More brilliant public relations work by the AVFM crew.
The top “meme,” posted on AVFM’s Facebook page, isn’t inexplicable in itself — I assume someone said to the meme-maker that by “criticizing” women he was doing the same thing feminists were doing by criticizing men, and this was meant as an enormous insult? It’s just inexplicable as a way to, you know, reach out to a broader audience beyond misogynist douchebags who think that the idea of ironing a woman in lingerie is inherently hilarious. But I guess that’s not really AVFM’s aim, is it?
Another one from the AVFM Facebook page:
Ah yes, I remember the chants at the last feminist demonstration I went to.
What do we want!?
Childsupprtagencies’protecting’childrendivorcecourtspolicearrests cheaperworkforcecontrolofeducationworkerprisonsdisposablesoldiers!
When do we want it?
Now?
Let’s just finish off this edition of inexplicable AVFM memes with this lovely submission from the AVFM forums, which is ostensibly about child abuse.
AVFM, proving critics of the Men’s Rights movement right pretty much every time they post a meme!
…you should be…
What is even the “men’s rights” angle here? Are they going to stop women and AFAB people from menstruating? Are they being oppressed by a bodily function that’s outside most people’s control?
Obviously we all know it’s just a cheap shot at women, but I’m wondering how they’d justify it as “totally not misogynist, just fighting for our rights” or whatever.
Maybe that’s what they’re referencing: women entering the workforce en masse and getting paid less has driven down the value of labor and made women more desirable employees than men (I actually hear this as an argument for why the wage gap couldn’t possibly exist: if women were cheaper, wouldn’t companies be hiring mostly women? They’re not, therefore the wage gap don’t real).
Yup. I don’t get why the fashion industry in particular is so into this kind of violent misogyny, but it seems to be a thing and it’s really fucking gross.
(And we haven’t even touched the number of “selfies” taken by drunken office dudes who think it the height of originality to drop their drawers and moon the photocopier.)
At a guess, the right to segregate women during PMS and menstruation, like they did in the Bronze Age and still do in some parts of the world. Having cramps and craving oranges(???) Off to the menstruation hut with you! Do not trouble real humans with your petty pains!
Yeah, that’s kind of a stumper when one’s knowledge of economics is entry-level, or informed mainly by libertarian ideology.
So remember how those guys on Fox responded to news about the first female UAE fighter pilot participating in military strikes against ISIL as having “boobs on the ground” and the other dude saying she probably couldn’t park the jet afterwards?
A veteran’s group has responded.
cloudiah, that is awesome. Thanks for posting it, it made my day!
Scantily clad woman is literally referred to as a thing to be acted upon by a well dressed man.
I mean, it’s not even remotely debatable that this is objectification..
Just wanted to point that out.
These guys all seem to accuse women and feminists of being greedy and driven only by love of money. But have they actually seen Mr. Paul “Live off of Ramen noodles,” Elam?
Also, does it burn their asses so much if a woman does a selfie? How does it endanger their wellbeing if some woman, drunk or not decides to take a self shot in a pub or something?
Delurking because I can read Russian and Polish. I looked the image up on Google as well – it’s on some walls in the Russian version of Facebook, but I couldn’t find exactly where it was, or I got tired of scrolling through pictures, so I don’t know if it has any commentary attached. I did also find it on a Polish site, which seems to just be like a Tumblr or a blog or something that posts weird news; the image was in the forums. The text on it said in Polish:
“Woman! (It’s not offensive to address someone this way in Polish, you could say the same to a man, but “Man,” obivi.) “Perhaps even right now you are playing the best role in a porno… in someone else’s fantasies.” So… yeah. Mostly it’s weird.
Why are these men so against supporting their own children?
I know a woman whose husband deserted her and her children. Why? Because “I didn’t sign up for this!” Yeah, see, he didn’t want children, so when he married the woman, he didn’t do contraception, had three kids with her, and then decided that he still didn’t want children, so he would just leave, and NOT pay child support, because he didn’t want to.
Really manly there, bro.
Dude. If you don’t want children, get a vasectomy. If you don’t want children with THIS woman, use a condom, every single time.
PUAs talk about how they like to go “bareback,” and risk the STDs and pregnancy, and then blame the woman for daring to have their children.
But I thought that real manly men provided for their families? Oh, but that’s only if they wanted it, in the first place. Not if a woman “trapped” them. Because it’s always the woman’s fault if she conceives, because she STOLE that sperm. They didn’t put it into her body willingly. Oh no!
So that’s why child support is evil, I suppose? You don’t like the mother, so the helpless children have to go hungry and homeless.
Oh, but don’t let a woman get a job that can actually pay to support herself and her children. Making a sufficient income to support a family is a MAN’S right. Any woman who doesn’t need a man to pay for “her” children is evil. But then again, any woman who sucks the money from a man to pay for “her” children is evil.
Urgh. Have to go vomit now.
What is it about MRHMRMRHMGTOWMENRNM that lends itself to word salad? You’d think at least one person involved would be able to help these people create an image with a well-defined message.
The comics, while more readable, are practically the definition of mansplaining.
Blrgh kitten time.
Oh, okay, I found what the Russian text is. It says: “Everything breaks down eventually: feelings, people, the iron. The iron, that especially upset me. I wasn’t expecting it.” Also, just… weird.
Oh, my gosh.
https://www.facebook.com/102001393188684/photos/a.392418540813633.89052.102001393188684/711213105600840/?type=1&relevant_count=1
Do they seriously think that rape is ACCIDENTAL?!
I should never read this stuff while I’m on antibiotics, I know. But it just sucks me back in.
https://www.facebook.com/102001393188684/photos/a.392418540813633.89052.102001393188684/711027115619439/?type=1&relevant_count=1
Riiiiiggghhhht. Women never had to fight to have access to their own children. Except when the law said that women couldn’t have access to their own children, because the children belonged to the father, EVEN if he was abusive, dangerous, and irresponsible. If a woman tried to run away from an abusive, dangerous and irresponsible man, she could leave, but she couldn’t take her children with her, as that would be “kidnapping.” Also, if she earned money, while she was trying to be safe from her abusive husband, that money belonged to him, and whatever she spent was “stealing.”
But a man could take the children and desert his wife, and that wasn’t considered kidnapping. He could force her to work, and take all the money to spend on himself, and leave her to starve, and that wasn’t considered stealing.
Look up the laws in Regency or Victorian England some time, dudes.
What’s with the big red ‘M’ in the background in the first one? Not that any of it makes any sense… Head hurts. Must think kittens, rabbits, yarn. Maybe numbats (silly name, adorable marsupial).
https://www.facebook.com/102001393188684/photos/a.392418540813633.89052.102001393188684/710069802381837/?type=1&relevant_count=1
BWAHAHAHAHHAAAAAA! OK, this is a good one, but I don’t think it means what they think it means.
Yeah, fishing isn’t just for manly men. Women are capable, too.
I suppose the guy who did it meant that because some women enjoy fishing (and the cleaning and gutting that goes along with it), that they are bloodthirsty harpies? But if a man fishes, and guts his fish, he’s NOT bloodthirsty? Or… It’s OK for a man to be a bloodthirsty fisherman, but not a woman? Or…
Really, wat?
Not sure to what you’re replying, exactly, but yes. A lot of dudes think that the majority of what is called “rape” these days is just some guy innocently doing his thing and accidentally stumbling over the obscure and indefinite line that separates consensual sex from rape.
I believe that is, if not the source, at least a source of their anxiety over “false rape accusations” and subsequent unlimited wells of support for dudes accused of rape. If rape is something that a guy can just stumble into, by chance, then it’s something that could happen to them also, at any time, and they would have no way to see it coming or prevent it from occurring. Hence: they can sympathize with dudes who have, in their imagination, suffered this unforeseeable and unpreventable tragedy (for the men, it’s a tragedy for the men).
@kittehserf – Ooooh! Nice yarn!
What are you going to make with it?
As a feminist, I regularly eat money and demand more police arrests and ‘disposable soldiers’. It’s really right at the heart of the whole movement. Well, that and stepping on babies.
In much more important news: kitteh, is that Crofter? I love that stuff. Made a pair of socks from it last month and I may have to start on another pair soon.
@Holytape
I vote for not high enough, because I’m off my pain meds for 10 days, while I take a course of antibiotics, and they don’t make sense to me, either.
Of course, pain befuddles the mind, too.
Then again, there’s a good chance the dudes who made the memes were high, soooooo…
Yeah, not high enough.
RE: cassandrakitty
The fashion industry in general, well, all I can say is that in this picture at least the woman doesn’t look dead.
I know, right? We used to clip high fashion pictures to put on our walls in high school, just because they were so eerie and WEIRD and we would spend hours staring at them, trying to figure out why people made the images that way and what it all meant.
We found this much more enjoyable than analyzing Shakespeare.
RE: Ken L.
For MRA who real are that and not just misogynist by another name,
They EXIST?
RE: katz
If anyone is wondering, that’s Valentina Tereshkova. She spent longer in space on her single mission than Americans had in total.
Thanks! I was going to ask, but you beat me to it.
RE: Bina
(And we haven’t even touched the number of “selfies” taken by drunken office dudes who think it the height of originality to drop their drawers and moon the photocopier.)
My least favorite selfies are those goddamn dick pics. At least I have this tumblr to soothe me.
It just confuses me and makes me mildly sad for the person asking it. Christina Hoff Sommers said it recently in a youtube video someone asked me to see because… Something something.
It’s actually a statement I have a hard time responding to because, well, what are you to say? I could launch into an explanation of how informational assymetries shape markets and how entrenched attitudes overrule strict rationalist revenue maximization yet the very fact that someone rolls out the “so why not just hire women, huh, gotcha!” sort of shows my odds of having that make sense are just near zero.
@cloudiah – re: the veterans protesting jerkiness on the news – YAAAAY!
Yeah, I’m not very articulate today, but I totally agree with what they said. Thanks for linking it.
@Fibinachi
In the United States, Ron and Rand Paul have said things, out loud, on TV, to the effect that civil rights legislation is unnecessary because: markets! It’s not just randoms who believe this, it’s also people with legislative influence.
@Policy of Madness
I was referring to the meme that compared women being upset with advice about how not to get raped, with being a good girl, and wearing her seatbelt, so as not to get killed.
This one hits me really hard, because I have been in three auto accidents (rear-end collisions, every one – totally not my fault), and am living a disabled life because of it. Yeah, I wore my seatbelt. Didn’t stop me from getting hit by a truck. It made the damage less than it would have been, but that’s all. It didn’t stop the drivers behind me from ramming into my car.
And guess what? Following all those contradictory “how not to get raped” rules don’t stop rapists from ramming into you, either. All it does is give you some sort of protection from jerks who want to blame it on you. IF you followed ALL the rules (did I mention they are contradictory?) then maybe they’ll allow it to be “legitimate rape,” or “rape rape” or “real rape,” and show you a tiny bit of sympathy. But it won’t stop the rape. Not. At. All.
And people still die while wearing seat belts, if the accident is severe enough. Seat belts mitigate the damage. They don’t stop it.
Accidents and rapes still happen. The thing is, if you rear-end someone and send them to a hospital, no one is going to say, “Well, what was she wearing? Was she out alone after dark?” or “She was totally asking for it!” Even accidental collisions are still considered to be the responsibility of the one who actually did the colliding. They don’t blame the victim for that. Why should they blame the victim for rape? Well, because the rape was totally NOT the fault of the rapist! It’s not like HE was the one behind the wheel. She shouldn’t have been wearing that short skirt. He couldn’t control himself! It was an accident!
And I’d like to know – if men are so incapable of controlling themselves when faced with a pretty woman in a mini-skirt (or t-shirt and jeans, or sweats, or whatever the victim is wearing), WHY are they considered the superior sex, who are sooooo much smarter, and stronger, and more logical, and less emotional, and should clearly be in charge of running the whole world?
And then they blame wars on women. Because we somehow forced the men (who can’t control their violent impulses, remember?) to fight each other, in order to impress us, so we would willingly spread our legs for them, rather than forcing them to take us without our consent, because men have needs.
Or something.
I really don’t understand their “logic.”