So the founder of the Men’s Rights subreddit, a fellow who now goes by the name of notnotnotfred, has done his fellow Men’s Rightsers a little favor and collected together a handy assortment of “antifeminist graphics” to assist them in their antifeministing activities on the internets. I thought I would share some of them with you all, just so you know what you’re up against.
Oh, who am I kidding? We here at Man Boobz love love love MRA graphics. There are few things in this world so hilariously awful. Take a look at these hot messes.
First, a fellow who proudly announces his plans to beat women:
It took me a little while to realize that he probably wasn’t suggesting that he was going to physically assault women, just that he considered himself superior to them, and could beat them in competition.
Then there’s this poorly thought out little poster:
Problem is, even if we accept the rather strained rape-is-like-getting-hit-by-a-car metaphor, this graphic doesn’t even make sense on its own terms. Because we DO tell cars — or at least their drivers — not to hit kids.
Before you’re allowed to drive a car, as you may recall, you have to take Driver’s Ed and pass a driving test; the importance of not hitting people with your car is rather central to both. Also, in the very picture used for the graphic, THERE’S A GUY HOLDING A SIGN TELLING CARS TO STOP SO THEY WON’T HIT THE KIDS. That’s actually HIS ENTIRE JOB.
A lot of the MRA graphics aren’t so much “graphics” as they are “bunches of words arranged in conventional paragraphs with no graphical elements at all.” Like this rant, which is highly unlikely to convince anyone of anything other than that MRAs are a bunch of angry dudes who like to yell a lot and if they can’t yell at you in person they’ll do it in .png form.
Other “graphics” in notnotnotfred’s collection are nothing more than blurry screenshots of Facebook conversations in which Mr. Fred apparently thinks the man in the conversation “won.”
No, not the “logic!” How can we ever win against “logic” like that?
It’s a sad state of affairs for the MRAs when the parodies of MRA graphics are almost always better designed than the originals. Here’s one from our own Cloudiah:
Also, thanks to Cloudiah for pointing out notnotnotfred’s little collection in the first place.
Bina, damn, sorry that happened to you. Glad you at least won the court case.
On the whole beating issue, I’m not sure the guy in the poster was literally talking about physically attacking women in the “if you want equal rights you need to be able to take equal lefts” sense; I sort of think he wasn’t.
But I do agree that MRAs are rather scarily obsessed with this particular point, always looking for instances when they’re justified in hitting women. There’s Paul Elam’s “bash a violent bitch month,” and there’s this poster, also included in notnotnotfred’s collection:
?token_hash=AAG1knuMeOOVlebCe8K-jsb_n4wcfWnrDsTUxhRwm5sHeg
That poster is such a perfect illustration of how dumb the MRM is. What would a smart person who cares about children do if they see someone abusing a child? Get the child the hell away from the abuser as quickly as possible. What do MRAs want to do? Ignore the kid, use its pain as an excuse to beat up a woman.
That poster – it wreaks of desperation. The creator of it is just so desperate for a reason to beat up a woman.
It’s like watching a kid in a car sit there going “are we there yet? what about now? now?”, but with misogyny and violence.
Sorry, that Facebook one is really bugging me.
Whoever wrote that reply so obviously doesn’t get it. The original post wasn’t saying that girls and women are better than boys and men, but rather that girls and women are strong, too. He got pissed off about someone saying girls and women are as strong as boys and men, then goes into this long spiel about how boys and men are stronger. And he’s reinforcing toxic masculinity (boys & men don’t cry or show emotion) and reinforcing sexist stereotypes (girls and women can’t aim). Plus the gendered insult: the worst insult in the world for a man is to compare him to a woman! Has no idea about social pressures placed on women – dude, why do you think women feel they need to wear five inch heels? (And some women were five inch heels because they want to, and yes, it is an accomplishment to be able to competently walk in a pair of stilettos. And why is it socially unacceptable for men to wear five inch heels?). And no, only people with uteruses are able to bear children, but that doesn’t mean that pregnancy and childbirth doesn’t require strength and endurance. And the crying all night thing, y’know, it’s far better to feel emotions and be able to deal with and process emitions than to be an emotionless robot.
Whew.
If you know or suspect a child is being abused the appropriate response is to notify police or child protective services. The appropriate response is not to go beat up the abuser. What would that solve?
I don’t read that “beating women” one (and yeah, the guy does look like he’s wanking) is only about getting ahead in business, or whatever. First, does Mr Genius with the camera angled up his nose look like he’s going to get ahead of anyone in competition? More to the point, like everyone else has said, MRAs are obsessed with beating and raping women. It’s the main point of their “movement”.
He also seems to think he can beat up other men, going by that equals = being violent equation. For some reason (I can’t imagine why) I suspect he’d get his arse kicked by a lot of men if he tried.
Oh – going back to Cat’s comment about MRAs having no sense of humour, and that gorgeous bulldog video: it reminded me of a time Samuel Johnson was out walking, probably with Boswell, and they were on top of a hill. Dr J emptied his pockets and rolled down the hill, ‘cos he said he hadn’t done that in such a long time. This was an oldish, big man and I’d bet he showed more sense of fun and humour in that one incident than the MRM could show in its members’ entire miserable lives.
“The guy complaining about no reproductive rights for men reminded me a lot of the life of Brian: “I want to fight for the right to have baby” ”
Well, looking back at it 40 years later, that was a rather bad joking routine about transwomen, if you think about it. Still great movie of course 😉
What the MRAs mean is of course that they want to have a say about women’s bodies if a foetus might currently be inside it.
I still don’t get why they have such a problem with it being generally recognized that men hitting women is a mostly bigger problem than women hitting men.
Yes, ideally nobody should hit anybody. And, no, women aren’t special snowflakes, that it’s inherently worse for them to suffer violence.
But all other things being equal, men tend to be bigger and have more upper body strength than women. That’s the thing: if you MUST pick on someone, you PICK ON SOMEONE YOUR OWN SIZE. Or bigger.
I, a girl, learned that in early childhood, from my ex-boxer dad. It wasn’t chivalry. He encouraged me to stand up for myself against the boy who was picking on me. Dad was no pacifist, but he had some old-fashioned ideas about honor.
” That’s the thing: if you MUST pick on someone, you PICK ON SOMEONE YOUR OWN SIZE”
I do have a problem with that. I’m a guy. Sure, I could probably deal better with somebody going violent at me than a woman similarly untrained as me but of smaller size and mass. But that doesn’t mean I should have to! There should absolutely not be any “if you MUST”. Physical aggression against anybody is bad, period. Screw “honour” in fights, rather don’t have fights, period!
But of course, the fact you shouldn’t beat anybody, period, is what makes the MRA insistence on this “unfairness” so jarring. There should be no “right” to beat women, because there should be no right to beat anybody. Not even in a “honourable” (pfah!) fight.
An untrained woman of the same size as you would have less upper body strength. That’s part of the point. I agree that “don’t beat people up” should be a basic expectation that everyone ought to be able to meet, but please don’t try to wash away the gendered nature that a lot of violence has, and that MRA violence in particular has.
Not to mention that not only are women likely to have less upper body strength than a man, but we’re mostly socialised all our lives AGAINST any sort of violence, even in self-defence. We’re socialised from birth to accommodate men. How many of us are taught anything about how to fight, how even to throw a punch? Most of us have a lot more than physical inequality against us if we’re attacked; we’ve masses of unconscious inhibitions against protecting ourselves, and little if any practical knowledge of how to.
Yup…wanking at the prospect of being legally allowed to abuse women and get away with it in the name of “equal rights”. Never mind that for the longest time, the police wouldn’t intervene in a so-called “domestic dispute”, because husbands DID have the right to beat wives…to “correct” them, as the saying went.
I am curious as to why that young man thought that the entire internet needed to see the contents of his nostrils.
I love how that weird, creepy look on his face makes it impossible to take him seriously. MRAs are their own undoing.
I’m also curious as to why he’s wanking in his kitchen (note the small bottle of soy sauce on the shelf behind him).
Nostril dude looks like he’s all of fifteen.
The SCOTUS decision saying a male only draft is A-OK is based on women being prohibited from combat roles. Problem solved, MRAs: open every job in the military to women!
Not waiting underwater for that one.
I’m much more familiar with various “comedians” pushing the line that the reason women “run their mouths” is because as girls they “never learned the consequences of their actions” and “never had to take responsibility” because when BOYS supposedly get mouthy other boys beat them up. If only girls were backhanded every time they got mouthy, then as adults, you see, they would know their place, and wouldn’t hurt Teh Menz feelings.
I’ve heard this same routine, almost invariably from pasty white dudes though, alas, not exclusively, over and over and over. It’s an MRA talking point, rendered not at all amusing by guys trying to do standup in clubs. It utterly fails to explain how, (a), there is anything equitable between saying words, and acts of physical violence, and (b), why is it that every female I personally know, self included, as LITTLE GIRLS, had mainly men (and some women) smack us around for “being mouthy”. And then little boys, observing this, thought they could smack us around too.
(Which, at least in my case, just made me really really good at beating up boys. Half the battle is your state of mind. (Un?)fortunately it’s been a useful skill set as an adult too. Upper body strength, you can take my word for it, only gets you so far.)
My point is, I look at creepy pasty Nostril Boy, and I think Nah. The beatings and abuses are already here, have been here in some cultures for several thousand years, and he knows it. If he’s not an abuser in some fashion already, it’s not because his fantasy version of mutually abusive feminism hasn’t arrived. Maybe it’s because real, if crude and rudimentary, feminism cockblocked him. Maybe he remembers trying to push a girl smaller than him off a swingset so he could see her underwear or make her cry, and was startled when she smacked the crap out of him in front of all his friends. I’d like to think so.
That collection is… something. I particularly like this one:
Yes, because understanding context around fictional depictions is misandry!
My other favorite is this one:
Because that doesn’t just smell like some parody. I mean, I always thought that the straw radfem and straw exploitative girlfriend were two different tropes.
Maybe he remembers trying to push a girl smaller than him off a swingset so he could see her underwear or make her cry, and was startled when she smacked the crap out of him in front of all his friends.
I confess, that was me.
As my daddy always taught me: “Never start a fight. Always finish it.”
Also, they are still sending around a graphic comparing Anita Sarkeesian’s Women in Videogames project kickstarter (which got more than 10x the requested funding due to misogynist asses) with an image of a kickstarter for a documentary about Brian Banks, a black man who was falsely accused and convicted of rape that was only partially funded.
Well, the fact is that kickstarter didn’t get the huge overfunding that Anita Sarkeesian did (due to people not donating to piss off its opponents), but they did get funded at $7000 over their goal, and the documentary is in progress:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1681576010/the-brian-banks-story/posts/663464
Also, he has partnered with an evil feeemale documentary producer.
Apparently, kickstarters not being funded as soon as they are put up is misandry.
Someone’s boosting David’s signal!
I certainly know women who are against circumcision for their sons, and who have opposed the draft. I recently heard a program interview women who were part of the anti-war movement in the 60’s, and how they began to form women’s consciousness raising groups and become more active in the feminist movement as well because they felt they weren’t being listened to by some of the male activists back then. Which is unfortunate, but also shows that there was(and still is) an intersection of women in the feminist and anti-war movement.