadgers look like anything but an entire fleet of douche-canoes. They were, in fact, de-railing and trying to shout down the panel and other attendees, but that particular quote isn’t a good demonstration of that.

    oops.

  24. consciousness razor says

    In fact we suspect the joy for these individuals is not in expression or sharing expression or even critiquing it but in rejecting it as immoral.

    It’s sort of funny that they cast themselves as a bunch of super-naive New Critics/Freeze Peachers. Isn’t a social good like free expression outside of the text — so what business is it of theirs to support it? Or does this infection reside entirely in their inability to cope with such morally-guided criticism — while presented metaphorically as something that corrupts their precious artform?

  25. Holms says

    #14
    So they literally say the same thing as people like Anita Sarkeesian, while hating people like Anita Sarkeesian because feminism sux and CENSORSHIP.
    A stunning example of coopting the language of their opponent while acting in the opposite manner.

    #18
    If you had read the article, you would know that the GGer / Honey Badgers were attending a panel discussion not as panelists but as members of the audience, and here is what they did:
    “We were about fifteen minutes into the panel when a woman in the second row stood up and identified herself as a Men’s Rights Activist. She and her male companion both came to raise issues they felt would not be covered by our panel.”

    So not only were they interrupting, they even state that they intended to raise ssues not covered by the panel, i.e. offtopic derail. Fucking lousy conduct.

  26. says

    Their page about their members/leader people:

    “Founding Hosts” are Karen Straughan and two other women I don’t recognize…

    8 confirmed as women in total, 9 men (all of the artists and animators), ….plus one person called “Observing Libertarian” (yes, that’s Observing Libertarian) who has a bio in the first person, and has no mugshot. Not surprising, lots of the writing sounds noticeably libertarian.

  27. Funny Diva says

    brianpansky,

    so, not just GamerGators, but AVFM-ers as well. Quelle Suprise…NOT!

  28. Becca Stareyes says

    “We were about fifteen minutes into the panel when a woman in the second row stood up and identified herself as a Men’s Rights Activist. She and her male companion both came to raise issues they felt would not be covered by our panel.”

    So, basically, they interrupted a con event by being loud and unruly. Even switching the sides — feminist geeks crashing a pro-GamerGate panel to shout at them — I would expect to be kicked out*. Because the con committee doesn’t care what you are shouting about, they care the con runs smoothly.

    * Also, I’m having trouble of thinking about circumstances where I’d do this but not be annoyed enough at the con to just boycott them. Because it’s one thing to use the Q&A to critique the panel’s conclusions, and another to disrupt the panel. The latter strikes me as ‘I think this event is invalid’, which… yeah, boycott.

  29. drken says

    When I read their manifesto claiming that nerd culture is awesome just the way it is, so it doesn’t have to change anything to accommodate anybody else, it reminds me of the character of “Never” on Season 3 of Louis C.K.’s show on FX. The story revolves around Louis getting roped into looking after him after school. The kid throws his rug out the window (the least horrifying thing he does), and generally acts like he has no impulse control whatsoever. At the end of the show, Never asks Louis why Louis’ daughter (and everybody else) wants nothing to do with him. Louis replies that it’s because of all the weird (a charitable description) stuff he does. Never is confused. He states:

    “But my mom says any choice I make is OK as long as I love myself”.

    I always think of that scene when Christina Hoff Summers talks about Gamergate. “Gamers aren’t sexist, I met some and they’re wonderful people”. It explains why they call her “Mom”. Who else would tell them they’re perfect the way they are and It’s the people who object to the awful way they act who have the problem.

  31. Lady Mondegreen says

    I truly believe in freedom of speech, but coming to a panel with the entire purpose of derailing it and shooting down the voices on the panel

    …is a deliberate attempt to drown out others’ speech.

  32. Lady Mondegreen says

    We are the myth makers, the dreamers of dreams, the geeks, the nerds, the outcasts and those who hunger for the horizon.

    We are the stealers of familiar lines, the writers of hackneyed prose, the smug, the ego-inflated, and those whose hunger for recognition far exceeds their talents. #rewrittenfortruth

  33. Rey Fox says

    I was just about to try to say something half-formed about peoples’ extreme aversion to the word “victim”, but then anteprepro said it all so much better in comment #11.

    Except that maybe sometimes I think that the whole rigmarole about “I ain’t no victim” is just a denial of how powerless most of us are in society.

  34. UnknownEric the Apostate says

    Or maybe Silverman was trolling his own convention. I don’t know.

    The 2nd Doctor gambit? Act a fool, but pull all the strings while no one’s looking?

  35. Hj Hornbeck says

    I’m surprised no-one’s linked to the obligatory We Hunted The Mammoth article, because this story does get worse: it turns out they were making light of sexual assault.

    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.”

  36. anteprepro says

    Rich. Bleated from the mouth of gator in response to this event: “Orwell’s 1984 is now a documentary”

    Such sensitive souls, these gamergaters.

  37. Hj Hornbeck says

    Oh geez, and a GamerGater in the comments just posted the full audio recording of the panel these jerks crashed. Haven’t listened to it myself, but apparently the two MRAs are left confused when the panelists don’t follow their script.

  38. Holms says

    Couldn’t help but be amazed that they had the gall to describe the video thus:
    “Trigger Warning. At 18:30 the conversation turns to dangerous and unacceptable harassment.”
    Note that this is the point at which they interrupt a panel discussion from their audience seats. It boggles the mind that they are so far removed from rationality.

  39. says

    CCEE broke attendance records with 102,000 attendees this year and I have no doubt they’ll do it again next year. As a first-time attendee, I had a blast. The vast majority of people there weren’t even aware of this manufactroversy. I think the organizers handled a no-win situation very well.