The unquestioned king of A Voice for Men’s crew of meme-makers is the mysterious fellow known only as John Galt. Galt, whose contributions are often chosen as AVFM’s “meme of the week” and posted to AVFM’s Facebook page, is truly the meme-maker AVFM deserves — a graphic designer whose graphically challenged photoshopped masterpieces are as baffling as they are offensive.
I highlighted several of his, er, designs in my recent post on Inexplicable AVFM Memes. Today, I’d like to delve further into the photoshop disasters that fill his own Facebook page, some of them official AVFM memes and others posted under his own fake name.
But first, a little introduction to Mr. Galt, as found on his blog.
I live and work in the UK, am a physically fit man in his mid thirties currently studying Computer Science and Mathematics. … I, like most men I know have dated on and off for the past 20 years or so and from my experiences I have come to realize as, no doubt many of you have that there is a deep sickness in our society in regards to how men are treated. …
With a 50 billion dollar divorce industry, sex sold as some sort of priceless resource and victim hood sold to a nanny state as the only valid form of currency it is evident that Men must protect their independence and freedom more vigilantly than ever.
The price, for failing to see what is essentially a fairy tale lie is higher than it has ever been. That price is paid to governments and businesses who profit from the misery of destroyed families, men and women with tax rates and laws that only ever increase. It is paid to greedy women and feminists who demand one sided equality while forcing men to shoulder responsibilities with none of the inherent rights associated with
Sorry, I nodded off for a second.
These fascist lies permeate everywhere from the destruction of Masculine Roles to the ignorance of sex differences in medic
Oh fucking hell he goes on like this for several hundred more words. You can go read it if you like.
Anyway, he ends with a question:
What are you going to do about it?.
Longtime readers of this blog will no doubt notice that Mr. Galt ends his sentence with a new variation on the famous MRA two-dot ellipsis, which I think we can call the Galtian MRA Question Period.
Galt has answered his own Question Period with an ever-growing collection of terrible, terrible memes. So let’s take a look!
There’s this inexplicable homage to a 24-year-old song by MC Hammer.
And this conspiratorial take on “the pill.”
Apparently feminism was writing nursery rhymes in the early 19th century:
Hey ladies! Get on the feminist gravy train!
Apparently feminists want everyone to live in tents, which supposedly look like … vaginas?
Apparently the true cause of erectile dysfunction is … nagging?
I’m not sure what’s the most offensive thing about this one — the comparision of feminism to a nuclear weapon or Mr. Galt’s egregious typo.
![There are only [] words in this poster. And one of them is misspelled.](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/1512277_283830341778156_2363545253799813839_n.jpg?resize=541%2C720&ssl=1)
Honestly, I don’t think Mr. Galt needs a Men’s Rights movement to solve his problems. I think he might just need to hire a dominatrix. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
I’ve just scratched the surface of Mr. Galt’s graphic work. I may have to return to him in a future post.
Also re:Piers Anthony – I read him a lot when I was younger and even corresponded with him while I was in college. It wasn’t until I actually picked up some of the stuff to re-read that I realized how icky some of it was. I mean, the “Crowley’s only gay because he’s scared of vaginas and once he has sex becomes totally straight” thing from Tarot bothered me immediately but I somehow edited out most of the really bad stuff.
I never read the Xanth books though.
RE: contrapangloss
I like her elemental master’s series
Miranda loves the Fire Rose! We didn’t make it too far through the other books, though; Lackey just isn’t our thing, it seems.
RE: proxieme
I’m sorry about your family and I hope to see your goal come to fruition.
Well, I seem to be making good strides on that front, so I feel pretty good!
And yeah, people mostly held off on their bullshit about our (percieved) sexual orientation until sixth grade, at which point it came down like a sack of bricks. All I can say is, try your best and be supportive.
RE: maistrechat
I never read the Xanth books though.
This was a very wise decision and you should be proud of yourself. (Seriously, I think we owned almost twenty of those books as kids.)
Okay, book recommendations – please notice that I am male, and most of the protagonists are male):
Nick Harkaway – The Goneaway World (Angelmaker is also pretty good, Tigerman less so)
http://www.amazon.com/Gone-Away-World-Vintage-Contemporaries/dp/0307389073/ref=la_B001JRYSH4_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1412285582&sr=1-2
A post-apocalyptic tale featuring ninjas, mimes, the offensive uses of tupperware and the defensive uses of sheep. Also notable for having one huge twist in the middle that changes EVERYTHING you thought you were reading.
Joe Abercrombie – First Law series
http://www.amazon.com/Blade-Itself-First-Law-Book/dp/159102594X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1412285720&sr=1-1&keywords=joe+abercrombie
Nasty gritty fantasy that should appeal to those that liked _The Black Company_. What would have happened in The Lord of the Rings if Gandalf had been a massive asshole?…
Charles Stross – the Laundry series
http://www.amazon.com/Atrocity-Archives-Laundry-Files-Novel/dp/0441016685/ref=la_B001H6IW0Q_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1412285936&sr=1-3
Dilbert meets Lovecraft as British spies battle their expense accounts, office politics, and soulsucking demons from other dimensions. Unreliable narrator and occasionally annoying male lead, but the upcoming next book will feature a female protagonist (in which Mo starts the UK’s first superhero team).
Daniel Abraham – Dagger and Coin series
http://www.amazon.com/Kings-Blood-Dagger-Coin/dp/0316080772/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1412286294&sr=1-3&keywords=dagger+and+coin
Superior to Name of Wind series, in my opinion. Features both male and female protagonists, ancients wars coming back to life, a wholly human and sympathetic but villainous villain (actually, pretty much a “Nice Guy” given too much power), a neat twist on the eldritch enemy idea, and shows people fighting with economics and/or writing letters.
(Comment in mod – amazon links are weird)
I’m just now realizing how many good books there are with awesome girls and women as protagonists. Warm fuzzies are abounding.
There are also a ton of good books with guy protagonists, and I love those too! But…
This thread has made me happy.
I loved the Tamora Pierce books because of this. 🙂
Dude, so is everything.
Gone-Away World is truly the spiritual successor to The Name of the Wind in that it’s the new book that everyone is constantly telling you that you must read, but that turns out to be so overrated that it needs to be plotted on a log scale.
There is some fantastic stuff to look forward to on the YA front next year.
Elizabeth Wein is releasing her new book, Black Dove, White Raven. Lady pilots and race relations in interbellum Ethiopia. Will it break you like Code Name Verity did? Is Elizabeth Wein an endless fount of awesome airplane books? We shall see.
And at long last we get Stacey Lee’s debut, Under a Painted Sky. A Chinese girl and a runaway slave are road tripping on the Oregon Trail and Stacey is patiently explaining to everyone that, yes, there were Chinese people in America in the 19th century. (Stacey, incidentally, didn’t go for my novel at all, but that’s neither here nor there.)
katz: Dude, so is everything.
Comment made because Name was mentioned above.
Gone-Away World is truly the spiritual successor to The Name of the Wind in that it’s the new book that everyone is constantly telling you that you must read, but that turns out to be so overrated that it needs to be plotted on a log scale.
Haven’t seen your recommendations yet. Is this the point where you break out ponderous philosophical crap written by dead men in different languages so you can sneer at everyone else?
Uh, Phonecian.
Look up. Recs there for future reading opportunities. Okay, so more of a behind the scenes proof-reader/author who knows publishers type rec. Both of them look pretty interesting, regardless.
We all have different tastes, though.
Speaking of philosophical crud written by dead men in different languages, I still love Candide. Despite, well, everything.
Voltaire, you are a glorious weasel beyond all compare.
The Prince is also good. I think we discussed that to death in a different thread though.
Moby Dick was way over-rated, but that was written in English. Dude, if you spend an entire chapter on mustaches, you might have a problem.
Aw, I like Moby-Dick. But yeah, sometimes Melville chose to write about things that were…less than relevant.
I don’t remember the mustache chapter though. Might need to take another look.
I exaggerated a little. He was introducing some character early on in the book, and kept going on and on about this dude’s cheeks and facial hair. It was years ago, so time has only inflated the annoyance.
Best way to annoy high-school freshman me: go on and on about facial hair in a book about whales.
I decided to read through Bruce Coville’s Unicorn series, mostly out of affection for Coville than any liking for unicorns.
So glad I gave it a shot! The first couple books were… enh. But book three, it just blasted off into the land of epic, and it’s been awesome from there on out! (And book three is as long as the first two books together. Book four is even longer.) I normally don’t like epic fantasies, but I’m loving this one.
I KNEW I COULD COUNT ON YOU BRUCE COVILLE FORGIVE MY DOUBT
Watchdog and the Coyotes by Coville: One of my most fond childhood book memories.
Monster Road by David Lubar is also awesome.
LBT: Someone sold you on a series about unicorns? That is indeed high praise.
Look up. Recs there for future reading opportunities.
Didn’t see them – just you dissing Rand and Jean Auel (which, mind you, is not a bad thing to do). Can you repost your recs?
I had a classmate in college whose ambition was to travel back in time to become Voltaire’s lover.
RE: contrapangloss
Watchdog and the Coyotes by Coville
I can’t believe it. I have never heard of those books. *goes to check* Oh, that’s because they’re not by Coville; they’re by Bill Wallace. I was going to say, I thought I knew almost everything Coville had ever written!
RE: katz
Someone sold you on a series about unicorns? That is indeed high praise.
I know, right? I HATE unicorns. I hate them with all my twisted, miserable soul. And not gonna lie, for the first couple books, that’s how I felt about the Unicorn Chronicles. And then Coville came up with a brilliant explanation for why the unicorns were so goshdarn wonderful and why anyone would want to kill them, and I remembered why Coville is one of my beloved writers, past and present.
RE: Phoenician
Can you repost your recs?
Dude, they’re litterally RIGHT THERE in the comment she made above your sarcastic retort admitting you didn’t read her own comment. Come on, don’t be a butt.
LBT, whoops. Is collvile still bunnicul? Or are all my childhood memories lies?
Bunnicula. Autocorrect, stop.
The trouble with Gone-Away World was that Harkaway has some interesting ideas, but is completely lost in them. He’s not controlling the narrative, so it wanders, sometimes strongly supporting his points and sometimes working in opposition to them. (The stylistic nature of the world-building works in the second half, for instance, but in the first half it just serves to make the second half less punchy when it happens.)
Same goes for the narrative. He can write really nice prose, but he also gets lost in massive garden-path sentences. And the overall tone oscillates from goofy and farcical to gritty and post-apocalyptic without any logical attempt to square the two.
Nope. Bunnicula is Howe. Okay, no one ever trust be on author’s names for kid books, ever again.
Phonecian… I’m pretty sure I don’t look like Katz. Are you sure you didn’t skip an entire page of comments or something? And aed the comment directly above yours?
The Bunnicula series holds the distinction of the best title I’ve ever heard: The Celery Stalks at Midnight.
My childhood authors who have withstood the test of time (AKA not Piers Anthony):
Roald Dahl (actually was our first exposure to the concept of child abuse, and that parents are not necessarily looking out for you)
Bruce Coville (our first exposure to queerness, and bi himself!)
Gail Carson Levine (wow, that curse of obedience, plus writing of dragons who purposely conceal their genders and behave in a mix of roles)
Patricia Wrede (so 90s, but such wonderful fractured fairy tales)
Spider Robinson (our first exposure to drugs and poly that wasn’t “never do that!”)
James Herriot (blood and guts was never so sweet and life-affirming)
There are a lot of writers I’ve found and liked since, but these are the ones who were with us from elementary school on.