A Voice for Men’s ongoing campaign to convince the world that “Men’s Human Rights Activists” are a bunch of petty, malicious, sexually insecure douchenozzles continues apace.
I mean, that must be what they’re really up to, right? Because no one who actually had any real interest in human rights of any kind would produce “memes” like the one above and all the rest below, delivered to your eyes straight from AVFM’s Fcebook page.
At their best, AVFM’s memes are merely baffling …
… or ridiculous.
AVFM also loves appropriating the images of famous people, and pretending that these people are somehow on their side. But their choices of imaginary celebrity endorsers can be a bit, well, ironic. A couple of days ago in one of my posts on the iconography of the “Cultural Marxism” conspiracy theorists, I posted a neo-Nazi meme showing a crudely photoshopped picture of Star Trek’s Kirk and Spock endorsing Adolph Hitler — a rather odd conceit, given that William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy are both Jewish, and that the original Star Trek series promoted tolerance and a very 60s-liberal sort of multiculturalism.
Well, here’s AVFM’s attempt to make Spock an MRA:
Dudes, hate to break it to you, but Nimoy is actually a … feminist. Really. In the 60s he demanded that Star Trek’s producers pay actress Nichele Nichols the same as her male counterparts on the show. And as a photographer today, Nimoy acknowleges that he is heavily influenced by feminism, partiularly the writings of Jewish feminist Letty Cottin Pogrebin, one of the founders of Ms. magazine.
So that’s not really his “listening to feminism face” at all.
An astonishing number of AVFM’s memes are so sexualized that they are more or less soft-core porn. Even their anti-male-rape memes, ostensibly attempts to raise consciousness about the rape of men by women, feature seductive, scantily clad women, undermining whatever message they are supposed to be getting across.
But the most, er, revealing memes are the ones that hint at deep sexual insecurities on the part of the meme makers and those who “like” them on Facebook. (The images that follow are mildly NSFW.)
This meme, for example, actually features the dreaded vagina dentata:
[slightly risque meme removed]
And this one attempts to shame male feminists by suggesting they enjoy being penetrated, an act that’s really only “shameful” if you have some rather fucked-up notions of what is and what isn’t appropriate male sexuality. And a certain degress of hatred and fear of female sexual agency.
[slightly risque meme removed]
AVFM meme-maker John Galt also continues to be weirdly obsessed by me.
And then there’s this lovely meme, intended as a joke at the expense of a feminist activist who’s been on AVFM’s enemies list ever since she told some AVFM dudes to shut up at a demonstration several years ago. (I’ve crossed out her face, because no one really deserves to be made into an AVFM meme.)
[slightly risque meme removed]
The joke is obviously supposed to be at her expense, suggesting that she is so unattractive that she makes penises wilt. But you don’t have to be Sigmund Freud to realize that this isn’t the real story here. This is a woman demonized by AVFM and other antifeminists because once, several years ago, she shouted down some dudes. It’s not her appearance that frightens their penises; it’s the fact that she wouldn’t put up with their bullshit.
Guys, you’re not fooling anyone, except yourselves.
@guest No negative results so far, but none of the positive promises the tories gave when panicked either. I think it is due to most people being too young to remember how they ‘forgot’ promises they made in the last referendum.
I’d like an independant yorkshire in alliance with an Indy Scotland. We have much more in common than either of us have with London.
I live in the south of England, so I have no stake or interest in the whole independent Scotland thing, but wouldn’t an allied independent Scotland Yorkshire (Scotshire? Scorkshire?) be a bit awkward for the counties in between?
Not necessarily…. Yorkshire (current borders–sorry Alan!) is bigger than Vatican City and smaller than Lesotho, so not entirely unprecedented.
Actually, I’m gonna go further. “Feminism”, as far as I can tell, is perfect, which is to say, its premises are perfectly correct. These, for the benefit of trolls coming by, are twofold:
1: “Women are people, too.” Women deserve to be treated as the equals of men in all fields, including socially, professionally and legally, as well as any other arenas you’d care to come up with.
2: “We ain’t there yet.” Due to a combination of (relatively easily identified) formal systems and (much trickier) informal systems, collectively called “the patriarchy”, women are not currently treated in an equal fashion. That the patriarchy sometimes benefits some women (at the cost of others) or works to the detriment of some men (usually to the benefit of other men) does not invalidate the fact that these systems are all part of a collective societal state of being.
Now, some feminists are not perfect–since feminists are people, it would actually be rather impressive if any were truly perfect. Sometimes personal issues come to the fore and interfere in the work; sometimes the way forward isn’t even clear, and so there are sincere issues of dispute within the movement (easy example: how to address sex work in general).
However, this is different from anti-feminists who are horrible people, because anti-feminists are already working from faulty premises. When an anti-feminist gets something right (say, opposing cosmetic male infant circumcision), it’s not because of their initial premises, but rather, in spite of them.
Yeah, no. That dude was on a team that discovered the comet.
He wore an inappropriate shirt. He was called out on it. He apologized.
And MRAs like you felt so threatened by that they got hysterical. Excuse me. Testerical.
He didn’t actually ‘discover’ anything, he worked on a team that landed a machine on a comet. If you want to talk about people who discovered comets, by themselves, you might look here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_Herschel
Wouldn’t it have been great if someone had worn a shirt with her image on it?
Feminism hasn’t focused on anything important in the last 15 years? Are you American? Did you just miss Sandra Fluke, the ACA, the successive waves of abortion restrictions, and Hobby Lobby? Did you miss the support for Melissa Alexander? Does Wendy Davis not count as a feminist? Did you miss how even some of your feminist bogeymen, like Anita Sarkeesian, received credible threats to their safety just for having opinions while female?
Maybe if you didn’t get all your information on feminism from antifeminists, you wouldn’t be so fucking ignorant.
Probably the former. But what do I know? I just listen to other women when they talk about their experiences – I don’t have your manly “common sense” feels to guide me.
Yeah, when someone wants you to be angry about a quote, and the quote is full of ellipses like that one was, shouldn’t that at least make you curious about the full quote? Critical reading and critical thinking: you’d think a member of the More Logical Sex would be able to apply them.
Yeah, even with stuff like Dworkin’s comments about hetero sex, the quotes being mined come after pages and pages of reasoning and explaining definitions and so on. They’re not meant to summarize the author’s views on x and y; they’re part of much larger arguments.
Funnily enough, I think this is one claim that can be traced back to Sex And The City. Now, why so many men assume that a handful of fictional women speak for all real women is another question entirely, but it does help explain the MRAs’ irrational fixation on that show.
Even if it were true that feminism is rife with man-hate……. it’s not doing a very good job of oppressing men. Men have virtually all the world’s assets and power just like they did before feminism.
Circumcision is stupid. Harming or removing healthy tissue without the express desire and consent of the person it’s being done to is fundamentally wrong.
Now let’s stop pretending it has anything else in common with FGM. One is illegal because it’s vastly more harmful and the other was believed to have health benefits so of course it was available legally. Circumcision isn’t the norm in the US because men are disadvantaged. It’s the norm because people thought it was medically beneficial and are now unfamiliar with the alternative.
It’s also the norm because, in addition to the alleged hygiene benefits (which are almost nil in the West–they’re more prevalent if you go to countries without an abundance of running water), it was believed that circumcision would prevent young boys from masturbating.
Yeah, that’d be an interesting study to perform, but I seriously doubt there’s a significant difference there. But in Kellogg’s era, ‘self-harm’ was still one of the dominant euphemisms for pleasuring yourself.
@guest
D’oh! Yes, of course. How quickly I forget.
.
I will admit to finding circumcised penii more aesthetically pleasing than non-circumcised ones.
And so what? I oppose circumcision, unless there’s a damn good medical reason for it. I don’t imagine for a minute that my subjective feels about other people’s naughty bits are more important than their bodily autonomy or a baby’s right to not be mutilated for no good goddamn reason.
Probably a lot of gay men of my generation feel the same way. Who cares what some people think looks better? That’s not important. It’s certainly not the reason boys were routinely circumcised throughout most of the 20th century.
I prefer the whole thing but, when I’m with a dude who was circumcised, I don’t refer to his penis as “mutilated cock meat”. Jesus.
Finally caught up! And I need to point out that some of those quotes came from some pretty messed up feminists who’d be more than happy to see trans
peoplewomen cease to exist. So I can quite safely say that yep, they’re idiots I don’t agree with. But, you know, there is that small matter of that having been, oh, 40 years ago? (Yes, it’s been that long since the 70s)Question for the regulars, is it still okay to call someone a TERf or is that a bad word around here now? I didn’t catch enough of the latest flair up to be sure one that one?
Also, PUPPY CAM!!
Ugh. The “male infant circ TOTALLY IS EXACTLY LIKE FGM” argument. So fun… NOT.
I grew up in a non-circ household, and despite strict hygienic routines, most of my six brothers ended up having significant problems with the foreskin fusing closed and having to be (literally) ripped back. Multiple times. At an age when they most definitely could remember it happening. One of them got infected so badly he had to have an emergency circ.
Fast forward to me having boys of my own, and I chose circ because I never, ever wanted my boys to suffer that kind of pain at age 1,4,6,8…. Was it the right choice? I don’t know! The cult I was raised in was sooo messed up – anti-vaxx, home birth even if it kills you, rampant sexual abuse of the children, dragging girls around by their hair to get the demons out – I could write a book.
Maybe my brothers’ problems were connected to the sexual abuse. Maybe it was something else. I don’t know if I made the right decision because I’ll never have all the facts behind my poor siblings’ pain and fear, all I knew at the time (only 3.5 short years out of the cult and woefully ignorant about EVERYTHING) was I didn’t want my sons to suffer. So I tried to make the best decision for them I could, out of love for them, and naturally it was presented as a health option by the doctor (who, despite the MRAs, was not, I believe, seeking solely to line his own pockets by “mutilating” my child!)
That said, I’m not “pro-circ” when it comes to IMC! I’m very definitely anti- FGM, though, and it makes me insane when it is conflated to mean the same thing. On the one hand, Kellogg aside, today most parents who choose circ for their sons do it out of love – whether they have been told it is a health issue, or because they don’t want their kid being made to feel ashamed, self conscious, etc – not saying it’s a right decision, but that’s where most parents are coming from.
I’ve heard all the “twenty thousand nerve ending wahhhh” and I’m sorry for men who feel they were robbed, but the standard attack on IMC is to compare it to FGM and accuse parents of child mutilation. Which achieves NOTHING. Mad because PLanned Parenthood sponsored a local informational session on IMC at your hospital? Create a presentation about NOT circing and put on your own show. Educate those who have yet to make the decision, instead of (A) after-the-fact crucifixion of parents who were in no way trying to harm their kid and (B) a campaign to make circed men feel “mutilated” to fuel rage in them. That’s just counter productive.
As for IMC being equal to FGM – hell, just look at the intent, for starters: to ensure sex is so painful a woman will never willingly have it and thus will only have it when her husband *cough owner cough* rapes her. It destroys any chance of sexual pleasure, and often leads to a short life full of pain and infection ending in death at childbirth. Not quite what happens when IMC is performed…
I have absolutely NO issue with a movement that seeks to educate parents-to-be and to encourage leaving male boys intact. But they really don’t seem to understand that they are going about presenting their point in the worst possible way.
Sorry for the long post, I was in a huge FB argument over it the other day, and I was primed, LOL
“Mutilated cock meat” makes me think of roadkill poultry.
“Why did the rooster run across the road?”
“Who cares, let’s take it home.”
So where can I buy the knickers with the teeth on them??
LOL “bina” said something to the effect of “no I won’t have sex with you.” I never asked ANYONE on here to have sex, nor did I insinuate that I had problems with women, was circumcised and had a problem with it, was an mra, watched a ton of tv or porn, or any of the other presumptuous things you all have thrown at me.
You all made up these things up in your own minds lol.
I never compared circumcision to fgm. I CONTRASTED it. I said that it is illegal in the U.S. (as it SHOULD be, of course), yet male circumcision is standard operating medical procedure. You guys/gals are fuckin’ mean lol.
I think that the main problem here in America is that rich Republican bastards try to fuck with everyone’s lives, regardless of gender, sexuality, ideology, race or religion. No “ism” will ever change that. We gotta elect someone like Bernie Sanders for president, get republicans out of congress and stop worrying about trite, trivial, first world grievances. Y’know, like the shirts men wear, the porn men “tend to watch,” media portrayals of women in magazines, movies, video games, and porn, etc.
Duerstisms needs his nappie changed again.
No you didn’t… MRAs cannot have Bernie Sanders! I really didn’t give a fuck that dude here was being a pain, because fuck it, you guys got this, but using Bernie Fucking Sanders to further your agenda? Well, now I have to comment, if only to say…
Regulars, lurkers, and other sensible people: odds are you’ll like Sanders’ politics, if you don’t already. So don’t let Mr. -isms Divide Us bias you against Sanders, go google him.
I bet you’d be pleased to know that i support a woman’s right to choose, infinite access to birth control, affirmative action for women, anti gender/race discrimination laws for the workplace, banning christian “conversion therapy” against gays/trans people…
fuck i’d practically BE a fem if their movement wasn’t so rife with hysterical bullshit…
I also think catcalling of women on the street is one of the most disgusting things you can do to someone, NO ONE is entitled to sex regardless of how much of a “nice guy” they are, and DON’T adhere to the binary gender norms unfairly dumped on us by our parents, pastors, teachers, bosses and administrators.
Still wanna call me an MRA?
“hysterical”
Bernie Sanders would never agree that male privilege is something “hysterical” feminists made up. “But I’m a progressive” does not mean you are exempt from misogyny.
Yet ANOTHER strawman! lol.
I do agree that there are some slight advantages that men have that women don’t, but there are also some advantages that WOMEN have that men don’t. I believe that most of the social disadvantages in our society are mostly due to things like class and race.
Does this sound like someone who doesn’t believe in male privilege?
http://vtdigger.org/2012/03/01/bernie-sanders-statement-on-womens-health-care/