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.
I quite like snakes, in general, but I have to admit that the one time we found a very large one in the garden while we were eating breakfast at a friend’s house in Kuala Lumpur I was a bit freaked out. Large snakes are more of a post-coffee kind of thing, ideally.
I’m sure Malaysian snakes are probably more impressive than those in midwest America, barring the poisonous ones.
I miss having snakes (used to breed them). Slimy is so not the word. Dry, smooth (or pleasantly rough, should they be a keeled variety) with a stiffly grabby belly. Solid is the best way to describe what Cassandra called, “muscly”.
And yes, big snakes are not the thing to see when alone.
Yeah, it’s stupid, we had an argument last week about snake sliminess. She’s an old farm girl too, she should know better.
We all grabbed our stuff and ran back into the house, shut the sliding door and waited for it to move on. Better a snake in the garden than a snake in the bathroom, I guess, but I’d never seen one that big up close before. I think it was a cobra.
I’ve never had one personally and probably never will. But I LOVED the snake shack at my summer camp so much. Black snakes around your neck, greenie weenie and his/her belt loop trick. It was awesome.
Gah!…if cobra…run.
If it’s a sea snake, that’s the least of your worries.
Snakes feel amazing. I wish there were warm-blooded snakes. They would feel great. (And they’d make great boas.)
I was about 12 or so at the time, so of course son of family friend who was a couple of years older took great delight in telling me all about how cobras will spit venom right in your eyes if you scare them.
@katz
I was just grasping for some way a snake would be slimy. She said, “Don’t they get all slimy crawling around on the ground?”
In her defense, Southern Illinois has some real nasties near the rivers and maybe it was drilled into her as a farm kid.
Better a snake in the garden than a snake in the bathroom, I guess,
a friend who spent the summer in Sri Lanka told me they loved the cool tiles, which is why every afternoon, when you got home, you grabbed the snake stick and removed the cobra from your shower.
…hey, where’d everybody go?
Well, I’ve got to go to sleep so I can make more music tomorrow.
I’m very glad I don’t have cobras in my shower, the occasional spider-cricket, but no cobras.
eli, that thing about “snakes are slimy!” seems to be an old idea that won’t go away. Gerald Durrell wrote about it in one of his books – Menagerie Manor, I think – back in, oh, the sixties. He scoffed at it by saying 1) people don’t think twice about handling a wet cake of soap and 2) snakes feel coolish and dry, like a snakeskin handbag, duh.
That green snake crawling through your belt loops sounds adorable.
Just as long as they weren’t boa constrictors. (Well someone had to say it.)
Pecunium: all the applause for your second note. Collective guilt indeed.
Maybe she’s confusing snakes with eels. Eels definitely are slimy when alive. But very tasty, when not alive, either pan-fried (why is it pan-fried? WTF else would you fry something in?) or smoked. Jellied eels is an acquired taste cos we’re back to the slimy again.
titianblue: Pan-fried = sautéed as opposed to deep-fried (or the related, “shallow-fried” in which the oil is 1/4-1/2 the depth of the food), not to be confused with, “chicken-fried” in which the meat is battered before being placed in the oil.
I like snakes, lizards, toads and frogs. I don’t like spiders, but don’t fear them either. Then again, in Minnesota we don’t have lethal versions of any of them.
The fist in the vagina is the most troubling to me. Sexual violence at its core.
Amphibians (frogs, newts and salamanders) are slimy, because they have mucous glands to keep their delicate skin moist. Perhaps that’s the root of the confusion with snakes and lizards.
Oooh, thanks for the clarification, @Pecunium. In the case of eel, I use butter rather than oil & roll inch long sections of eel in seasoned flour before pan-frying 😉
Re men inventing everything that built civilisation, the other year, the British Museum ran a serious of programs where they got a group of historians to come up with the most important objects in the collection. One of the things that the historians rated as really important (along with all the gold and art objects) was a prehistoric needle. They talked about the genius of the needle, how it revolutionised our ability to make clothing, and about how small and simple yet clever it was.
Interestingly, an early wheel did not make it into the selection.
Chicken-fried means battered!!?! Blimey. I always thought it meant fried in chicken fat.
We just call battered fish and meat … battered. Which usually/always means deep fried.
Wow I just took a look at their Pinterest page. These people seem HORRIBLY immature.
Katz you are not the only token religious person. I’m an exmormon, but a convert and before that I was ELCA. I know exactly what you mean.
@cassandrakitty
You’ve made me Disney-hulk. Thanks a lot. Time to go do the dishes leftover from the party yesterday singing ‘Let it go!’ (I’ve sung it so much, I’ve even caught my boyfriend singing it a few times).
We’ve also quite a few people who’re not religious in the sense of following a creed, but are definitely not atheist.