Want to earn yourself some quick karma points on Reddit? It’s easy! Just post some terrible misogynistic comic and wait for the inevitable upvotes. Like this one, which combines some standard-issue victim-blaming rape apologism with a bit of racism and serves it all up in terribly drawn cartoon form, and collect dozens of upvotes!
Or this one, which also, er, touches on issues of race. Did I mention something about dozens of upvotes? This one got hundreds!
Yes, that’s right, a barely coherent cartoon protesting “race-mixing” did indeed get hundreds of upvotes on the Men’s Rights subreddit.
EDITED TO ADD: Ah; the reason it’s so incoherent is that it’s a racist remake of an anti-racist cartoon.
And this one got thousands of upvotes for its amazing insights into gender relations.
Officially, according to the Men’s Rights subreddit sidebar, it’s against the rules there to post “rage comics, or other low-effort image posts. Mods may remove these at their discretion.” Apparently these all count as “high-effort.”
@Alice in one of my other online communities, we called it the “disembodied penis” theory of rape. As a culture, we tend to talk about rape in the passive voice (“X was raped” as opposed to Y raped X”), or talk about what the victim did wrong, and we end up separating the act from the person who chose to commit it. It’s another way we’re failing to address the reality of rape.
The Pervocracy has a great post on the slavering beast theory” of rape: the idea that rapists are not like normal people and spotting them should be easy.
Alice – precisely! And you notice how their denial of male agency is always to the benefit of men who want to hurt/rape women. They deny women’s agency and humanity to put us down, and deny men’s agency to reinforce the power dynamic and absolve themselves of responsibility at the same time.
(You can call me kittehs, btw.) 🙂
Athywren: Yes! Exactly! And I don’t see how this is some difficult distinction here. Not being, personally, sexually attracted to a person: okay, whatever. Making broad, condemning statements about a whole group of people based on their skin color: racist.
twomoogles: Getting incoherently ranty right along you!
And about the whole “men with boners can’t control themselves/ are some sort of force of nature/ uncontrollable beasts” idea: Wouldn’t that be more of a justification for putting greater constraints on men’s behaviors and freedoms, since they obviously can’t control themselves around women, than telling women they need to act and dress a certain way?
MRA: “I hate women! They’re always mooching off the hard work of MEN!”
MRA: *steals artists’ hard work and uses it to make racist/sexist cartoons*
Speaking of getting cars broken into. We had a 1989 volvo that was broken into. They stole the rearview mirror and nothing else. I’ve always been puzzled by that….
And yea, denial of agency means a) you don’t have to think you’re doing it “I’m not like that monster!” b) you don’t have to think your friends do it “they’re nice guys, they’d never do that!” c) you don’t have to change anything about the current culture because you can’t stop something that’s inevitable “it happened as a natural consequence of [anything not explicitly THE RAPIST FUCKING RAPED SOMEONE]”.
Sittiekitty: I can only assume that the thief also owned a 1989 volvo and the rearview mirror had recently broken.
Ikr? It was just the weirdest thing to have stolen. And to this day I think I’ve only ever seen 2 cars that were the same as mine was. My other theory was that they were drunk and/or high and woke up the next morning like wtf, where did this come from?
@Athywren
Hi 😀
(also, wordpress ate my comment 🙁 *mopes gratuitously of little things*)
@sparky
IMO yeah. But they just want to punish women, not follow their fucked up logic to its conclusion.
“If you are not able to stop yourself from assaulting people…”
Satire, done right — http://www.rapecrisisscotland.org.uk/campaigns/10-top-tips-to-end-rape/
I always loved that “Ten Ways to Stop Rape” poster. It puts the responsibility of rape on the rapists who choose to rape, and not the victim, where it belongs.
Marie: Yeah, not even internally consistent to their own “logic.” It’s very sad.
Argenti Aertheri: That’s wonderful, it made me smile. Thank you. Oh, and I read in the earlier comments, that you used to work at JoAnn Fabrics. I used to, too; this was back in the way back, though. Did they make you wear the stupid green apron, too?
Alice Sanguinaria: Amen. A-freaking-men!
I like Jonathan Grey and Cory Rydell’s comics, so I’m annoyed someone outright stole it and badly photoshopped it. I’m almost tempted to email them to bring it up – all considering.
Otherwise: there’s nothing really more pathetic than these kinda comics. The fact they’re considered “funny” just shows MRAs/PUAs have a terrible sense of humor. I’m sure they’d claim it’s “satire” – ’cause that’s the convenient excuse of the day. I see this kind of thing all the time at facebook when people share memes involving “friend-zoning” or “white knighting”. When I or someone else doesn’t find it funny, you’re accused of lacking a sense of humor.
Of course – ’cause not finding everything “hilarious” is a personality flaw. Or, just maybe, they have a personality flaw and projecting it back onto you. Since, y’know, they can’t deal with constructive criticism and expect you to kiss their ass…
“Did they make you wear the stupid green apron, too?”
Yes! And customers never understood what “I’m on break” meant, they heard “fuck off” not “you’re cutting into my 15 min to grab food, go ask somebody else”.
But hey, we had nuns. There were a couple nuns who came in regularly in the full nun garb and were just the nicest people to deal with (also a favorite — anyone who just needed to know where to find the thing they were sure they needed)
My favorite were always customers who would come up to me and say, “You know what I’m looking for?” as an opener to asking where to find something. Because, I’m thinking, no I don’t know what you’re looking for, please tell me, I’m not psychic, but I am flattered that you think I am.
And trying to refrain from actually saying “no I don’t”?
My favorite idiots? Fabric returns, no receipt, no clue when they bought it, can’t find it in the store, why won’t we take it back?
Because we haven’t a damned clue how much to give you, for fucking starters!
sparky – when we get the customers like that it’s usually some twerp from a shipping agency on the phone who thinks I automatically know who they are because they’re so special and we don’t get any other shipping agencies ringing. One day some twit’s going to get what I say to my boss after these phone calls: why yes, I am psychic, but it’s a very narrow bandwidth and You. Are. Not. On. It.
Argenti: I’ve occasionally heard of people tapping into open Wi-Fi networks and changing the name to something like, “Learntosetapassword”. This sort of thing amuses me. MRA-style victim-blaming? Not so much.
Bruce Schneier (google him if you don’t know) doesn’t secure his wifi. He says he doesn’t care if someone surfs his bandwidth; and internet is important. He does secure his computers, printers, etc.
Bruce is a mensch (as well as being so smart that I sometimes feel less than brilliant).
Cassandra: Is that somehow made of malachite as in the stone,
I don’t know the source for the ich-killer, but malachite is hella-toxic (it’s a copper rich stone, and the copper is poorly bound, so it leaches out. Something about the nature of it makes the copper more absorbtive than it would be otherwise. It’s not as bad as cinnabar, but I’d not want beads made from it).
My favourite Idiot Customer story: working at the Museum of Victoria in its old building. Walk in the front door and there’s the information desk smack in front of you. Keep walking in a straight line and you get into the State Library. But if you turn right at the info desk you walk through a doorway into the Museum, you go a few yards and get to the ticket desk and first exhibit. No connection between the rooms, no way to get into the library from the museum and vice versa.
You with me so far?
So, one day I’m on the info desk and a bloke comes up, waving at the Library and complaining, “There’s only books in there! Nothing but books!”
“That’s the State Library,” sez I. “The Museum’s through that door.” (pointing)
Bloke says nothing but wanders off and is never seen again.
Colleague who’s at the Museum ticket desk and has seen this then rings me up and says,
“I sold that idiot a ticket an hour ago.”
@_@
This happens when people talk to me at work:
“Do you know what I’m looking for?”
“No, but you’ll tell me.”
Re men and rape. My favorite Golda Meir story has to do with an outbreak of rapes in Jerusalem. Her cabinet wanted to make a curfew, on the women. She said, “If we are going to have a curfew, it will be for on men. They are the one’s committing the rapes.”.
Kitteh — lol, clearly too smart for the library!
Pecunium — you’ll see it before you see this, but the ich-killer isn’t the stone, but prolly more toxic to me cuz it’s liquid (or powder, but the liquid has always worked better for me [also, I definitely do not want to inhale that stuff!]). And yep to that approach to net security. My wireless printer and HD are secured (so much so that I keep forgetting to ask if you ever got access to the HD), my net when it was under my control? Open to anyone in range, enjoy.
kittehs:
Now it’s your turn to owe someone for spitting out liquid on a computer!
Information desks:
My two favorite questions ever, both at libraries:
1. “I need a list of all the books you don’t have.” (I believe that was the point at which I decided I was not cut out for public service. Although the dude asking for flea circus information, which I was able to provide, almost made up for it.)
2. “I need a photograph of Cleopatra.” (This was to my sister, who after spending a significant amount of time explaining why that was impossible BECAUSE CAMERAS, eventually just gave her a photo of Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra that she got off of IMDB.
I recall one of the more memorable stories from when my folks had a brick and mortar bookstore.
Someone on the phone wanted a book; had nothing more than it was a romance, and possessed of a purple color. No author, no title, no year of release.
I figured out what they wanted.
@cloudiah
*snortle* all of them?