Men’s Rights activists have discovered something that Fred “God Hates Fags” Phelps and the rest of his gang at the Westboro Baptist Church learned a long time ago: outrageously offensive signs can mean media coverage.
Canadian MRAs associated with A Voice for Men recently got attention in Edmonton for posters mocking a date rape awareness campaign. Now some of their compatriots have captured the attention of the media with posters in Saskatoon.
This time the MRAs toned down the offensiveness in favor of simple outrageousness, combined with a healthy dose of incomprehensibility. The most incomprehensible of the current lot is probably this one, which comes straight from the A Voice for Men poster page:
But my favorite is this one:
I was originally going to write a sort of rebuttal to this, pointing out that by most measures Canada is, generally speaking, a rather unfrightening place for men (and women), what with its high standard of living, decent health care, relatively low crime rate, and so on.
I mean, if I were to pick a frightening country to live in, as a man (or a woman), I would probably pick someplace like, you know, Somalia, North Korea, Sudan or South Sudan, someplace like that. Syria’s probably not a great place to visit at the moment either.
But then I was thinking: Canada’s main problem, in terms of its international reputation, is that people tend to think of it as boring, not frightening.
Maybe Canada should embrace the whole “most frightening place to be a man” thing, and take advantage of this silly quote from Erin Pizzy to promote itself as scary, edgy, intense, EXTREEEEEMMME!
Maybe with some posters like the one at the top of this post?
I don’t know. I’m not that great at photoshop. Perhaps some of you would like to have a go at it? I know we’ve got some talented MRA poster-parodists here.
Oh, I see, the women in the Atheist 2 poster are both known for being feminist atheist activists. So that’s what it has to do with atheism. What is has to do with supremacy is another matter ???
To me the message of the We are From Earth poster is that men and women are not alien to each other, and we are all human beings. Which is a good message. If it thinks it’s attacking feminism, it isn’t.
@Ally S
The poster is well designed, but they’re still horrible, yes. I was not trying to say otherwise, and I apologise if that’s what it sounded like.
@Myoo
Oh, no need to apologize. What I said wasn’t directed at anyone in particular, although I could’ve phrased it better. :p
All the stuff about fatherless children in their statistics . . . . that doesn’t lead me to conclude that fatherless homes are all the mothers’ fault.
Are there posters that quote Paul Elam saying “Women are BEGGING to be raped!”, and that if he sat on a jury for a rape case, he’d vote to acquit, regardless of the evidence? And posters with John the Other or whoever it was saying that if he saw a woman being raped, he’d just walk on by? And posters letting the world know that “Men’s Human Rights” site A Voice for Men for years hosted a terrorist manifesto openly calling for the firebombing of police stations and courthouses in it’s “activism” section?
Not that I think the context could make it any better, but what was the context of JtO saying that he would ignore a woman he saw being raped? I don’t want to watch the video, sorry.
@Myoo: Okay, I get it!
Husband looked at those and thought the message was that all women are evil, even anti-feminists, you can’t trust nobody (because the women sort of look a bit evil).
So, the comfort women fic…they know that their willingness to associate themselves with that totally justifies their classification as a hate group, right?
Rape is not justice, assholes.
Anyways, what is the context of atheist poster 2?
I can’t tell what anyone in it is saying, including avfm, and I can’t tell what it has to do with supremacy or atheism.
Thanks blockquote
They do realize that when you show your hand like that, ie. make it clear that if you ever got power you’d set up rape camps, nobody who’s not completely batshit is going to support you? Even the most misogynist, abortion-hating, pray the gay away supporting, traditional patriarchy loving people are going to look at that fic and go “nope, not giving those guys any power”.
That Comfort Girls piece is the sort of thing that ends up in an evidence bag.
I suppose human monsters need reading material, too. Thanks to Rick Westlake they have it!
http://i1286.photobucket.com/albums/a615/Capnben0/Canada_zps2a9384e6.png
A belated response to the question in Sarah’s comment (the first one): I was interviewed by a buzzfeed reporter, not sure when the post is supposed to run (they keep delaying it). My “welcome buzzfeeders” post went up by accident.
That was on purpose: I notice how much MRAs would go on and on making the same point over again as pedantic a fashion as possible. Not that I don’t rant on occasion but it’d never be about how bad I have it as a white, heterosexual, cis male in the West because…well, it’s not fucking true at all.
Sir Bodsworth, I find your argument very compelling. I may have to reconsider some things.
that… that comfort girl thing actually made me very sad…..
.. I can’t believe someone actually thinks this is an anti-misandry piece of.. “thing”. (saying “art” would hurt me.)
I keep saying…by putting that up on an anti-misandry site they’re basically saying that they consider women being allowed to say no to sex to be misandry.
Yeah. Great PR move, guys.
@auggziliary, yea I wasn’t really sure but it sort of looks ike her. I have no idea then. It’s probably safe to assume she’s another atheist who asked someone not to do something. The horror.
I actually LAUGHED at the two different “honeybadgers” posters… I love how they decided she needed sunglasses on in one… I can’t even…
I kinda like the “crazy batshit” (isn’t it batshit crazy?) one too. Gimmie a T-shirt of that.
I’m not familiar with either quote in that atheism 2 poster, so I couldn’t begin to lecture about their context, but I think the poster creator thinks his message is FREEZE PEACH!! instead of the actual message of WHAT IS BRAIN.
Thanks for the clarification, David! I just hope my comment sticks, because it’s always exciting to get a first post. =p
http://i1286.photobucket.com/albums/a615/Capnben0/Canada2_zps501a03fc.png
Vaguely OT but I’d never really listened to that stupid Rush song about the trees before on account of Rush being terrible, but it came on the radio the other day and since people had been talking about it here I did listen.
Wow.