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The classic stereotype of the feminist — or at least the one most popular with antifeminists — comes to us straight from the 1970s. This feminist is mannish, unkempt, ugly, and above all fat. She wears baggy men’s clothing — perhaps overalls — or long hippie skirts that offer a glimpse of her defiantly unshaven legs. Think Andrea Dworkin, or some exaggerated version of her.
This stereotype, or at least an updated version of it, remains popular amongst the internet antifeminists who make so much noise — and so many memes. The updated ugly feminist remains fat, but has traded away her hippie accoutrements for leather miniskirts, black lipstick, facial piercings and hair dyed a violent red or blue. She looks like she just returned from a Slut Walk, though she’s one of the protesters that antifeminists like to loudly proclaim they Would Not Bang.
While Andrea Dworkin types — and sometimes Dworkin herself — still make it into antifeminist memes, like the one posted above, you’re much more likely to run across some variations of the feminists below.
Antifeminist meme makers love incorporating unflattering photos of feminists who seem to embody the new stereotype into their memes; given that none of these women have exactly volunteered for the role, so I won’t post any of these memes. They’re easy enough to find, as they show up pretty much anywhere misogynists congregate online. Which is practically the entire internet.
But that’s not the whole story here. It turns out that the fat, ugly feminist stereotype has a sister, and she looks less like Andrea Dworkin than she does the woman used to illustrate the non-feminist woman in that meme above.
This alternate feminist stereotype is what most observers would call conventionally hot. She’s also conventionally conventional, possibly a former cheerleader and sorority girl. She is the very picture of white privilege — and, her detractors claim — female privilege.
Far from rejecting the trappings of conventional female beauty standards, as did so many feminists in the 1970s, she embodies them — unashamedly using her beauty, and her sexual power over men, in order to get what she ways. All while chanting the feminist mantra of equality.
That last one may be far more revealing than its maker intended, suggesting that he quite literally sees feminists as the popular “mean girls” in high school who not only wouldn’t date him, but who wouldn’t even talk to him at parties.
These smug and demanding manipulators are also, these memes tell us, likely to cry “rape” if they retroactively decide that some man they’ve slept with isn’t good enough for them. Or they may cry rape for no reason at all — just because they can.
There’s real hatred lurking behind these memes, and a not-very-well-hidden desire for some kind of retribution. Antifeminist meme-makers transform stock images of attractive women crying into morality tales in which evil feminist women finally see the error of their ways.
The meme-makers also love to imagine that they themselves have brought tears to the eyes of some model-hot feminist by posting harassing or threatening remarks online, or perhaps by setting up an antifeminist Facebook page.
Or by wearing some offensive t-shirt:
In the movie Bowfinger, Eddie Murphy — playing an action-movie star with a tenuous connecting to reality — is weirdly obsessed by the desire to take the Lakers cheerleading squad “down a peg or two” by exposing himself to them.
Sometimes I wonder if a similar desire is the primary driver behind the Men’s Rights movement: the desire among MRAs to tear down — to humiliate, to bring to tears — the women they most desire, but who remain, somehow, tantalizingly out of their reach?
The “crying feminist” memes are hugely ironic, considering the amount of public wailing and foot-stomping that goes on from these guys every time a woman dares to have an opinion, a job, or a three dimensional movie role. Feminists aren’t the ones who see a tattoo, rush home, and compose a 10,000-word screed about barbarians at the gate. Feminists aren’t the ones demanding that everyone validate and worship them and give them 100% credit for building all of civilization. Feminists aren’t the ones getting all tied up in knots over being “denied access to sex” (as if sex is a location, not an activity), and threatening violence if they don’t get their way. Talk about weak.
“There, there…if you don’t look at the pink hair, it can’t hurt you.”
@Buttercup
Hope this is suitable
http://i.imgur.com/yB1VCe7.png
That last meme is not targeting general feminists, but a specific feminist named Amy who has been harassed by MRAs using memes like this one since 2012.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/lousycanuck/2012/08/16/the-campaign-against-amy-davis-roth/
http://skepchick.org/2013/02/chicks-tough-old-hens-and-roosters-oh-and-t-shirts-at-tam/
Having wheelchair ramps and handicapped parking spots doesn’t help disabled people! It creates them!
Feminism: It will keep older women from noticing that they’re surrounded by an army of copy paste attractive clone robot ladies.
We hate women who aren’t physically attractive to us!
OK, what about women that are?
Fuck them, too!
@ Buttercup Q. Skullpants
Excellent post.
Clearly, these men are pillars of good mental health and so have every right to comment on other people’s health.
I looked back over the memes again, and did anyone else notice that the fat girl chastising the skinny girl said “Meat is for men, bones are for the dogs…”?
Even in their straw arguments, we’re only doing this for their attention.
I gotchoo sucka!
Ahhh, but Buttercup Q. Skullpants, you fail to realize that for these nards, sex *IS* a location. These guys think that their penis in a vagina = awesome sex. They don’t care about foreplay, about consent, about the comfort or pleasure of the woman, about the burden upon her of reproduction and childbearing, or really about the brain or feelings of the woman attached to the vagina at all. They just care about gaining entrance to the vagina: a location.
This mentality is, of course, what gave rise to Wanda Sykes’ wonderful monologue about the “detachable pussy”. If you haven’t ever had the privilege of listening to it before, I highly recommend it assuming that slightly crude humor doesn’t trigger you terribly. : )
@Dr_NicolaLuna Not only is the income gap a thing, but did you know that when it comes to divorce, typically in a divorce, men’s income actually INCREASES post-divorce while women’s decreases? And yes, that’s even taking into consideration alimony payments (not that most states enforce that vigorously or anything).
The last time I saw the statistics on it (I think it was a 2012 study?) men tended to end up about 1.5X better off purely from a financial angle while women ended up at about 60% of their previous income level. So yea, men definitely get paid better. And sure, some of that is maybe because we enculturate men and women differently as children such that some of them pursue different kinds of degrees/trades, but that wouldn’t really account for that broad of an income spread. There seems to be a prima facie case just from post-divorce income levels for the existence of a glass ceiling for women.
@Snowberry
Just to clarify:
‘Spermjacking’ would only entitle the resulting child to support payments from their father, not alimony for the mother. Almost no one, except the very rich and the very old, divorced in the last 20+ years pays ‘alimony’ to an ex-spouse.
Women don’t take 50% of a man’s property via divorce settlements. That’s not how the dividing of marital assets works.
Being mean to women they don’t know is the only way that these wankers know how to assert dominance over anything in their pathetic, unfulfilling lives. These are broken people who refuse to get real help ( because therapy is for women and gay people and is used against men because therapists totally always take the women’s side… Getting help is totally not Alpha at all… Wallowing in your own filth like a toddler with a shitty diaper and blaming everyone else for the fact that you shit yourself and then complaining that feminists who wipe their own asses are getting a handout because a woman didn’t invent toilet paper is totez Alfuh, dudebro ) and thus blame their problems on everyone else. Boo-hoo it’s feminists’ fault that I don’t have a hot supermodel submissive cheerleader with a severe addiction to blowjobs for a wife. Boo-hoo it’s feminists’ fault that I don’t have a job I want because wimminz work at my place of employment and obviously don’t deserve the jobs they have because no woman does. Boo-hoo it’s feminists’ fault that my mom didn’t cook my favorite dinner tonight because if feminists didn’t teach her that she could be independent and choose to cook for me whatever she wants, I could be having Frito pie instead of icky gross roast chicken.
I am sooooo powerless in my life because of feminists. How can I gain control over something? I know. I will gain control over something in my own mind by making a mean picture of it or leaving a mean comment onthe internet or blaming women for everything. Yeah! That’s it! TOTEZ ALFUHZ BRO!!!!
And, of course, the whole ‘feminists are ugly’ falls afoul of reality. To pick merely the most obvious example, Gloria Steinem researched her story about the goings-on at the Playboy Club in New York… by working there as a Playboy Bunny. (And had far more to tell about attitudes in the media after that came out and she had trouble finding any new work for a few years, of course.)
“Sometimes I wonder if a similar desire is the primary driver behind the Men’s Rights movement: the desire among MRAs to tear down — to humiliate, to bring to tears — the women they most desire, but who remain, somehow, tantalizingly out of their reach?”
Exhibit A: https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/10/21/these-mens-rights-activists-get-off-literally-by-fantasizing-about-sexually-humiliating-feminists/
@ Nathan Hevenstone
She’s actually Megan Fox. (Out of curiosity I cropped out one of the clones and plugged it into Google image search.) No idea if Ms. Fox would identify as a feminist.
@ Geoff
Huh… that’s a very Olivia-Wilde-like picture of Megan Fox. I checked it out, though, and you’re right.
And BTW… yes, even Megan Fox identifies as a feminist. A problematic one, to be sure, but she does claim the title…