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.
@cassandrakitty
:: hugs ::
I’m sorry that you’ve found this argument upsetting.
If it was a conversation where a mutually agreeable resolution was possible I might feel differently, but it isn’t. Which pretty much leaves us with one section of the commentariat randomly going “btw I think you’re a fucking idiot who’s devoting your life to the source of all evil, just thought you should know” to another section of the community at regular intervals. Perhaps there’s something I’m missing, but that doesn’t seem like a particularly useful way to interact with one’s fellow community members.
http://www.amazon.com/How-Restore-Sanity-Political-Conversations/dp/1935758063
I found the above book helpful for conversations like these, but it is hard to utilize.
I remember visiting AVFM and seeing how they were trying to recruit mememakers. They’re entire plan hinges on an internet campaign of soundbites that cater to the short attention spans of rewired brains for the computer age. Do you think it will find them more converts or people will join them and it will be only a passing phase, as they don’t really care about anything but anti-feminism?
I think most people will just be confused as to what they’re trying to get at with the memes, honestly. Other than the primal scream of rage towards women element, which comes across quite clearly, nobody who isn’t already familiar with the MRM is going to have any idea what they’re going on about.
It kind of reminds me of when the GOP was trying to rally young people against Obamacare by making wannabe Buzzfeed listicles and memes. http://secure.isidewith.com/news/article/the-new-house-republican-web-strategy-copy-buzzfeed
Aaaand the GOP continues not to understand the internet. Why not just create content ON BUZZFEED? Or a Twitter hashtag or something? Bring the content to where people already are, or you’ll end up preaching to the converted.
As the token religious person, well, it’s just mean and insulting. There are actual discussions about actual topics, and then there’s shit like “there is Zero about the western abrahamic religions that is not, in fact, horrifying abusive.” Nobody wants to have to argue against the proposition “everything about your cultural heritage sucks and so do you for being part of it.”
And then there’s just how random and off-topic it usually is. When people bring it up out of the blue, like they did here, it smacks of “hey, you know what we can all agree on? How religion sucks! Let’s talk about that!”–that is, of being more of a rallying cry than an actual argument. When it’s brought up by atheists, especially white guy atheists like Dawkins, it feels very much like they’re looking for a group they’re not a part of to blame for Bad Things so that they can claim the moral high ground.
All of this only goes for those really broad, unprovable, nigh-meaningless statements like “religion is the root cause of misogyny.” I am 100% in favor of specific, meaningful discussions of misogyny in religion, even (indeed, especially) when it’s my religion. If the ELCA is up to something bad, I want to know about it! And I’m always interested in topics like, say, how Christian Dominionism influences Schlafly’s views. (It’s just annoying that those topics can so quickly degrade into the “all religion is bad” argument, from which there is no going back.)
And you have totally nailed what I was vaguely fumbling around for.
The logo on pintrest made me roll my eyes. Are they trying to pick up anarchist points? Or, as my first impression, are they rabid fans of V the series? Cuz if so on the second, do they think of themselves as the lizard people, or feminists?
Which led me back to the creepyPM forums: http://imgur.com/a/qkFvW
Rilian – oy, Dawkins. Someone needs to teach him the first law of holes.
Cassandra, Buttercup – Wow, that just adds to the level of disgust for those creatures. I knew about Peaches Geldof’s death, but not about that picture.
OFFS. That’s basically saying the fundies are right, only literal interpretations of modern editions are right, and only the bad OT shit counts. Yeah, right, let them define the vast mosaic of even one faith, and dismiss everything that’s happened since their fantasy notion of the past.
emilygoddess – I *think* part of it is the Great Divorce, which left a lot of bad feeling, to the point it couldn’t even be talked about except very allusively, until a few months ago. I wasn’t here then. The subject doesn’t really bother me; I confess I am quite ready to jump down asshats’ throats on this subject. Doesn’t really matter if they’re religious asshats or atheist ones, though on a personal level I’ve had more shit from atheist bigots than religious ones. But in neither case do I think they’re representative of their belief/nonbelief group as a whole – something the asshats seem incapable of grasping about The Other. It’s sort of like MRAs, thinking all men are as horrible as they are.
Also what everyone else said already. :/
moldybrehd – that is beyond bizarre. WTF were they even talking about?
emilygoddess:
All of the above, plus what cassandrakitty said:
That’s why. It’s incredibly unpleasant to be told that an aspect of your life, that is an incredibly important, deep, sustaining aspect of your life, is evil. It is incredibly insulting to be told that, if you happen to share your religious beliefs with your children, that you are abusing them.
I don’t understand all this. I really don’t. Assholes are assholes, whether they’re religious assholes or atheist assholes or agnostic assholes or whatever. It seems pretty simple and easy to be able to call out assholes being assholes without painting a whole swath of people with the same brush.
But that’s what I find so exasperating about this whole conversation.
Plus there’s the ASSumption that you’ve only got to be
insulted enoughsplained to enoughenlightened and you’ll become one of those totes rational types like the asshat in question, and that belief is just something you change like you’d change your shoes. The idea that it isn’t like that, or that it’s more than an emotional crutch (and how the asshats love to use that idea, like things that give you comfort and strength are bad and mean you’re weak) never occurs to them. The idea that people can go the other way would probably give ’em an assplosion.I’m also confused by the idea that being an atheist is an identity in the same way that being a believer is. How can the absence of belief be the organizing principle of your life? And the idea that because I’m an atheist I’m supposed to admire/look up to/respect Dawkins is even weirder. He is a person with whom I share just one thing, a lack of belief in the existence of a deity/ies. Occasionally he says interesting things, often he seems like he needs a good smack with the clue bat, and in general he doesn’t seem like someone who would have my back if I needed it. Why am I supposed to be throwing actual allies under the bus while pretending that he’s my ally, which he has made it quite clear that he is not?
@kittyserf, sorry, I meant to link the original creepyPM link, but the spiced rum wouldn’t let me, lol. http://www.reddit.com/r/creepyPMs/comments/23b0e3/my_wife_runs_a_popular_science_websitefacebook/
It’s a FB message that I Fucking Love Science gets frequently.
Spiced rum is a powerful thing, lol.
I’m still baffled, not least by why lizard people wouldn’t have legs. Lizards are not generally speaking legless (unless they’ve been into the spiced rum … waitaminute …)
Aren’t legless reptiles called snakes?
There are legless lizards.
But they aren’t the majority, of course.
Isn’t “legless reptile” the name for the 60 year old man who’s trying to chat you up at the pub when you’re 16 and you sneaked in with your big cousin’s ID?
Apropos of nothing:
Why does my mother keep insisting snakes are slimy? No, mother, they are not slimy. Maybe if they’re sea snakes, but those garter snakes that you freak out about, no.
The only thing I am going to say about the religion conversation is that walking up to someone and saying, “I know this holiday you are about to celebrate is important to you, but it’s all based on a pile of shit that makes you complicit in all sorts of things which are nothing but pure evil* and I’m doing it because I think someone, at some time, wasn’t as nice to some atheists as they ought to have been” is a pretty asshole move.
Just sayin’.**
* “there is Zero about the western abrahamic religions that is not, in fact, horrifying abusive.” Is both untrue, and not worth rebutting, because anyone who can say that with a straight face has so completely failed to look at the actual insides of the the huge body of sects which make up the Abrahamic relgions and still feels competent to make sweeping claims; as to make the effort of detailed response not worth it. Been there, done that, and had people (whom one would expect to know better) gloating about being wrong, in the terms of debate they had defined. It’s not worth the candle, save to affect my feelings about the people in future.
** Ok, I ended up saying more than I meant to in the footnote, but as katz and sparky said, being told one is an evil bastard; and in a way which implies that to maintain one’s faith (however tenuously one may maintain affiliation) is to be actively complicit in that evil… grates is too mild a word. It’s offensive. It’s collective guilt. It’s saying that no matter what one’s personal belief, nor the tenets of the faith one adheres to are, the past informs all and yea, unto the nth generation shall they be guilty.
The only absolution is atheism. Which is bullshit.
And that is all I intend to say on that subject, in this thread.
And this atheist just got home from a very long Easter vigil service. It was lovely. And they gave us applause (which is unusual, there were lots of non-regulars there because they had lots of baptisms and new Catholics this time around)
If I was to try to describe how snakes feel I’d say…dry and sort of muscly? If your snake feels slimy you should probably take it to the vet.
Yeah, she’s never felt one ever in her life. And insists they must be slimy. There was a green snake at my summer camp that liked to crawl through the belt loops of my jeans.