Men’s Rights Activists learned a long time ago that the easiest way to win an argument with someone is by playing the old straw man game, ignoring what they actually believe and instead pretending that they believe something much less defensible — and much easier to rebut.
Trouble is, when you’re actually debating one of these people directly, they may point out to you that they don’t actually believe what you claim they believe. And this makes it oh so much harder to win the argument.
Luckily, MRAs have found a workaround for this little difficulty. Instead of debating real feminists who can argue back, they debate imaginary ones who say only what the MRAs allow them to say.
One quick visit to a stock photo repository and hey, presto! You’ve got yourself the following memes depicting Straw Feminists Confused About Everything.
Er, what? Feminists have the power to ban hot babes from going out in public? Do these hot babes have to make themselves less hot before they can get a walking around permit from the Department of Jealous Feminists Who Won’t Let You Go Out if You’re Too Hot?
I think I may have posted this one before, but I still don’t quite understand it. Hey MRA dudes, you’re supposed to confuse the imaginary women in your memes, not the rest of us!
This dumb little cartoon, drawn in 2003 by a dude hoping to sell a few t-shirts, has provided MRAs with thirteen years’ worth of cheap outrage so far. Congrats, MRA meme-maker, for squeezing a little bit more outrage from its desiccated corpse.
I ain’t saying she’s a golddigger but, yes, you are saying that. Again. That song is more than a decade old. Move on, dudes.
These are all legible, so right from the start they’re better than around 90% of the memes MRAs usually make. The first two are straw men, but at least coherent. Then things go down hill fast with an MRA who I guess thinks men are such dangerous sub-humans that women are better off with actual sharks?
I left my marriage and gave up the financial security I had within it because I didn’t find the love and support I needed. Financial security is nice, but as a feminist, I value my integrity and self-worth more than being able to afford to eat meat every day.
It was hard, I won’t deny it, but worth it for what I learned about myself in the process. I’m now totally independent and, although I have quite a low wage and multiple debts to service, I can make ends meet. Some days I eat bread rolls with vegemite for lunch and dinner, but I do eat.
So, yeah, this real life feminist couldn’t give two hoots about getting her financial security from a man!
(Sorry for the unexpectedly personal turn this comment took)
Financial security? When my ex walked out, he tried to demand alimony because I was making quite a bit more than he was (thanks, college degree!) Unfortunately for him, he didn’t bother to check the laws in the state where we lived – you have to stick with a relationship for 10 years before you can get alimony. (I’m sure this is to protect men from golddiggers, not women from selfish jerks). So he settled for keeping 90% of our property by simply not forking over when he sold the stuff.
He also walked out while I was in the hospital for an extended illness, so he managed to keep most of what we owned, anyway. I ended up in a very bad spot financially.
Good thing I married him for love, right? Since I got no financial security. Wait, I didn’t get love, either.
The shark one is the worst attempt at a gotcha ever. I’m not going to go live in the ocean because I’m a human. Humans are land mammals and did not evolve to live in the ocean. Simple to refute that one.
We’re going to have to make sure we build our underwater feminist bubble cities far away from those built by the “going Galt” crowd. We don’t want a bunch of objectivists just dropping in and interrupting our misandering.
OOOOH YOU SHOULD LIVE WITH LITERAL SHARKS HAHA TAKE THAT I’m so smart
What
back in the day when I was more indulgent with trolls, cant tell you how many times I had a “conversation” like this:
“Why do you believe X?!?”
“I dont. Never said that. have stated strong opposition to that. No idea where you got that. I believe Y. ”
“So you say you believe Y, but how can you really believe Y when you believe X!”
“I do not believe X.”
“Why do you believe X?!”
I like the ‘Boys are stupid’ one (a friend has the actual shirt). I think it’s really cute. It’s just such a harmless way of expressing women’s (often justifiable) exasperation with us; and it’s not like women actually do throw rocks at us.
@Alan yea rlly isnt the stereotype supposed to be that boys throw rocks at stupid girls & isnt that part of the joke?
^^And yet these pricks say we can’t take jokes.
Why do we get mad when men want “equality”? Because theirs involves the right to hit us with impunity. Which, BTW, is not actually the case for women — we get charged with assault just the same as men. That law is already gender-neutral. Move the fuck ON, idiots.
One in six women are sexually assaulted in their life time. So that means that one in five women are attacked by sharks?
Is there like a Sharknado Alley I’m unaware of?
Poor misunderstood sharks
@ kale
I dunno. To me it’s a bit like the “Feminist Killjoy” one. It’s funny because it isn’t true, but it plays with the stereotyping.
@Bina part of the point of feminism is that men were and still are already hitting women with impunity.
Speaking of sharks, this is the opening paragraph of a genuine story in our local paper. I think the only appropriate response is “Er…”
Read more: http://www.westbriton.co.uk/Shark-bite-Cornwall-Great-White/story-19671850-detail/story.html#ixzz45FXYzVig
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This is some weird shit! It’s almost as though these MRA/MGTOW/PUA losers had some kind of, y’know, partisan vested interest in not letting feminism get fairly represented…
I was in junior high when that awful “boys are stupid” shirt was being sold, and I hated it then, and I hate it now, oh my god, let it die, just let the terrible cartoon die, why is this still a thing,
In regard to the last meme, I’ve never understood why most MRAs seem to think we’re currently living in 1950’s America. To use myself as a counter-example of this extremely outdated stereotype, I work full time as an RN, and I’m completely financially independent. I own a comfortable and well-furnished house with a decent-sized yard in a safe neighborhood and a relatively new car in good condition. Solely on what I earn as a nurse, I can buy groceries and put gas in my car, pay all my bills, taxes, etc. each month and save up “rainy day money” for emergencies and maybe going back to school to advance my degree. No government assistance (beyond standardized public services available to all genders).
So, despite working in one of the most archetypically feminine career fields, I have absolutely no purely economic incentive to get married or co-habit with a man. At my work place, I’m surrounded by other women who earn as much if not more than me. I’ve also met CNAs and other women who earn significantly less than I do yet who support not just themselves but several children on their incomes alone. (It’s definitely no easy but it’s not nearly as impossible as people think it is.) I know not all women are in the same position I’m currently in, but I find it absolutely baffling how many MRA/PUA theories about female psychology hinge on any given women being completely unable to support herself or her children.
Sorry to double post, should have mentioned this in my last comment.
Gotta love that their “must ban hot ladies so dudes will want to bone me!” meme features a young, thin white woman, ie the group that is massively overrepresented among women in the media. Is that the only kind of woman you brosefs can imagine, even when you’re thinking of women you would not bang? Are all non-young, non-thin, and non-white women literally invisible to you??
@kale
Why do you believe that penises are antennae that receive man-controlling radio signals from aliens?
Why?
Given a choice between living with a shark or an MRA, I’d take the shark. I think more people would object to me putting an MRA in the fishtank in my living room.
Lewis Black – If It Weren’t For My Hoo-erse
“…and then someone says the dumbest thing you’ve ever heard, and it goes…in your EAR.”
I guess that ban-all-better-looking-women meme is about outcry at unrealistic images of women in the media that promote eating disorders combined with the “beautiful at any size” movement and calls to stop body-shaming.
Which is to say, it misses the point of the meme: that feminists are not looking to feel good about their own bodies exclusively by banning anything, but rather they are looking to build societal awareness of the messages that say women can only be loved if they fit some narrow band of looks on the attracto-meter.
But really, isn’t this a fact among reactionaries that everything is a zero-sum game? We only contain so much acceptance in us, and to extend that acceptance in one direction would mean to remove another direction.
That and some primal fear that, if allowed to leave the predetermined box of attractiveness, women will literally bring down all of human civilization merely by existing as fat or with a different color hair and/or skin color, with tattoos and/or piercings, not in a short skirt…. or wait, simply as existing probably.
Since MRAs love strawman arguments so much, maybe we can counter with strawman arguments of our own. We can ask them why they think men are like sharks. Then, because we’ve learned that they think of themselves as sharks, we can throw buckets of chum at them.