Men’s Rights hate site A Voice for Men has a long history of fat shaming: apparently, like Roosh V and assorted other Red Pill douchebags, the good folks at AVFM consider the existence of fat women to be an assault on manhood, and possibly civilization itself.
Because that’s just the sort of human rights activists they are.
But even by AVFM’s low standards for logic, their latest little meme campaign against the evil fatties is a bit puzzling. Take the meme at the top of the page, found on AVFM’s Facebook page.
As an assault on “double standards” it’s a little odd, assuming that people find male employment and female thinness to be similarly sexually attractive. As an antifeminist “gotcha” — as I imagine its creator intended it to be — it makes even less sense. Feminists aren’t the ones telling men to “man up” and provide for women like the patriarchs of some imaginary golden age.
And if MRAs don’t want women to look to men for financial support, well, they could stop handwaving away the very real gender wage gap. And give up their endless attacks on child support as well as their fantasy of “financial abortions.” It’s hard to blame single mothers trying to raise kids on their own, often with inadequate or even non-existent support from the fathers in question, for thinking twice about dating guys who could end up demanding financial support themselves.
What makes the meme even weirder is that AVFMers don’t really want to give up fat shaming. So the overall effect of this meme is to … justify throwing shade at men who fail to live up to the traditional provider role that AVFM ostensibly opposes.
The meme below is an even more ironic variation on the theme.
Why is it more ironic? Because there actually are men out there interested in “dating” homeless women — and by “dating” I mean exploiting the desperation of young women living on the streets who are willing to trade sex for food, shelter, or drugs.
How do I know this? Well, aside from having heard stories from several women who were themselves exploited in this way, I know because guys aspiring to exploit homeless women keep showing up on this blog.
Several years ago, you see, I wrote about an incredibly skeevy post on Matt Forney’s old blog In Mala Fide touting homeless girls as a frugal alternative to pricey prostitutes. The author of the post, calling himself Advocatus Diaboli, suggested focusing on “freshly homeless young girls” with hippie inclinations, reporting that
a decent round of drinks, snacks, money for pot, a small necessary item of clothing, decent dinner with booze will almost guarantee you a good lay (or at least a couple of BJs).
Ever since I wrote that post, my blog has gotten a small but steady trickle of visitors who’ve found the site through Google searches for things like “homeless girl paid to have sex,” “homeless prostitutes,” and “how to get the homeless to have sex eith [sic] you.” These are all real examples from the past week; I see a handful of queries like this every time I take a look at my stats.
So congratulations, skeezy dudes, you’ve managed to overcome the prejudice against homeless people, with your boners.
Meanwhile, back on Facebook, AVFM is expanding its fat shaming crusade to include men as well.
In the United States, we should note, more than two-thirds of men (70%) are classified as “overweight” or “obese” — a rate even higher than that for women (57.6%). Apparently AVFM’s much vaunted “compassion for men and boys” only applies to 30% of them.
I don’t mean to be rude, but there are a number of AVFM staffers — male and female — who are themselves, well, “overweight” or “obese.” I wonder how they feel about volunteering for a site that regularly portrays people like them as little more than walking punchlines for unfunny memes.
@Polymath Father
Pelagic isn’t snarking, they’re a troll whose schtick is posting straw nonsense in the hopes that somebody agrees and they can wrangle a gotcha out of it. Needless to say, nobody’s ever agreed yet.
It’s also worth mentioning here that, among misogynists, “fat” (when applied to a woman) is really just an all-purpose insult. It doesn’t often even /mean/ “fat,” or get applied to women that would generally be considered fat. My asshole misogynist dad, for example, would berate my mom for being “fat” because he strongly believed that any woman (regardless of height or body composition) who weighed more than 110 lbs was “fat,” and a direct insult to his highly sensitive aesthetics. Or think about all the times you’ve seen someone call Michelle Freaking Obama “fat,” which is obviously just… incorrect.
“Fat” doesn’t mean “overweight,” to them. It means “too big.” That “bigness” that threatens them has nothing to do with body composition and everything to do with daring to take up the full space allotted a human being in the world.
Once again they based their memes on straw feminism and their own completely made-up reality…
Firstly, they believe that men value women because of their looks (not solely, perhaps, since according to them, women should be submissive as well, but looks are no doubt very important to them) and women value men solely based on their income. Therefore, a woman being fat (that is, unattractive according to conventional norms) is comparable to a man being poor, since both traits will cause the opposite sex to shun them.
Now, MRA:s believe both that this is how the world works, and also that feminists care nothing for the plight of men, so that feminists believe that although men should stop fat-shaming women and start appreciating women of all sizes, it’s perfectly okay for women to keep on shaming poor and homeless men and only appreciate the rich ones. That’s the alleged double standard that they want to abolish.
Comprehensible if you know enough about their weird views… otherwise just a bit WTF.
It would probably kill them to realize that some of us (probably all) are also anti-poverty activists, because we know that poverty hurts women even more than it does men. Not that it doesn’t hurt men, of course, but most of them are NOT forced to sell their bodies just to eat/feed their kids/keep a roof over their heads/etc.
Loving the heavy projection here. All I can see in those memes are, “Well, I think that women should have be attracted to every single guy who is attracted to them, so that’s what fat acceptance means, right? That I have to be attracted to women I’m not attracted to? Right?”
The gods forbid that they ever actually read up on the movement or try to comprehend it. Nope, just take whatever MRAs believe and reverse it in favor of women instead and call it feminism/fat acceptance/any other movement that tries to better the lives of women and girls. Fantastic.
I really do think Pelagic is a gamergater. They got their start here trying to lure us into saying that video games are evil because they remain convinced that’s what Anita Sarkeesian’s message is. When that didn’t happen, zie started in on other topics. I don’t know how much longer it’s going to take before they notice that nobody is biting and just give up.
It’s kind of telling that they think the operating word “beautiful” is synonymous with “sexy,” as if “big is beautiful” campaigns were solely about attraction rather than general positive body image and self-esteem. Pretty revealing of their internal “it must be all about me” attitude.
“A flower should never fly from bee, to bee, to bee.”
Well I wouldn’t suck on a lollipop that had been inside several other people already, no matter how hard it was rinsed off afterwards. How do you like that?
Also, look how much AVfM care about homeless men! Homeless men, you are just like fat women – worthless, lazy, ugly, and a general blight on humanity. Clearly you need to be shamed into getting a house and a job, or at least a woman and gullible followers to leech from.
Re these memes I can only say: Sense this makes a bit not of…
Re preying on the homeless for sex – Those people are monsters plain and simple. After thinking about what kind of person would do that, my brain needs a shower .
I’d also like to point out the hypocrisy of MRAs claiming that homelessness is a men’s issue they care about. Yet they have no problem using a picture someone took of a homeless man that someone put online in order to make a stupid meme. Thus furthering the attitude that the homeless are like zoo animals for the rest of us to gawk at. So human rightsy!
Funny. I think too many people take what these guys are saying too much at face value.
A lot of these fat-shamers strike me as cases where “the lady doth protest too much”. My personal belief is that a lot of this shit is driven by simple Projection where the hater/shamers redirect their guilt/shame over their own attractions onto the object of those attractions. Others might be more consciously adopting a pose and trying to hide an attraction that they think will get them ridiculed by their peers. Either way, I assure you that there are plenty of boners that are not only not oppressed but thriving … even if wracked by guilt.
@Lynne
There are a lot, and I mean a whole lot, of trolls, parodies and fakery on reddit and tumblr, particularly tumblr. Sure, there are women who genuinely believe all sorts of stupid, offensive and/or goofy things, but I tend to be skeptical when it comes to those sites in particular.
I don’t see many women concerned with “converting men’s boners” as a goal. There are certainly people who are hurting from rejection, both men and women, or longing for acceptance, both men and women. But looking for aroused boners from generic strangers? Or attempting to create forced sexual attraction? Its not a major political goal of feminism.
Again, I think the real fear from MRAs/PUAs of FA is teh same fear that activates any authoritarian–the fear that someone else is not being punished and not following “the rules.” It doesn’t matter whether the rules are though to be god given, or parental, or based on stupid eve psych. Authoritarians love the idea that harsh rules must be followed and that people who don’t accept authority will suffer. Women (and men) who accept and enjoy their own bodies without turning towards authorities/society/magazines/men to tell them whether they are winners or losers are a very scary thing. Like slaves who have run away and are living free in the woods. The self loathing these guys feel can only be assuaged by believing that other people are even unhappier, that their own ugliness/poverty/grief is exceeded only by someone else, lower down on the social scale. They become enraged and terrified by someone telling them there is no hell and there is no punishment for being fat.**
**If anyone heard the NPR piece a few years ago about a famous mega preacher who lost his church following when he refused to preach the existence of hell you will know what I’m talking about. You’d think, naively, that people who believe in heaven and hell would be thrilled to know that there was no hell and no one was going to be condemned to it. But his flock became absolutely enraged at the thought that *other people* weren’t going to suffer.
“You should have sex with plus sized men.” Because the opposite is exactly what feminists argue.
https://www.facebook.com/102001393188684/photos/a.392418540813633.89052.102001393188684/815714285150721/?type=1&theater
At least, for once, FOR ONCE, in the comments they called the image “irony” and while not actually correct (the proper word is ‘parody’) they did manage to recognise a form of satire when it was actually satire!
Also can anyone make sense of this comment that was under the above meme? I can’t screencap, so here is a transcript sans names.
MRA 1: And if a fat man asks you for sex, you need to give it to him. Sound familiar?
MRA 2: If women don’t have sex with fat men, they are raping fat men.
Seriously what is that I don’t even.
Oh yeah, and unable to resist making yet another fat joke at David, AVFM commented:
Because of course they did. Because the MRA never mention men they claim to fight for in a positive light unless it’s to bludgeon a feminist over the head with some sort of failed “gotcha”.
Any other time though, it’s “Lol, fatties!”
Translation: Hey ladies, we’re fat. So, you gonna fuck us, or what?
(And the logical answer: Nope. And not because you’re fat, either.)
So I spend a lot of time lurking on the chans because I’m fascinated by the foul dregs of the human psyche.
And during GamerGate there *totes* was a shitload of “let’s infiltrate social justice movements and destroy them by radicalizing them!” type bullshit “op” planning. I remember laughing my ass off since it was clear these duncewads had long since forgotten how normal human interaction is supposed to work.
Anyway, I’m just throwing that out there, since it seems to describe pelagic’s schtick pretty well. Of course if s/he would like to respond I’d be interested in hearing it.
All this talk about how being fat is the end of the world for them just makes me wish i had another 250:- SEK to burn on candy.
It’s funny how they’re essentially saying “if fat women are human beings with value and dignity, then so are unemployed men”- expecting that feminists will disagree. I’ve never met a feminist who wouldn’t say “yes, yes they are.”
Weird comparison, unemployment and obesity. One’s a physical characteristic. One’s employment status.
Anyways, I don’t know where the notion “Big is beautiful” is the product of feminism comes from (aside from their arses.) No one has to find fat people attractive. Lots do. Lots don’t. That’s great. The fact social disadvantages associated with obesity are weighted against women to a greater extent than they are against men is a feminist issue, sure, but feminism didn’t produce the idea fat is attractive.
In a more general sense of fat people being people deserving of dignity and basic respect isn’t inherently feminist either. It’s not specific to women and girls. It’s not something borne of feminism. It’s just….. reasonable.
The unemployment bit is just fucking weird though. These are the dudes that complain endlessly about women not working and now they’re arguing for the dignity of unemployed men. Why doesn’t that apply to women?
But these are the same people who complain about women who work too so why the fuck am I asking for any consistency?
I have a question that I know may seem somewhat off-topic, but I am going to try to connect it to the topic. RooshV has been mentioned lately owing to his fat-shaming and was mentioned in this post. Roosh in some of his writings about the so-called “problem” of obese women mused that in another time he would be off fighting wars in a foreign land. I find that laughable and I find it an example of the general ludicrous tendency of PUA’s like RooshV and MRAs to associate THEIR twisted version of masculine archetypes with achievement in military service. That leads to my question – has anyone seen *anywhere* in the manosphere any reaction to the various public speeches and official communications of LTG David Morrison of the Australia Defence Force? The best-known at least in the mainstream media is his June 2013 message to the ADF on unacceptable behavior and sexual assault and harassment. He has also spoken publically on ways of reducing and preventing rape in war. I am very curious about this because Morrison’s comments and ideology CLEARLY place him within the realm of what MRA’s would call the worst of manginas. Moreover, given the tendency to associate being a “mangina” with being a beta male, certainly Morrison is clearly revealing his beta tendencies, right? Have MRA’s or other associated manosphere people ever alleged this? I’ve turned up nothing on my own searches but thought this blog a good place to ask. I find this so intriguing because with the Chief of the Army (the Australian equivalent to the U.S. Army Chief of Staff) one CLEARLY has, almost by definition, someone who IS the bad-ass that PUA’s and some MRA’s fancy themselves. I find Morrison a very gifted orator and respect him as a soldier; what I very much liked was how in the June 2013 speech he *directly* associated not harassing female servicemembers and refusing to tolerate those who do with the *same* integrity and strength of soul that every member of the Australian Army knows was present at Gallipoli, Crete, the defense of Tobruk, Alamein, the crossing of the Owen Stanleys and so on. So advocating for feminist causes coincides with some of the clearest examples of military badassery ever recorded because *it is the right thing to do*. How would MRA’s explain that? How could the spirit behind such accomplishments be present in a mangina?
Roosh wouldn’t make it through the first day at Kapooka, Parris Island, Sand Hill at Fort Benning, Lackland, Great Lakes, or any other equivalent (sorry to our Canadian allies – forgot that the Canadian equivalent is. You get the idea.)
Again, if anyone saw how MRAs and pseudo-masculine PUA’s dealt with the David Morrison contradiction, I’d be curious to see.
(I meant to ask this question two Saturdays ago on April 25 (for reasons obvious to anyone who cares to think about the ADF and NZDF) but unfortunately we here at Pavlov’s House were busy being real soldiers and teaching real history to other real soldiers and not being keyboard jockeys.
The weirdness of the memes comes from the fact that their creators can’t think clearly about the issues that obsess them so. That’s why their attempts at “satire” are unintelligible to anyone outside the Manospherian echo chamber.
They seem to think (I use the term loosely) that (1) Fat acceptance is only about women, not men; (2) Feminists think all men are somehow required to find all fat women attractive; and (3) Women who prefer to have relationships with financially stable people are just being mean.
Add the projection that has already been mentioned, and a hearty dose of self-justification (if I fat shame women it’s for their own good!) and random confusion (If you tell me to stop shaming fat women, that means you think I have to sleep with them!) and you’ve got a recipe for mind-numbing incoherence. (Yes, dudes, we’re laughing at your memes. At them, not with them.)
Another piece of their shit pies: the need to rationalize their own romantic failures. If women don’t like them, it’s because women have these cruel picky “double standards.”
Uh, no dudes. Women don’t dislike you because you’re fat, if you are. They don’t dislike you because you’re not rich, or suave, or good at sportsball.
They don’t like you because you’re hateful and self-centered.
@Lanariel
Fellow Swede? 🙂
“They don’t like you because you’re hateful and self-centered.”
The hate is coming from of place of supreme bitterness and immaturity. An inability to accept that a lack of attractiveness might be a factor – most people simply won’t consider partnering up with someone they aren’t at all physically attracted to. That and you may not have much to offer anyway.
Therein lies the appeal of alternative, ego-protecting explanations that blame women, feminism, or society for personal failings/reality.