Men’s Rights Posters Now Officially Sillier Than Their Parodies
It’s hard to parody Men’s Rights Activists, because no matter how ridiculous your parody is, there’s a good chance that some MRA out there has already said, or written, or sung, something even more ridiculous already.
Not that long ago, a bunch of Man Boobz regulars set out to parody the bizarre, and often inadvertently surrealistic, posters that have been popping up on MRA sites like A Voice for Men and Artistry Against Misandry. It was hard, but I think some of us managed to come up with posters that were even uglier and less coherent than the originals. I especially liked these two, from (respectively) Cliff Pervocracy and Sir Bodsworth Rugglesby III.
But alas, we have been outmaneuvered by the all-too-serious poster-makers on A Voice for Men, who have managed to produce posters that make even less sense than our silliest parodies. Take a look at this one, which I believe is the work of an Australian MRA by the name of Roger O. Thornhill.
I mean, really. How can we compete with that?
This is an actual poster that some MRAs think will actually win people over to their cause. How, I’m not exactly sure. What exactly about a cupcake with a tiara is supposed to scream “men’s rights” to random pedestrians who might catch a glimpse of this poster wheatpasted to a hoarding while on their way to work?
For more of Roger’s fine work, see here and here.
Man Boobzers, can you do better?
Or, if you’re not up to that Herculean task, could you at least try to explain just what exactly you think Mr. Thornhill was trying to say with that poster of his?
EDITED TO ADD: I have been asked to contribute a poster myself. So here one is. You can find many more hilarious and incredibly ugly posters at ArtistryForFeminismAndKittens and, of course, in the comments below!
Posted on November 27, 2012, in a voice for men, antifeminism, artistry, cupcake, men who should not ever be with women ever, misogyny, MRA, the poster revolution has begun and tagged a voice for men, anti-feminism, men's rights, misogyny, MRA. Bookmark the permalink. 703 Comments.
That women promise the nookie when you marry them and don’t deliver? Which doesn’t make sense, since they keep telling us that women are only boinkable until they’re 25 or so. And the quotes INSIDE the bubble? And what do recipes have to do with anything?
…is the cupcake… a lie?
Bait and switch?
Did you see the “Eek! A mouse!” one? I really don’t think these guys understand the concept of not preaching to the choir.
http://www.avoiceformen.com/portal/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Eek-A-Mouse.pdf
http://s899.beta.photobucket.com/user/sBagelsan/media/mensrights.jpg.html?sort=3&o=0
So, recipes are just cooking instructions, not actual food that you can eat. I honestly don’t understand what the fuck the princess cupcake is meant to be saying in that poster.
Don’t ignore the fact that the word “Life” is inappropriately capitalized. That MUST mean something!
@blitzgal
Recipes must be porn, because it’s not actually having sex, it’s instructions how, I guess? The cupcake is telling men that they’ll never get to have sex because feminists don’t want them to get fat?
My head hurts from trying to figure out their logic. I’m going back to lurking now.
Yay, Bagelsan. Here is my pitiful attempt, using an actual “headline” from AVfM:
And you must have seen this, right?
Raise your hand if you would assume the cupcake poster was for a cooking website if you knew nothing about the MRM. Message fail.
Maybe it’s because we occasionally discuss food, and all women are spoilt princesses, and the most evil of spoilt princess women discuss food and recipes here?
It would be like them to be that internally-referential (sorta). And MRAs do seem to loathe us (probably because we take the piss out of them).
Richard Cohen of the Washington Post says that Daniel Craig’s Bond is why women have expectations and shit, and why 23 year old women won’t fuck him. LOL.
http://gawker.com/5963581/james-bond-is-the-reason-richard-cohen-cant-date-23+year+olds
@ Roger’s poster and blitzgal’s link: what the heck?
The poster would do well in a contest for surrealism, though.
I love yours Cloudiah. Maybe they’re trying to lure women onto their website with the promise of cupcakes recipes (because women, kitchens cooking, amirite guys?) in the hopes that they’ll see the posts renounce their evil feminist ways and become the doormats the MRAs want
@blitzgal
I’m 23 and I’ve never seen a Bond film, and yet I still don’t want to sleep with that man.
How odd.
@Noadi – that’s what I thought! It looks like a silly or self-parodying ad a cake shop put up, maybe fore a competition.
Is it just my age showing, or do the eyes on that cake look like the coughdesignercough was harking back to the I Dream of Jeannie title cartoon, where her eyes are shown on the bottle?
I thought it looked familiar!
I googled “princess cupcakes a voice for men” and all I found was stuff relating to this and stuff about Adventure Time. One of these things is not like the other.
Their images about feminists and feminism are, uh, interesting. When feminists are depicted they’re either old harpy witches—or, on the other hand, as patriarchal stereotypes of weak women. Oh, and they’re always women. I guess they’re not brave enough to bring up their “mangina” schtick to the public.
Anyway, IMO this one tops the Cupcake Princess by quite a bit:
http://www.avoiceformen.com/portal/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/feminazi_final.pdf
My favorite part is the boxcutter.
And for sheer stupendously bad design, there’s this:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8xPFIPRZ75AVnhLZjM5RVdzMU0/edit?pli=1
@thenatfantastic
How dare you have the audacity to choose who you fuck? Misandrist!
The “are you a happy feminist” one makes me laugh, partly because I suspect it’s the idea of anyone being happy that upsets these douchebags as much as the idea of anyone being a feminist. I mean, what does their so-called activism do for any of them? Never seen such a miserable, hate-filled, incoherent bunch of losers.
@Tulgey Logger
Why is there a unicorn?!
I mean, I’m feminist anyway, but seriously, if being feminist meant free unicorns for everyone I’d be really really excited whilst galloping off on my feminist unicorn surrounded by multicoloured flower petals and golden sparkles.
Of course Bagelsan tops the cupcake one in five seconds. So glad you’re back!
Hum… I’d guess the cupcake’s purpose is to make the viewer go OMGWTFBBQ and then go see at the address WTF is going on. But since this is an inside joke and inside jokes come with a particular psychology, I doubt that’s what they intended with this.
The text further confuses this. Is it supposed to attract housewives who like to bake?
Wait, you mean you’ve never heard of the Einhornglitzernkampf?
Jeez, read up on feminist history. I hear there are free updates on avoiceformen dot com.
Greatest. German. Word. EVER.
Einhornglitzernkrieg was actually taken by a death metal band at the time of the original Dworks Crusade, so they had to go with kampf instead.*
And Bagelsan, that was brilliant. The cupcake’s expression really ties the whole image together.
*Note: Not really.
Seriously, why is there a unicorn? Or is it some inside joke again?
Well, I’ve certainly seen the light, thanks to the brave artists of AVfM! None of you feminist cupcake princesses are going to get your hooks into ME now! Never! Thank you AVfM for showing the me The Troof About Feminism! Box-cutters and cupcakes, all of you!
Take that you feminists!
/douchecanoe
*we now return you to your regularly scheduled mockery*
Also this, in case anybody missed it:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/post/the-war-on-men–straw-feminism-101/2012/11/26/0ae5c158-37da-11e2-b01f-5f55b193f58f_blog.html
the mouse one isn’t even original in its incoherent crazy: http://www.pigazette.com/Pig%20images/AntiSuffrage.jpg
I’m guessing “Free recipes for Life” is a reference to spermjacking. That’s gotta be it.
I read too much stuff about the forced birthers, clearly. I assumed the capital L on “life” there had to be some sort of anti-abortion reference.
And even with that, the poster still does not make a damn bit of sense.
I think this is too much like my original poster but I like the image juxtaposed with the AVfM headline:
But with this one, I feel like I have successfully made a parody that is sillier than any poster they have yet to create. TOP THIS ONE, MRA POSTER BOYS!
(Seriously, they can’t do worst than that, can they? That would be unpossible!)
Cloudiah: That one is hard to compete with, but I’m sure they’ll manage.
Yes, I shouldn’t misunderestimate them.
@Freitag
Suzanne Venker is apparently Phyllis Schlafly’s niece. Hey, her aunt made a CAREER of telling women that they are terrible people for having CAREERS, so why not? But seriously, way to regurgitate the same bullshit your aunt peddled thirty fucking years ago. It’s just the same record, over and over again. Skip, skip, skip…
@blitzgal, yes. I read that in the original piece on Faux, and had to LOL at it. Nice that she’s gotten out of the kitchen long enough to write three books, eh? How many did auntie write, I wonder idly? For women who hate career women, they seem to have made careers out of hating career women.
Ow, I think I just broke my brain.
Oh, for anybody reading the WaPo rebuttal, read the comments. They are…fascinating.
You know how sometimes something is so ugly that you love it?
Well.
By the SACRED MEATBALL what the fuck did they do to that art, Tulgey?
I’m wondering IF FREE RECIPES FOR LIFE is like FREE UPDATES – there are UPDATES which are FREE and will give you a RECIPE FOR A GOOD LIFE.
Suzanne Venker also had a role in creating a manboobz post!
This article:
http://www.nationalreview.com/home-front/295445/ryan-gosling-s-thankless-save/suzanne-venker
Led to this post by way of r/mensrights:
http://manboobz.com/2012/04/06/hey-girl-i-wish-you-were-a-greasy-smear-on-the-road-the-mens-rights-subreddit-hates-on-the-lady-rescued-by-ryan-gosling/
By way of Credible Journalist Suzanne Venker leaving out the part where Laurie Penny said she thanked Ryan Gosling. I’m sure it was just a mistake, though: Venker was probably just rushing in order to get her agenda out.
I think the poster is saying “tribble capricorn lettuce.”
Incidentally, here’s a real surrealist artist: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Cahun
Falconer: that was mine. Even MRAs are unwilling to do as much violence to aesthetics as I am.
Tulgey, you did that last one, right?
Seriously, I have no idea.
Ninja’d. Time for some breakfast.
@Tulgey Logger
Is that real or a pisstake? I ask because even in my sparkly dark tortured gratuitous emotional masturbation too many photoshop filters phase, I would have thought that was bad.
Damn, ninja’d too. I’m gonna have to install a nightingale floor.
Tulgey, that was gloriously, fractally bad. In a good way.
I think the title of this post has just been disproved!
I am glad. Anyone who could produce that as a ‘good’ poster with a straight face would have no hope for redemption.
I used to like cupcakes…then one stared at me with full lips and come hither eyes…never again.
cloudiah, Tulgey, those are awesome. I love poster time. ^^
From the WaPo comments section:
This seems to be a pretty consistent idea with anti-feminists. “If you’re a feminist, you can’t possibly have a good relationship with another person and you will end up old and alone with all your cats bemoaning the great men (like me) that you could have had if you weren’t a feminist.” I think that maybe the idea of a feminist having a happy relationship with someone who isn’t an asshole, or being happy with your cats, is anathema to them. They NEED you to be unhappy. So would all you lovely cupcakes kindly stop being happy now? And if you actually love your cat/s, get rid of them so you’re not happy!
Stop being happy right now!!! MRA happiness depends on it!
Since the MRM tends towards just dumping an entire blog post onto a piece of paper and calling it a poster, here is my humble contribution doing just that.
(Text is from this article, btw)
Ugh, and via Pandagon, there’s this week’s Dear Prudence. Major trigger warning for this one (domestic violence).
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/11/27/when-mens-rights-narratives-kill/
Well. I think (think, mind you, certainly don’t know) that the cupcake poster is referring to the idea that the cupcake (which represents) a woman, has ‘free recipes for life’ (ie can get away with anything) in this misandrist feminist society we live in (lol). They are making fun of this.
OK, on second thoughts, this is probably completely wrong, but it’s the first thing I thought of when I saw the poster. Heavy symbolism!
Carley, I really don’t think the MRM is capable of that depth of symbolism. As you saw with the box cutter, if there’s a picture, it’s probably meant to portray a real life (or imaginary) thing that they either think does happen, or think is going to happen. For instance, if there’s a picture of a guy chained up and a woman holding the chain, that doesn’t represent men’s servitude to women or anything–it means they think that, sometime in the future, women are going to literally chain men up.
@Katz, I just slogged through that article. What a pompous, ego-inflated wad of crap. Many paragraphs to say “wah teh ebbul feminazis are oppressing us, let’s GOOW.”
Guys, please do. GYOW already. Please. Think of the bandwidth you’ll save.
Yes, katz, you’re probably right. I’m too used to spending analysing poetry and art, it seems! I’m still trying to figure out what it means and it’s frustrating me more than it should, heh. I mean, the cupcake is obviously supposed to be female, the crown indicates a high status…
*Carleyblue steps away from computer*
I was just looking for a bog-standard generic bit of MRA drivel. Didn’t even read it.
I mean, in terms of actually effective MRAs, we have Eivind Berge, who got Uni Bergen to allow him to debate, who got TV time in mainstream Norwegian media, and who emerged from state custody, really a sort of preventative detention, with a supreme court ruling in his favor, a bill of psychological good health, and the possibility of suing the public prosecutor. However he is really f’-in scary and riding a technicality of the law to advocate violence against police, besides the rapey stuff. With more tact and less anger and not actually having violence and destruction as a political means *and* a goal, he might make a feasible center-right politician of the neo-liberal (in European terms) persuasion. But he’s also indicative of how far MRAs have to go to get towards acceptable political discourse, which leaves us with the British Fathers’ organizations as the *one* working model that’s discursively allowed. But yeah, best to start by being intelligible.
Does the crown indicate high status? Or did their bit of clip art just have a crown on it?
In terms of the glorious cupcake poster, maybe it’s like ‘those stupid sexy horrible bitches love cupcakes and recipes and will therefore come to our clever site looking for said recipes and see how we all HATE THEM AHAHHAHAAAAAAAAAA. And then they’ll realise what FOOLS they have been in rejecting us and come to us and let us do terrible things to them.’
Yes. The perfect plan.
http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3rxyg9/
Yay, katz is playing too! Everyone, don’t be intimidated — you literally cannot do worse than MRAs at designing posters. Think you need a fancy computer program? No! Go to http://www.postermywall.com
Two more from me, and then I have to hunker down for a while.
I thought that furby picture needed its own poster, and I loved the quote Freitag found:
We’ve had Nazis, but no Solanas yet!
Yes, the crown indicates high status. *nods firmly* It is a stupid princess BITCH cupcake!
Is anyone else really disturbed when animals or inanimate objects are given ‘sexy’ faces? I just find it really weird.
Don’t listen to Cloudiah. The only correct tool for making MRA posters is Microsoft Word.
The war on men. The battle of the sexes has an easy solution: just shut up and submit to men, ladies, and everything will work out!
@katz *snicker* Running through Windows 3.1
I’m trying to do a more involved one, but in the meantime, I think this image gets the AVFM message out about as well as anything else they’ve put up: