Is there something about Men’s Rights Activists that renders them utterly incapable of designing posters that aren’t embarrassingly ugly and offputting?
Posters designed by MRAs are so routinely godawful it’s hard not to wonder if there is something inherent about them or their ideas that prevents them from seeing what a complete mess they’re making when they put together something like the poster above, which I recently found amongst a whole collection of similarly terrible posters at the website What Men Are Saying About Women.
In the case of Christian J, the WMASAW poster-designer, there is clearly something more than bad ideas at work here, but I do think the bad ideas of the Men’s Rights movement are a large part of the reason why MRAs can’t design posters to save their lives. Their posters are muddled messes because their ideology is a muddled mess.
Effective political posters are effective in large part because they convey a clear message in an arresting way. But the Men’s Rights movement doesn’t have a clear message. In some cases that’s because MRAs are trying to disguise their misogyny in order to try to appeal to a wider audience. It’s hard to get away with direct expressions of hate if you want to treat you as the “human rights movement” you keep insisting you are.
But in many other cases — as is the case with most of the posters featured in Christian J’s collection — MRA posters are muddled because their peculiar logic really only makes sense to those who already hate women to begin with. Who else would agree with the “argument” of this poster, which seems to be that we shouldn’t give respect to women because some women get drunk and other women … pose with silly expressions on their faces for stock photos?
Meanwhile, in this antifeminist poster, Christian J. offers little more than free-associational word salad, mixing accusations against feminists (“Hating Men is part of the agenda”) with simple assertions cataloging his own dislike of them (“no one likes a feminist”).
He also has posters attacking feminists Gloria Steinem and Hanna Rosin; tellingly, neither of them offer any specific evidence of wrongdoing on the part of either one. I wonder is Christian has read anything Rosin has written beyond the title to her book “The End of Men.”
And if you haven’t yet gotten your full dose of hate, he’s got a few posters attacking Lena Dunham for being … fat. And because Vogue did some rather minimal photoshopping to the pictures of her it ran in a recent profile.
And, well, I don’t even know what this is supposed to be.
Frankly, the more widely spread these posters are, the better. Because their ugliness reveals a lot about the ugly ideology of the MRA that made them.
They need more pictures of female orcs and trolls. You just can’t put a human woman’s face on a poster if you’re trying to inspire fear and loathing. It’s just basic biology.
Funny how women don’t deserve respect because of funny facial expressions when so many pictures of Paul Elam (to give but one example) suggest he has the makings of a world champion gurner.
Ahahaha, but MRAs fail basic biology as well as everything else.
WWTH – yeah, it’s all so reasonably written, but it’s still a wall of WTFery.
Oh look! Cersei Lannister has joined us!
Oh, look, it’s Long Pedantic Nym That Doesn’t Fit In The Space Provided again!
Did these guys all enrol in the Graphic Farts department?
Or do they consider art too effeminate for them?
I can’t figure out that Winslet one, I really can’t.
While I can’t hold a candle to Bodsy, I made one based off a comment made by one of the misters:
http://i.imgur.com/eaumAz3.jpg
Very long pseudonym.
Obsessed over genitals.
Compensating, much?
“2 unequal entities being treated as equal – Is not morally sound”
So universal human rights aren’t morally sound?
@leftwingfox: Graphic design is much too “liberal arts”. These are men (and sometimes a couple women) of science, dammit! XD
That’s at least the second time nymfail has socked – shouldn’t he (I’m betting it’s a he) be banned by now?
By the way, I am not threatening to hold a candle to Bodsy.
Have another poster:
http://i.imgur.com/pqvKhFX.jpg
“If I wasn’t already familiar with MRArtwork I’d assume these were made by someone taking the piss out of MRAs.”
@Cassandrakitty: Exactly my thoughts
An exception must be made for Judith Viorst’s children’s poem “Thoughts On Getting Out Of A Nice Warm Bed In An Ice-Cold House To Go To The Bathroom At Three O’Clock In The Morning”:
Maybe life was better
When I used to be a wetter.
I always thought that I should respect everyone unless he proves that he doesn’t deserve any respect. Usually it is also really hard for me to say finally “yes, I can’t respect this person”. Of cause even if I see a person that I can’t respect I don’t extend my disrespect to all the group of people, to all males, or females, or to certain ethnicity etc. But it looks to me that MRAs are really working hard all together to make me disrespect them all. It looks the movement absorbs only the losers. Those that are too controlling in their family life and can’t find a woman that will stay with them, or those that have no creativity and skills at work and all the male and female coworkers show better achievements. They don’t have any logic also. They want to be promoted at work just because they are males, because they supposed to be breadwinners. But they never admit it, otherwise, they insists that it was a woman coworker that was promoted because she is a female. Usually really intelligent guys respect smart women coworkers and are able to find a way for mutually beneficial collaboration. The dumbest guys, in contrary, usually blame their luck of success on women-coworkers. They also usually like to make jokes about women’s logic but they don’t have logic at all. Once I’ve seen a blog that gave an advice to never marry women with a career. The comments from MRAs supported the idea and complained about… alimony that guys have to pay after divorce. Simple logic would say – if you’d marry a woman that has a career, that means she makes money maybe better than yours, you definitely will not have to pay alimony after divorce; if you marry a girl that has no career in the case of divorce you will end up paying alimony most likely. Then if you are saying them that you quite logically suspect them to be a control freaks because it looks like they want a wife that can’t divorce them without ending up being homeless and starving (no career and no alimony). In return they will accuse you in misandry. No wonder the guys like that can’t even create a good poster.
cloudiah, where are those quotes from? I love the “fight til my dying breath” one. MRAs are such drama kings.
On the Kate Winslet thing, she gave some interview where she mentioned that she had full custody of the kids she had with director Sam Mendes. She said: “None of this 50/50 time with the mums and dads – my children live with me; that is it.’
So Fathers4justice took out an ad denouncing her for it, or tried to (and she threatened to sue them), and MRAs are all mad at her for evilly keeping her kids from Mendes.
Thing is, Mendes is completely fine with the arrangement and asked fathers4justice to leave her and the kids alone.
Also, though this isn’t relevent, she’s apparently now married to a guy named Ned RocknRoll.
more info:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2525743/Kate-Winslet-threatens-sue-Fathers4Justice-advertising-campaign-attacking-saying-children-live-me.html
@Canuck with pluck, I’ve always wanted to try a Nanaimo bar. And by “always,” I mean “ever since I pirated Corner Gas a few years ago”. And I only pirated it because the CBC won’t let Americans watch their shows online.
Semi-related, I’ve been making these black bean brownies lately. They’re vegan and gluten-free, and while they taste nothing like brownies, they’re plenty chocolatey and packed with protein and fiber.
@Cassandra
You also need really long, sciencey words like “hyperfecundity”.
I have to link this Oglaf now.. (NSFW)
The overly dramatic quote I used is linked to in my first comment.
The worst part is when people have to qualify those goddamn eye-sores with “…but it’s trying to make a point.”
BECAUSE YOU ALREADY AGREED WITH IT, ASSHOLE!!!
It’s one of those things I wish people stopped doing in discussions, this whole “Devil’s Advocate” thing that’s meant to make you look impartial – even though it’s entirely disingenuous. They’ve already taken the other position and just won’t admit it. Especially when they’re the kind of people who do all this antifeminist ranting but then take offense when you call them out on their misogynistic bullshit. They back-pedal and throw around some excuses to cover it up momentarily…just to go back to the antifeminist ranting and thus prove their misogyny again. But they’re still too dishonest to ever admit it.
WOW the first one is a real poster!!! I thought at first it was a parody. It reminds me writing on a wall in the bathroom at … maybe middle school, probably could be junior high maximum. A little frustrated kid that is expressing his anger. I almost feel sorry for the poor little thing. LOL
saintnick – ::applauds::
I hate the whole Devil’s Advocate bullshit too.
Cloudiah, oops. Not quite sure how I missed that. Brain not working so well. But I just returned from r/amr, where I found another link to that comment and read it and his other comments in all their glory. I don’t think he’s 16, though, as some were suggesting. But I’m not convinced about his model girlfriend.
And who says that impartiality is inherently a good thing, anyway? Unless you’re on a jury, there is absolutely no need to approach a question with the attitude of “either position might be true.”
That Hanna Rosin picture had so many images overlayed on each other, it’s halfway on its way to becoming a magic eye picture. Presumably it will reveal a mangina.
As for the “Feminism is a hate movement”-don’t you just love it when hate groups run out of what they think are convincing reasons to hate something? You’d think they’d say “Hey Jimbo, maybe lose the ‘Nobody likes a feminist’ bit. It’s the desired effect of the poster, not a reason” but no, they kept it up there. I remember a neo nazi group once sent a lest on facebook of “10 reasons the holocaust didn’t happen” and number 9 was, no joke, “Jews are all liars” – and I was like “You couldn’t just do a top 9 list and pretend, for a second, to be basing your beliefs in some fucked up version of history, rather than hatred ofr a people and belief system you do not understand at all?”
Overall, the posters look like they have been constructed by transcribing the words of a gender swapped version of the rambling crazy cat lady from the Simpsons.