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.
My thoughts exactly. (I don’t get the lingerie one, either…do they seriously think we sit around in our “Hey, male gaze” underwear fondling each other?)
And yay, familiar faces have returned!
What part of “hypergamy” do you people not understand? I get it that more than a decade ago the concept might have been controversial. But hypergamy is not a new term any more. All these photographs show men as providers, which is exactly how women want them to be. The indoctrination starts early – women as primary nurturers raise their sons to be that way.
Oh, no… I take a long internet hiatus and then find out there’s been a meltodown when I finally slink back into Mammoth town? Wow, that makes me incredibly sad – I’ve missed everyone while I was gone. 🙁 I’ll have to go read the archives later and get myself up to speed.
Also, I don’t know what you guys are talking about. I’ve been maintaining my feminist credentials the entire time I’ve been AFK, and when I wasn’t sliding around in my green bucket to further women’s sports (it’s an event that’s an indoor, summer version of the luge, FYI), I was lounging in fancy underwear and heels. Y’all obviously do not feminist properly.
I’ll have to buy a green bucket, some floor wax, a helmet and some protective knee/elbow pads.
I got cut from the junior varsity bucket team after sustaining a tongue injury. It almost ended my Sultry Soccer career as well.
Hi LBT and Dvarghundspossen! Welcome back!
I have to say — I found all of the memes ridiculous. Buuuuuut, most of them were so, so predictable as well as being offensive or witless.
The “sports” ones on the other hand ??!!!?!
Weird squared or cubed or x1000000 or exponential function of some kind. Though I think the happy parents should have had enough time by now to name that soccer ball baby. We should be told.
Flying Mouse
Hi! And ugh! I haven’t been informed I do not Feminist well indeed.
Dvarghundspossen
Welcome back
Buttercup
That’s awful I hope you’re doing ok.
I wouldn’t be surprised one bit if there are several MRA’s who are among those gentleman who pay a handsome fee to be dominated. I’ve seen many many many many many many people trying to cover-up who they’re sexually attracted to with rage. They’re so terrified of other people’s judgment that they don’t live the lives they actually want to live. For example there are a lot of men who really like fat girls but yet you’ll find them on the Paleo diet forums talking about how disgusting it is that our nation is so overweight and fat people are a menace to society and a bunch of other fat shaming bull crap. I bet a lot of these Board of Directors guys in those photos are in the same pool.
In relation to their being almost no females, Forbes or Financial Times or somebody like that ran an article about the richest, most powerful women in the world. It was something ridiculous like eight out of 10 of them inherited their wealth. So even a lot of those women you see in those photos, no matter how few there are, didn’t really “earn” their position or gain it through the respect of their colleagues in the classical sense. If their colleagues had a choice, a man would probably be standing in their place. I realize a lot of men inherit their wealth too. I’m not saying that these women are less humans or less capable or don’t deserve to be there or do a worse job or anything like that; these women certainly don’t have to choose to be responsible business people. They could just as easily have chosen the Paris Hilton/Kim Kardashian route, but the point is it’s very difficult to find incredibly successful female self-created millionaires. I don’t think that has anything to do with female potential. It has everything to do with all the struggles we have in between.
But yes we are totally living under a tyrannical gynocracy filled with fat ugly man hating pig-headed shrill slutty banshees….
The BDSM stuff could be another kind of projection. They want to control women, they probably assume feminists must want to do the opposite and control men. And there’s certainly some toxic masculinity in there concerning submissive men too.
Right? They’re they ones always telling women to ask nicer for their rights and maybe, just maybe they’ll decide to allow that we might deserve them. Maybe. We’re the one’s being told to smile and never get angry or use naughty words when we tell yet another misogynist that it is never OK to rape women or blame them for being raped. They don’t even understand what tone trolling is because they cannot be bothered to read for comprehension.
Calling for violence toward uppity women much?
Dvärghundspossen,
It is so good to see you and LBT. Thanks for coming back.
Hey, LBT, welcome back. There are two people here now posting semi-regularly as “Orion.” I dunno if you have history with the other one or not, but either way I guess you have to look at the weird hash marks. I guess I should really change my user name… or at least my avatar. That’s what I’ll do, I’ll get a new avatar.
Since stock photos seem to be artistic rather than realistic depictions of a subject, I often find them very hard to interpret without context. As in, what they’re “supposed” to represent.
Like that poster photo above, maybe it was indeed meant as a reference to consensual femdom/malesub play. But then, malesub is sort of a taboo subject and I’d think when people search photos of it they’d want something more explicitly erotic. I’m sure there are more openly erotic stock photos around, and then the case would be more convincing.
Maybe some stock photo director just said, “People have been searching photos for ‘male oppression by women’ and they chose stuff like this; let’s make more.” Or maybe they just said, “People have been using photos with these particular elements; let’s make more.”
(Note: I don’t really know shit about art or stock photo industry, maybe this is just my Dunning-Kruger speaking.)
Exactly!
LBT, I have been thinking about you and wondering where you were and if you were OK. I’m so glad to see you back!
Oh boy. There’ll be some asploding in the manuresphere if they take notice of this ad campaign.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-02-22/this-girl-can-viral-campaign-encouraging-females-in-sport/6175398
“I jiggle. Therefore I am.” and “I kick balls. Deal with it.” will make some not-nice people very unhappy.
It’s called reaction formation, where someone suppresses thoughts and feeling they consider unacceptable by massively exaggerating the opposing tendency.
Hi Dvarghundspossen, welcome back!
I continuously encounter the who sexual dimorphism counter from MRAs. It’s used as a reason why men are better at sports than women. Anyone have a good counter attach for this reasoning?
Mildlymagnificent, thanks for sharing that ad campaign. I like that a lot.*
LBT and Dvarghundspossen both back on the same day? Woot! Time to break out the Yoo-Hoo and Mallomars – let’s celebrate. Congratulations on getting to go back to Boston, LBT – like the song says, it’s better to run to Toronto than to live in a place you don’t wanto.
*As opposed to liking that alot. Alots are fine, though.
Thankyou! 🙂
MRAs love to insist feminists secretly enjoy being dominated by men, catcalled, or worse.
Meanwhile, all their images of evil feminist domination involve sexy ladies in high heels and pinup garter stockings.
Dvarg, everyone’s got a right to leave or come back whenever and for whatever reason they like.
On the subject of sexy shoe songs (this one by a man, and way more upfront about his predilection for dominatrixes in choice footwear):
Key lyric:
The way you keep me in pursuit
Sharpen the heel of your boot
Then you press it to my chest and you make me wheeze
Then to my knees you do promote me
(!!!!!)
Then there’s the (surprisingly submissive) Suck It and See:
Jigsaw women with horror movie shoes
Be cruel to me, cuz I’m a fool for you…………