A Voice for Men seems to have gone a bit meme-crazy. The site’s official Pinterest page, which seems to be fairly new, is loaded up with 374 memes on such subjects as Sexual Politics, False Accusations, MGTOW, and of course Feminism.
It’s not clear how many of these memes were created by the AVFM “Meme Team” and how many were simply grabbed from the internet. But a number of the memes are emblazoned with the A Voice for Men name and/or logo, so I think it’s fair to say that these, at least, are “official” AVFM memes.
Going through these memes, one thing about them becomes clear very quickly: most of them seem to convey messages that are often considerably different than those their creators seem to have intended.
So here, without further ado, here are 6 AVFM memes and what they really mean.
1) MEN SOLVE PROBLEMS
What this meme purports to say: These two variations on the same meme might (charitably) be interpreted to mean that we should honor the historical achievements of men.
What this meme really says: Men are superior to women. Suck it up, dumb bitches!
2) TODAY HE WOULD BE CALLED A RAPIST
What this meme purports to say: Feminist ideologues have so corrupted the notion of rape that is has become ridiculous.
What this meme really says: We basically don’t understand what consent is. Why shouldn’t a dude be allowed to just go kiss a woman on the mouth without her permission?
3) THANKS FOR NOTHING, FEMINISM!
What this meme purports to say: Feminism has conned women into giving up the joys of motherhood for the sorrows of wage labor
What this meme really says: We believe in a magical prefeminist fairyland in which all mothers were young, beautiful middle class women whose husbands could afford to support them while they raised children. There was no such thing as the working class, or women working in factory jobs, before feminism. Also, we basically think women shouldn’t have jobs, though we get mad at housewives for “leeching” off their husbands all the time, too.
4) COMMITTED TO FAIRNESS IN FAMILY COURTS
What this meme purports to say: Judges should not automatically assume that mothers will make better parents than fathers.
What this meme really says: We hate women, and love to laugh at them, and think that if any woman anywhere behaves badly it reflects poorly on all women due to the transitive property of women being terrible bitches.
5) BAN BOSSY?
What this meme purports to say: We oppose the #BanBossy campaign, for some reason.
What this meme really says: We hate women with any power in the world. We also hate little girls.
6) FEMINISTS WON’T STOP UNTIL WE MAKE THEM
What these related memes purport to say: These two memes suggest that feminism is a vicious, violent ideology that must be strongly opposed.
What these memes really say: We like to portray ourselves as victims of feminist violence, even if we have to imagine it, because that gives us a justification to indulge in wild fantasies of violent “retribution” that for some reason involve fists being shoved into women’s orifices.
COMING SOON: An arbitrary number of A Voice for Men memes that make no fucking sense.
EDIT: Proofreading fixes.
About the whole “wimmin never invented anything!” part; Hedy Lamarr invented wifi and bluetooth. Ada Lovelace is considered to be the worlds first computer programmer. So maybe the folks at AVFM should thank women each time they use the internet, because without these women, their website probably wouldn’t be able to exist.
Jeezy Creezy, I can’t pick the most backward, creepy one.
At first I thought, “wow, they’re really bad at this. Must be because their thinking is so muddy.”
But then I realized that, historically, plenty of bad ideas have been well-propagandized.
So I guess it’s not just that they’re stupid. They fail at propaganda too.
OK. Well, good.
Alternate interpretation of number 2: We don’t understand the difference between sexual assault and rape
‘We invented the wheel for you’.
…and the woman in that famous photo was being sexually assaulted. She said so. She didn’t know that man. She tried to get away from that man. Look at how he’s holding her. That’s not a passionate embrace. It’s a man forcing a woman to submit to his sexual advances.
I was found that picture quite creepy, much longer I left the feminist closet. It never stroke me as romantic; something was off.
*I always found
argh….
But, what could they possibly have against the little girl in the Ban Bossy one?
No, seriously. She’s a little girl. A child. MRA’s are picking on children now?
Sadly, I am not surprised.
It’s hilarious that they think anyone not already suckered into their little circlewank will be convinced by these. I can only imagine the reaction of a regular Joe or Jane coming across these.
1) “Men have invented things. And? So have women. What’s this supposed to mean?”
2) “Men who force themselves on unwilling women are apparently considered romantics by these guys. What a bunch of shitheads.”
3) “Dudes, women have to work for a living. It’s rare that couples can afford to lose half of their income when they have a baby.”
4) “Huh?”
5) “Oh, a pouting little girl! Isn’t she just adorable?”
6) “Is this the setup for some weird fetish porn scene?”
Number 3 is all “See? Feminism sucks because got in the way of all women’s natural tendency to be full-time mothers” and number 4 is all “feminism sucks because not all women make good mothers.”
Could you least make up your minds about which reason you hate feminism for?
leatapp:
I read that interview too! And when you look closely at the photo, it absolutely corroborates it… she’s holding herself stiff with her fists clenched at her sides, she’s not melting into a passionate kiss.
Do these guys really think that pictures of angry women/girls prove anything about anything?
This is a bit off-topic but since it’s Easter Sunday tomorrow and this blog has been known to chastise atheists(I’m an atheist and ardent feminist FYI), I thought I’d share this article with ya’all by a feminist contributor to jezebel.com about feminism and faith: Read all about it. Not gonna lie, I detest religion for how it treats women and I’ve seen too many real life examples of this growing up in christian amurca.
Also, they’ve got it totally backwards about feminism and factory work. Feminism didn’t force women into factories, women were already entering factories in huge numbers to meet the demand for labour in rapidly industrializing countries around the turn of the 19th of century. What feminism did do was start advocating for the rights of women workers to ensure that they didn’t have a completely shitty time upon entering a world of work that had been entirely built around the needs of men up until that point. Some of the earliest feminists were also heavily involved in the trade union/labour movement and vice versa.
You know, #2 is extra problematic as the “sailor” from the iconic photo wasn’t even in the military. He was just taking advantage of the situation and celebrations.
It’s really gross that they left the meme with Peaches Geldof up. She just died.
My other takeaway is that the shoe in #5 is really cute. Where can I get a pair?
Tinyorc,
You’d think they would at least know about the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. Since all MRAs are history experts :/
Maybe they think the victims were shopping for garments, not making them.
grumpycatisagirl:
Which also makes none of the sense, because feminism is pretty clear on the idea that gender does not in any way determine one’s parenting ability, and most kids will thrive with one or more parents/guardians of any combination of genders as long as there is lots of love and support and respect.
I’m not even going to try to deconstruct the “let’s all fist an x-ray” imagery. Ew.
Just a suggestion, though, guys? If you’re aiming to convince people that you’re not a hate movement you might want to pick a logo that looks a bit less like it was scrawled on a wall in blood. Doesn’t exactly say “we’re nice, reasonable, trustworthy people, we are”.
@weirdwoodtreehugger: I’m actually doing a write-up about that at the moment as part of a project at work! It’s very sad, but also a fascinating period of history.
I mean sorry, excuse, only men ever die in work-related accidents.
“Men invented the wheel, but don’t you women dare build anything in factories! Go home and have babies, you incompetent bad parenting bitches! And what do you mean you don’t want to be grabbed and tongued on the street by some random dude? MISANDRY!!!”
(Also, their V-in-the-middle-of-an-M logo is butt ugly, and looks a lot like overcompensation. Anybody else notice that?)
Oh, they’ve already thought about that. And their response is the meme with the woman digging her heel into some unprotesting dude’s face. Like that sort of thing happens everyday, everywhere, to everyone.
Hey, if they want random people who see their logo to assume that they’re some sort of a support group for serial killers, far be it from me to disagree.