Every Friday is Memeday here on We Hunted the Mammoth. Today, we’re taking a look at some terrible antifeminist cartoons. But not just any terrible antifeminist cartoons: terrible antifeminist cartoons done in the style of old-school editorial cartoons. You know, the kind with stuff all labeled and shit.
I ran across the cartoon above on Reddit yesterday, and it’s an excellent example of this particular genre. My only real disappointment is that the artist didn’t take the time to label the five different balls ‘n’ chains set that poor Louis CK — I assume that’s supposed to be him — has attached to his legs and, in a clever twist, to his right arm.
Given the odds against him he seems weirdly cheerful.
UPDATE: As various people have pointed out, this is an MRA-ized version of a cartoon intended to highlight male privilege. I’ve posted the original at the end of this post, along with a translation of the caption helpfully provided by the original artist.
Next up is a cartoon that’s been floating around the manosphere for a while; I found it on the Twitter timeline of Hannah Wallen, one of the Honey Badgers and possibly the strangest “thinker” in the Men’s Rights world. (Well, alongside her fellow Honey Badger Alison Tieman.) I think she is the, er, artist here. I may be wrong, but the bizarro world logic of the cartoon is right up her alley.
This next one comes from her blog; presumably she’s the “artist” here as well.
You kind of have to admire the diligence in labeling almost everything in the cartoon that could possibly be labeled. But why not go all out and label absolutely everything? The pants should be labeled pants; the shirts should be labeled shirts; the shoes should be labeled shoes. (If those lumpy things in the foot area are indeed supposed to be shoes.)
I’m a little puzzled as to the meaning of the cartoon, though. Is is supposed to show that women have a harder time on the job because their weirdo bosses make them stand on boxes?
There are fewer labels in this next cartoon, by a Twitterer called @AntiFemComics, but the effect is just as confusing.
Apparently the evil feminists have tied up some mothers, and are sending them down Feminism River to certain death over Life of Regret Falls. What all that is supposed to mean I couldn’t tell you.
And given that the mothers are already tied up, why did the evil feminists need to take their paddles, too? It’s not like the mothers could do any paddling anyway. Feminists are just mean, I guess.
Let me end with a cartoon I found a couple of years ago. Sure, I’ve posted it here at least once already. But it’s a stone cold classic!
Take that, “Today’s Lace Curtain Dominated Media!” How dare you try to silence ALL MALE OPINIONS by hanging these opinions (which are also a dude) while wearing boxes on your heads! During what appears to be a total eclipse of the sun!
Maybe instead of trying to produce editorial cartoons, MRAs should just stick to what they’re good at. Which is nothing.
(Note: I get a cut from anything you buy on Amazon after you click on the ad above; it doesn’t cost you anything, and it’s a great way to support both WHTM and good cartoonists! If you don’t see an ad, turn off your ad blocker!)
https://twitter.com/Emanu_G/status/688668767694499840
it’s at times like this I’m really thankful for A Good Cartoon, a funny tumblr account that posts and “interprets” ridiculous right-wing editorial cartoons in a more sensible way.
http://agoodcartoon.tumblr.com/
Some of these ‘cartoons’ are so awfully drawn that I can’t stand them, let alone the hilariously bad messages.
lamuella, that’s a fantastic link. Thank you very much.
Is the third one the MRA version of a color-by-number book? So “Work/Life Balance” stands for say, brown, “Heavier Workload” is blue and so on?
They do make me feel like a better cartoonist, horrible content aside, nparker.
The first one is just a shitty edit of an actually good cartoon. MRAs can’t draw that well, remember?
I only meant the first two ones. The others just have horrible messages
Lisa C, the one thing MRAs don’t want it to do to you, I like it!
On the first cartoon ever notice how the so called “benefits” women get aren’t really benefits, just political butt coverage, to cover the inadequacies of male politicians failing to actually give women real equality?
Also notice how the male problems are caused by men making them for themselves it’s like they want something to whine about.
Sexual harassment: It’s a male issue, and it’s the woman’s fault, you touched her butt and are in court? Pull the other one!
If it weren’t for sexual harassment being no laughing matter it would almost pass for comedy.
Subtlety and details are for feminists! They see people as human. These ideologues can’t be bothered with clutter like that. They have a VISION!
(Never mind that it’s complete and utter dreck, and 100% bass-ackwards to boot. It’s a VISION!)
I’m guessing they blindly copied the female side from a political cartoon about white people complaining that minorities had it better.
@Tulse
Maybe it’s syndactyly? Like Jimmy Darling in American Horror Story. Because why not? Drawing individual fingers = misandry.
Isn’t Feminism supposed to be awesome for mothers? What with all the alimony and child support and favorable divorce laws? Although I guess Feminism is also destroying traditional families… is this happening retroactively?
Maybe Feminists are going around and causing divorces in happy families. Except only mothers are regretting it… because… they are forced to financially cripple their ex-husbands (whom they still love) with exorbitant alimony and child support?
@Lorcan Nagle
“…The man is holding a large load away from his centre of gravity…”
Proof that he doesn’t even LIFT, bro! Well proof he doesn’t lift *correctly*.
I like how the river feminists have red hair. Red hair is misandry. Why, I don’t know.
@Terrabeau: It’s a book I found at a thrift for 50c, because the join of spine and front cover was badly ripped at the bottom (remarkably, the pages and popups themselves were undamaged). So I’ve done a teardown on it and made a new cover. I’m not skilled in pop-up paper architecture… yet.
Here’s a video of the book as published:
The first cartoon was plagiarized/edited. Non-creative bigots LOVE taking the material from their opposition and making shitty edits.
re: lobster claws
The hands on those feminists would be fine if they didn’t have palm lines. -_- Mitten hands for distance models are pretty common. Up close, having an indent in the middle of the palm and the fat pads on the hands emphasised help viewers to read the image of a hand correctly. But at a distance, we don’t really see those details.
I don’t think MRAs can draw very well because drawing, and almost any talent, partially requires the ability to critique yourself and others successfully. From what I know about this group, they can’t do that very well. 😛
@ WeirdwoodTreeHugger- Red hair = “cr*zy feminist” has been around since that one meme of that lady who was filmed arguing with MRAs.
Damn, I need to crack the white male reactionary market. You don’t have to be good at writing or drawing or anything.
Portfolio review:
–So for #1, a man stole someone else’s artwork to make a cartoon about how hard men work. This means something. THIS MEANS SOMETHING.
–Note how the “artist” of #1 wasn’t content to just rip off the original cartoon, but copypasted in even more obstacles. The black woman in the original had a ball and chain and had to jump over an alligator, so the white man has to have FIVE balls and chains and jump over TWO alligators. That’s how hard it is for men to live in our man-hating society, with its unreasonable demands like “feed your children” and “don’t grab that lady’s boobs.”
–I admit #2 is beyond my comprehension. Okay, Feminism is a puppetmaster secretly controlling Patriarchy, accurately represented by Chairman Mao stepping on a smiling man’s throat. I get it. But then I see the controller made of academic fraud and I’m totally lost. How does the Feminist/Patriarchy alliance work? Help me, Honey Badgers!
(I do love it when the women who filmed themselves crying after getting kicked out of a convention and have used that video to collect tens of thousands of dollars from the world’s dumbest men accuse other people of “damselling.”)
–Okay, #3. The concept is fine: the man carries boxes labeled with difficulties to represent male oppression, while the woman stands on boxes labeled with advantages to represent the unfair leg up women receive. But then the artist gets overexcited and draws the woman carrying boxes too. Just draw the man carrying boxes and the woman standing on boxes! You don’t even need to draw that many boxes, since most of the labels are some variation on “men work hard and women are lazy, that’s why men get paid more.” And why do they both carry boxes labeled “Work/Life Balance,” but the man’s is small and the woman’s is big? I’ve now put more thought into this than the artist did.
–The feminists in #4 are so cuddly.
I was just wondering who is sexually harrassing the guy in the obstacle race…
I am happily reminded of Captain Hammer,
“It’s curtains for you. Lacy, gently wafting curtains”.
Crab people! Crab people!
Taste like crab, talk like people!
1) All women really want to be in male-led heterosexual marriages with children, much like the stereotype of mid-century middle class single income families, except the women also do some paid work (although not Real Work, because that would be stealing from men) as forcing men to share their incomes is misandry.
2) Feminists hate men, and they have no problem using regular women as pawns in their bid to destroy men’s happiness. In order to do this, they feed women a bunch of lies like “hey maybe your spouse should actually spend some time with your kids every once in a while so you can take a nap and also so that your children can form bonds with their father” or “If one partner works within the home, enabling the other partner to work outside the home, then the money coming in is team money that you’ve earned together and you both have a right to it” or “you are just as important as a man.”
3) Men, who are wise and objective, see through these demands and either refuse to acquiesce or are forced into complying. Either way, the mothers can no longer be happy in their natural state.
@Jack
“What? But women can’t possibly face workplace harassment because they get free drinks from dudes at bars who want to have sex with them!” /s
That’s probably their actual counter argument. MRAs routinely prove themselves to be beyond parody
@lamuella
Wow that blog is awesome. I want to play that game with these MRA memes!
1. A white man in shackles, facing down a field of barbed wire, chest-high walls, and duck ponds in his way still has a easier time making it in the world than a woman of color. A good comic.
2. By lobbying and with enough tugging at the strings of democracy by feminists, the patriarchal justice system will finally start to take death threats and sexual harassment more seriously. agc.
3. Women are routinely excluded from risky jobs due to discrimination in hiring, and must waste their time getting up on soapboxes to explain common decency and respect to their sexist co-workers. agc.
4. Feminist lobster-people are here to rescue poor mothers who are floating towards a waterfall of regret without any agency of their own and restrained by sexist rhetoric telling them that childcare is their proper ‘role’ in life. agc
5. A sexist dude being told to stop using the c-word will martyr himself and declare this is the death of all male opinion, compare his plight to racial discrimination and then blame ‘the media’ for not saying things he agrees with. ‘regular day at the AVFM headquarters’.
Speaking as someone who suffers from chronic lower back pain, I find that third one really irresponsible.
@Nequam
… at first I read “Pope pop-up book”.
That might be cool, too.
Pope-up?