‘Honey Badgers’ Have Raised Over $19K For a “Legal Fund” To Attack Calgary Expo
Some of you may recall that a couple weekends ago that the Calgary Expo (in Calgary, Alberta) kicked out Men’s Rights group ‘The Honey Badger Brigade’ who had purchased an exhibitor.
The reasons for the removal were simple:
- The group registered the table under false pretenses
- The Group had disrupted panels the first day of the con
- The table was selling #GamerGate merchandise, which is classified as a hate movement by the staff (and thus violated safe space policies)
It’s all pretty cut and dry.
The Honey Badgers (a mostly-women group of MRAs with close ties to hate site A Voice For Men) decided to raise holy hell about it though. They’ve put out hours and hours of videos about the booting, and have started to raise money for a “legal fund.”
And that fundraiser has raised over nineteen thousand dollars.
Here’s the thing though, they don’t have a legal leg to stand on. If they had actually read the convention policies they agreed to, they’d know the Calgary Expo staff can literally boot anyone for any reason they want. According to the rules they contractually agreed to passes to the event can be by revoked by “authorized staff without compensation for whatever reason deemed fit.” The staff could have booted them if they just didn’t like their shoes. The Honey Badgers have tried to invoke the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, except that they don’t actually represent a protected class so they wouldn’t have a valid complaint.
So, in other words, this is literally just raising money for nothing.
But hey, Men’s Rights Activists are a gullible lot who will just toss money at their leaders without really critically thinking about what could actually be done with that money. That’s literally what sites like A Voice For Men have built their entire business model on and the Honey Badgers are just following the examples before them.
Via WHTM
So….literally professional victims, right? That’s how this works?
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Aside from the fact that there are legal limitations on the right to evict at will where there has been “consideration” in the contractual sense, there’s also the bad publicity this generates for the convention. Throwing out a whole group without warning, violating the organizers’ own posted policies, simply because the organizers didn’t like their opinions, reduces the expected value to purchasers of booths or tickets, since they may at whim be expelled by the organizers. What’s more, there is the issue of the false complaints made to the police — that’s flat-out ILLEGAL under CRIMINAL law.
Look at it this way — suppose that the ideology had been flipped here. Suppose that the Badgers had been expelled because the convention organizers were anti-feminist and the Badgers were feminists. Can you doubt that the Badgers would have a good case here? Or that the expulsion would damage the reputation of the convention?
Well, the specifics of the ideologies involved don’t make a difference. The law is neutral between ideologies. What’s more, there are heck of a lot of fans who agree with the Honey Badgers, so the convention is going to hurt itself in a business sense no matter what happens.
And there’s the possibility of criminal prosecution for laying false complaints with the police department.
In my opinion, the Honey Badgers have broken into a nice yummy hive, and will gorge upon the contents, to the detriment of the future chances of the bees involved.
So you use a lot of words to say a lot of thing which actually don’t apply.
Calgary Expo wrote language in their vendor and attendee agreements which says they can kick you out for any reason. Regardless of whether you agree that lying on a vendor application broke the rules (which it did) or that the Honey Badgers violated the safe space rules, Calgary Expo is legally covered (as the Honey Badgers don’t represent a legally protected group).
That’s all that matters. It’s a “legal fund” for a situation where there are no legal grounds to use said funds.
That’s it. That’s all that matters.
As for perceived value, or anything else — since Calgary Expo has taken a pretty firm anti-GamerGate stance, I think that it INCREASES the value for attendees that people like the Honey Badgers got evicted. The Honey Badgers bought the table WANTING to start a fight — picking a con whose policies discouraged the very Merch they were selling, and lying on their application. If feminists lied to buy a table at one of Paul Elam’s cons, we’re pretty sure they’d get kicked out of there too.
So don’t bring your weak tea into my house.