A two-storey Sydney pub on King Street, Newtown. Band on Saturday. Roast on Sundays. Drag queen bingo on Tuesdays. And tonight, for the first time ever, a private booking of men's rights activists (MRAs) who have come to meet the women who agree with them.

The MRAs arrive in pairs or alone and tramp up the stairs to the rooftop bar. There's Frank, (not his real name), who has come with his wife, who reviews films on Youtube and doesn't want her fans to know she's here. Frank wears a fedora and blue-tinted spectacles. He introduces himself to a man who wears a 'Make Australia Great Again' cap and a t-shirt for the pro-MRA documentary The Red Pill - recently the focus of a violent protest at Sydney University. The man gives his Facebook name - Aussie Mgtow - from the group 'Anti-feminism Australia'.

Frank and Aussie Mgtow have never met the Honey Badgers before, but they've watched the videos and are big fans. Frank is mainly here just to say hello to other MRAs, who he doesn't see much offline, but for Aussie Mgtow it's a much bigger deal - it's kind of pilgrimage.

"I basically came tonight to pay my homage," he says.

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Whatsapp Karen Straughan in 2014.

The focus of his reverence is Karen Straughan, one of the three women who co-founded the Honey Badgers in 2013, and is a major commentator in the manosphere - the part of the internet where MRAs hang out. The Honey Badgers podcast has 35,000 subscribers worldwide and Karen's Youtube channel has 165,000. She and the other two co-founders - Alison Tieman and Hannah Wallen - are on a 'Down Under tour' that will culminate at a national MRA conference on the Gold Coast. Tonight is the first stop. The Melbourne venue has just cancelled after learning they had booked a bunch of MRAs.

"We're not boogie men, we're people just like you," says Frank.

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Whatsapp Men's rights activist Adrian.

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Whatsapp MRAs at the Sydney Honey Badgers meetup.

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Whatsapp Father and son at the Honey Badgers meetup in Sydney.

"We have the same fears and doubts, hopes and dreams, we're just people."

"We just want a discussion."

The Honey Badgers bring the discussion. Karen's videos have an academic style, though she isn't an academic, and they seem to be filmed in her kitchen. Frank likes how she uses evolutionary psychology. Men are natural risk-takers, says Frank, while women aren't good at confrontation.

That is, except feminists, who are apparently too confrontational.

Also, except the Honey Badgers.

This MRA meet-up feels like some kind of especially shameful singles night - the men at first seem wary of being publicly outed, and then gradually they loosen up and start talking about the wage gap (doesn't exist), domestic violence stats (male victims under-reported), the family court (fundamentally unfair to men), and the phenomenon of Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW).

"We live our lives happily now and choose not to interact with women," Aussie Mgtow says.

He says his marriage broke down five years ago and he was financially ruined. At the depth of his despair, he says, he found Karen's Youtube channel.

"She explained how the system works with modern feminism and the hammer of the law they wield to destroy men's lives," he says.

He says he donated $92 for her to come to Australia.

The Badgers arrive

There's about 70 people upstairs, including about five women, when the Honey Badgers arrive and begin to mingle. Karen, Alison and Hannah, plus plus two of the male producers, Brian Martinez and DoctorRandomerCam. The foreign celebrities are quickly absorbed into the crowd, which has two basic groups: uni-age students and middle-aged men.

Alison sets up a stall for $30 t-shirts. There's also Wonderland-themed posters for something called 'Alice in Badgerland', sub-titled 'Misogyny edition'.

The 'Down Under tour' poster is based on the movie Mad Max: Fury Road - the 2015 sequel praised for its feminist message. Karen is cast as the female lead, Imperator Furosa.

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Whatsapp The Honey Badgers 2017 Australia tour.

"When you're a men's rights activist you tend to have an inherited reputation as a bad person," she tells Hack later that night, eating a steak.

"You have to work a bit to let people know that's not what you are."

"You're not interested in going back to the 1950s, you're not interested in denying girls an education, you're not interested in making rape and domestic violence legal."

"You just want men to enjoy the same rights other citizens do."

The Honey Badgers believe they are standing up for powerless men. They acknowledge men appear to fill the positions of power in our society, either as politicians or bosses, but these are only some men - the rest are victims of a system that discriminates in favour of women and sees men as 'disposable' and 'obsolete'. These arguments are classic MRA, with the added twist they come from women.

The Honey Badgers also argue feminism oppresses women by defining them as victims who need to be rescued. Asked how this was different to men claiming they were victims, Karen replies that men are real victims and women are just pretending. She says men are suffering from discrimination in the Family Court, where they were losing custody battles, while women complain about trivial problems such as 'manspreading' and 'sexist air-conditioning'.

"We've talked about women's issues for the past 50 years," she says.

"We've left men behind."

'A simplistic bizarre parody of feminism'

Men are being left behind, and it's because we care too much about women: this idea is at the centre of MRA philosophy. It's a zero-sum game. If one gender does better, the other must do worse. Dr Michael Flood, an Associate Professor of Sociology at Queensland University of Technology with a focus on men and masculinities, described this as a "simplistic bizarre parody of feminism."

"It seems at best naive and at worse downright dishonest," he told Hack.

He said that it was possible to recognise the ways men suffer disadvantage without claiming feminism has gone too far. Indeed, in many cases, feminism has helped men. There's a long history of feminists in Australia supporting male causes, such as men's health and male survivors of sexual abuse. There's also emerging evidence that a major driver of suicide in young men is old-fashioned notions of masculinity - especially the idea that men should suffer in silence.

Men's rights groups can offer men a sense of community, but they also tend to isolate their members in a tiny, angry fringe. They alienate them from women who aren't Honey Badgers.

Dr Flood said the demographic profile of the Sydney meetup was typical of MRAs - white, middle-aged and heterosexual. He said there were signs of fresh interest among younger men, partly because of the overlap with the Pick Up Artist (PUA) sub-culture, but there was little to back up the claim the men's rights movement was drawing numbers to its cause.

The International Conference on Men's Issues, easily the biggest event of the year, held last weekend on the Gold Coast, had about 100 attendees.

"Anti-feminist groups have been around for 50-60 years," Dr Flood said.

It's just become more visible."

A couple hours after the Honey Badgers arrive, the numbers have thinned and Karen Straughan is holding court with the last few dozen. The unsold t-shirts are packed in suitcases. The diners in the adjacent restaurant area have no idea what has taken place.

Downstairs, the drag queen bingo is in full swing. Two divas in sequins call out the numbers and the audience obediently hunch over their forms and tally up the grids.

The performers break up the night with a few song-and-dance numbers, and they're still going when the last MRAs come down the stairs and leave.