Last week I wrote about the fondness of a certain Men’s Rights website for a certain four-letter word starting with the letter c. This week they’ve topped themselves — with a postering campaign based on the c-word.
Yep: A Voice for Men has thrown its support behind a postering campaign with the slogan: “Having a vagina is no excuse for being a C*NT.”
They don’t use an asterisk.
The postering campaign, spearheaded by a Youtube antifeminist calling himself Bane666au, feature what purport to be real quotes from feminists alongside not-exactly-subtle stock photos depicting comically angry women. For example:
I’m the one who blurred out the c-word; they left it intact. Other alleged feminist quotes include:
If a woman has drunk any amount of alcohol, she can’t consent to sex.
Nothing gives me more pleasure than the suffering of men.
Historically, women have been oppressed worse than black slaves.
That last one is a tad ironic. Not just because it’s a bit odd to contrast “women” and “black slaves” when half of all black slaves were women and girls. And not just because I never hear feminists making this claim. No, it’s a tad ironic because AVFM is constantly comparing men to slaves and suggesting that men are being “enslaved” by everything from child support payments to the women they date.
But I digress. You may wonder where exactly all these alleged quotes come from. In the comments to his AVFM post promoting the postering campaign, AVFM’s Dean Esmay blithely assures readers that “most or all” of the sources of the quotes can be found “right at the end of the video.”
This is not — how should I put it? — true. In fact, the percentage of quotations accurately sourced at the end of the video is a lot closer to “none” than to “most.” Bane666au, for his part, only claims that “all comments are based on actual comments I’ve seen or heard from self proclaimed feminists.”
Apparently he has an extremely loose definition of “based on” because only a couple of the actual quotes from Tumblr feminists he includes at the end of his video bear much resemblance to his, er, paraphrases.
Many of the alleged “hateful” quotes are obvious jokes, taken completely out of context, taking aim at popular perceptions of feminists. Here’s one screenshot from his video (with the name of the poster blurred out):
So who is the terrible misandrist who posted this terrible thing? I went and looked at her Tumblr. It consists of a lot of arty photos of her, mixed with pictures of favorite bands, some of her own artwork — and various pictures of various boyfriends, all evidently remembered with much fondness. On Valentine’s Day she posted some Valentine’s Day cards she designed and drew, inspired by The Smiths and Fleetwood Mac. She’s an excellent artist. There was no hatred to be found there.
And it’s a little hard to see how anyone but a misogynist who has named himself after a Batman villain could possibly interpret this comment, from another Tumblr feminist, as “misandry.”
And speaking of reasonable statements interpreted as misandry, here’s my favorite poster in Bane666‘s batch of posters:
Now, I hope I don’t shock anyone here by saying it, but the wage gap is real. There’s some debate over the size of it, and to what degree it is appropriate to attribute the gap to women’s “choices” rather than discrimination. But it exists. Even the study most cited by those who like to downplay the gap, a 2009 Labor Department report prepared by the CONSAD Research Corp., found a roughly 5-7% wage gap that couldn’t be explained away by women’s “choices.” (See here for more.)
But MRAs have convinced themselves that the gender wage gap is a “myth.” Having failed to win over the rest of the world to this incorrect belief through the power of simple repetition, the folks at AVFM have evidently decided to move on to gendered slurs.
It will be interesting to see how this works out for them.
The fact is that having a debate between two positions necessarily confers a degree of legitimacy on both of them. It implies that both are worthy of consideration and that a reasonable person could hold either. And that’s just not always true.
See: anti-vaxxers.
Yes, Ally, feminists should definitely debate misogynist on the subject of whether or not we’re people, and the related subject of which circumstances it’s OK to rape us in. That will be a productive use of our time, and it’s not at all disingenuous of you to frame things that way.
The more I see of you, the more I dislike you. Also, just FYI, you’re not very good at telling jokes, so you should probably leave that to those who have a talent for it.
Is Ally his real name, or is that an attempt at irony? Because if dude thinks he’s an ally to women, he’s kidding himself.
I wondered that too.
Look, if y’all keep saying those stormfronty folk are gross without referring to specific individuals and providing evidential support, I’mma have to ban you. Race politics spectrum, peeps.
Echoing what everyone has said about Ally Fogg. It’s impossible to have a rational, coherent or interesting discussion on a thread overrun with MRAs and Slymepitters. They add nothing but noise–potential signal winds up lost in the static.
That’s what I felt like I was reading on Ally’s blog and it skeezed me so bad.
But no, I think Ally’s name is Alisdair/Alistair just like every other male Ally (pronounced Allie) I know.
He is half-right sometimes. That’s why Paul Elam hates him sometimes.
I just hope that feminism as a movement has learned from the Hugo debacle (and the mess with snowdrop explodes), and people won’t be so willing to embrace any man claiming to be kind of feminist who’s throwing red flags around with gleeful abandon just because, hey, man who claims to be sort of feminist.
Hey, Ally’s given us a hand. He’s explicitly not a feminist. Will tell you so himself.
Why do so many feminists seem to consider him a feminist ally? I really don’t get it. Just because someone talks about feminism sometimes doesn’t mean they’re necessarily someone we should be supporting.
I was so confused at first; I thought everyone was talking about OUR Ally!
RE: sirtooting
Whoop, whoop! Troll in the dungeon! That or lamentably obtuse, but let’s be charitable and pretend you be trolling. That way, you’re just a cocksore, instead of a DENSE cocksore. (Also, I just looked up the word ‘cocksore’ in the dictionary. What a surprise! There was a picture of YOU!)
I suggest you first get some manners, then learn some tolerance.
You realize our tagline is “Misogyny, I mock it,” right? You realize that means we MOCK shit, right? You realize that that means we aren’t tolerant of misogyny, right?
Oh dear. It looks like you ARE a dense cocksore after all. I pity your mother.
RE: weirwoodtreehugger
I’m not on tumblr at all are assertations of “cisphobia” really a common thing there?
It’s tumblr, Jack. The answer to those sort of questions are generally always yes.
RE: cassandrakitty
I just hope that feminism as a movement has learned from the Hugo debacle (and the mess with snowdrop explodes)
AAAAAAH SNOWDROP EXPLODES WHYYYYYY
sirtoot got the boot.
Woot! Say toodaloot to sirtoot!
…I’m sorry. (No I’m not.)
And then along came Ally, who thought he was a hoot.
(Sadly, he was wrong.)
Their “facts” were in dispute, which they posted with the subtlety of a combat boot.They were as genuine as a three-bob suit.
Nthing the THANK YOU comments for this.
Oh, so Felisha came back? Funny, that. Her screaming rants about how she should totally be allowed to use p—- were uncommonly like sirtoot’s about t—. What a coincidence.
BTW, thanks are in order for David’s realization that he needs to actively mod people like sirtooting. Spaces where that kind of pointless wanking is allowed invariably become no fun at all to engage in.
Seconded.
Thirded. I appreciate that the host of this particular movable feast is so committed to seeing that the dialog remains interesting and lively by having the punch-bowl-sitters escorted to the curb!
@Ally
Honestly, what possible “discussion” is there to be had between feminists and MRAs/anti-feminists? The issue(s) was long ago settled when it was decided that human woman are actually people and should have the same rights and privileges as human men.
Out of all the bloggers at FtB, yours is the one I stay away from because I know you give quarter to those who think my rights are up for debate. They’re not. That’s why they’re called rights (thank you, Rachel Maddow). The ‘no such thing as Natural Rights’ discussion aside.
An anti-feminist/MRA doesn’t need to “debate” a feminist(s) in order to have his or her mind changed. The information is already out there and in abundance.
Answer this truthfully: Do you honestly think anything discussed in a comment section would be enough to change the minds of the Paul Elams of the world? ‘Cos I don’t think so.
Heh. That’s funn–
Hah!
Wait, are we doing this?
Oh dear. We’re doing this.
… all right.
…. I hope I don’t seem like a brute if I burst in with a mood to be less mute and speak up, re: Sirtoot, whose propositions were easy to refute, his wax standard pregoratives of grammar less astute than a new recruit fresh from boot (camp, that is) – lacking the fact that words permute and lacking the tact to not be a newt, I’m glad he got his last toot and had to scoot because his points were moot, floundering down a route not worthy of salute!
As for Mr. Frog, I must refute your lovely desire to be held beyond dispute, for it does not compute, as the root is the crux of the stuff and this is such, two positions held absolute need not combine to make a thing like a two piece suit, in pursuit of finding truth, commentators often aggregate and present opinions not fool proof, less acute, of ill repute, and letting their voices fester renders any dialogue perhaps not dead but suffering things subacute, vapid wandering word warriors simply come to loot any chance of common ground and just impute that women wanton wreck the world, and all the blame lies with the girls
afore they chatter, boot them down the chute, or else like sirtoot they will pollute and uproot your lovely place of thoughts and talks, they are just there to dilute the conversation into a spectrum where one side is “They want agency, cute!” and the other “Icky women, hirsute, should get the boot”.
Be a better person, not a low hanging ideological fruit
Ally: I’m human. Please encourage your friends to treat me as such, or you are a horrible person. Still a person. Just horrible. And not respectable.
That’s really all there is to say on the subject.
*Beatboxes behind Fib*
Welp. No one’s going to top THAT!