Sam Roberts
Sam Roberts is the ethics officer for Reaxxion. Think we're doing something wrong? Want to chat? You can follow him on twitter, or email him from our ethics policy page.
In the name of protecting women from harassment, feminists have harassed a group of women out of a Canadian comic convention, the Calgary Expo. Students of history will remember the Vietnam war will remember the statement, “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.” This (possibly fabricated) quote was a major factor in turning American public opinion against the war. Will “We had to harass the women in order to stop harassment of women” become a similar turning point in the war for “Social Justice”?
The women were part of a group called “The Honey Badger Brigade”, who had purchased a booth at the Calgary Expo in an attempt to spread the message that “nerd and gamer culture is perfectly wonderful just as it is and should be left alone to go it’s own way.” The group was attempting to spread an anti-censorship, pro-Gamergate message, and get the word out about the attempts by certain segments of the left (the people we call Social Justice Warriors) to shut down discussion and silence anyone who disagrees with them. They had intended to distribute information at a booth, and attend feminist panels and talk to the panelists during question and answer sessions, presenting Gamergate’s side of the story for the audience.
The Honey Badger Brigade’s booth. This was shut down before it could even be shown to the public.
Social Justice Warriors reacted to the accusation that they are shutting down discussion and silencing anyone who disagrees with them by… shutting down discussion and silencing the Honey Badgers for disagreeing with them. SJWs flooded Calgary Expo with bogus claims of “harassment” (the nature of which was never specified), and convinced the convention to ban them. According to the group, the three women from the Honey Badgers attending were asked to leave because “(the convention) had received complaints on social media, including 25 allegations of harassment.”
Calgary Expo released several statements via Twitter that these three women violated their mandate to make the convention “positive” and “safe.” Exactly how these three women were making the convention unsafe, they have repeatedly failed to specify. When pressed, expo staff pointed to a panel one of the women had attended the previous night, where one of the women had spoken during the question and answer session. It was here, according to the staff, that the supposed “harassment” took place.
The Accusations Were Lies
The audio from the panel is available here, and it tells a very different story. The woman from the Honey Badgers is calm and polite at all times. She asks for permission to speak, and when given permission speaks very briefly. She never raises her voice or speaks out of turn, and when the panel decides it’s time to move on, she says nothing more.
In fact, in a statement released to pro-SJW website The Mary Sue, one of the feminists on the panel, Brittney Le Blanc, said that while she felt the Honey Badger’s question “wasn’t constructive”, it also “brought up some great discussions.” If Le Blanc felt harassed, she certainly didn’t say so.
Taken together, the audio record and statement from the panelist show that accusations of “harassment” are nonsense. This was bullying, slanderous lies intended to silence and harrass women for speaking their mind. In other words, the people behind this showed themselves to be every bit as nasty as what they claim to be fighting against. The difference, of course, is that the Gamergaters they hate exist only in their minds, while they themselves are very real.
Calgary Expo’s statement on the expulsion. No actual information is given, just a vague statement about “positivity” and “safety”.
The backlash from Calgary Expo’s decision has been enormous, with over 40,000 tweets on Twitter, as well as coverage on large sites like Daily Caller and the Examiner that normally don’t cover Gamergate news. This is a massive black eye for the convention, and given the fact that only women were evicted, there’s already talk of a Human Rights gender discrimination lawsuit. (While it is a private event, the Calgary Expo is partially funded by the city of Calgary, and as such is subject to Canadian equal-access laws.)
They Can’t Help But Prove Us Right
Social Justice Warriors have a long history of shooting themselves in the foot and rushing to prove their enemies right. Gamergate began when, faced with accusations that they were insular and out of touch with the gaming public, game journalists reacted with “Gamers are dead.” When they lost the Hugos, social justice warriors exploded in outrage and called their opponents sexists, racists, and homophobes. The result? Now everybody is talking about the Hugo awards. These people literally cannot stop themselves from exploding in outrage and proving everything their opponents have to say.
If they hadn’t been banned, the badgers would likely have had an uneventful trip to Calgary. At most, they would’ve slightly annoyed some feminists, and perhaps told some convention-goers about Gamergate. Now? They’re the subject of international news. Their visibility has grown a thousandfold, and they have a bigger platform to spread their message than ever before. And they have the liars, bullies and harassers in the Social Justice movement to thank.
Read Next: How Frank Cho Told Feminists To Shut Up And Go Away
