That last post was a bit, well, grim. So I thought I’d lighten the mood with some terrible, terrible memes from A Voice for Men’s Facebook page. They’re so Men’s Human Rightsy that you can practically smell the human rights wafting off of them!
Or could that be the powerful and obnoxious odor of mendacity?
Either way, enjoy! For a fun game, see how many different examples of ideas that do not actually enhance human rights you can find in the memes below! For example, I found both misogyny and transphobia! See what else you can find!
This last one is kind of my favorite. Fuck you, mom! I took out the garbage last week!
Well, it’s pretty clear they have “mother issues”.
Why would you have a picture of a macho dude working on a machine in a meme trying to argue that the industrial revolution helped women? Wouldn’t you picture an example of a way in which women were helped?
The first one reminds me so much of 19th Century primary documents written by colonial administrators in India and Africa.. Also, justifications for slavery in the antebellum south.
“We’ve brought these people civilization purely out of the goodness of our hearts! We feed them/clothe them/give them work to do! Why do they resist/run away/kill us?”
Oh yeah, the whole slavery/exploitation thing.
MRAs really have no conception of history.
Jackasses.
I find that last one to be particularly ironic in light of the histrionics over the #endfathersday hashtag–which turned out to be a 4chan hoax.
@kirbywarp: That’s clearly hair metal she’s playing there.
@Falconer:
Now I wish that was a real thing.
I also wish I could draw, so I could visualize some of the mangled metaphor in their text memes. Particularly, a super over-the-top image of a woman on a pedestal surrounded by suffering and wailing men, and the hand of Dworkin reaching through the clouds to lift the woman up higher.
If gender is a social construct, then it is constructed “socially,” by society. That doesn’t mean you can freely choose. Castes are social constructs as well, but you don’t choose which caste society puts you in.
MRA Logic: Not quite as logicky as MRAs think.
Also, isn’t the whole “historical male innovation” thing basically the apex fallacy; claiming that men are innovators because a certain number of men were prominent innovators?
AVFM and the men on that facebook page most likely didn’t break their backs for anyone. It pisses me off so much when people try to credit for other people’s accomplishments.
Do they want women to bow down to them or what?
“Oh thank you man on facebook for the guys that worked in a factory years ago even though you weren’t there”
no I appreciate the men that have done great things but I will not thank every single man in the world.
I can’t help boggling at the “You made us believe” line about “purity” and perfection and how not living up to that is letting men down. This is just bizarre. It sounds like it was written by a man who hasn’t stopped crying since he found out girls really do poop.
Men whose backs are not actually broken and who are in no way put upon by women not being “All that is good in the world” are complaining of what here? Exactly what is the grievous injury done to men by women not being what they want them to be (perfect) and dedicating their lives to making these men happy? How is a human being “pure” exactly? Is this his gross way of describing chastity? So, he’s sad that women are having sex with people who aren’t him. That’s “turning on” men? That’s deceiving them?
Also, How are feminists responsible for patriarchal ideals of women? Where are the feminists that support the idea that women need to be “pure”? Feminists are the only women MRAs say they are actively against. So, the deceitful, non-perfect women in this proudly displayed AVfM poster are feminists, right? This make sense how?
How do these people even string these poorly thought out whines together, much less think they should share them with the world? I don’t even…
How did women make these men believe they were “all that is good in the world”? That’s a really stupid thing to believe. If you see women as fully human, that’s not even a possible thing to believe. I don’t know where this poor disappointed man got this impression. It’s cartoonish.
These are the people claiming feminists are “playing the victim”.
This would be so funny, if they weren’t dead serious.
For a bunch of guys who think a person can get away with anything by “playing the victim”, they really suck at playing the victim.
Saying the industrial revolution did more for women than feminism ever did is like saying that some dude hammering together a ballot box was all it took to give us the vote. Or that boxing gloves have done more to fend off sexual assault than any legislation making it off-limits. Or some such other silly shit.
But then again, this is the MRBM. They don’t have to make sense, they just have to thump their chests and pontificate, and we will all automatically bow to their superior ManLogic™.
Because REASONS.
>snurk<
Ask any feminist if all women are perfect. Seriously, ask. Has anyone asked? Yeah, I know, that’s a rhetorical question. What MRAs fail to realize is feminists saying “No woman ever asks for or deserved to be raped” =/= “All women are perfect and wonderful and I would totally leave my children alone with any of them, including Karla Homolka.”
I laughed too hard.
LOL…I’ve long thought as much myself. And I suppose the spread legs are supposed to look defiant and intimidating. Like, “Bow down before the Power of my Almighty DONG!”, or some such.
Personally, though, I think it looks much more like the legs of a toddler wearing a loaded diaper. Which is far more fitting.
Yay, the Industrial Revolution! Children and women and men working 16 hour days in appalling conditions for paltry wages! THANKS, MRAS!!
(What’s that you say? The MRAs responsible for silly memes like this aren’t actually personally responsible for the Industrial Revolution? Oh well I guess they should stop patting themselves on the back, then.)
Dear AVfWoman-haters,
The industrial revolution only led to women being liberated via the advent of the oral contraceptive pill. Before that, women couldn’t really participate in said revolution due to not having control over their own bodies (and I’m sure the atheist man-logickers in the MRA would be pleased to know that their next counter-argument, “if they didn’t want to have kids they could’ve just shut their legs!” is exactly the same one used by religious leaders to justify all kinds of regressive bullshit).
As the oral contraceptive pill is used by 90-99% of women, depending on which stats you use, and this has allowed two to three generations of women to make their own decisions about if, when, and for how long to raise children, not to mention the countless unwanted kids that men would’ve been paying child support for without the OCP, I think you might be misattributing the source of women’s liberation economically (being able to plan a career path based around controlling their fertility kinda trumps having access to jobs they couldn’t stay in).
Aaaaand as for it being a male invention, so what? That means that men contributed to something they didn’t benefit from directly (but benefited a hell of a lot from indirectly) and created what economist Ross Gittins regards as one of the biggest economic revolutions of the modern era.
So kindly cram your “we created the Industrial Revolution for you, so STFU laydiez” bullshit.
…And at this point, I’m just kinda like, “Yes. That’s right. Feminists are going to kill you in your sleep. Feminists are just like Freddy Krueger.”
Golly, so many fails: design, content, wording, message… Is there no start to the meme-making talents of the MRA?
This “we can kill you in your sleep” business is pretty weird. In theory, anyone could kill anyone in their sleep, or have a jolly good try.
Which is probably why people by and large prefer to sleep with people that they trust not to kill them.
Ah… I get it! MRAs don’t trust women not to kill them in their sleep but want to sleep with them anyway.
Also, what Lea said about that “You made us believe you were innocent, pure….” one.
That is some load, right there.
“We” made you believe that? Who’s “we,” dude? Feminists? No, feminists have always spoken out against ridiculous demeaning dehumanizing bullshit like that (and yes, it is dehumanizing, even if it’s superficially flattering.)
But misogyny sparked by a man or men figuring out that women aren’t pure, innocent, perfectly lovely (and harmless) beings is a Thing, one that goes way back. Octave Mirbeau’s Torture Garden expresses it clearly–the narrator knew a Bad Woman, so now he thinks All Women are evil and destructive.
Women can’t just be people, individuals with complex personalities who differ one from another as much as men do. No, we have to be some man’s ideal.
It’s a version of the Madonna/Whore complex. No woman is really a Madonna–therefore they must all be “whores.” Because there isn’t anything else, right? For women to be?
This stupid myth that “feminism = wanting women to be worshipped and men to be abased” needs to die of obscurity.
No. Putting women on a pedestal is just as bad as saying they belong in the kitchen.
I think it was someone here (might’ve been a different feminist blog) who aptly summed it up in saying that a pedestal is a horribly restrictive place with no freedom to move, and high enough that when you inevitably fall off – because you’re not perfect – you get hurt.
A friend of mine once schooled me on this when I made a joke about her being out of her (then-)boyfriend’s league.
This is a complete misunderstanding of what a social construct even is. Just because an identity is socially constructed doesn’t mean it’s chosen with the same ease that people choose between red and blue shirts.
I mean, is it that hard to understand that socially constructed are literally imposed on society? There is no choice involved.
There should be a commemorative plate celebrating the awfulness of these memes