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.
(That’s apart from the fact we all follow the One True Faith, ie. Furrinati worship.)
There’s a lovely example of tone trolling on Democratic Underground at the moment
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4846205
Well, I was raised Catholic. I identify as agnostic, leaning toward witchy nature-embracing religions on some days. From my own lived experience, assholes exist everywhere. Religious assholes justify sexism and racism because god; atheist assholes justify it because science. Religious assholes justify homophobia because the Bible/Quran/other holy book; atheist assholes justify because nature (I’ve seen this happen even in the face of other animals being homosexual; one person even claimed PIV sex could only transmit HIV under special circumstances and that therefore anal sex was inherently something humans shouldn’t do and that meant homosexuality was bad). Religious assholes are against abortion because god and babies and consequences for having sex and women’s role; atheist assholes are against abortion…because babies and consequences for having sex and women’s role and “beautiful little life forms”. Agnostic assholes can go either way. Assholes are assholes are assholes no matter what their beliefs may be, or their lack there of, so if some atheists could stop pretending that being atheist makes you a better person, who isn’t sexist, racist, homophobic, or against female-bodied people’s reproductive rights, that would be great, thanks.
Alex – nailed it!
OK, so I was getting the impression that both sides were being asked to drop it, which was rubbing me the wrong way, because I feel like we should have the freedom to defend ourselves and each other from assholes. But I didn’t want to be a jerk or upset people, so I wanted to see where the objectors were coming from. It’s all a lot clearer now.
I’ve met enough atheists from repressive religious families or regions to understand why atheism as an identity is important to people (especially when it’s the reason people in their life are treating them badly). But as you said, it’s not that way for everyone.
Maybe she thought there’d be lizard legs. IDK, I’m aware of the “OMG reptilians!” conspiracy theory, but I’m not up on all the details.
On the snake discussion: they’re awesome, and I wanted one as a pet for the longest time. They’re a spine with a head, and that’s it! How cool is that? And they feel really cool when they wrap around your arm. Thinking that they’re slimy is actually a common misconception – maybe it’s because they look like worms, or just a visceral “ew gross” reaction?
I see what you did there.
From my *extremely fuzzy* memories of elementary school history lessons, pre-european north americans didn’t have wheels. Plains people used travois, which was a kind of rack they attached to dogs (and later horses) to drag carrying stuff, but the ends just dragged. And wheels aren’t very useful in the snow, so what would they do with a stockpile of wheels all winter anyway?
What I’m saying is that wheels aren’t the ULTIMATE useful technological achievement.
Okay, that was probably the most incoherent description of anything, ever. Sorry. Time for coffee.
Travois: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travois
I’m one of those witchy nature-worshippers that the conventional religionists and the militant anti-theist atheists both despise and think are somehow mentally defective. As a result, I have no more use for Dawkins-style “atheist” assholism than I do for fundamentalist patriarchal religion. Both, to me, have one major, and very asinine, thing in common. Which is quite ironic when you consider how at-each-other’s-throats they are over everything else.
One thing I have noticed, though, in the course of my 25-odd years of informal studies of comparative religion, is the fact that there’s a growing groundswell of Abrahamic believers who are working hard to reclaim and restore the Divine Feminine in their respective beliefs. There are Catholic/Christian feminists reclaiming Mary, the saints, etc.; Jewish feminists reclaiming Lilith, Eve and other denigrated Old Testament women and Middle Eastern goddesses; Muslims working hard to distinguish between what the Qur’an actually says, and what is just patriarchal tribalism dressed up as “Islam”. To deny that there is a feminist current at work in the Big Three Patriarchies is to miss a huge part of the picture. And it doesn’t do feminism any favors, either.
So the idea that you can only be a good feminist by abjuring all religion rings totally false to me, and the idea that being an atheist automatically makes you “more rational, because no gods” doesn’t ring true either. Feminism is what you bring to your belief system, whatever it may be, to achieve women’s equality everywhere. If you don’t bring it, it doesn’t matter if you’re a complete unbeliever; you’re still part of the problem, and you are no nearer a solution than if you’d been the very fundiest of fundies.
And that’s about all that I have to say on the religion question.
One of the things I often say when I’m confronted by people who think feminism is the belief in women’s superiority to men is that I don’t think women are better than men — we’re just not worse. What several of those memes demonstrate is that MRAs firmly believe that women are worse than men. That belief is absolutely central to their worldview.
Somewhat similarly, I’m an atheist because I don’t believe in god, not because I think atheists are better than non-atheists. I am full of admiration for many of the non-atheists I know from here and elsewhere. You guys are awesome. <3
Speaking as a WoC ,who is slightly outside the MRA bubble, it just seems extremely obvious to me that this is just all about them. I’m reminded of this every time I come to this site. That there is a subset of White men who hate White women with the passion of a thousand suns because they can’t have them.
It’s all just some sort of scream of primal rage, a three yr. old having a tantrum over not being allowed to have ice cream, aimed at Pretty White Girls. WoC are never referenced and pretty much don’t exist because in the minds of these creatures , we just aren’t the kind of women they covet. They covet the White females who have made it abundantly clear that they don’t want them. Usually, conventionally attractive, blondes, under 25, since they’ve also made it pretty clear they’re not interested in White women who are older than that either.
If anyone on here has ever read Aesop’s Fables, one of my favorite ones, whose meaning has stuck with me for decades is the Tale of The Sour Grapes. That is a textbook example of what I think is happening every time I read this kind of stuff from them.
That about nails it, yup. It’s been obvious to me since I was a non-blonde, non-blue-eyed child that certain types are prized above all others. And that all these guys think they’re entitled to one of these trophy-ladies just for existing as males. Everything and everyone else doesn’t exist, except as a transient annoyance to be shoved aside and yelled at. And when the pretty young blondes find themselves getting creeped on by these guys, and don’t respond as hoped, well…another misodge is born.
It’s sour grapes all the way down.
I always wanted to dye my blonde hair something else, but was always either too cheap or too poor. At least it’s finally getting a lot darker and graying so there’s hope on the horizon.
Bina’s comment:
QFT
By the way, happy Easter to those who celebrate it!
Sorry, I shouldn’t have phrased it that way. That sounded dismissive of the other theists around here.
Well, sometimes they do reference Asian women, but only as a convenient way to scold white women for not being thin and submissive enough. Other than that, yep, cosigned. Whenever MRAs are banging on about “women” you can usually read it as either “white, thin, conventionally pretty high school girls or college students” or “women who remind me of my ex wife, therefore white, middle class, over 40, and omg they’re all such bitches”. With MGTOW and PUAs it may also mean “conventionally pretty white women my age, so 30 something, who’ve never been interested in me but now they’re hitting the wall that I invented to make myself feel better about the women I just mentioned not wanting to date me, oh no I’m not indulging in bitter revenge fantasies, why would you think that?”
If neither of these descriptions matches you they probably haven’t noticed that you exist, unless you happen to be blocking their view of one of the women they want to rage-wank about.
BTW, Lkeke35, did you get a welcome package yet?
http://artistryforfeminismandkittens.wordpress.com/the-official-man-boobz-complimentary-welcome-package/
@katz I’m a manboobz lurker who is too shy to permanently delurk, but I’d just like to pop in to say that you aren’t the only theist – or ELCA member!
And because I feel the need to point out that there is a blog run by the husband of the youth director at my “ELCA” church – back when I was in the middle school – called “Exposing the ELCA”. But it’s 100% from the other side and it’s kind of funny to see the loaded questions he pops in the poll on the front page. He came in at random times to spoonfeed us a lot of fundamentalist crap and in a subtle manner at that (not saying but implying we shouldn’t believe evolution, recommending the Gresh books, etc.) and my parents weren’t happy to find that out when I told them years later. Glad we moved.
The ELCA *itself* is pretty great and I’ve stayed involved with church or at least some of the charities it runs, despite religion kind of waning in importance to me over that time. I’d be sad to hear about the church leadership doing something bad.
By the way, I found out they kicked out that church in the middle of them being split on whether or not to leave (in moral outrage over that pro-LGBT assembly decision in 2009, of course…), so I will be forever grateful for that, too.
Anyway, I was just a little too tempted to share my revenge-motivated story. Heh.
ELCA fistbump (and happy Easter)! And help yourself to a welcome package!
the first thing i wondered looking these pics is: do they are so old for being sure that weel has been created by a male? wow….if they have the proof i stop talking….
Yah!, I got one ,cassandrakitty. I’ve commented on here before but my comments are pretty infrequent. Most of the people on here are pretty savvy, and make most of the points I’d make anyway.
I spend most of the time lurking and marvelling at the sheer level of wtf*ery gets posted by these guys. Everyday, they reach new lows, which is just astonishing.
Hey, a religion conversation! The perfect place to expound for paragraphs and paragraphs with all my opinions about religion!
Hmm. Or not.
This site, and this community, were actually a large part of my deconversion from fundamentalist Christianity. And so I owe a debt to lots of people here, religious and non.
And I think we’ve gone over all that ground a bunch of times, and once you already know all the details and the arguments the need to hash the same thing out again just becomes a desire to shout at people you disagree with, and I’m just not feeling that.
@lkeke35
They’re like an onion, but the onion is made of rage, and the bitterness is a result of frustration about the fact that it’s illegal to force women to touch your penis rather than various sulphur-based compounds.
That was my first thought as well! There’s no evidence the wheel was invented by a man – just the sexist assumption that it couldn’t have been a woman.
I am very glad I missed the latest round of That Conversation.
Honestly, it’s enough sometimes to make me wish for NWOslave back.
@supernova:
Eh, to be pedantic, Hedy Lamar and George Antheil invented “an early technique for spread spectrum communications and frequency hopping,[3] which paved the way for today’s wireless communications[4][5] and which, upon its invention in 1941, was deemed so vital to national defense that government officials would not allow publication of its details.[6]”
So yes, she helped invent something that proved essential for modern communications. No, she didn’t invent modern communications.
@Unimaginative
That’s right, Native Americans didn’t have the wheel, whether North or South. For whatever reason, you can find a larger number of permanent structures south of the Rio Grande than north of it, but the lack of wheels didn’t seem to slow any of them down much.
Well, the Aztecs had the wheel, but they only used it for toys. So they knew how it worked, they just didn’t find it very useful. The way I heard, the North Americans and Mesoamericans had no pack animals so there wasn’t much use for the wheel, and the Incas had the llama, but they lived in the mountains where wheeled vehicles would be dangerous and impractical.