When feminist author Jessica Valenti posted a picture of herself wearing an “I bathe in male tears” sweatshirt, Men’s Rights activists reacted as though she had literally called for the violent murder of every man on planet earth.
Though Valenti made clear the sentiment on the shirt was aimed at the obnoxious Men’s Rights types who routinely flood the comments on her articles, MRAs chose to believe that she was mocking homeless men, battered men, male suicide victims, and other men suffering very real pain.
A Voice for Men led the charge, with AVFM’s “social media director” Andrea “JudgyBitch” Hardie, one of Valenti’s most persistent and dishonest harassers, proclaiming that Valenti “hates all men and thinks their pain is funny, no matter what the source of it,” an assertion that is as demonstrably false as a flat earther’s contention that gravity doesn’t exist.
Valenti wasn’t the only “ironic misandrist” vilified by MRAs at AVFM and elsewhere; some were so upset by the trope they launched a campaign to try to convince the world that “male tears” was slang for semen.
I bring all this up because, as I perused the meme repository on A Voice for Men’s Facebook page recently, in preparation for the Memeday celebrations here on WHTM today, I noticed a couple newly posted memes that centered on female tears.
And it struck me how many of the very same Men’s Rights Activists who’ve thrown the biggest tantrums over the ironic misandry of the “male tears” trope love to joke about female and/or feminist tears.
I decided to scroll back through the AVFM archives to see how many more I could find. The short answer: a lot, many of them not only reveling in (imaginary) female tears but taking a certain pleasure in the notion that their own antifeminist activism was causing them. I had originally planned to go through the archives of several other antifeminist Facebook pages, but I found so many on AVFM’s Facebook page I didn’t bother. All but one of the memes below come from AVFM’s Facebook page or from Hardie’s JudgyBitch site.
Let’s start with AVFM’s favorite stock image of a crying woman:
These are all lovely, each in their unique way, but the last one may be my favorite, as it reveals the almost proud ignorance of feminism that underlies so many MRA attacks on feminism. What “radical feminist” magazines is this crying feminist supposed to be subscribing to? Beyond Ms magazine, hardly a bastion of radical feminism these days, I doubt the meme-maker or any of those who’ve passed along this meme could name any feminist magazines at all.
But this crying woman isn’t the only one to make it into MRA memes. There’s this theatrically crying gal — the same one who’s in the meme at the top of the page.
There’s this artfully photographed black and white lady:
This cartoon stereotype:
This crying girl:
And her friends:
There are crying celebrities:
And ordinary women who’ve been turned into memes against their will:
Not all of the sad women in MRA memes have literal tears running down their cheeks. Some just look like they’re about to burst into tears.
And let’s not forget the image that AVFM’s Andrea Hardie used to append to so many of her Tweets.
What’s striking to me about all these memes, beyond all the tears, is how little any of these memes have to do with any aspect of real-world feminism. Or real-world women, for that matter.
Many of the memes are, of course, little more than meanspirited “nyah-nyahs” aimed at feminists: “I don’t wike it/I’m a feminist” is not what you’d call a sophisticated rebuttal to feminist arguments.
But then again, none of the other memes offer real rebuttals either, largely because the feminism they attack is made almost entirely of straw. Neither feminists, nor women in general, have ever demanded “total control over men.” Women aren’t buying pearl necklaces with child support money. Virtually all of the “privileges” or “special treatment” that MRAs accuse feminists of demanding aren’t either, and in many cases apply equally to men. Virtually the only obligation that men have and women don’t is that men have to sign a largely meaningless registration card for a non-existent and politically impossible draft.
And of course there is no such thing as french-fry rape.
Cry harder, MRAs.
EDIT: Added the link to Hardie’s comment on Valenti.
The level of fail with their memes is cringeworthy. MRAs really do shoot themselves in the foot with their misogyny. Who can take them seriously at this point except for men/woman who hate women?
http://i2.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/cryblackman.jpg?resize=600%2C399
As opposed to their own (mra) version
I saw a black man once in a movie…white men are now cuckolded forever…..waaaaaaaaaa
http://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/avfmcrybw.jpg?resize=600%2C600
If women being treated equally with men, is special treatment, then aren’t you really copping to the fact that men are given special treatment already.
14,000 Facebook likes? Means either thousands of stupid people, or an awful lot of hate-readers secretly monitoring your page for Teh Stoopid (and memes to tear apart so they can hear YOU cry.)
Cry harder indeed, wankers.
I feel so bad for that red head on the phone, there’s a line of cops in the background, something terrible quite likely just happened, and MRAs do this with her picture.
I still don’t get what they mean when they say women want the same rights as men without the obligations. Is that just about the draft?
And now I don’t get what the “strong and independent” one means. What “traditional roles” don’t men want to fulfill? Is that woman supposed to be single and childless? She looks like she’s got a headache from dealing with some asshat at work. Is she supposed to want to get married and her boyfriend broke up with her? Is she supposed to be divorced and her jerk ex won’t pay any part of child support and/or help out with the kids?
BTW, do “women’s studies” still exist? I’m a college professor and the trend has been to call this program “gender studies” and it covers a whole host of issues. In a lot of places it isn’t a BA, it’s a minor which means that people study something else in addition to this. And, anyway, in the US, you have a host of “core courses” or whatever the institution calls them.
The answer is they make up conspiracy theories about radical feminism or cultural Marxism or the liberal media or some other bullshit. Wait, were they talking about women?!
My favourite donkey sanctuary has (as of just now) 260,156 Facebook likes; and the donkeys don’t even do podcasts.
And moreover, isn’t it making THEM the weaker sex? I mean, just listen to how they whine whenever women get even a tiny step closer to actual equality…how spoiled and pampered can a grown man get?
@Alan, judging by the kickstarter response a few years back, even potato salad has more fans and financial supporters than AVfM
“Special treatment doesn’t help weak people – it creates them”, so say the men who demand special treatment just for being men and existing. So say entitled, self-pitying nice guys. So say people who only care about “homeless men, battered men, male suicide victims, and other men suffering very real pain” when rabidly hating feminists.
And they really need to stop pretending that they only hate feminists, women with dyed hair, women with piercings and/or tattoos, fat women, and white women (it’s almost always white women in these memes). As has been well documented on this site, they hate all women. They aren’t fooling anyone except the ignorant or willfully blind.
Pfft, that’s only true if you care about “logic” and “the implications of what you’re saying”. Such things are for lesser men! Trump 2016!
I wonder how often people encounter women who are strong willed and abrasive in some manner and just assume that the words coming from that woman represents feminist ideology as a whole, regardless of whether that woman actually calls herself or what she is saying “feminist”. I’ve certainly seen youtube videos where the title claims that the woman is a stupid feminist, and while there is a woman who is brash, foolish and obnoxious she never does or says anything even remotely connected to feminism. I guess if you already have a negative view of what you call “feminism” it becomes self reinforcing. Every time a strong willed woman embarrasses herself in any way they think of feminism. Though admittedly a demure, submissive, and passive woman is less likely to embarrass herself; i.e. she doesn’t attract negative attention because she doesn’t attract ANY attention.
Of course there is the irony of the “A black man spoke to me!” meme and how often the manosphere overlaps with white supremacy. They both seem to assume, atleast subconsciously, that equality between different groups is impossible; thus when the ‘other’ demands equality what they must REALLY want is superiority.
I actually received child support until I was… I want to say 21? Because I was a dependent student. The only difference was that I was an adult at 18, so at that point Dad started sending me the money directly, rather than giving it to my custodial parent.
This would probably confuse the child support hating wing of the MRM, whose members can’t seem to understand that child support is actually about supporting your children. It’s not a get-rich-quick scheme orchestrated by your money-grubbing bitch harpy ex-wife.
The Minnesota Renaissance Festival has 129,345 likes on Facebook.
Cry harder, MRAs.
This is similar to how MRAs howled with rage when women dared to criticize an EU’s scientist’s shirt that had nudes all over it (worn on public television during a satellite launch), but constantly demand that women who’ve been doxed, threatened with torture, rape and murder (of themselves and their families), grow a backbone and stop being such whiney babies because the internet is a tough place.
Making fun of men’s tears shows how hateful, cruel, spiteful and priviledged feminists are, but making fun of women’s tears is fair and warranted.
For them, right and wrong is solely dependent on whose ox is being gored.
Same logic as Trump supporters.
MRA’s don’t have a real backbone at all… I mean, if all it takes for you to have a meltdown is someone making a joke about how stupid hyper-masculinity is (because it is really stupid), or if someone cracks a dick joke regarding your muscle car, then it’s clearly you, Mr. ManlyManMRA, who has the problem.
But I guess you just have to be so stupid and self-absorbed to not see it that way.
I was going to post this last time the subject came up, but I’m so, so tired of ‘men have it so rough, men have to work in the miiiiiiiines….’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pit_brow_women
Sorry, fedoraboys, we’re not crying.
We’re laughing at you.
(Look at them, trying so hard! Who has the heart to tell them that repeating something over and over again does not increase its truth value?)
Re: the draft
They seem to get so hung up on that in the US. I personally think it should be abolished anyway – even having it there in name only is ridiculous.
We don’t even have that in Australia. Oh, we did once – for the Vietnam war. But it’s gone now. Military service in Australia is entirely voluntary. The menzers here have to go on about “social expectations” and “women don’t go into combat roles”.
The voter enrollment card I sign is identical to that which any man would sign and confers the same right – one vote.
I was wondering what was happening with the, uh, “gentlemen” over at the increasingly irrelevant AVfM. Lately there’s been so much more pressing racism and violent rhetoric cropping up on the “alt right” and Trump buddies that it has nudged Paul Elam & Friends out of the dubious limelight.
@Tragedy of the Commas – I think the reason MRAs and suchlike focus on white women in particular is because as much as they don’t believe women are people, they truly don’t believe any women of color are human. Also, I believe most of these bros are white themselves? And more than a little bit racist. We’ve seen the overlap so often.
Oh come on MRA’s it was a joke quit being so poliicicaly
@ dreemr
Makes sense. I agree.
@ Lady Mondegreen
I feel like Jon Stewart’s famous “learning curves are for p***ies” line is relevant here.
@Texans: It wasn’t nudes, but it was a dumb shirt all the same. Sheesh, if the guy had to pick a pinup-patterned fabric something with a bunch of vintage pulp covers of space babes would’ve at least felt more fitting to the setting. (Better yet, vintage pulp covers with retro spaceships would’ve avoided the whole flap in the first place.)
I still don’t get how they rail against child support. WTF!
THOSE ARE YOUR OWN KIDS, FOOL!
They can’t just opt out of taking care of their own kids, just because they dislike the momma. At the very least, it would behoove them to see the children get, you know, food and shelter, and not live like vagabonds.
And I still can’t figure out whether or not they want women to work or not. On the one hand, women are supposed to be at home taking care of their kids, but if , because of the three Ds, some man left them, how are they supposed to support the children?
But then women get vilified for going to work and taking jobs away from men. (Which entirely excludes the fact that WoC, didn’t have any choice but to work, because their husbands weren’t allowed to make enough money to support a family.)
MRAs answer to women working, is for women to find a man to take care of them, (which also excludes those women who already have a man, who isn’t making enough money for them both, or hell, let’s just for the sake of argument, include women who don’t want men.)
So their argument seems to be that when women are dependent on a man for food and shelter, she’s a gold digger, but when she isn’t she’s vilified as a ho!
Am I getting this straight?
Okay now my head hurts…I’m gonna need some brain bleach. Does anyone have any Pygmy goat or hedgehog videos/gifs?
Dreemr:
Yeah, I’m not sure they are aware of the existence of WoC. But then they’re not aware of a lot of things. They seem to live in a giant plastic hamster bubble of fear.