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From time to time I like to check in on the Facebook page for A Voice for Men, to see how that eminent men’s human rights organization’s program to advance the human man rights of human men through badly designed and even more poorly conceived graphic “memes” is going.
Well, I can report that this program is going, and going, and going, a bit like a famous battery-powered bunny.
Looking through them today, I couldn’t help but notice the weird sexual undertones — and overtones — of many of the memes, and realized that, while none of the memes tell us much about the world, they do, in an altogehter accidental way, offer some pretty interesting insights into the ids of those making and “liking” them on Facebook.
You don’t have to be a trained psychoanalyst to see the not-very-well-hidden straight male sexual insecurities that lie behind a large number of AVFM’s memes — both the ones they create themselves and the others that seem to have arrived on the AVFM page after being forwarded via email from someone’s cranky misogynistic uncle. Let’s take a look at some of them.
1) AVFMers have apparently convinced themselves that the history of mankind is the story of nice guys being nice to snooty women who won’t date them.
2) The straight men who make up the bulk of AVFM’s audience are pretty much terrified of women.
3) A lot of these guys seem to really enjoy fantasizing about women being forced into crappy jobs and/or sex work.
4) One of AVFM’s meme makers, the fellow who goes by the name of “John Galt,” has trouble distinguishing between the real world and certain (perhaps unacknowledged) sexual fetishes he appears to be a little obsessed with.
5) Straight cis male AVFMers hate fat women who don’t please their boners, and are angry at feminists for convincing at least some fat women not to hate themselves.
6) These AVFMers evidently prefer women who are very young, very thin, and photoshopped into anatomically implausible proportions and positions. But they simultaneously hate these women for giving them boners.
8) AVFMers really, really hate male feminists — and pretty much every man who doesn’t hate and fear women like they dO — and not-very-subtly project their own sexual insecurities onto them.
9) They also really, really, really hate me.
But I think that’s probably because they’re jealous that I have that second pair of arms.
What really baffles me is that they think these sorts of images would ever convince anyone who wasn’t already predisposed to buy their bullshit to support them. I mean, they are just unfunny, uninspired, and outright offensive. Most average people who would see those images would just click on or laugh, not at the humor but at the person who created it.
The top one just makes me think they’d be a lot happier if they were honest enough with themselves to go hire a pro domme.
#6: … Where the fuck are her organs? O_o
The placement of the logo on that one suggests that the might be planning to disembowel that poor young woman anyway, so…
cassandrakitty: Make it a sexdoll domme they can rent, instead; I wouldn’t want to wish any of these scumbags on a real woman, even if the woman was getting paid for it.
As a history graduate, I would like to state for the record that history is neither Lincoln riding a bear (where the fuck did they study historiography?) nor nice guys failing to please women. IMO, history has always been about an attempt at progression and gain. Whether it was the greed of a tyrant, breaking free from oppression, inventions, or discovery of new lands (and conquering of pre existing countries) I’d say it’s one long story of people trying to achieve, give and get more than they already have.
Did these guys drop out of high school or something? Good grief.
There isn’t enough money in the world to get me alone in a room with one of these guys, that’s for sure.
But let’s be honest, we all had our reservations about that part of the “History of Feminism” where Lincoln rides a bear in holding an AR in one arm and the constitution in the other.
I hope the first image isn’t supposed to be a feminazi, because it’s more femicommie, or perhaps more Soviet-soldier’s-one-night-stand considering she’s wearing a peaked cap and a suit jacket, and flashing a little skin.
You’re right, it isn’t.
History is Lincoln riding a bear, brandishing an AK-47 and a half-empty IV bag.
Also, I wondered for a moment why they’d bother obscuring nipples, since that’s all they’re about: nipples with no strings attached; then I saw that David said it was slightly altered, and all was made … slightly less baffling.
Re; #1 If someone (male or female) ever tried to put their coat over a puddle for me to walk over, I’d ask them what the Hell was wrong with them, ruining a perfectly good coat like that? If the weather is such that there are puddles in the street, then I’m sensible enough to wear appropriate boots. I never understood that gesture as anything other than infantalising toward women. It’s like the putting women on a pedestal thing. Why would I want to sit on a pedestal? It has no back support or butt cushion and my feet would dangle. Also, it would quickly get boring and lonely. Didn’t pole sitting go out in the roaring 20’s?
MRAs complain about men being oppressed.
Yet they are apparently in a privileged enough position that they are able to look down their noses at fast food workers.
I think you’re supposed to stand on the pedestal, like a Greek statue in a museum.
I thought it looked like Lincoln was brandishing an IV bag, too. But the constitution does make more sense. Two anachronisms in one meme would be a bit much, even for AVFM.
Most of these are downright confusing, but really, what’s with the Lincoln riding a grizzly bear with a machine gun? How is that feminist history? I just don’t understand, even within the confines of their own stupidity this makes no sense.
Also, David, I’m impressed by your apparent Futurama cameo. Wonder why I can’t get in on that. Maybe I could voice one of the Decapodians.
Is putting a coat on a puddle for a woman to walk over something that has ever actually happened? I’ve never seen it anywhere but cartoons.
Not only would it ruin the coat, but the woman’s high heels would probably get caught in the fabric. I’d rather walk around a puddle than faceplant into mud and asphalt, personally.
Oh, dear Bootsy! Standing on a pedestal would be even worse! I’d get vertigo. Also, I have very large feet, so it would be easy for me to fall off!
Either way, it’s horribly insulting.
Also, I know anatomy is hard, but he’s not riding a bear. He is intersecting with a bear.
Apparently feminist history is strictly American. Because I hate to break this to men who are already suffering so terribly, but… my history lessons didn’t include anything about the American revolution. Not a blessed word. We did the Wars of the Roses and Cromwell.
The only American history I got at school was the New Deal. Not quite sure why, actually.
I thought the coat-puddle thing was, like, Raleigh with Elizabeth I, or something.
MGTOW: A man who understands that sexual attraction and intimacy are separate from financial obligation… The kind of man who has the courage and strength to live by it…
Confession time: I dated one of these jackasses, briefly. (Not briefly enough.) I was young and foolish, what can I say? The above quote is _totally_ accurate if you view it through the following lens.
We had been dating >3weeks, but he had somehow finagled his way into living with me, and I’m still not sure how. He was chronically unemployed. By that I mean he was unemployable because of the amount of pot that he smoked. (Seriously, you should not smell like pot after a full shower, but he exuded the smell in his fucking sweat!) He would go on long rants about evil ex-girlfriends and how they were only after his $moneyz and super-special sperm. I found out after ~5 weeks that he had a kid who was AT LEAST 5 years old, and he had never paid child support.
Whilst not working, he stole my debit card & bought a N64, a half-dozen games, and all the crappy porn he could carry home on the bus.
I tried to throw him out & he beat me up. The neighbor had to save my ass & the police got involved.
And then he told everyone what a horrible person I was for getting him arrested and breaking his fist with my face* and I lost an entire friend circle.
So yeah, MGTOW, to me, always means “I WILL ATTACH MYSELF TO YOU LIKE A LAMPREY AND STEAL FROM YOU, BECAUSE I AM A PIECE OF SHIT! CODDLE ME, FOR LADIEZ ARE EVIL! but totally not you, you aren’t like ~those other girls~ we have a special connection…”
*he actually denied ever having laid a hand on me, in spite of the police report, the hospital records, and the photos. shocker, eh?
/end overshare
Sorry, that crappy memeposter just made me all ‘splodey with anger.
Goddamn, I hate it when the MRAs just decide to use awesome stuff for their agenda. Like that picture of Lincoln is part of an entire series of paintings of presidents doing badass shit.
http://imgur.com/gallery/YG0Nt
ISTR that my AP US History textbook glossed over the George H W Bush administration in a way I didn’t like at the time, but damn if I can remember how.