Sometimes I wonder if we’re being unfair to Men’s Rights Activists by allowing them to handle their own publicity. I mean, it’s pretty clear that they’re terrible at it. Worse than terrible, really. Terribler. Possibly the terriblest.
I mean, just this week we saw the official social media director of A Voice for Men’s conference in Detroit announcing the conference’s new venue with this:
https://twitter.com/JudgyBitch1/statuses/476822883881459712
Bloomfield now claims this was her attempt to “troll” people like you and me by tweeting what I guess she’s now saying is a thoroughly awful fake quote which for some reason she has decided to attribute to a real person. This makes so little sense by normal human standards that I find this explanation a little hard to believe — but I guess I’m just getting trolled by my own skepticism? Oh, Judgy Bitch, you got me!
https://twitter.com/JudgyBitch1/statuses/476822883881459712
Whoops! I guess I got trolled a third time!
And … oh, for a second there I thought I was going to be trolled again, but I stood firm. For now.
Anyway, all this is just a long intro for some Actual Authentic I Didn’t Make These Up Honest to Goodness Men’s Rights Memes that I discovered on the blog of someone named Francis Roy, an MRA, an AVFM fan, and a bit of a meme enthusiast. The somewhat baffling meme at the top of this post? One of his best.
Which is to say, his memes basically suck, even by meme standards.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, these are all overvalued by at least 997 words. You can find them all in the meme section of his blog, though, be warned, he also posts a lot of graphic and disturbing pictures of dead soldiers and circumcised babies and other horrible things. (Note to MRAs: a lot of feminists, like me, are also troubled by and/or opposed to circumcision. Instead of derailing every discussion of female genital mutilation and alienating potential allies, you might try taking your message to the public at large?)
Anyway, let’s get to the memes. Note: A couple are mildly NSFW.
Here we learn that divorced mothers who have custody of the children are really just keeping them in order to enjoy all that sweet-ass child support cash!
Note: custodial parents who’ve been awarded child support actually receive, on average, about $300 per month. You can almost buy an XboxOne for that! Or, you know, you can try to feed and clothe and care for a child. And pay for child care, and babysitters, and doctor’s visits, and toys, and, you know, shelter. Huh. $300 actually doesn’t sound like that much.
Frankly as a money-making proposition, “stealing me for daddy’s money” seems like kind of a bust.
But let’s just move on to this fine meme, which as far as I can figure it is some sort of attack on underwear models:
Really? Hath not an underwear model eyes? Hath not an underwear model hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? If you prick an underwear model, do they not bleed? Does blood not run down their smooth, tight abs?
Pretty sure it does. Seriously. Underwear models need to eat, too! Well, maybe not as much as I do, but come on! Stop the hate!
Oh, did I mention that Mr. Roy apparently considers himself a Man Going His Own Way?
Yeah, let’s just move on.
Lol wut
Oh, come on!
I’m not even a Christian, but, seriously?
I’m going to post two quotes here. One will be from Jesus. The other from a rather well-known Man Going His Own Way. See if you can tell the difference.
Here’s the first quote. See if you can tell if this is Jesus, or MGTOW elder Christopher in Oregon.
Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
Here’s the other quote:
I’m going to be blunt. Have you ever smelled a vagina? Seriously. I mean in it’s natural, unwashed state? Really stuck your nose right down there and taken a deep breath?
Once.
My G-d. The stench could have knocked a buzzard off a shit wagon at fifty paces. To this day I swear there was a cloud of flies buzzing around that portal of doom. Sometimes when riding my Harley-Beasties around the rural roads here in Oregon, I encounter dead skunks. Road kill. We have a lot of them here, and when they’ve been baking in the summer sun, you can smell them a long way off even at sixty miles per hour.
Vaginas tend to be even nastier.
SPOILER ALERT: The first quote was the one from Jesus.
Let’s see what else Mr. Roy has got.
Wait, is that one of Mr. Roy’s memes, or did I just accidentally post a pic from my extensive collection of FemDom porn?
By which I mean, yes that was one of his memes and forget what I said about that other stuff.
Ok, one more.
Yaaagh!
Sorry, I didn’t mean to spring that on you. Hopefully you weren’t eating.
But in the unlikely event that you would like to print out your own high-quality color poster of a glowering Paul Elam to hang over your bed, or wherever you hang such pictures, I’ve got some good news for you! Mr. Roy has helpfully provided a downloadable pdf version!
All of the above graphics are by Francis Roy and under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
How is telling someone they are fat abusive?
Some people are fat. That’s how they’re bodies are.
Is it that calling them fat is abusive or is it making their perceived fatness into an insult that is abusive?
Because telling me I’m fat is like telling me I’m crude. Neither may be meant as a compliment, but both are correct.
@grouchyoldman,
I m glad you live through the experience without any actual rape. The fear of it is in itself quite traumatizing. You never thought of jumping the border? Its not overly talked about, but the Canadian culture has been benefited a lot of the influx of young American draft dodgers. My understanding was that once here, there was no way back home. Anyhow, that is what a colleague explained me about his own situation. Here he is an upstanding civil servant for the federal.
@LBT
I never sensed misogyny from my gay friends but what you said confirmed what I heard from others. I think I just chose to be naive about it. My family has always been really liberal and my mother best childhood friend was homosexual, so even 30 years ago, there was always 3-4 openly gay friends gravitating around. The one thing I remember most is that they always had the best Halloween costumes. When we were old enough, we were invited to their big annual Halloween Extravaganza and it was truly epic.
Woody: I’ve seen no evidence to suggest that Paul is anything but fully committed to what he does.
We agree. Paul Elam is fully committed to hating women, and getting other men who hate women to pay him to hate women.
And you support him in this endeavor.
He noted a while back that he uses some of AVfM’s donations for his personal expenses, but that’s OK… I didn’t think otherwise.
The thing is, he said otherwise. He lied to those who were sending him money. That, my dear boy, is the definition of grifting.
Isabelle: There was an amnesty for draft-resisters during the Carter Administration. So people who fled to Canada had the option of returning to the States if they so desired. It had it problems (let’s just say the terms of the amnesty left a bit to be desired).
Fat is either an insult or a descriptive word depending on how it’s used I think. It’s only recently that the fat acceptance movement has gained enough of a foothold for people outside of it to realize that the word ‘fat’ has been reclaimed. People aren’t used to it being ago to describe someone as fat and not be seen as mean. For decades euphemisms like ‘voluptuous’ and ‘curvy’ have been used. Much to my annoyance because I’m not thin or fat I am voluptuous and curvy and I was left without a descriptor for my own body!
We’re used to ‘fat’ as an insult and it’s often used derisively. It shouldn’t be. But it is. It’s often used against women who aren’t actually fat because in terms of conventional beauty standards fat is the worst thing one can be. Misogynists in particular like to use “haha you’re probably a fatty” as the go to insult when someone dares to speak up against misogyny. It’s so tiresome.
I wish our culture wasn’t so fixated on weight. Especially not to the extent that “you’re fat” is considered a valid debate argument.
Sorry. That last comment was a reply to Lea.
There is a difference between pointing out to someone that they have a weight issue and “calling” them fat. When it is used as an insult, it’s meant to degrade and objectify the person. It’s meant to tell them that they are worthless because that’s how media portrays overweight/obese people. I’m not completely sure how it works within the context of a partnered relationship, but calling someone fat is definitely a form of verbal and psychological abuse.
Interestingly, there is a correlation of various types of abuse in childhood and a person’s likelihood of one day being an overweight or obese adult. So, it may be considered aggressive to call an adult fat because it could potentially trigger that person to think about issues that they had as a child and abuse that they went through at that time. I base that on my personal experiences of being called fat as an adult triggering memories of childhood abuse that was related to my weight and that actually caused the weight.
“You never thought of jumping the border? ”
Frankly I think I would find Canada a more congenial home (but you can keep your f*cking tar sands) than the US, but I am a fairly stubborn person and I wasn’t about to be run out of the country I was born in because of their stupid war. Also my father was a well-known local politician who was an anti-war candidate for Congress, so I got some attention for my views from the local press. I had too many friends who had been killed or maimed physically or mentally by the war to feel that it was honorable to not stand up against it. Finally I had a wide and a young son, and my wife (long since ex-wife) was/is schizophrenic and couldn’t survive being very far away from her mother, so they wouldn’t have come with me.
The rape-threat in prison was mostly a nuisance, but it did give me, as I say, a glimpse into the way many women have to live — doing, in effect, life without parole. The problem is that our culture makes both young men and young women insecure in their self-image, then tells young men that they will be more manly and have higher status in the peer-group if they can persuade or, failing that, coerce young women into having sex with them. I know that when I lost my virginity I had no particular interest in having sex with that girl but I did desperately want the other guys to stop taunting me for being a virgin. If you could convince men that you get no manliness points for non-consensual sex, I think you’d see a remarkable reduction in rape.
At the time if one went to Canada to avoid the draft one had to assume one could never come back, even to visit. The Carter amnesty program fixed that, because the federal authorities quickly decided that they wanted nothing to do with draft violators and basically treated it as a total amnesty and they didn’t want to hear about whether or not anyone had complied with the terms.
I keep coming back to look at this memes sitting there, making no damn sense. It brightens my day (ok, all but the last).
I meant *these. I totally did.
I was looking at the pedestal thing (and not entirely successful avoiding Elam’s colde dead eyes) …
There’s just so much abusive logic in it.
“We live for you, we put you in a PEDESTAL (and hunt the mammoth and all that)
… SO YOU STAY THERE AND NEVER COMPLAIN!! Or we’ll bring it up to show how much we ACTUALLY care for you!”
Daddy-knows-best logic at its best *pukes*
I couldn’t find the Alan Cuming discussion thread, so I’m posting this here and just saying, at least they didn’t use these as the image for the male swimsuit poster:
Very NSFW
http://www.fioridue.com/sexy-men/lateral-body-flash-collection-by-alter
Janet,
I do not have a “weight issue”. Fuck that shit. You may have an issue with my weight, but I’m just fat. Do not try to tell me that the way I am is an insult or that likening other people to me is abuse.
OK?
That’d be great.
…OMFG.
Really? Are the poor fatties fat because they were abused? Is being fat just a sign of being broken?
Is fat only not an insult because we reclaimed it? How about this: fat is not an insult because there is nothing wrong with being fat?
I’m pale too. I used to get made fun of about that. I got called Caspar. I got skin cancer trying to tan. (They got it. I’m fine.) I spent $ to spray dye my body orange because pale is “sickly” and never sexy. I didn’t look like a healthy person. Tan was the only way to go when I was growing up.
You want to tell me that’s only not really an insult because we’ve reclaimed the word or is it not an insult because there is nothing wrong with being pale?
What about short?
Short has been used as an insult and yet people are short.
You know, being malnourished as a child can stunt growth, so short people were probably starved by their parents. Let’s talk about how sad that is and not how saying shit like that about people leads to workplace discrimination and further perpetrates the idea that something is just wrong and sad about people with certain bodies.
You all can do better than this.
I’m not saying the word fat is inherently insulting. Just that our culture has decided it is. In the 80s and 90s when I was growing up it was drilled into our heads that referring to a fat person as fat is mean and one must use euphemisms. Of course, that’s insulting in and of itself and I’m sure thin people invented that to make themselves feel better. Our culture is slowly evolving away from the euphemisms thanks to the fat acceptance movement. That’s a good thing. It’s a slow process and hasn’t caught on everywhere yet though.
Me too. Even in my teens, it struck me as ironic that it was equally unacceptable to have naturally brown skin, or, if you were white, not to be tanned.
Only time I can recall being called fat by someone trying to insult me was a few years back: drunken creep trying to hit on me, then when I wasn’t interested and left (this was in a park in broad daylight), he yelled out that I had a fat arse.
I was thinking, “And? Do you have a point?” It was a feeble attempt at an insult, coming straight from the idea of fat being bad, and doubtless all that “Does my bum look big in this?” stuff women supposedly go in for.
BTW, has anyone here ever asked that? I sure don’t. Not being an Esher girl, I don’t see my bum or even think about its size, unless glorying in its misandric padding for hard chairs, muahahahaha!
I’ve never asked that, although I have asked if I should go up or down a size, and whether the colour suits – that sort of thing. I don’t look at my arse in clothing shops, the mirrors aren’t designed that way, anyways.
I tend to take a couple of sizes of whatever garment with me, if they’re available, cos clothes tags are notorious liars. 😛 Some shops have angle mirrors so you can see the back view, but I’m really only interested in the front; if any of my fat bits cause concern, it’s my floppy belly (thank you NAFLD). I don’t like the look of tops clinging to it, I like ’em to skim, and as for the ones that are too short and show the gut hanging out, nooooooooooooo!
I go on my own judgement with clothes; I don’t have anyone but Mr K to shop with, but I tend to ask him more about the line and if he thinks it’s flattering, rather than the colour.
Calling one “minor” sexual coercion and the other “severe” coercion is a way to avoid the fact that there are TWO (at least) offences involved in the severe classification. Anyone who knows anything about IPV that “hitting, holding down or using a weapon” can be used to hurt or to threaten in any interaction and for any purpose.
But why would you point that out to anyone? It’s not like they don’t know! It’s not like it’s any of your fucking business! So you want to go around, pointing out the obvious to someone, that they have failed to live up to modern standards of the appropriate size, that people are judging them for that every day, and you think that’s not rude? On what fucking planet?
The only difference I can see is that one method is deemed* “politer” than the other. But telling someone either way is fucking rude.
*by idiots who think that the exact content of the message is important.
There’s also (and I’m prolly repeating at least one person, but wottheheck) the matter that being fat is not automatically an issue. Fat doesn’t equal unhealthy, but even if it did, it’s still rude and stupid to bring the matter up with someone, especially a stranger.
No, they’re pretty much the same thing, except that the former is more passive-aggressive. I mean, why would you tell someone that? They know what they weigh. If you’re worried abou their health, well, diets don’t work in the long term. And being fat is much much less of a health issue than most people think.
It’s a bit like walking up to someone with a mole on their cheek and saying, “hey you’ve git a mole on your cheek!” It serves no purpose except to make that person feel more self-conscious.
And studies have shown that making people self-conscious about their weight is more likely to lead to weight gain than weight loss.
I can’t imagine a situation in which it would be helpful or appropriate for anyone (other than a person’s medical advisers) to make uninvited comments on a person’s weight.