Every Friday is Memeday here at We Hunted the Mammoth, but this week I’m going to start the celebration a day early, with a collection of “told you so!” memes I found, mostly, on Men’s Rights and other antifeminist Facebook pages.
Now, most of us human beings enjoy a bit of Schadenfreude now and then; it’s not the most noble of emotions, but it’s kind of hard to resist laughing a little when some horrible person gets their comeuppance.
Men’s Rights Activists are a pretty bitter and immature bunch, so it’s hardly a shock to see them giggling away at other people’s misfortunes. But it’s still a bit surprising to see just how many of the memes they create and/or pass along are little more than meanspirited “told you sos.”
Even more striking is how many of them offer up a sort of future-tense Schadenfreude. They’re not laughing because some feminist they hate has gotten their comeuppance; they’re laughing at the possibility that this feminist will get their comeuppance some time in the future. And I don’t think I’m wrong to see a sort of anxious desperation underlying these memes; I think on some level most MRAs know their Schadenfreudy fantasies aren’t going to come true.
The meme posted at the top of the page — I posted it before in a roundup of memes from A Voice for Men — is a visual representation of the rather tired claim, repeated endlessly by MRAs, that feminist women will end up dying alone surrounded by a small army of cats.
It’s not clear to me exactly why MRAs find this prediction quite so hilarious. Women tend to live longer than men, which means that even the most staunchly antifeminist women are likely to outlive their partners, giving them pretty much the same chance of ending up “alone” late in their lives, at least if they have no family or friends outside of their late husbands.
But for some reason there aren’t a lot of feminists sitting around cackling at the thought of GirlWritesWhat dying alone at some date in the not-so-near future. Because that’s petty, and tacky, and mean.
In addition to being a stony-hearted bunch, MRAs also tend to be a bit impatient, and like to imagine their sworn feminist enemies having their Waterloos long before they get to the age of seventy.
And so MRAs fantasize about feminists having a sudden realization that they were wrong and the MRAs were right — shortly after hitting age 30 or whenever it is that modern misogynists like to imagine that women magically turn into pumpkin-faced uggos.
Dudes, only MRAs, misogynists and pedophiles think that a woman’s “best years” are in her teens and early 20s.
By why wait for these imaginary feminists to have some sort of drastically premature mid-life crisis when you can just pretend that they’ll all be miserable just as soon as they graduate from college with their women’s studies degrees.
Whoever made this meme picked an awfully cheerful-looking woman to represent a young feminist brokenhearted over having to work at Subway.
But women don’t have to work in food service to be miserable, the mememakers insist. Having to work ANY job at all is going to make them regret their feminism. Because apparently, before feminism came along, women were pampered creatures who slept all day on silk sheets, surrounded by bon-bon wrappers and an assortment of tiny dogs, while their husbands worked 25-hour-days in the salt mines.
Huh. Somehow I missed the part where feminism told women that working in an office was the closest thing to paradise on earth
Then there’s this tired trope, a lovely example of misogynoir turned into a meme by a black MRA cartoonist I first noticed on DeviantArt a couple of years ago.
And let’s end this survey of future-tense schadenfreude with a meme that somehow manages to work in two historical cartoons I really like and that I think I’ve posted here before.
I’m going to say, “yes,” except perhaps the portion of her life she spent married to a dickhead.
And because the first two cartoons there deserve better than to be shoved into a dopey antifeminist meme, let’s look at them in all their full-sized glory.
We love you, kickass suffragette girl!
This cartoon was originally intended as anti-suffragette propaganda, but, seriously, that girl is AWESOME.
Looking through the collection of anti-sufragette cartoons featured on the post I linked to above, I noticed another one that shows pretty clearly just how ancient and utterly unoriginal the “you feminists will all die alone” trope really is.
See, wanting the vote makes women UGLY!
Is is even necessary to point out the obvious: that despite all the mean cartoons they inspired, the suffragettes WON.
And here’s that other cartoon, of more recent vintage:
Wait, is that redhaired gal dating Carl Sagan?
Nooo they are still babies they will always be babies (covers ears, goes “la la la”)
I’m going to defend this position a bit. I don’t think it’s reasonable to literally forsake all others, and more than once I’ve been disappointed by friends disappearing as soon as they’ve found a partner and no longer see the point in maintaining their friendships. It is sad when that happens, for everyone involved.
But our culture doesn’t have traditions, scripts, models or infrastructure for friendships that are so strong and close they can replace a life partner. It’s harder to have a successful relationship without all that. Most people are not open to the idea.
In theory non-romantic relationships can be just as fulfilling as romantic ones. But in practice, it’s harder to have all your needs fulfilled from them alone.
ETA: ideally you’d have both of course. And if you have to choose one, then you’re probably better off choosing friends over spouse.
@ Mortarius
The betas and white knights go on to orbit younger, prettier women of course. Because everybody knows that it’s feminist men who have a tendency to creepily hover around younger women.
My widowed 74 yo mother has more of a social life than my 16 year old niece who she is raising & lives with her due to family issues. My mother not only is raising a teen in a troubled time, she goes out at least twice a week to regular events (including card games & square dancing), she dates & goes out with her girlfriends to lunch & shopping or the movies at least once a week. Oh & she’s a legally blind, type 1 diabetic with a pacemaker and a feminist (as was my father until he passed 10 years ago).
I suspect they are merely projecting their worst fears onto others.
hehe, talk about projecting :,)
Most of the old naggy femnazists I know in my family (7 older sisters to my mother) are so freaking awsome with tons of political power and a large social life. And they laugh so much when we discuss how men behave on the interwebz in their “4ever alone” bubble.
Best regards from sweden
I love hearing about all the widowed family members leading active lives! The trick really is to cultivate interests and find people you want to share your time with.
The saddest people I have known have been retired men who don’t know what to do with themselves in retirement. They had no interests outside of work. Often, they have no social life, especially if they relied on their wives to organize their social lives and now the wife is dead or ill.
The complaining meme-makers won’t fear the same fate, though: they will still be able to complain on the internet, their main interest!
@katz:
My daughter frequently declares that she is a baby who is too little to walk. This is how she asks me to carry her.
She also declares herself Max the Glow Train while my son likes to be Katy Caboose.
When they’re not being Thomas, Percy, Rosie, James or Donald, or perhaps even Tayo the Little Bus.
i’m a little disappointed, why can’t we see the future misery of male feminists… they don’t recognise us, do they?!
and here are some totally alone feminists in old age:
http://jwa.org/sites/jwa.org/files/styles/artifacts/public/mediaobjects/badaugh.jpg?itok=Z3SU-mqu
Bella Abzug
http://chicagotonight.wttw.com/sites/default/files/article/image-non-gallery/mayaandbob2.jpg
Maya Angelou
Margaret Sanger
i giggled all along but this one made me explode with laughter 😀
Because feminists hate men as evidenced by the fact that these guys believe feminists hate men. Duh.
Yeah, I don’t want to live into my Seventies. I want to marry some MRA who likely thinks beating or shooting me and the kids = “Marriage counseling.” Sure.
This would be a classic example of the difference between a feminist who happens to be male and a Male Feminist™ if Arash wasn’t just an MRA.
You can’t troll in one thread then pretend everything’s normal in the next. We’re not cartoon goldfish. Dickhead.
http://cdn.someecards.com/someecards/usercards/these-are-books-and-i-have-tons-more-ive-decided-to-become-that-crazy-book-lady-who-also-happens-to-have-cats-b2263.png
Their ideas are totally false, anyway. I did exactly what they suggest, i.e. married at 21, had my first baby at 23 (an accident caused my naive belief that when he said it ‘didn’t matter and it would be ok’ not to leave a space at the end of the condom, I actually believed him. He’s since declared that I shouldn’t have because men will say anything).
Due to having no usable qualifications (I was planning to return to studying before the pregnancy), no ability to earn enough to pay for childcare, no relatives nearby who could help with childcare, and him being unprepared to adjust his schedule to help, I became a SAH mum.
He has since said that I should have had an abortion if I wanted a career, and believes that the fact that I’ve ‘never had to work’ is somehow a monumental advantage and I owe him all the admiration and respect he felt he was owed.
He ended up cheating and leaving me for a woman who DOES give him all the feels he needs, i.e. someone who is only with him for his money and knows her place, which is not as his equal.
So, even if you do what they say, it’s not enough to guarantee a long-lasting relationship.
They would probably argue that it was my fault he left me because reasons.
I could have done with more feminism in my youth, I would probably have made better choices (such as NOT giving up a career, friends and family by moving halfway across the country so that he could go watch his adored favourite football team, and NOT dropping out of school at 17).
It’s also not true the crap they spout about men only being attracted to girls under 25. I’m 50 and I have many young men contacting me on dating websites. True, they are only looking for easy sex, but it really irks them that the reverse isn’t true. They basically hate the fact that it’s easier for women to find a willing sexual partner, and are frantically grabbing around in the dark for any excuse to hate on women.
Most of them are likely just 17-20 year-olds who don’t yet have the social skills to get a girlfriend.
@Falcon
She’s holding an axe because she’s a “battle axe”. I’m lazy so I’ll turn it over to wikipedia.
I think it sounds more awesome than pejorative but that’s me.
Jesus… Ashara, I’m so sorry all that happened to you – it sounds like he never had any respect for you at all. I hope that you and your son/daughter are doing well without him.
DS:
I want this story of an enjoyable double-quadruple-feminist relationship shown to all MRAs everywhere just to watch their heads explode.
Thanks for the giggleguffaw @Jamesworkshop 🙂
@Scented Fucking Hard Chairs
oh that happens to be a myth:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldfish
we?!are you some sort of self-appointed representative?!maybe(who knows!).
and i’ve got some news: i’m not here to please or act according your prejudiced bitter views.
and can’t you seriously understand that i’m mocking MRA’s cliche of a feminist?!which is a lonely Misandrist “woman”
Women! You can choose between taking care of a cat or taking care of Dean Esmay. Obviously you would choose Dean, right?
When did we start carrying axes? When *didn’t* we carry axes!?!
ScarlettAthena, I feel you on the retired-men thing. My dad retired a bit ago and other than the occasional weekend gun show, he does nothing but sleep, read, watch TV, listen to conservative talk radio, go on the computer (his sites of choice also being mostly conservative), and annoy the living daylights out of me and my mom. I love him, but I may have to throw something (that causes little damage-maybe my little squeezable rubber stress zombie?) at his head the next time he goes “Are you guys OK?” or “What are you doing?”
What Ashara Payne posted above is true. I did the SAH thing. Cooked, cleaned, etc. He controlled all the finances I owned my own home and had a career prior to getting married. He pissed through the proceeds of the sale of my home, my 401K on hookers. I kid you not! He walked out after he ran out of money and shacked up with a woman much older. Paid little to no child support. No alimony as he hid all his income (self-employed).
After being out of the work force for 8 years, I had to start over. I also had ‘0’ credit rating because of that long period of inactivity. Guess what? 3-4 years later I dug myself out of that hole with my own bare hands!
If I could give any advice to a young girl it would be;
1.Education – STEM!
2.If you’re going to marry, make sure it’s 50/50 responsibility, ALWAYS! This includes cooking, cleaning, paying bills and CHILD REARING!
3.Never ever ever quit your job, EVER!
4.Never mingle your money.
5.You are your own knight in shining armor.
Also as a side note, men in their 40’s seem to want ‘relationships’ now more than they did as younger men. It’s nice and sweet but in the back of my mind I always wonder if it’s because they want a nurse maid for when they get older. I know this is because I have absolutely some serious trust issues. I can say though, I am having a lot of fun ‘dating like a guy’. I also love not having to answer to anyone.
@arash
SFHC said “cartoon goldfish”, so it actually works. If someone references Wile E. Coyote it doesn’t mean they believe coyotes can set explosives or not die when an anvil falls on their head.
Can someone please explain to me why “woman” is always in scare quotes?
Do you guys know what the scare quotes are supposed to mean? Are feminists/misandrists not actually women? Is this part of the lizard person conspiracy?
Inquiring minds would like to know.
Addendum: Since when is “Misandrist” a proper noun?
Can someone help me decipher this okc message I just got, beyond the hint of racism? Snakes? What?
“….Hi beautiful. How are you.I am what you are looking for. Tall, dark hair, handsome, Caucasian, great personality and spontaneous. PICS are not needed they just fill the mailbox. NO FLAKE THE SNAKES”
@Dr Hoveiny
I figured I’d find something about flakes and snakes on urban dictionary but all I found with a quick google search was confused people asking yahoo why their reptile’s skin is flaking (side note, do research before you get a pet, people).
Also the flake part led to a much more disgusting entry I am choosing not to share, that for some reason involves orgies.
Also lol @ the PICS part, I roughly translate that to: “you don’t need to see me, it’ll just waste valuable sex time, come over and sleep with me right now and you’ll see… well feel, because I’m not going to turn the lights on”
@Dr Hoveiny
Literally nobody has ever said “no flake the snakes” before. It’s a googlewhack (sort of). I have no clue what it’s supposed to mean.