Honey badger (men's rights)

Janet Bloomfield (her pen name) was born 1979 or 1980[13] in northern Ontario, Canada, into a Seventh-day Adventist family, with three brothers.[10] She grew up on a hobby farm in a fundamentalist Christian enclave in rural Alberta, Canada.[10][13] Her parents divorced when she was a preteen.[10]

Bloomfield went to the University of Western Ontario to study film theory, but after graduation made the conscious decision to become a wife and mother.[10] She continued to the University of Victoria, both to study for a Master of Business Administration, and to find a husband.[10] She married, had her first child, and became a stay-at-home mother.[13] In October 2012,[notes 1] she started a blog named JudgyBitch.com with a college friend, writing about how her friends were disdainful of her choice to be a homemaker, and dependent on a man; about how when her parents divorced, her mother was able to win child custody and turn her and her three brothers against their father; and how even her film theory courses taught students to view movies through a feminist filter. Bloomfield's views became aligned with the online Men's rights movement (MRM), and in 2013 some of her work was republished on A Voice for Men.[3]

In 2016, Bloomfield was living in Thunder Bay, Ontario, with her husband, young son, and two daughters. She was the head of social media for A Voice for Men. She supported abortion rights in the first trimester, and women's right to choose whether to work or stay at home (though believing most would choose to be homemakers). However, she opposed women's right to vote, writing that women historically made bad decisions, especially on economics, defense, and immigration, while being immune from conscription and therefore the blood consequences of those decisions. She believed some women could earn the right to vote by having sons, husbands, or serving in the military.[10] Bloomfield was also a prominent supporter of the Women Against Feminism social media campaign, and said she knew the anonymous founder.[15][5][16] She appeared on Viceland, the BBC, the NBC Today Show and on the syndicated The Doctors.[10][17][18][19][20][9] She received numerous death threats, and promised to defend herself with her crossbow.[10]

In January 2019, Bloomfield retired, closing her blog and her Twitter and YouTube accounts; she wrote that she could defend herself, but she could not defend her children who were being stalked and harassed by adults online due to her activism.[21] She allowed many of her articles to be moved to the website FEMoid.[22]

Straughan speaks at the Free State Project in 2014

Karen Straughan is a divorced mother of two boys and a girl, who lives in Edmonton, Alberta.[3][2] She was born raised in Sherwood Park, just east of Edmonton, as the youngest of three sisters.[6] Her father was a mechanic who taught her to work with her hands, and her mother was a tomboy who taught her self-sufficiency and treated her wounds after fights.[6]

As an adult, Straughan worked as a part-time waitress while writing erotic fiction for women as a side line (she is self educated and bisexual), and discovered the men's rights movement when she and other authors decided to troll a MRM forum, only to find that she agreed with the forum posters.[3][9] Another impetus was the inequality of child custody laws: when Straughan was going through her divorce, she found herself the presumptive custodial parent, and legally unable to waive a child support order against her ex-husband, and when she started another relationship she found her boyfriend had helped raise a stepdaughter but hadn't been able to see her for eight years.[2] In 2011, she started a blog, "Owning Your Shit", and a YouTube channel named "Girl Writes What", where she discussed her views supporting the men's rights movement; in three years her early video "Feminism and the Disposable Male" had over a million views.[9][6] By 2013, she acted as a spokesperson for Men's Rights Edmonton.[23] In 2016, Straughan earned enough from YouTube ads and speaking fees to quit her part-time restaurant job.[10][3]

Tieman in 2018

Alison Tieman, also known as "Typhon Blue",[11] lives with her husband in Kelvington, Saskatchewan, Canada, east of Saskatoon.[3] She was born on December 20, 1977, and grew up a feminist, like her mother, who was one of the founders of Calgary's first Take Back the Night marches in 1975.[6] Tieman became focused on gender equality issues, such as the male-only draft, after returning from an all-girls boarding school at age 15.[6] She became more interested in men's issues at age 16, when her mother gave her a copy of The Princess at the Window: A New Gender Morality by Donna Laframboise, a critique of contemporary feminism.[1] She began formulating her own theories on gender, which she posted on her blog at genderratic.com. She says she focused more on men, as their voices were not being heard at the time. This drew the attention of Paul Elam, founder of A Voice for Men, who asked her to write for his group.[24]

In 2013 Tieman acted as the Saskatoon spokesperson for A Voice for Men, defending men's rights posters put up there, mirroring Straughan's role in Edmonton.[25] In 2014, Tieman acted as a spokesperson for both AVfM and Men's Rights Canada on multiple occasions.[26][27]

The Honey Badger Brigade is an organized group of honey badgers,[1] a female-led and founded organization, though it does have some male members.[28] In 2013, three of the women posting on A Voice for Men, Straughan, Tieman, and Hannah Wallen (using pen name Della Burton),[29] founded the Honey Badger Brigade website and Honey Badger Radio podcast.[3][30] Tieman was the head of the podcast, and designed the Honey Badger Brigade graphics.[6] Bloomfield became a prominent poster on the website.[31] Other prominent female Honey Badger Brigade members included:

• Rachel Edwards, who wanted to start a Honey Badger Radio spinoff focusing on nerd culture[3][11][32]
• Kristal Garcia, a black woman from New York City and former sex worker[3][11][32]
• Jessica Kenney, also known as Jess Kay, a veterinary assistant and manager of the Facebook page I Don't Need Feminism, who became interested in boys issues after having a son[4][11][32][3]

In 2016 Tieman incorporated the group as Honey Badger Brigade, Inc., and became its president.[28][33] She was able to quit her part-time job, due to the $10,000 monthly revenue raised by the Honey Badger Radio podcast, which was enough to also pay for two full-time and two part-time staff.[10]

The Honey Badger Brigade continued an association with A Voice for Men: at the first International Conference on Men's Issues, in 2014 in Detroit, organized by AVfM, the Badgers crowdfunded $8000 to fly there as "human shields".[9] The 2019 International Conference on Men's Issues was hosted by the Honey Badger Brigade in Chicago.[28][34]

Brigade members Edwards, Garcia, Kay, Straughan, and Tieman were interviewed in the 2016 documentary film The Red Pill.[35] Straughan was the most prominent, talking about how men's lives, whether in the military or dangerous jobs, were regarded as more disposable than those of women.[36] In 2017, Straughan, Tieman, and Wallen went to Australia on a Honey Badger "Down Under tour", to promote screenings of The Red Pill there.[37][38]

Besides those mentioned above, other prominent female men's rights activists that have been listed among the Honey Badgers include:

• Anna Cherry, a Sacramento Webcam model, cosplayer and YouTuber who attended the 2015 Calgary Expo with the Honey Badger Brigade[6][49]
• Daisy Cousens, an Australian actress and conservative commentator, daughter of actor Peter Cousens[38][50]
• Diana Davison, a Canadian YouTuber, and founder of The Lighthouse Project, a non-profit that helps people falsely accused of sexual assault[10][51][29]
• Janice Fiamengo, a former English professor at the University of Ottawa[10][38][52][53]
• Elizabeth Hobson, an English activist for the Justice for Men and Boys political party[8]
• Theryn Meyer, a Canadian-South African transgender woman[10][54]
• Tara J. Palmatier, "a Shrink 4 Men", a psychologist from the US West Coast specializing in counseling men in abusive relationships with women[1][11][29][12]
• Helen Smith, a forensic psychologist from Knoxville, Tennessee, and blogger for PJ Media[9][29]
• Suzanne Venker, niece and co-author of conservative campaigner Phyllis Schlafly, and columnist for Fox News.[9][2]