Is this the holy grail of MRA infographics?
Designed — if that’s the word for it — by an MRA and #GamerGater who calls himself BJSparky, this lovely “poster” offers up a 2000-word wall of text in such tiny type it’s impossible to read.
Well, not completely impossible. I snagged the largest version of the poster I was able to successfully download on BJ’s Deviant Art page and enlarged it until the text was a more reasonable size for reading — albeit a bit blurry. (There may be a larger version, but I got a broken image when I clicked on his download button.)
A quick scan reveals that this particular wall of text seems to have been built mostly with straw: it’s a list of allegedly feminist beliefs that no feminists actually believe. (Admittedly, I didn’t read every example; for all I know, the entire right side of the poster might be made up of passages copied from Supernatural fanfic or James Joyce’s Ulysses.)
Here are some of BJ’s straw feminist nuggets:
As you can see, BJ is as elegant a writer as he is a designer.
I would kind of love to see these straw feminist nuggets blown up and used as signs at some straw feminist demonstration.
Over on the Men’s Rights subreddit, the poster has gotten a more enthusiastic reception than I have given it here, garnering more than 100 upvotes and inspiring this amazing comment:
Sorry, bro, but I think there is a definite possibility that you have low and/or unusual standards.
H/T — the awesome chewinchawingum on r/againstmensrights
@sunnysombrera:
It is the bestest cake ever. I would like it for a wedding cake but apparently it can’t be done, and that makes me sad.
Not replacing, just in addition to. It’s from the most recent necro troll in the glossary if anyone is confused.
https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wtf-is-a-mgtow-a-glossary/comment-page-32/#comment-723045
@weirwoodtreehugger:
A troll in the glossary section claimed to have been told evil evil things by our good feminist friend, Katie. So now feminist Katie is real.
@OP:
Well, ok, reasonable people could disagree on whether use of “prick” and “dick” are harmful or harmless (but not on whether they carry the same weight as the others), but “asshole?” Does this guy literally think women don’t poop?
“We want women to be able to wear whatever they want and without judgement, but heavily scrutinize a man’s choice of fashion” (Column 2, entry 9).
I’ve very definitely seen actual news articles on any given day about how some woman wore something or didn’t wear something or the same as someone else with incredibly judgmental tones. I have very definitely not seen large numbers of similar relating to men. In fact I’m struggling right now to remember having ever read criticism or even scrutiny of a man’s choice of fashion in the media.
So I’m imagining the internal monologue went like this, “That woman I annoyed with negging and then asked about my garb criticised my beat poet look with skull accessories which clearly anyone can see looks extremely cool – this more than makes up for the constant barrage of criticism women receive from the media and from random strangers on the street!”
Obviously the last sentence is artistic license as he would never have any awareness of the constant barrage or its affects.
Also, “If you want to be taken seriously as a feminist then practice what you preach”, which we’ve just been told is that long list of nonsense above. Idiot.
Many, many times I see things like this and my very first impression is, “This is satire…right?” But, alas, I am almost always stunned to discover that such manifestations of stupidity -such as the “informative meme” above- are actually created by real men who sincerely hold these paranoid and delusional ideas about women, and especially feminists. It reminds me how medieval minds once believed toads gave one warts; that black cats were devil’s imps and a mole on a woman may be a witches teat, and if she had consorted with The Devil could curdle cream with her presence. It surely smacks of the same kind of panicked logic born out of fear and ignorance that has caused scourge after scourge through the centuries on human society…on women, people of color, various religions, sexual orientations and the like. We’ve been coexisting on this planet together for thousands of years and yet every time we seem to be making headway at understanding the undeniable human connection between us all, and grasp it in unison, some group always shows up with a joy-buzzer in their handshake.
These MRA-types consistently seem to prove the theory of de-evolution; for just when you think society at large is growing more intelligent thus increasingly inclusive, these guys open their mouths and plunge us ideologically back into the Dark Ages when the Earth was still “flat”.
@lith ““We want women to be able to wear whatever they want and without judgement, but heavily scrutinize a man’s choice of fashion” (Column 2, entry 9).”
Could it be a reference to shirtgate?
This is not the most effective way to get your point across. Even if someone wanted to show you they weren’t “demanding bias, bigotry, discrimination, blah blah etc etc,” handing them a mountain of statements in tiny text for them to deny isn’t going to be very helpful.
Especially if the tone of your message is that the vast majority of feminists actually do agree with many of those statements. Especially especially if the feminist in question understands the twisted logic the statements come from.
Aw man. It’s like if someone asked Paul Elam what do feminists really believe, and then tried to fit everything he said on a poster. It’s really bad.
Depends on the content, doesn’t it? This is most likely referencing something like AVFM either with their convention or with some school speech. It’s not “men’s issues” people were protesting, it was AVFM.
I have a feeling pretty much all of the statements are like this. Pretend criticism of something was criticism of the most reasonable part rather than the unreasonable part.
Oh look! The MRAs are projecting again!
@ Spindrift
I can’t help but wonder what scenarios, events or conversations got twisted up in this guys mind and inspired each bullet point, but I think you may be right about that one.
“Women can’t show their boobs in public but I should be able to wear on national TV a shirt that shows women showing their boobs!”
This is the classic conspiracist “text is more credible if saved on .jpg” type thinking. Literally anyone could type out this kind of list, but there’s this attitude that it’s credible if someone took the time to put it on an image.
It’s weird. For no particular reason, I blame reddit.
Uhh… the only time I’ve heard MRAs use the term “free of consequence” with regards to sex is when the topic is either a woman getting drunk and then raped, or when a woman wants to use birth control so she doesn’t have kids. I can’t imagine what the “man’s heavily scrutinized” bit is referring to.
And their green cathode ray is broken!
The creator of this poster… he’s something else.
Of course he thinks Christina Hoff Sommers and a family member are one of the good feminists. Of course he does.
It looks like one of those massive copypastas they dump before running away when people try to explain why they’re wrong, only harder to read and with a little more colour. Think that’s it’s intended purpose, or is it just more preaching to the choir?
It’s got to be just preaching to the choir. The actual message is not “Feminists! read this to make sure you aren’t actually a bigot.” It’s “Feminists actually mostly believe these terrible things and are all a bunch of hypocrites.”
Well, that at least explains where the ‘opposite day’ bullet points come from.
If I were bored enough and had the time, I could turn this into an infographic full of contradictions believed by MRAs.
“Tells women to grow a thicker skin against online harassment, devolves into spittle-flecked gibberish over ‘male tears’.”
“Says rape isn’t a big problem and rails against ‘Schroedinger’s Rapist’, tells woman to expect to get raped if she wears anything less than a burka.”
Etc. I’m sure there are enough MRA contradictions to make a graphic like the above, only without all the straw.
That poster looks like army ants invading a Club Libby Lu. He seems to repeat himself a lot, probably because he needed extra quotes to pad out the block format.
Ah yes, those welcome, respectful catcalls: where strangers compliment women on their IQ, but they ask permission first. How hypocritical of us to be against something that doesn’t exist!
“We want objectification of women in any way to be seen as oppressive and harmful, regardless if it may be respectful, welcome, encouraged, or legal.” (4th column, 2nd down)
I would love to know about these respectful forms of objectification.
Ninja’d and with a gap of one little minute. >_< You're a ninja of the highest order, Buttercup.
Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope.
I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there is something really, really disturbing about it being “empowering” to attract a man. Maybe it’s the fact it basically defines you based on your relationship to another person, rather than on your own merits. Or maybe it’s the fact that it paints attracting a man as some kind of accomplishment, a goal to be achieved. Whatever it is, it makes me feel like this:
http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mdy4mpnIpG1ro2d43.gif
@ej:
Don’t forget that their version of learning “how to understand and attract” women is PUA, ie learning how to ignore “no” and psychologically manipulate women, sometimes resorting to outright rape.
I wonder if he’s talking about “The Rules” here… I don’t think I know a single feminist who gives that drivel any credence. But hey, it’s written by women for women, so feminists must automatically endorse it!