So A Voice for Men has decided to use a picture of a disabled veteran … to attack black single mothers.
https://twitter.com/AVoiceforMen/status/731667484172935169
The meme was posted on the AVFM Facebook page as well.
The US treats its veterans horribly. But using the plight of wounded and disabled veterans in order to push a blatantly racist and misogynistic agenda is, well, calling it “cynical” would be a massive understatement.
And what exactly has the Men’s Rights movement ever done to help veterans?
Oh, that’s right: Nothing. Nada. Zilch.
Veterans of a different ethnic background get treated worse, to boot.
Likewise, one out of three homeless is a veteran.
Put the two together and you get a sad state of affairs of how stupidly racist this meme is.
So clearly this is AVFM and the MRA movement taking a public stand against war and in favor of universal access to affordable comprehensive reproductive healthcare, right? RIGHT?!!!
I gotta tell ya, as someone who is actually a veteran, I am not a fan of people who use me to shit on other people. If MRAs wanted to help me, they could, idk, write their congresspeople and demand better funding for the VA, extend the GI bill, do something about how long it takes to get disability (current time in my area: 12-18 months) or hire us. The most charitable thing I could think about this line of reasoning is they think money should be taken from single mothers and given to veterans, but even then I don’t feel very good about that. But that’s me giving more credit than they’re due. They don’t care about me and mine, all they want is yet another excuse to hate on women and people of color.
*sigh* This should go up alongside Andrea Hardie’s Black Face desperation-stunt.
So, like, what if the mother is single because her husband was killed in action? Because that’s not exactly a rare situation.
@SFHC
How dare you apply MRA arguments to real life situations?
Even if we are supposed to take those memes at face value, the vet is getting $1300 for himself. The single mom is getting $2500 for *eight people*.
So chalk another one up to an MRA meme own goal.
Doesn’t/didn’t Elam receive more than either for sitting around ranting online and doing nothing to actually help any men?
Fun fact. Veteran’s funding is done completely separately from general funding in the US. So, a single mom getting government aid doesn’t actually take anything away from veterans. Not that I expect an MRA to know anything about anything.
Hello apple, meet the orange. You will be compared in the false equivalence argument of a faux concern troll who actually does nothing to help vets but actively shits all over women and non-whites.
Of course, it would never occur to one of these Elamite-douche-nozzles that there are plenty of female veterans — both white and WOC — who are single mothers.
And if Elam has such a problem with single mothers receiving government support, why isn’t he circulating memes about fathers ducking child support payments? (Of course, plenty of parents don’t earn a living wage, but since we’re in meme-land, we don’t have to consider realities that would complicate our prejudiced attitudes and willfully ignorant misconceptions.)
So the veteran receives a bit over four times the money as any of the people on welfare? Huh.
Also, not a veteran, but I think Dizzy’s right on the money. If you’re going to use people’s problems for attention, it’s common courtesy to actually do literally anything whatsoever to help them.
OK, A Voice for Men, what exactly are you saying on behalf of men here? So the majority of soldiers are men, and therefore any injustice against servicepersons disproportionately affects men. The injustice in this case seems to be that the government pays out 96% more money in assistance to single mothers (nearly all women) than to injured vets (mostly men). Alright, got it. Makes sense
*Columbo voice* Now, just one more thing, uhm…
What’s the solution here, Paul? I once had a dude tell me, no foolin, that, if we don’t allow parental bankruptcy (or whatever the nonsense MRA term for that is), we shouldn’t allow abortions either. Paraphrased, ‘it should be equal’. The single most stupid conversation I’ve ever had online. Books could be written on the depths of idiocy reached, and that was one of the least vacuous and conspiratorial things he said. Kinda how these people work. They want everything to be exactly, surface level equal, so long as nobody actually thinks about it. If these guys got their way, nobody would get any gov assistance. $0=$0=$0, it’s all equal
Finally, Paulie has discovered a way to combine the rancid chocolate of racism with the moldy peanut butter of misogyny. Not that he was ever far from it. And since Roosh has been doing the same, trying to curry favor with the “alt”-right (same as the old right, though neither would ever admit it), well…monkey see, monkey do.
It’s so disgusting how to a casual observer, AVfM would look like they actually do care about legit stuff: child support, veterans, male abuse and rape victims, male mental health, etc., but once you peel back the thin veneer, you get the singular reason they care: “Because we hate anyone who isn’t a cishet white dude, and therefore they deserve nothing, and we deserve everything on the virtue of being a cishet white dude.”
There is no bigger misandrist than a manospherian. They don’t give a flying RoUS’s ass about actual problems men face, they just want to use them as a cudgel against people they don’t like to play yet another version of Oppression Olympics, and they won’t get to use the cudgel anymore if they actually get up off their asses and help to fix the problem, so they don’t.
But, lest we forget: AVfM’s goal isn’t activism, it’s yelling at the internet and the people who inhabit it.
I agree with dizzy.
If Elam actually cared about veterans then he would actually help them.
OT: Because irony is dead, truth is stranger than fiction and also ethics something.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/katiejmbaker/yale-ethics-professor
Elam does know that Veterans come in all shapes, sizes, genders, abilities, races, etc? Right?
@paradoxical intention: I think you mean they also hate cis-het, white dudes, too. They really only care about their boners. And only their boners, because if they cared about their personal self, outside of that, they’d do “humaning ” better.
Is that klansman taking a dump in that photo? He really looks like he squatting down to do a poo.
As for that crappy meme, wouldn’t it be nice if Elam could actually highlight the scandalous treatment of veterans without using it as an excuse to attack women of colour? But then, this is Elam we’re talking about, not someone who actually cares about men’s rights.
These kind of contrast “gotcha” memes suggest that they can’t simply say something positive. Not ever.
Not even “Hey, how about we treat our wounded veterans better?”
There’s always got to be someone being put down.
Is that $2500 a month even enough? Raising kids is expensive.
(This is assuming the $2500/month figure is accurate.)
It’s like when right libertarians and Ancaps froth over Pincochet.
You have to wonder who the oppressor really is.
Hell, at this point, I don’t think Roosh even can be said to care about his own boner. The way he talks about his own attitude towards his sex life would be pitiable if there were an iota of a decent human being in that rancid little shell of a man.
You guys, Paul totally helps veterans. Sessions with him are $90! An ear for men! The penis in your hand!
@bluecat – yes, exactly. I’ve seen this approach in so many different contexts now. A common one here in Aust. is comparing the condition of prisoners to that of the elderly in care facilities. Elderly people in care often suffer terrible conditions and it’s chronically under-funded. But why make this point by attacking prisoners? “OMG they have showers and they’re allowed to watch TV sometimes!!!!! Anyone would think they’re human!”
Using veterans to try and score points is deeply insulting, imho. And as everyone has already noted – veterans and single mothers are not necessarily like “ships in the night”. Scildfreja, would a Venn diagram work here? 🙂