Well, my fellow feminists, we might as well pack it in. For the forces arrayed against us have a devastating, nay brutal, new slogan.
The Counter-Feminist Agent of Change (CFAC) who calls himself Fidelbogen explained in a recent post how this “wicked new slogan” came to him. Also, what the slogan is:
This occurred to me in a flash of inspiration today. I grabbed the first scrap of paper I could find and jotted it down:
Feminism spreads lies like a fly spreads germs.
You like it? I thought you would.
So . . . spread it around, and make it part of the “buzz”!
Get it? Buzz. Like, “buzz” means “what people are excitedly talking about.” But it is also the sound that a fly makes.
See, Fidelbogen is working with TWO DIFFERENT MEANINGS at once. It’s like juggling two things at once, only with your brain. No wonder some MRAs regard his as the finest mind in the Men’s Rights movement today.
Several days after The Bogen (that’s what I like to call him) came up with this masterful slogan, one artistically minded MRA took it to a whole nother level – by using the slogan in the graphic above.
As The Bogen explained in his second post about his new slogan:
Memes can take many forms, and what you see here is among the most elemental and effective of those forms.
I am posting this graphic image for anybody on the planet who wants to fly away with it and spread it around.
First with the “buzz” thing, and now “fly away with it.” LIKE FLIES DO! The man is a genius.
Hell man, you could even print it on T-shirts and coffee mugs. Certainly you can post it on your website. Best of all, you can print it on little squares of paper and leave these in all manner of places where all manner of people will happen upon them.
Oh shit. T-shirts? Mugs? Motherfucking SQUARES OF PAPER?! He’s going CROSS-PLATFORM!
This is the sort of thing that will land in people’s brains, and buzz around there, and never leave!
I explained the buzz thing already, didn’t I?
It will find its way into the general buzz of conversation, too!
Just in case you’ve forgotten. Buzz = what people are talking about. ALSO THE SOUND FLIES MAKE.
I still cannot get over how much of a genius move that whole “buzz” thing is. I don’t know how he does it.
I kindly thank St. Estephe, the blog keeper who created this. I am honored to see my words so skillfully combined with pictures, and made ten times more effective by that method.
It’s true. It takes a tremendous amount of skill to find a picture of a fly, and then to put words next to it.
How can we possibly compete with this?
I tried to come up with some slogans of my own. But the best I could do was this:
I hope you guys have some better ideas.
Try QuickMeme if you want to make a little graphic. I’ll post any especially good ones here!
EDITED TO ADD: Some more graphics that are Fidelbogenesque in their brilliance. One from Scar, one from me.
Oh… I meant “and I’ll drop you a line and give you my contact info and you can contact me”
oh ami, thank you, i got all worried that i was out of line. keep your fingers crossed for me and the job, i’m not sure they know what they might be getting! if i am can help you in any way let me know (my experiences are all UK/Australian and largely cis men/women…but you never know).
All day long, I sit at my desk and reject manuscripts and articles, thinking to myself…
“Hacks.
Not buys.”
No you’re absolutely not out of line. 🙂 i would do my job even if I didn’t get paid for it (though hopefully that means I’d have won the lottery or gotten a better paying job or something xD ) :]
I think, if it’s okay with you, what I’d want to ask you or talk to you about would be less about specific trans/queer issues and more about working in the field, and how to deal with stuff like “vicarious trauma” (when you emotionally begin to take on the stuff you hear and experienced) and also about the way organizations work and etc, because while I have some training in organizational structure and working with organizations, I think it’d really help to be able to talk with somebody who’s had first hand experience 🙂
Sorry, I explained the term “vicarious trauma” because it’s a term used in my workplace that I’d never heard before I was hired, so I don’t know how well known the term is. If it’s pretty well-known, I didn’t mean to imply as if you wouldn’t know what it meant or something 🙂
http://manboobz.forummotion.com/t711-manboobz-the-children-s-book#19247
here’s the Manboobz Children’s Book thread 😀
Meet the newest MRA hero and victim of the matriarchy, Josh Powell.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505263_162-57371762/josh-powell-kids-die-in-alleged-murder-suicide/
Is Josh Powell the new Thomas Ball?
MRAs are so ridiculous.
As a punk rocker I’ve always valued difference over conformity, so for me ‘queer’ might be used as an insult by some but I consider it quite a compliment. Rather be with Queers than Normals. 😉
Fag OTOH is definitely off-limit, as it refers to us being a little bundle of sticks made for burning. It’s basically the fate they wish upon us. Pretty offensive. I mean, as much as people of color have terrible epithets thrown at them, nobody ever came up with the idea of calling black men ‘fruits’ or ‘pendulums’ to refer to how they think they ought to die. Did they? I actually wouldn’t be surprised if somebody did, you know…
@blitzgal: I assume the MRAs are gonna pipe in with “It was all the mother’s fault for being a horrible female, blah blah, drove him to suicide etc, the man’s a hero, blah blah”.
@BlackBloc: Over here “fag” is slang for cigarette. Which I suppose is kind of like burning a bundle of sticks in a round-a-bout kind of way.
@Joanna: Exactly. Also a spin of how the child porn on his computer wasn’t really porn, because it’s totally natural and you’re just suppressing his masculinity.
Blackblock:
Billie Holiday wrote and performed a song called “Strange Fruit”. I believe it was, if not common parlance at the time, at least well recognized.
Here are the lyrics, they are both very sad and very disturbing:
http://www.lyricsfreak.com/b/billie+holiday/strange+fruit_20017859.html
Sorry, Holiday didn’t write it, The writers are credited on the linked page.
Blitzgal:
How the hell could they twist that into anything other than an horrific murder/suicide? And possibly the murder of the children’s mother as well.
Jeez, nothing is to low for these guys.
AFree re-reading those lyrics I need Another glass of saki…
Ami,
I think my workplace used the term “burn out”. It happened to almost everyone eventually. It’s really difficult to work with people so traumatized for a long period without becoming traumatized yourself.
To be completely fair, this is my assumption of how their conversations about this case will go. I have not yet waded into that cesspool of the internet. I usually leave that to David. It’s much more comfortable reading this stuff with you guys (and gals).
@blitzgal: Your assumptions are misandrist!
@SaruGoku: I meant as a derogatory term. In this song, in context it sounds like a social critique.
@blitz:
I found this Spearhead article, searching “MRA + Josh Powell”, but that’s about it
http://www.the-spearhead.com/2011/09/29/police-put-pressure-josh-powell-by-removing-his-children/
I fully anticipate an article about it from them and probably AVFM today or tomorrow though.
I wonder what MRA’s opinions of this guy are : https://apps.facebook.com/theguardian/commentisfree/belief/2012/jan/25/rick-santorum-rape-pregnancy?fb_source=other_multiline&fb_action_types=news.reads
And W.F. Price has already responded to a comment from someone pointing out that Josh Powell has now murdered his children, saying “Typical for a feminist to see this as a triumph. Josh Powell was hounded for years up to this point. If he didn’t kill his wife, and there’s still no evidence he did, does the court bear some responsibility for the outcome here?” So, no matter what, MISANDRY!
Ami: I think they get the idea that false rape accusations happen all the time from treating rape as a special crime. No one says that false robbery accusations happen all the time.
I think what they do is look at the rate of conviction (for robbery it’s about 90 percent. For most prosecutions it’s about 90 percent. Therefore the baseline they assume for a legitimate prosecution is a 90 percent chance of conviction.
Rape doesn’t fit the pattern. Therefore some huge percentage of the acquittals must be the result of false accusation (otherwise the rates of conviction would be the same). Since they aren’t some other factors must be in play.
Most rational people would look at the culture in which those trials take place. They’d look at the sorts of arguments made in court. They’d look to see the underlying social narratives about sex/rape. In short they would examine the evidence on the actual question (i.e. why don’t rape convictions occur at a rate similar to other crimes?) to come to their conclusions.
The MRM seems to go the other way, and posit a conclusion, something like this.
P1: Crimes which are honestly reported have a 90 percent conviction rate.
P2: Rape has a much lower conviction rate.
C: Rape is reported falsely at a much higher rate than other crimes.
It’s valid argument, but a false conclusion. It fails to account for the other variables. It’s also question begging, because when you challenge them they say all the “false accusations (i.e. failures to get a conviction) just shows how prevalent the problem is.
They never accept the idea that other things, which aren’t false accusations, might be the reason. Then people like Brandon take it a step further and say people ought to be doing incredible things (which violate the autonomy of others) to protect themselves from the dire prospect of a false rape accusation, or the Elams, who say women who were raped ought to be ignored, so no woman will every cry rape falsely (which is of course a tautology… if rape is never going to get a conviction, no one will ever file a charge… why bother?). NWO, and I forget whom all else, just want to make it too dangerous to file any accusation, by defining any rape charge which leads to no conviction as a proof falsity on the part of the accuser; with draconian punishments as the result.
Again, no one will file charges.
And all based on the lie that rape convictions happen at a lower rate because the accuser is lying.
@Cloudiah:
Can you link me to that?
That sort of thinking seems to be very common in the manosphere–this idea that, “Well, violence is terrible, BUT you guys made him do it”. It sounds like an abuser’s logic. Look at the way the MRAs cheered Breivik.