So Martyn Bradbury wrote a post about me

And I just want to clear a few things up, if only to establish with some finality that Martyn “Bomber” Bradbury shouldn’t be trusted as far as you can piss facing into an emerald Wellington gale.  Martyn’s post is here, or will be until he deletes it and pretends it never happened.

Martyn’s statement:

QoT left the blog with Nicole Skews

is a lie, and one which I have previously corrected him on .  Coley (which is what people call her when they’re not trying to silence her with the threat of workplace-related drama*) left The Daily Blog on 12 September.  Her side of the tale is here.

I, on the other hand, had stepped down from blogging there on 24 July, with the following email:

Hey man, my post for the week is now with you.

Unfortunately I’m going to have to step back from TDB.  As you’ve probably gathered, things in the meat-world have been pretty rocky for me this year and the past month has just taken all my spoons.
It’s been great though, I really like what you’re achieving and the line-up is awesome – so I know I won’t necessarily be missed *too* badly. 🙂

You’ll want to keep this in mind for a bit further down.  When in later email conversation I corrected him for claiming that my stepping down was due to Coley’s, he stated in an email of 20 September:

My mistake – I thought the 2 events were connected.

Next up.  Martyn’s statement:

QoT’s latest attack is to claim that our desire on TDB to have more female voices is somehow a conspiracy to hide my true intentions of allowing the patriarchy to rule while paying lip service to diversity. She claims the lack of posts by the female bloggers in October is proof of this while I think that is a terrible slap in the face to the women bloggers on this site.

is easily compared with my actual post here – which Martyn does not link to.  Please note:  the statistics are not for October.  They are for the entire running history of The Daily Blog, from February to October 2013, as noted on the post.  I do not accuse Martyn of “allowing the patriarchy to rule”; I say:

With those kind of numbers, you’ve got to ask exactly what is being served by getting more women’s names onto the TDB roster.  Is it women, or is it one guy’s liberal cred?

But Martyn claims that he’s actually the real feminist here:

QoT knows first hand from times she couldn’t get her blog through to us that there are many extra time issues for female bloggers to contend with. Family, work and study all impact on the time commitments people can commit to blogging, every blogger on this site has the ability to post whenever they want above the minimum commitments they agree to.

It’s a nice point, and a very valid one, and yeah, I’m not a perfect employee contributor.  But it struck me as odd that Martyn was suddenly so understanding of the pressures on women and how this might affect their ability to commit regular blog posts, because after I sent that email, back on 24 July, his response was far less accepting.

Martyn, 24 July:

WHOA – Hold up sister – QoT – mate, comrade – hold up.

I was out tonight at backbenchers and I had a couple of guys from out of town who had made the trip in special to watch it and they were raving about you and the impact you have made on their girlfriends in helping them find their voice.

QoT I do not want to lose you – how about this – how about we cut you down from weekly to fortnightly – would that help?

A day later, after I hadn’t responded – remembering that I’d explained life was a bit difficult at the moment.

So would fortnightly take the pressure off you?

Please note that is the entire text of the email.  I explained – very nicely** – that it wasn’t a goer.  He responded:

Doh – those personal things – bloody nuisance those.

I’ll back off for a month and then start gently prodding – you are simply too important a voice to allow quieting my dear QoT – there is genuinely a new generation of women reading your blogs and feeling real power from seeing a woman as staunch and powerful as you front footing it with anyone.

I know how passionate you are so know your personal trauma must be great to pause from blogging. Take time to heal comrade, I’ll hold your line in the fight.

And then a month later, with no further contact from me – and sure, I could have been more forthcoming, but Martyn could also have taking a fucking hint** – the boilerplate reminder emails began again.  And I didn’t want to pick a fight, because I feared that Martyn would be nasty in retaliation.  I think subsequent events bear this out.

But it does seem to suggest that he is not as open-minded about the pressures on women bloggers as he claims, and quite happy to apply it himself.

And finally, Martyn says:

The insinuation that Amanda Kennedy, Christine Rose, Dianne Khan, Jenny Michie, Julie Anne Genter, Julie Fairey, LadyMac, Laila Harre, Latifa Daud, Louisa Wall, Marama Davidson, Moana Mackey, Penny Hulse, Phoebe Fletcher, Professor Jane Kelsey, Rachael Goldsmith, Sue Bradford, Susan St John, Tali Williams and Melissa Ansell-Bridges are somehow puppets being played for deceptive means by myself, Chris Trotter, Selwyn Manning, Frank Macskasy and Wayne Hope is as ludicrous as it is offensive to those women.

It’s very nice to know that he can name all his remaining women bloggers.  But again, it begs a question: if all of these women find my statements offensive and ludicrous, why isn’t Martyn giving them a platform to say so?

The rest of Martyn’s post is a masterclass in sexist double standards and tone argument.  It shouldn’t need saying that the man who refers to me as “Queen of Scorns”, who coined the phrase “Emerald Stormtroopers”, and who categorised what is basically an argument over one comment on a blog as “completely fracturing the Auckland and Wellington left” is probably not the person who should be lamenting the horrors of blog-war.

Martyn is a liar.  If you are dealing with him, screencap everything.  This correspondence is now very much closed.

~
*In an earlier post, Martyn referred to her as “Nicole Skews of [her workplace]”.  This has, like so many things, been silently retconned.

**And let’s all think for a moment about how women are programmed to be nice in order to not antagonise men because they fear being attacked by them.  I don’t think it’s a stretch given the exact post I’m commenting on now.

4 comments

    • QoT

      Objectively, yes. Subjectively, he’d get such martyr-mileage out of it that I’d rather deny him the honour.