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.
@littleknown
I love Lewis Black. His comedy hurts him. He sees the fact that what he does is twist the awful into the tolerable. There is an attitude in there that I identify with very much.
We tell dumb blonde jokes about our dog all the time.
He’s male.
So much straw. Nobody strike a match!
Are any UK based mamotheers going to the protest at number 10 tomorrow? Or the big one next weekend?
Has it ever been revealed here why so many of these “meme” makers all plaster that huge-ass AVFM logo on all their … erm … creations? The dumb blonde one and the emotional intelligence one have different names on their logos, so two different people made them, but both had the brilliant idea to make the logo fucking enormous so that it’s the first and most glaring thing you see. Other memes show the logo as literally the biggest thing on the image.
Is there some kind of “meme-making instruction book” out there on AVFM that advises this? Does AVFM require you to do this as a term of use of their logo thing? Some other explanation?
I thought all rape reports were lies. Are all reported shark attacks even bigger, badder lies, with the sharks actually taking the alleged “victim” out for coffee and buying them fancy jewelry, so that shark attacks can be fairly said to occur less often than never?
@Policy of Madness
Outside of basic individual experience at making them this is the sort of thing you need.
This is neat too, as well as the general search on the term meme.
Even in their straw feminist arguments, we’re only doing [a thing] for their attention and to somehow trick the poor men into sleeping with us.
Because, in their distorted reality, the only reason that women do anything at all is “(cis) men and their boners”.
“Women are fighting for advertisers to see that showing starving women as models and women who are average as ‘plus-sized’ is damaging to feminine-identifying people, and can cause eating disorders in people who are struggling to fit that narrow view of ‘beautiful’.”
“Must be because they want to force dudes to think fat chicks are sexy! Fat chicks aren’t sexy! They’re gross and make my boner wilt! Why do feminazis want to force me to find fat women sexy?!”
I’ll admit I’m not great at faces, but in the “Feminist Mind” meme, does that look kinda like Shane to anyone else?
Alan, that shark article.
“We’re not saying it’s not a giant maneating shark, we’re just saying it’s not that type of giant maneating shark. It’s this more likely to be maneating species, actually!”
Nice. That is not how you reassure and protect people and protect sharks.
A bit more on memes from the first paper I linked,
Most of the “memes” that are posted here are what I think of as “modern iconography”, text plus pictures that convey cultural information. Some of them are even animated icononography.
@ contrapangloss
Yeah, I feel really sorry for sharks. Don’t get me wrong; if I encountered one whilst I was swimming I’d be racing for the shore throwing small children behind me; but I completely understand why Peter Benchley wishes he’d never written “Jaws”.
Don’t even get me started on the shark fin soup industry. 🙁
@ Alan
That quote from the shark nerds made me very happy. They’re so absorbed into a version of reality where the only things that matter are sharks, and (accurate!) facts about them, and differences between them, that they’ve completely lost all perspective on how most humans work most of the time.
It’s endearing. I wish I was that enthusiastic about something.
eta: ^__________^
Hi everyone! :waves: It’s been a long time so I thought I’d pop in!
Any hoo,
Like Bina said I don’t trust guys who complain about “we want equality! What about us!?” Because it’s always boils down to “I get to hit women/girls right!? Women/girls should die more!” Etc. They don’t care about men and boys they just want women and girls to suffer and the thing is we are already suffering and we are already dying by the hands of misognist (and other bigots) pricks like them.
The funny thing about that “boys are stupid throw rocks at them” tshirt was created by a misognist (not a misandrist) who has been known to steal art.
And also when are MRAs gonna just change their movement to Anti feminist/misogynist movement? Because they aren’t doing anything for guys, heck they said themselves they don’t really care for them they just hate women and feminists.
@Paradoxical:
That’s because most of them simply cannot see anything beyond women’s usefulness to men. It’s absolutely the only reason we exist, and some of us apparently aren’t “womaning” correctly.
Ah yes, memes and how most of the MRA ones fail miserably.
Personally, I like memes about minivans, especially ones like this:
http://s2.quickmeme.com/img/2a/2ad1801a04e6b829d831818662257c282067808d29c8dc86012432e8e34587a2.jpg
But sadly, very few memes celebrate the awesome and practical nature of the minivan. Instead, I get memes that degrade the minivan, claim that any man who drives must “relinquish their man card” and the car is known as a “mommy mobile”. Sure, the minivan doesn’t generate loads of testosterone like a Toyota Prius or Smart Car, but said cars don’t pack the same level of horsepower as the minivan can (or station wagon). But yet, most men (especially men) seem absolutely terrified of minivans. Why? I think they’re great cars, clearly superior to those over-engineered pieces of garbage like Ferrari or Lamborghini.
The last one annoys the hell out of me.
It’s not a question. It doesn’t need a question mark.
Men are said to have superior writing skills but so many can’t tell the difference between interrogative and declarative?
@Friendly Neighborhood Dragon Arthur
Because they’re uuuuuggggly!
I am certainly not in the camp where I think driving one is humiliating or emasculating, but good lord would I not want to look at a minivan sitting in my driveway.
Conveniently, my decision to not bear children exempts me from having a legitimate need for a minivan or it’s many benefits.
They are a much more comfortable choice than many other vehicles if you have to go on a trip somewhere though, so I guess there’s that.
[this comment brought to you by someone who grew up watching F1 races and rallies and probably absorbed a few too many instances of my parents thinking minivans were gross]
My husband drives a minivan and it doesn’t bother him at all. He also still has his small pickup truck from like the 90s when trucks weren’t all these large, gas-guzzling beasts with crew cabs. Some guys try to poke fun at him for having a “baby truck,” but he just shrugs it off. Sometimes he’ll tell the really macho ones that his truck is small because he doesn’t have anything to compensate for.
But why would a woman even go in the water if she didn’t want to be eaten by a shark? I mean… it’s the shark’s property. She has to know what she’s getting into.
@ dust bunny
Yeah, you can imagine that if you were screaming “Argh, it’s eating me!” they’d just respond “Actually, he’s just being curious. He’ll probably spit that leg out when he realises you’re not a seal”
@Dragon Arthur And mini-vans tend not to ‘spontaneously’ combust. 😉
Dr. Nicola Luna, the People’s Assembly health homes jobs NHS march on the 16th probably.
Exactly!
I mean, compared to seals, humans are junk food. No good blubber reserves, too much bone… It really wasn’t worth his time to bite you, and he probably feels rather sad about it.
Even sadder case (for the shark): I always feel so sorry for the blue sharks that accidentally take bites out of surfboards, actually. Expecting a delightful mouthful of seal and all you get is styrofoam.
🙁
Nthing the defense of sharks. It makes me sad that so many predator animals are hated and feared. See also, crocodiles, wolves, and lions. And those misandrist hyenas of course!
@Wetherby:
Then, strictly speaking, aren’t they dumb blond jokes?
@Scaly Llama
You are an inspiration!
@iknklast
Damn! I’m sorry to hear that. I hope that things are looking up for you.
@Fruitloopsie
Hi! (Waves back.) Nice to see you! I hope that you’ve been doing well.
*******
Regarding the memes, I found this word in the dictionary, lifemanship. It entered the English language in 1949. Lifemanship seems to be the skill set of the proto-troll or Early Troll:
lifemanship
the skill or practice of achieving superiority or an appearance of superiority over others (as in conversation) by perplexing and demoralizing them
Three words:
Pa thet ic.