Pity the poor MRA meme-makers. It’s hard for them to find real-world images to illustrate their deeply held belief that women in general (and feminists in particular) secretly or not-so-secretly run the world.
Indeed, there seems to be a lot of photographic evidence that supports a rather different conclusion about women and power. Do women run the US congress? Nope.
The Supreme Court? Nope. (Dudes circled for easy reference.)
Corporate Boards of Directors? Nope and nope and nope and nope and nope and nope.
Happily for MRAs there are still some options left – like stock photos.
The word of stock photos is a strange one indeed, one filled with women laughing alone with salad and cheering themselves while crouched on scales in their underwear.
Oh, and did I mention that stock photo sites like to make their pics of women sexxxxayy? And that they seem to have the same confusion between sexy and sexist as Nigel Tufnel of Spinal Tap?
Indeed, when Cate Savilla of Buzzfeed recently tried some common female-centric search terms on stock photo sites, these were some of the weirdly sexualized pictures that showed up in the results.
Bingo!
Apparently a lot of guys imagine feminism as some kind of session with a dominatrix. Never mind that in the real world, men getting trod upon on by women in high heels often pay quite handsomely for the experience. No, in the minds of the world’s MRAs this is a perfect image to represent the jackbooted high heeled stormtroopers of feminazi-ism.
Attach a vaguely threatening caption, and the URL for A Voice for Men, and you’ve got yourself a meme!
H/T — MUH Men’s Rights Activism and Philip Rose
UPDATE: I just realized that I featured this meme before. Well, the post still stands.
Ah! That’s all I needed to do! AWESOME! XD
Me too!
naltia
LOL!! XD They probably really d think that feminism is like that.
‘do’
Here is another one.
LBT!
::waves frantically, bounces in a circle, flops back onto couch::
Too tired for coherence at the moment, but all the hi!
Bed me now get, so tommorow function I can.
It amazes me what ordinary, everyday things they get mad at having to do.
“Wah, women get mad at me for using a booming voice along with my larger frame to intimidate them into not challenging me, it’s so unfair that my bullying behavior is being oppressed!”
Because, really, when else does anyone have a ‘tone’?
…oh, and midterm for fire 1 was sufficiently rocked. So tired. Long, long, long day.
Hiya, LBT, glad you’re back!
@LBT Oh all right, I’m L.J. from LJ/DW. You know, the person who’s only a middle initial away from your handle. You inadvertently reminded me I have a Tumblr, so I followed you to increase your apprehension, mwahaha.
@Annie I know, right? It leads me to believe their misogyny is just something they glommed onto in a quest to rationalize a generalized sense of grievance.
Welcome back, LBT. 🙂 And Hooray, contrapangloss!
Typical MRA hypocrisy. If feminists refuse to be polite they sealion and tone-police us into silence. I mean, not as if they were ever going to argue in good faith anyway.
What are some good tactics for “winning” the argument by not letting oneself be silenced or otherwise forced to rage-quit?
LBT, welcome back!
Miss Andry, I often wonder if AvfM is secretly a BDSM website for submissive men who are too embarrassed to admit that they’re subs too. Memes like these really make one wonder if their rage at David for allegedly being a “mangina” and their oft-proclaimed disgust with pegging is a projection of their own insecurities about their non-traditionally masculine desires. It’s sort of like virulently homophobic Christian preachers getting caught paying male sex workers for “massages.” They rant against the thing that they hate most in themselves.
Yeah, I agree. I was just reading an anti-feminist blogger who’s bummed that the manosphere isn’t as hardcore about “calling out women” as it used to be circa 2010. But 2010 was a pretty tense year that seemed pretty fertile ground for crankery of all sorts. And of course, when things are bad, it’s easiest to blame people you’re already prejudiced against. Misogyny is an ancient and widespread prejudice that’s still pretty socially acceptable, so there you go.
Though there were all kinds of cranks then, too, that seem to have piped down since. Gold-bugs, preppers, tea-partiers… all kinds of wacky crank predictions, too, that never came to pass. Guys talking about Weimar-style hyperinflation like it was inevitable. The collapse of the global financial system! Roving armies of Mila Kunis lookalikes who’d be irresistibly drawn to the owners of stashes of ammo and powdered eggs!
meantime, people slowly started going back to work and remembering that powdered eggs are pretty gross.
I make them ragequit by responding with logic and reason, their Kryptonite. They all eventually run out of replies and go silent, or resort to the kind of gross sexual harassment that exposes them for who they are.
Here’s one instance where my interlocutor subsided into radio silence: http://ljlee.livejournal.com/54038.html
PussyPowerTantrum | February 22, 2015 at 3:27 am
I love how he’s the one who initiates the conversation with a Gish Gallop, then won’t even read your response when you give every single one of his assumptions consideration because it’s too long and thus you must be yelling at him because feminism.
My sister is a professional domme and I can attest to the fact that men pay big bucks for that kind of treatment.
Also – “feminists won’t stop until we make them” – stop what? Trying to get equal rights and opportunities? Oh noez, we’d better stop and get back in the kitchen in our sexy high heels.
The manosphere are ridiculous. They want us to be subservient to them, stay home, make babies, be housewives but also not require them to support us financially somehow. Perhaps we’re supposed to start shitting money?
no, you’re supposed to just… not need anything. Or want anything. (Wanting anything is wholly out of the question!)
You’re supposed to be like the Jetsons’ Rosie, only like, sexy and maintenance-free.
Also, you should to figure out how to make the kids not need anything, either.
Step right up for this deal, ladies, OR YOU’LL BE SPINSTERS with nothing but dollar bills and cats to wipe your tears away with.
@ ParadoxicalIntention
It’s the MRAs’ entire approach to women writ small–the goalposts are shifted constantly so no woman can possibly do right. It’s like @NicolaLuna said, no matter what a woman does she’s in the wrong to these people. I wish these MRA types would just go full Dukat already (hi DS9 fans!) and admit that they hate all women who don’t fulfill an utterly impossible ideal, i.e. they hate women, period.
Of course they’ll tell you that it’s not women they hate, it’s feminists. They love women, it’s just the evil feminists who ruin everything! Yeah, I’ve heard that one before. Segregationists and assorted racists absolutely sang the praises of black people–good black people, that is, the hardworking, docile, cheerful blacks. No, it was just the bad Negroes they were opposed to, the Northern blacks who came South during Reconstruction to outrage the social order and plant ideas in the minds of perfectly happy former slaves. Meaning, of course, the black activists and politicians who instituted black suffrage and strove to turn back the tide of racism–and any black person who got contaminated by their unnatural ideas.
No bigot will ever admit they hate every member of a group. It’s not women, it’s feminists. It’s not blacks, it’s the uppity ones. It’s not gays, just the ones who want tog get married to each other. And once a member of that group crosses that completely arbitrary line (remember the guy who was on here a while ago saying he didn’t believe it when nice women self-identified as feminists?), they’re fair game to be treated however the bigot likes and it’s their own damned fault anyway. Classic abuser line, that one: “Stop forcing me to hurt you!”
Not hate women my ass. All these years, and the haters don’t even have the creativity to come up with a new song and dance.
@ParadoxicalIntention
I’m aware of that. It’s just that these companies don’t mean to sell symbolic images of the first estate stepping all over the second and third estate, which limits what the high heel can possibily represent here.
Most good points have already been made, so I’ll just point out the obvious: what the hell does a woman with uncanny valley legs sitting in a green bucket have to do with sports??
@LBT I’m so glad you’re back! Waves enthusiastically.
@misseb47-Exactly. A few years ago I kept seeing comments from MRAs saying they wouldn’t take feminism seriously until they focused on men’s issues. I think that Freudian slip is more telling than they realized.
Hi guys…
I’m sorry I left in a huff before. And I know it’s a little bit ridiculous to say “I’m out of here” and then come back only a couple of weeks later. But I missed Mammoth, so I couldn’t resist peeking in again. And now people say that some changes have been made and it’s all good… So I’ll give Mammoth another try. 🙂
Also, long story short but when I left in a huff (is that even a saying in English btw?) I was in a pretty bad shape mentally, but I’m better now, so. Here I am again.
Also, wanna add that I do think the two bikini girls jumping into a lake is a proper picture for “female friendship”, although the other ones are weird (and no one weirder than the green bucket one). 🙂
Hi Dvarghundspossen! I for one am glad to see you back. 🙂
Thanks!
Hi, LBT and Dvärghundspossen! Happy to see both of you back.