Women Not Alone With Bullhorns Yelling at Men

It’s Memeday again!

Anyone who’s seen a lot of antifeminist memes online has surely noticed them: the angry women yelling at men through bullhorns.

Constructed, for the most part, from pilfered stock images accompanied by vaguely histrionic text, these women are supposed to represent the evil feminists of the world with their abusive behavior and their impossible demands.

Naturally, these women bear only the loosest resemblance to any real feminists any of us have ever met.

Here are a few of these bullhorn-wielding women I’ve run across recently.

Ok, now, that’s just a terrible idea for a chant. Seriously, go for something a little more classic, like “Hey Hey, Ho Ho, Patriarchy Has to Go,” or “Men’s Rights Reddit, You Can’t Hide. We Charge You With Gendercide.” I just made those up on the spot here; you could probably come up with something better if you worked at it.

Remember: Rhyming is good!

Ok, that doesn’t rhyme either. And I’m having a little trouble understanding exactly what is so terribly outrageous about it.

Fellas, if you feel there is something wrong in the world that no one else is addressing, and you sincerely want to do something about it, here’s a suggestion: get together with some other people who feel the same way and, well, do something about it. That’s literally what every other activist in the world does. Don’t get mad at feminists for not doing your work for you.

I don’t think this one was a meme, per se; I think it was used to illustrate a post on A Voice for Men at some point, (though my Google-fu failed me when I tried to track it down).

Ironically, one of AVFMs favored forms of internet activism is to send its flying monkey squad to pester and harass its enemies on Twitter and to fill up the comment sections of articles they don’t like with invective and accusations and abuse. That’s pretty much the internet equivalent of shouting someone down with a megaphone.

Some women — like this extremely angry straw feminist — apparently don’t need a bullhorn in order to yell louder than one of those cars that go boom.

The angry-woman-with-a-bullhorn trope has proven irresistable to the angry woman-haters of Gamergate as well. The cartoon below serves it up with a side order of anti-Semitism, incorporating a version of that Anita-Sarkeesian-as-the-Happy-Merchant caricature so popular with Gamergaters.

Again, this is a terrible chant. “Privilege, Privilege, Misogyny” not only doesn’t rhyme; it doesn’t make any sense.

Also, why is the giant Sarkeesian monster carrying a wad of cash in her fist? With all that money, she can’t afford a purse?

Meme harder, dudes.

EDIT: It’s been pointed out (thanks, Tessa!) that this isn’t a real Ben Garrison cartoon. The original featured Hillary Clinton; some Sarkeesian-hater pasted that anti-Semitic caricature over Hillary’s head, changed a lot of the wording, etc. Garrison’s cartoons are regularly modified like this, for the lulz, but his cartoons are generally pretty awful/ridiculous to begin with.

Oh, and on a somewhat unrelated note: While poking around looking for bullhorn-wielding women online I ran across … well, this thing. For some unknown reason, someone has taken a bizarre animated gif and turned it into a strange tribute to the “eternal friendship” of Portugal and Brazil by adding captions and the relevant flags.

If anyone can explain the logic here, please let me know. I’m pretty sure there’s no place in either country (or any country) that looks like this. At least in this reality.

Also, I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to put flags in the ocean. Or whatever that is.