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.
Worse. This was actually printed and released in the wild. The second biggest eyesore in the history of the town, or at least in recent memory.
The first being last election season, when the whole town turned orange (a party color) thanks to our mayor’s subtle campaigning.
My eyes…
I don’t think “treating both sides equally” has a single literal meaning. If I judge both sides by the strength of their arguments alone, I treat them equally, and if I nod at what both sides says (no matter what they say) I also treat them equally, although in a different way. But none is more literal than the other, they’re both pretty literal understandtings of what it means to treat someone equally. However, it’s the first meaning that everyone goes by in real life; judging everyone with the same yardstick.
For instance, if a judge in court were to give everyone, regardless of the crime they were accused of, and regardless of whether they even were accused or, say, appeared in court in their capacity of lawyer, a one-year-prison sentence, that would not be considered the height of impartiality.
When I first read the title of David’s original post:
Why are Men’s Rights posters always so comically ugly?
I was shocked. How can he be mocking the physical appearance of the people who post on Men’s Rights sites, I thought, after all those discussions we’ve had about how appalling it would be to do that!
… I also had a bit of a ”huh?” moment, titianblue.
And then I read the article, and the world was better and made more sense.
This^
A bunch of people have found the title confusing, so I’ve reworded it.
So we’re not going to get a troll coming along now & accusing us of hypocrisy about the appearance of MRAs. I’m almost disappointed.
Okay, see, I heard “Female Friendly Courts” and had a different mental image.
Start with your standard courtroom. Now, harden the seating, so that men’s bony butts are made uncomfortable. (Cushions will be made available, but only to women who request them from the bailiff–see below for more on him.)
In the armrest, there should be small built-in cups filled with bon-bons every morning and at the breaks.
Along the railing separating the gallery from the main court, a row of scented fucking candles. I can’t decide whether the scents should be uniform, complementary, or just selected at random.
The judge, of course, is a penguin whore, and the bailiff is/looks like Brad Pitt.
Any other recommendations?
Uh oh! Pictures of feeeemales looking grumpy! Ideas that feeeemales are human and might have their own grievances!
Hmm, I was trying to find a pic of a dramatic animal and somehow found a whole bunch on a ‘Catholics Answers Forum’:
poor poor menz
Hm, some misandry must have interfered to prevent my link from working. I shall try again POOR POOR MENNNZ
FINE I GIVE UP! ARE YOU HAPPY NOW MISANDRY?????
Link fixed! You forgot the colon after http.
But…but I copy and pasted…
My head is hanging in all the shame. Thank you ms Ally. Do you go by ms? I could just not use a title but I’m English so, y’know.
I don’t know whether to officially go from miss to ms, I quite like being miss but feel I ‘should’ be a ms. (Fascinating OT, you’re welcome!)
And now I’m worried that asking for preferred titles isn’t the same as asking for preferred pronouns and I’ve crossed a line. No line crossing intended. I’m just a nosy parker who is interested in the strange world of titles. I swear for a job application the other day there was a list of about 20!
Based on two of those posters – did I miss something? They both contain the same image from The Talk when the hosts did something dramatic and brave (for today’s culture) – they appeared with no make-up and their hair undone. I know they have issues with an episode where the women, Sharon Osbourne in particular, joked about a man having his penis cut off, but apparently that shot of them with no make-up is some sort of “SEE! HORRIBLE FEMINISTS!” image in the minds of the MRAs but otherwise just a random image that makes no sense to anyone else.
It’s okay! HTML is a real pain sometimes.
As for titles, I feel a little odd being referred to with a title since I’m only 19 (and I’m also American, so there’s that as well), but I don’t mind and both ms and miss are totally okay with me. =P Some family members call me titles in Urdu and Arabic as well so it’s no big deal, although I wish they gendered me properly as well…
Ok cooool. When I was in America (at 18) people kept referring to me as ma’am which was rather unsettling, I thought that’s what you call the queen!
I just worry about getting things wrong. When I was younger I’d always be mildly scandalised by children calling their aunts and uncles by their first names, and being awkward as a teenager not knowing when to stop referring to another adult as ‘aunty’ whatever.
@titianblue,
Me too! I’m also disappointed that David changed it, the trolls would have been hilarious. 🙂
@daintydougal, that ‘ma’am’ thing IS super awkward. Mr M’s been given a job offer in Seattle so we were talking about this.
When he was over there a while ago he was worried people would think him rude if he didn’t call them ma’am, but he felt too awkward using it and didn’t know when to say it and to whom.
On the other hand, from my point of view, there’s the using it and being called it. As you said, ma’am’s what you call the Queen and I ain’t royalty.
So, we’re so British we won’t use a polite term because we’re worried we might get it wrong, which could result in us being rude.
Oh the agony of etiquette.
The blockquote monster never wants my offerings, so sad. 🙁
For the record, as an American woman under 30, being called ma’am is always weird. Not because I’m not a queen, but because I’m not like 50. I feel like ma’am is reserved for older women, and am always confused when it’s used on me. I’d rather be called “miss” in awkward social interactions like customer service and whatnot.
Titles tend to get dropped here, too. When I was at my last job interview I called my now-boss Mr ____ and he immediately said to call him by his first name. Only time I can remember insisting on being Ms ____ was years ago, when a smarmy bank teller started making fucking rude jokes because I’d just deposited a chunk of money, and called me by my first name all the time. He was a good bit younger than me, so I froze on him, said “It’s MS _____ and do I need to ask to see your manager?”
He crumpled.
By the way, if anyone wants to refer to me with a title, Ms Ally is kind of odd because Ally is a nickname for Aaliyah, which also happens to be my first name. It would instead be proper to say Ms/Miss Syed, as Syed is my surname (pronounced /saiyed/). Very useless information, but I felt like sharing it anyway.
Oh, I still remember when one of the interns at a former job went off on what I assume was meant to be a “look how feminist I am, give me cookies” speech about “I don’t know why girls feel like they need to wear shoes like that” about my heels. He was maybe 19 or 20? He got a rather firm lesson in why it’s not appropriate to call women 15+ years older than you “girls”, or mansplain what they “need” to wear to them.
@Cassandrakitty,
I actually had the opposite, a fifty something lady in Ikea said loudly ‘tsk, look at those shoes!’ Whilst pointing at my 14 hole Doc martens with rolled up jeans.
Can not understand what footwear has to do with anybody else, and Mr M certainly never had any comment regarding anything he has ever worn. I on the other hand have been criticised for being a ‘girly, girl’ or ‘dressing like a boy’ whilst wearing the exact same outfit.
@Kitteh
I also had the ‘Ms’ issue at our bank a couple of years ago, the lady kept calling me by my first name whilst saying they had been short staffed so hadn’t had time to pay my rent.
Seriously, how Lloyd’s bank think they can get away with telling a customer obvious rubbish like that I don’t know.
I told her that computers were a thing and that I was pretty certain every transaction in Britain wasn’t carried out by individual employees.
She got pretty ratty after that and kept on using my first name, when she went to get her boss she did it again and called me ‘this girl’. So yup, too fucking straight I told her it was ‘Ms’! (And closed our account!)