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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?
Just wondering how strange the world might be if every philosophy, every social movement, every line of thought ever proposed were judged entirely – but entirely – on the looks of its founding figures and contributors, measured by the standards of the 21st century fashion and pop industry.
Y’know, kids, today in science we’re going to look at the Copernican revolution. Here’s a picture of Copernicus – how many of you think he’s hot? Can you grade his looks 0 – 10? Shall we have a vote? Sorry, we have no information on whether he went to the gym or not – but we’ve got an artist’s impression of him from the rear wearing tight pants that will help you decide. OK, so the votes are in – looks like the sun revolves around the earth after all. Copernicus rates a meagre 3 on the HB scale. Next, the theory of relativity. Here’s a pic of Einstein. Oh dear. Looks like it’s laters for relativity kids…
When it comes to body acceptance, I agree with Malice W Underland. In the mid-90s Dawn French made an hour-long programme about how fat can be beautiful, rejecting the pressure that media puts on women to be thin (I honestly think it’s improved since then, fashions in the 70s/80s/90s were thinner than now; this may be due to the much-quoted effect of an economic downturn but I’m not so sure, it’s only recently women have started desiring bigger derrières).
At the end of the programme, Alison Moyet popped up to ask why we’re so obsessed with beauty anyway, one step beyond maybe being beautiful for the benefit of men’s boners.
You know, in that first meme, Dworkin is just giving that look like she’s saying…
“Really? This is your meme? A bunch of copies of a photoshopped model representing what you think “normal” women are and a regular picture of me as the Big Scary Feminist? You do know you’re making my point for me, right?”
I find that hilarious.
The one with centaur woman might as well be captioned “Kelly would have continued listening, but she was struck with a sudden important question. Just where HAD her internal organs gone?”
It’s once again time for everyone’s favourite show, Formal Logic with MRAs! Remember kids, MRAs are always objective and rational, so this should be both easy and fun.
From the images above, we learn that:
a) Hot women don’t need feminism because men will love them for being skinny.
b) Hot women are all lying, thieving whores.
c) Feminists are all immensely fat.
d) Women become feminists because they want to lie to men.
From these four axioms we can determine that:
e) Since all hot women are lying whores and feminism is about lying to men, all hot women must be feminists.
f) Since all hot women are feminists and all feminists are fat, all hot women must be fat.
g) Since hot women don’t need to be feminists because they’re skinny, all fat feminists must be skinny nonfeminis-
ERROR
PLEASE REINSERT DISK
That “This is feminism” meme takes on a whole new meaning if you picture the blue dude as a Roosh fanboy trying to be sarcastic.
A new, dark, accurate meaning.
Yup. They got pantsed, and all the girls saw and laughed and pointed, and didn’t want what they saw and laughed and pointed at. Ergo, feminism! Hence, all women’s real and huge societal problems are just their trivial fee-fees being hurt, while these guys’ sad boners and blue balls are huge, overarching societal problems. See how that works?
(No, neither do I. But that’s how these hare-brains seem to run.)
I really love memeday at WHTM. The post itself, then the comments following = a whole new level of wonderfulness.
Hell, no. Einie’s a total cutie.
I quite agree Snowberry but then I don’t conform my aesthetic tastes to the shallowest of the 21st century pop and fashion industry standards.
Einstein lived for a while not far from where I am, in Norfolk (the one in the UK) – in a kind of shed, I believe, out in the woods.
Even so, he’d never get on Pop Idol.
Calling feminists ugly goes back at least to the suffrage movement, although in those days the cartoon feminists were skinny and horse-faced instead of fat and sassy.
It’s amazing how women magically change into uggos the moment they stand up for themselves. I just witnessed a Reddit thread where a bunch of Red Pill guys were declaring Emma Watson too ugly for them (while at the same time raging that her boyfriend is a handsome jock). I’m sure Watson is crying herself to sleep on her huge pile of money and Hollywood contracts because she’s not hot enough for some gross dudes on Reddit.
Yesterday on a Facebook discussion about misogyny I got told I was too ugly to fuck (not that I’d asked) and “looked like a dog”.
Now, I’m not saying he couldn’t be right – only there are precisely two photos of me on my Facebook page from which he could possibly have made his judgement.
In one, I have a flowery skull face painted on and am dressed like Carmen Miranda for a Day of the Dead dance. In the other I am ten years old, and have just discovered caviar.
@Shaenon
It’s funny how far some men will delude themselves into thinking that their opinion matters on any topic. Also, as if they would turn down Emma Fucking Watson if she for whatever weird twist of fate were in the same place as one of these dudes and started hitting on them. They feel comfortable making such ridiculous claims because they know they’d never be tested on it, but it’s just a bunch of bullshit sabre-rattling.
Worst Where’s Wally? book ever.
That’s really not too surprising. You know the saying, “beauty is skin deep, but ugly goes to the bone”? Well, to guys like that, any woman who offends them by failing to be a submissive kitchen-jockey is displaying her inner ugliness. Because they really do find that unattractive.
They’re just angry that their particular standards of inner beauty aren’t being catered to by society. Not that it would matter if it did, because their own inner ugly wouldn’t make things any easier.
I fuckin *love* (read: despise) their continual pathetic attempts to pretend rape isnt an actual thing that is actually happening. Women are talking about rape because a lot of women have really been raped, and I would be rather not-at-all shocked to find that a lot of MRAs know that damn well from personal experience. They deliberately try to make it seem like women are just imagining it, like, for profit?
@NicolaLuna
I think these are the same guys who think that the wage gap only exists because women major in useless degrees like women’s studies (I absolutely hate it when someone tries to tell me that all female dominated majors are useless because I majored in speech therapy which is far from useless but very few men go into)
In the very first image, the repeated image of the young brunette woman, looks a hell of lot like Olivia Wilde to me. Now, granted, my eyes could be deceiving me, but if that really is her, I find that exceptionally hilarious because she is, in fact, a feminist.
Ninja’d by Nathan on the first meme. I’d also like to add that the only thing I got from it was “I am obsessed with Olivia Wilde and jealous that she wouldn’t give me the time of day. Wait, she’s a feminist? Ooh, I know how to make myself feel better-put her in a meme comparing her to Andrea Dworkin, who I consider the worst feminist in the history of feminism.”
The most recent Saturday Morning Breakfast cereal
http://smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=4039
On the centaur woman one, I am one of those very skinny women. I have been told I look like a stick, called anorexic as an insult (at 7 years old the first time), and asked if I ever eat. But all of that is more reason to be a feminist because I want a world where I – and every other woman – am able to live without my very body being the subject of public discussion. By fluke of genetics I’m very skinny. By fluke of genetics some people are much bigger, some are very tall, some are very short, etc. Each person’s body is different, and each person’s body is their own. It really shouldn’t be a big deal.
This is a small nitpick.
These MRA’s always go on about women having “all the reproductive rights” or whatever nonsense because women have the sole ability to terminate a pregnancy that has begun.
MRA’s also love to go on about BioTroofs, what is natural, “men are inherently” and so on.
Of course, only when it benefits men. Here’s an actual biotruth for ya, women have these rights, and should have them unimpeded because of the currently insurmountable fact that they have to carry the baby in their bodies and they bear 100% of the risk of complications!
‘Even so, he’d never get on Pop Idol.’
Isaac Newton would though….
I actually kind of like the spot the feminist one.
It’s like they think all women are identical to each other… unless they happen to be feminists, and then they are unique individuals.
I know that’s not what they think, and frankly even anti-feminists are unique individuals, but it speaks wonders that these guys don’t even notice the implication of their meme that they want all women to be cardboard cutout identical.
So, yeah. Rambly 48 til midnight thought from AK.
As a curvy girl, it took me some time to empathize with thin, conventionally attractive women. Because big girls are also inundated with the message that our sole importance to the world is to be attractive to a man, and we must strive for that, we’re taught that thin women are our rivals, becasue they get male approval, and we don’t see that that affects them as much as it does us.
Curvy girls are taught that if we don’t get male attention, we are total losers at being women. But the alternative of getting lots of male attention for your looks, isn’t any better, especially if you really do want people to leave you alone in public, so you can get stuff done.
Although, I was fortunate to recognize the plight of conventionally thin women in my teens, and how it wasn’t much better than what I was going through, the other stuff took a long time.
A lot of us fail to take into account, sometimes until it’s much too late, that being conventionally sized, is not a get out of jail free card. It takes us a long time to figure out that thin women have the same problem we curvy girls do: Public Body Policing.
It took me a long time to figure out , it’s not about size or attractiveness, and the comments we start getting as soon as we start showing signs of puberty (or not showing) is all about public control of female bodies by family and hideously enough, total strangers.
Yeah, body policing has never been one of the tenets of feminism, but it is one of the tenets of patriarchy.
Can’t remember why, but when reading this comment thread I thought it might be a good opportunity to post this again:
http://echidneofthesnakes.blogspot.se/2014/10/more-men-are-raped-in-us-than-women.html