In today’s slightly delayed Memeday post, we’re going to be looking at the “selfish feminist” meme, a variation of the good old “hypocritical feminist” meme that’s based on the notion that selfish, spoiled women adopt feminism in order to score equal pay without equal work — and in the greatest crime against humanity ever known — without ever having to pay for dinner.
Once in a long while, the mememaker will throw in a literary reference, like this one namechecking the heroine from Ibsen’s A Doll’s House.
But mostly the dudes making these memes seem to be peeved that (allegedly) feminist women are (allegedly) making them pay for dinner without “putting out” afterwards.
For some reason, the makers of these “selfish feminist” memes often put their words into the mouths of real and recognizable women who would never actually say such a thing.
Sometimes they use pictures of favorite feminist targets like Anita Sarkeesian …
… and Rebecca Watson:
Other times they use feminist celebrities, like comedian Janeane Garofolo
And actress/activist Ashley Judd:
Actually, they seem just a teensy bit obsessed with Ashley Judd and her alleged refusal to ever pay for dinner:
Apparently, the deviously feminist Ashley Judd also manages to avoid paying for her fancy purses as well.
Yeah, Ashley Judd has a net worth of $22 million, at least according to Celebrity Net Worth. I’m pretty sure she pays for her own handbags.
Not only that, but the allegedly selfish Judd — and yes, at least some of the angry mememakers know that the woman in the meme is Ashley Judd and not just some random angry lady feminist — now devotes much of her life not to acquiring handbags but to humanitarian work. Here’s how Wikipedia sums it up:
Ashley Judd’s humanitarian work has revolved around AIDS. Judd has travelled with YouthAIDSto places affected by illness and poverty such as Cambodia, Kenya, Rwanda, and many others.
Inspired by her travels, which allowed her to witness the life of the poor and uneducated, she has since become an advocate for preventing poverty and promoting awareness internationally. She has met with political and religious leaders, heads of states, diplomats, and leaders on behalf of the deprived to convey the message to those who have the power to bring about political and social change. Judd has also narrated three documentaries for YouthAIDS which aired internationally on the Discovery Channel, in National Geographic, and on VH1.
In 2011, she joined the Leadership Council of the International Center for Research on Women(ICRW).
Other organizations Judd has been involved with include Women for Women International and Equality Now, along with other non-governmental organizations that direct attention to social, educational, health, economic, cultural and financial funding of the unfortunate.
So, yeah, she’s actually paid for a lot of people’s dinners.
Tomorrow: The worst “selfish feminist” meme of them all!
@Buttercup
Woman trying to follow MRA instructions, inner monologue:
I should take 12 weeks off work to take care of my baby!
No wait, I’m not supposed to take any time off work.
Guess I’ll just be back at work the next day and I’ll figure something out for the baby.
No wait, I’ve been ordered to spend time with my baby. I don’t want to be selfish!
Okay, there’s no solution to this. I guess I should have an abortion.
No! That’s not allowed either. Hmm.
I suppose I shouldn’t have gotten pregnant to begin with.
I should’ve been on birth control.
No wait, I’m not supposed to take birth control either.
I should’ve insisted that he put on a condom.
No. That would be misandry.
I guess I shouldn’t have had sex to begin with.
But then again, I’m supposed to be up for sex at all times.
But I also shouldn’t be too easy.
Maybe if I follow their instructions to make myself unattractive, I can avoid all these problems.
Let’s see… blue pixie hair cut, graffiti, shrapnel, put on a few pounds.
Perfect!
Nope. That’s misandry too.
Wow, I’m sure happy to be a woman though.
I have it so easy and I have no responsibilities whatsoever.
Can’t imagine what it would be like to be a man!
@Sir Bodsworth – I’m with you. She always seems to have forgotten her money or the cheque from the studio hasn’t arrived yet so she’s a bit tight. I know it’s only a few times a month, but it’s the principle of the thing, you know?
She was very grateful for the bag I got her as a birthday present, but again all I got for mine was a promise that she’d buy me something nice when the BluRay sales for Divergent took off.
Maybe this is why she’s worth $22m – she never puts her hand in her pocket.
No, I think on the topic of Ashley Judd, the MRAs have a very strong argument. Curses.
The rule of proper behaviour: The person who invites to dinner also pays for it. So, if a guy asks a woman out, he pays. If she asks him out, she pays. Of course they can agree on a different arrangement, but that’s the rule in general.
And for a reason: The person who invites chooses the restaurant and is supposed to pick something they can afford.
According to a certain mindset, if a woman is married to a man, all money and property technically belong to that man. Property can’t own property. She can only be a steward of what rightfully belongs to her father, future husband, or husband. See: helpmate, No Longer Quivering. So technically, that $700 purse would have been bought with husband’s money. Technically, it’s her husband’s purse— if that’s your jam.
There are, or were about 15 years ago, actually a frightening number of dating advice books and websites that advised women to insist the man pay for the first date so they would subconciously feel like the person for whom they paid was of worth. I like to think that attitude died a massive, shuddering death the moment I turned my back on the dating scene. Why would anyone waste time on someone who had to be tricked into thinking he or she had value?
Or use basic human communication to pick a place that you both like, then each order as much as they want to pay for. My advice would be to never date a rich person who refuses to be seen in a restaurant where they might have to be in the vicinity of any non-rich people other than the staff.
Exactly!
How hard of a slog is it for these guys to get to either splitting the bill or going by a “you pick, you pay” deal?
Hell, even if you can’t quite bring yourself to split the bill, split activities or expenses. On our first date, my husband got the tickets* and I got the food.
Our first real** date consisted of him making me dinner.
**”Oh, so we’re dating-dating now?”
*Well, he actually had free tickets.
@IP: Just reading that made my head spin. I think the problem is that she’s having thoughts. Amd we all know that leads to single mothers and white genocide.
No, the only way to please an MRA is to go lean against the wall and stare blankly while your batteries recharge.
@Buttercup
Pfft. I bet a man paid for those rechargeable batteries.
@IP –
I don’t know about where you live, but where I live the “best” places are often holes-in-the-wall in which I have to heavily rely upon my tenuous grasp of basic food-Spanish (or a lot of kindness and understanding – I just don’t know Korean or Chinese beyond “kamsahamnida” or butchering “xie xie” and “m goi”).
When I was dating, I knew that anyone who didn’t want to go to those places wouldn’t be a good fit.
Uh. Now I’m all wrapped up thinking about Vietnamese pastries and Lebanese food.
I hope my husband’s feeling better.
I feel a run coming up today.
@Paradoxical Intention
Thanks for that.
One would think MRAs would realize that putting women in no-win situations would make them not want to play the game, but…yeah.
Hey,
Don’t know if any of you have read this yet but this might be of interest.
Basically how “alphas” actually behave:
I think many already know this and I remember David writing about it on this blog but it’s important to reiterate.
@Imaginary Petal: Yeah, but that comes under “other arrangements”. The rule I wrote is from an actual modern etiquette book. So it hasn’t been “a man pays for dinner” for quite a while now.
When I was still on the dating market, I didn’t care if he pays or I pay or if we split the bill or each pays their own, it’s all fine by me. However, if a guy actually pointed out that since I work, I can pay for myself, that raised a red flag in my mind immediately. Not because I have to pay, but because if he mentions this as an issue on the first date, imagine what other issues he might have with women’s independence in other areas. Run away, run away, run away!
Basic human communication is misandry, or else why would “getting some kind of consent” be so awful?
This raises a slightly different red flag for me: this guy sees working as optional, for women. It’s odd that he doesn’t assume his date works- “working woman” is some variant edition of “woman.”
FWIW, I have never been on a date with a woman who expected me to pay for anything. Ever. I think these guys are attracting weird women. I wonder why…
I’m always, and have always been broke as shit due to not being able to work thanks to illness. So my dates have always been happy to pay (we’ve both been women though). That said I always put out after a date, I’m easy like that.
Also, the memes created on this thread made me gigglesnort tea out of my nose. Good job!
“One would think MRAs would realize that putting women in no-win situations would make them not want to play the game, but…yeah.” – KindaSortaHarmless
The comments here are a joy to read. You make my Saturday mornings giggly. Thank you.
Anecdotally, at the beginning of February I had a (second) kidney stone, and it wasn’t fully taken care of for a little over a month (at which point I had to spend another week with a tube stuffed up into my kidney, and I’m honestly a little worried I might already have another one because my side has been getting the same sort of twitchy pain over the past few days).
At the risk of TMI, having blood come out the peen is terrifying, and I don’t envy women who have to deal with that sort of thing on a monthly basis.
@Imaginary Petal That monologue was epic.
This fucking bullshit stereotype threat right here has caused me to buy my male dates so much more food, drink, birthday giftage, sex supplyage, and Valentine’s candy than they ever bought me. And whenever we get something to “share” and they eat most of it I say nothing and still offer to take more of the bill because I’m so incurably desperate to look “nice” and “obliging” and to overcompensate for this unbelievably inaccurate representation of women.
This stuff should be done on a case-by-case basis. Personally, I need to learn to be a little more assertive about fairness, or else I’ll end up feeling resentful. And in my case I think the person with the semen (where applicable) should pay for the condoms (though degenerate slut that I am, I always have a few on hand), especially since penetration does almost nothing for me and I’ve already got the cost of uterus and breast and bone maintenance to deal with, in addition to likely having a harder life on average (charmed as it is, thankfully).
But yeah, just like everything else in a relationship, this takes communication and negotiation and it’s going to work differently for different people and their different motives and needs. It still amazes me that some MRAs could think “free dinner” could possibly be a plank in “the” feminist platform. It’s like if we assumed “easily obtainable sexual servitude from conventionally beautiful women” was the primary goal of the MRM… which it totally isn’t… right…? I mean to think like that you’d have to be an entitled, selfish, bitter… oh.
It get’s worse?
@dslucia
It’s not that scary if you’re expecting it and know it’s not a health concern. It can be terrifying as a child when it happens for the first time (especially if a well-meaning teacher tells you it’s going to hurt, even if she said it’s only a little that was so scary for me), but once you’re used to it, the bleeding is just annoying. The other symptoms, on the other hand, can make you miserable and can last for weeks. It’s really awful to have PMDD. I used to have symptoms about 3 weeks out of the month. They would start about 2 weeks before menstruation and last through the heavy bleeding which for me ended about 5-7 days in. I would still go to work unless the lower back pain was so bad I couldn’t move, and once I even went in with back pain (was sent home when my director saw me walking stiffly), and only once stayed home due to abdominal cramps even though I would usually have 1 day out of the month where they were so bad they made me cry. Anyway, the point is the bleeding isn’t the bad part.
My current boyfriend paid for my dinner. Once. I was expecting to pay my share that time, but I got back from the restroom, pulled out my wallet, and asked “So how should I pay for…?” and his ex-wife answered “He already paid for all of it.” So I let it slide that one time.
Then again it could still be seen as paying for women because all of the adults present other than himself were women, so I don’t know. It’s not something I make a habit of, at any rate.
@kupo – eh I’ve heard that the pain of a kidney stone in the ureter (I want to say the medical term is “renal colic”?) is p much the worst pain known to humanity. But yeah, despite being messy and inconvenient the bleeding is the least worst part of menstruation.
@kupo:
Well, that was more a general response to Cyberwulf’s phrasing and a remark as to how bleeding from the lower regions isn’t a very fun time.
Kidney stones also come with excessive amounts of abdominal and lower back pain. While I only have first-hand experience in one of the two areas, I dare say it’s probably a decent way for cis guys to get perspective on how menstruation can feel. EDIT: Though, I wouldn’t wish kidney stones on anybody.
@Cyberwulf:
The first stone I had actually passed naturally, and I will say it’s the worst pain I’ve ever felt. I’ve never believed that I have a massively high pain tolerance or anything, but that is the only time in my memory I can ever recall actually throwing up due to pain.
@ dslucia
You have my sincerest sympathy! I couldn’t believe the pain when I had mine. Luckily it stopped about 10 minutes before they were about to whip my appendix out. That was the kidney to bladder stage. Weirdly the next stage wasn’t anywhere near as painful, more of a weird tingle.
An army mate who’s both been shot and had a kidney stone says he’d chose being shot every time.