It’s not news to anyone that some of the most popular antifeminist “arguments” are in fact logical fallacies.
For example, here’s the fallacy of relative privation, suggesting that women in first world countries aren’t allowed to complain about sexism so long as anyone in the world is worse off than them.
And here’s the good old straw man, in the form of a meme accusing feminists of believing all sorts of things they don’t believe (as well as a few things they do believe, but for perfectly good reasons).
MRAs: in case you’re wondering which of these statements are straw men and why, I’ve attached a helpful footnote below.
So, yeah, those are some logical fallacies on display. But looking through the memes on display on the Male Lives Matter Facebook page today  — which is where the memes above came from — I began to realize that MRAs have invented a whole bunch of brand-new logical fallacies of their own.
Let’s take a look, shall we?
Argumentum ad Picard Facepalm
This “argument” might make a little more sense were it not for the fact that Patrick Stewart — you know, the dude who played Picard — weren’t in fact an outspoken feminist who has literally worn a “this is what a feminist looks like” shirt in public.
I should note that using a Picard facepalm pic isn’t always a fallacy For example, if you are Ian McKellen, a personal friend of Stewart who famously carried a Picard facepalm sign at the London Women’s March this January.
Argumentum ad Ha Ha You’ll Never Get Laid
Granted, “white knighting” is not the same as feminism; it’s a rather patronizing form of “chivalry.” And that last post on the right up there is a little cringey.
But this meme is aimed at male feminists. And while there are some ostentatiously “feminist” dudes who profess a shallow facsimile of feminism in hopes of scoring with the ladies, genuinely feminist dudes are feminists because, you know, they actually believe in equality and shit. As much as this might shock MRAs and others obsessed with classifying men according to simplistic schemes using Greek letters, feminism doesn’t actually render men unfuckable.
Hell, I have actual photographic proof that one of the guys in this very meme has had sex with at least one woman at least once. Here’s the guy in the middle up there — Nev Schulman of the show Catfish —Â posing recently with his very pregnant wife.
IN YOUR FACE MRAS!!!11!
In case you’re wondering, she has since given birth to a baby girl.
Argumentum ad WTF-um
Wat
Argumentum ad You’re Not a Fireman
Apparently if you’re a female feminist you’re not entitled to emergency services? Even if you pay taxes just like everybody else? Does that apply to male feminists too? I need to know before I light my apartment on fire.
It’s true that there are not a lot of female firefighters. It’s also true that women have been largely kept out of the profession. But not by feminists — the only people I ever see arguing against women firefighters are MRAs and other antifeminists.
Argumentum ad You’re Not a Coal Miner
A kind of mash-up of the Fallacy of Relative Privation and Argumentum ad You’re Not a Fireman. It’s worth pointing out that none of the MRAs I’ve ever seen making this “argument” has themselves been a coal miner.
Argumentum ad Women Sometimes Get Drunk
It’s true that women sometimes get really, really drunk. I’m not quite sure how exactly this is a rebuttal of feminism.
Or is this about the hats? Are you suggesting that women need to start wearing 1956-style hats again?
It’s all very confusing. I think I need a drink.
FOOTNOTE:
Here are the straw men in that straw man meme above:
On drunk women: feminists DO believe drunk women should be responsible for their behavior. Just not the behavior of others. If a woman drives drunk, feminists have no problem with her charged with drunk driving. If a woman is raped while she is drunk, by contrast, feminists don’t think she should be charged with “drunk being raped.”
On alimony, etc: Women do pay alimony and child support when a court rules that it’s appropriate, and no feminist I’ve ever seen has argued that they shouldn’t.
On the draft: Feminists have long argued that women should be allowed to serve in combat and the National Organization for Women has in fact taken legal action to try to extend selective service registration to women,
As for the other ones? I’m not quite sure how exactly the “false accusers should be charged” crowd defines a “false accuser,” but, yes, it’s true feminists don’t want rape accusers charged if they lose a rape case any more than they want murder accusers to be prosecuted for losing  a murder case. Accusers of all sorts can be prosecuted for filing a false police report, but this is relatively rare.
Meanwhile, 50-50 custody can be crappy for kids, so it makes little sense to make it the default setting. As for the one about “unwed fathers,” is that really saying what it looks like it’s saying? If so, no, feminists don’t think fathers should be allowed to force women to get an abortion (or to not get an abortion).
EDIT: I reworked the paragraph on feminist dudes and sex to make myself clearer.
I thought the pink pussy hats were, in the majority, cat-ear hats? No? (Not that I’d put a vag hat past some particularly smartass protestor)
I heart Stewart and McKellen both.
Certainly far more than idiots who don’t bother to know that there are women coal miners.
You assume MRAs would bother to look at photos of protests, rather than read the phrase “pussy hat” and make assumptions, because facts is hard.
That coal mine one makes 0 sense. Like, the counterargument to his privilege seems to be that he can’t skip work and remain employed. Can women do that in this guy’s mind?
Also, when Jeremy Renner asks a man for a hammer, it becomes inert and lies immovably on the ground ?
Of course their memes are dumb. A meme cannot be smarter than its maker.
Do they think women didn’t get drunk before the 21st century and its evil feminist ways? For example, some of Jack the Ripper’s victims were alcoholics.
And it’s not like men don’t get drunk.
Is this picture proof that men are subhuman and shouldn’t have rights?
http://i4.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article8538024.ece/ALTERNATES/s615/Men-having-drinks-at-bar.jpg
A quick glance at the results when I Googled “alcohol consumption by gender” is just what I expected. Men consume more than women even though women consume more these days. If we’re judging group superiority and inferiority by alcohol consumption, women are superior to men and Muslims are superior to Christians or atheists. I’m not sure what the alcohol meme was supposed to prove.
Oh, right. Alcohol is like sex. It’s okay for men to do it, but if women do it, they’re evil whores who should be subjugated.
I’ll see your the one on the right is kind of cringey, and raise you the one in the middle.
I don’t know who that guy is, but elevator? I don’t care if he’s saying it’s abuse free, please just no please.
Oh lord, where to start with all the stoopid? Okay, Bina…one dumb meme at a time:
First World Feeeeemale Problems: Being able to attend college is not in itself a sign that first-world women are no longer oppressed. Even with a college degree (and sometimes several graduate degrees!), we typically earn less than men with the same or lesser education and work experience. Plus, have you priced college education lately, Mr. MLM? Tell me how this is NOT oppression. Especially if you have to pay it back with ruinous interest from lower earnings when you finally DO find a job, which is probably NOT even in your field of education.
Signs You’ll Never See At A Women’s March: Because these are just fuck-ass MRA straw-feminist talking points with no basis in reality. You want 50-50 right down the line, dude? Then YOU be the one who gets yourself pregnant, and maybe we’ll talk about you having the right to decide who gets the abortion. YOU be the one who gets raped (especially while intoxicated or otherwise incapacitated). YOU be the one who…you get the picture. Plus, who’d be seriously so stupid as to attend a women’s march with a blame-women sign? Even if they didn’t get punched, they’d still be singled out for ridicule and asked to leave. And rightly so. Because strawmen are flammable, and basically worthless as points of contention.
Vagina On Head: Literally no one wore these to the march in Washington. Those were CAT ears, bozo. You know, a play on the word “pussy”, and what it ORIGINALLY meant? The one Drumpf perverted when he started grabbing women’s crotches?
Knights In White Satin: Who the hell cares if they get laid as a result of feminism or not? You, and ONLY you, because you’re a sex-obsessed idiot who obviously ain’t gettin’ any on account of you’re a shit whose backward opinion repulses any woman with a pulse. They do feminism because it’s the right thing to do, you fool.
If I Had A Hammer: I’d hammer in the morning. I’d hammer in the evening. All over this town. I’d hammer out danger, I’d hammer out a warning, I’d hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters, a-all, all over this town. Take the hammer of justice, hit the bell of freedom, and hammer out love, between your brothers and your sisters, all over this town. As for your fucking meme, it makes no sense, not even as a weak stab at a quippy saying.
Women Using Serviceable Men: Well, fucking DUH. It’s the guys’ JOB to be of service, bozo. Doesn’t matter to what gender, as long as they can do it. Men also hire women to do things for them, and not all of the services are necessarily sexual, contrary to your inane expectations.
Damsels In Fiery Distress: Let’s see how macho YOU all are when YOU are the ones succumbing to smoke inhalation, MRA dipshits. Pretty sure you’d be nothing loth to let a strong firewoman schlep your limp ass out of an upper-storey window when the chips are down, eh? PS: Firefighters of all genders also rescue domestic animals. And I’m pretty sure the kitties don’t care about the sex of whoever’s holding an oxygen mask over their muzzles. Neither should you.
Workin’ In The Coalmine: Goin’ down down. Workin’ in the coal mine, woo! a mighty step down. Given that not many people do it for a living, though, and those that do tend to quit when black lung strikes ’em (and I’m thankful here that my own dad quit it BEFORE that could happen to him, and emigrated to Canada from Germany), and given that coal is just about played out as both a fuel AND a mining industry, well…let’s just say that if that ol’ sexist argument were a canary, it’d be dead of the firedamp by now.
Painted Ladies And A Bottle Of Wine, Mama: Surprise! Women have been getting leglessly, stinkingly drunk as long as beer, wine and liquor have existed. Just like men! I guarantee you that if you time-travelled back to 1956, you would meet a few drunk women in any given bar. In fact, women invented the brewing of alcohol. And the surname Brewster has the feminine -ster suffix to indicate that brewing, like the spinning of yarn, was a mainly female occupation, all the way back to ancient Babylonian times. So, your point was…?
All in all, I’d say that MRA memes are still as shitty and far beside the point as ever…even when they’re somewhat more legible than they used to be.
How about this photo from the New Hampshire Pumpkin Riot?
http://www.trbimg.com/img-54449392/turbine/la-na-nn-new-hampshire-pumpkin-riots-20141019
The first one made me lol so hard. These guys are not even trying to counterargument anymore. They’re just plain ridiculous.
By the way, what’s up with the “feminists doesn’t exist because as soon as they’re in danger they turn into damsel in distress”? Why do they keep trying to comfort themselves by imagining women in dangerous situations, suffering? Tells a lot about how they see women…
Also, do any of these guys work as miners or firefighters to be complain about the lack of women in these fields? If they were actually doing that, they wouldn’t be posting such absurdities on the internet.
Other than that, we’ve learned a new fact: MRAs can be a great source of fun.
More Saudi women than Saudi men go to college, so that would kind of clash with the old “if you cared about oppressed women, you’d be fighting for women in Saudi Arabia” thing that anti-feminists like to trot out every so often.
The manosphere can’t exactly complain that the things first world feminism deals with are insignificant. Their whines are usually about not having a harem of hot 18 year old virgins who like to do anal only with them. Or a female Ghostbusters. Or YouTube videos critiquing misogyny in video games. Or women having hairstyles that don’t please the boner.
Yup.
Plus, if these guys really gave a shit about oppressed Saudi women, other than as something to throw at women’s heads over here, hey — nothing’s stopping them from getting out and militating on those women’s behalf…except maybe an executioner with a sword. If they ever dared to go challenge the Saudi royal family about that, that is. Which they won’t.
Bunch of snowflakes.
About the dude in the ‘abuse free elevator’…It may be in reference to that football(?) player who beat his (now) wife (formerly girlfriend) in the elevator which was caught on video and shown in the news/online reports.
It could also be in reference to Solange (Beyonce’s baby sister) hitting Jay-Z in an elevator, the reasons for which were widely speculated on but no official explanation was provided (to my knowledge). The odds that it’s this one are low.
Last but not least that incident where the guy hit on a woman at 4am (ish) in an elevator and was surprised she was more concerned that he was being creepy than interested in his offer of going out for coffee. But I very much doubt this is what dude in the meme here is in reference to.
I’ve worked in lots and lots of offices. Not once have I observed a woman throw a hammer at a man.
But I admit I don’t work on job sites where hammers are used often. Is this a common occurrence on construction sites and in steel mills and such?
Human Resources ought to get involved!
And the police.
This sounds like yet one more example of something most people don’t know about because it doesn’t get covered.
Reading this over again I realized that the bit on feminist dudes and sex wasn’t quite what I meant to say, so I reworked it to make a point similar to Bina’s.
Ray of Rays:
http://i.imgur.com/hS1dRRE.jpg
When I first encountered the term “Male Lives Matter”, I was full of hope for a nanosecond. Could this be a group trying to get men to take reasonable safety precautions and see doctors regularly, despite the cultural taboos against that? Could it even be an anti-militarism group?
Then I saw who was doing it, and my heart sank again. Of course it couldn’t have been anything good, it’s simply misogynists being reactionary. Sigh.
Hello.
For the elevator, maybe also linked to the elevator incident at the world atheist convention (in 2011, feat Dawkins who said bullshit about Watson being harassed in an elevator).
Maybe in Mother Russia, you are the hammer, so no problem ?
I agree that the part of the meme with the person growling about protecting the two other persons is damn creepy (and kind of paternalist ?). That sound like what a stalker could say. The picture is out of context, but we do not even know if the two persons agree about any for of friendship with the one who posted the message. In fact, in my opinion, this is exactly the kind of message the Men Live Matters dudes can write, cause it sound a bit like “they are my property” painted under a “we are meaningful friends” varnish. Well, or it is me seeing evilness everywhere.
About miners, as many had already pointed out, there have been women too (and children, let us remember that the legal age to work in mine was 6 – at least in France – at the end of the XIXth century), and they were also subject to silicosis. However, at this time, women were mainly expected to just have children, that is mainly why there were less women miners than men. Not because women did not want to go in the mine, but because men were considering that was not their place. And that the same story with military stuff. You speak ludicrously about topic you do not even remotly know. So roll those posters in tip and shove them back in your ass from where they should have never pop out from to begin with.
On the drunk women stuff, you are the first to get some, and yet you still find the ludicrousness to fault them for that ? And you yell about the supposed lack of logic of women ? Yeah, lighthouse never light its foot.
You hate women, we have understood. If you hurt badly yourself and have to go the hospital for some times, are you going to tell us that you would hate that woman nurses take care of your health ? Are you specifically asking to being take in charge by man nurses ? What if they are none ? Let me guess, you are going to complain that women take the job from the mouth of men ! Clever you !
If there were as many men-hating and/or #killallmen persons than there are MRA/MGTOW and women-haters, we should see the same amount of ludicrous posters against men (assuming they would not have been done by said men to discredit women and build their own justifications). Strangely, it is not the case. I wonder why…
Ah, there is so much to say. But as they always use the same “arguments”, it is also tiresome to repeat the same debunking stuff… Maybe that is part of their strategy : boring us to death.
Have a nice day.
I’d bet money that the Venn diagram of people who think “Black Lives Matter” is a horribly anti-white name and people who think “Male Lives Matter” is a hilarious and perfectly acceptable name is pretty stinking close to a perfect circle.
@David
Would it be possible to scribble over the C-word at the end of the White Knight meme image?
I actually think that, outside of cases of abuse, custody should start at 50-50. Then factors like the child’s best interests come in during negotiation. This isn’t just to get men the chance to see their kids… It’s also to ensure they do actually see their children. My friend is currently in despair because her ex won’t take their son for his time without a court order. And as she is learning – you can force him to provide the basics of life. You cannot force him to actually give a fuck.
The other side of the coin was the stress another friend had in getting custody when he realised his ex’s new boyfriend was abusing his kid. He’d have realised much sooner and been in a much stronger position if he’d been able to see his son more regularly. As it was he took a major risk, checked his son into the hospital, and told nurses and social workers everything. Thank God they believed him and his son, because the doctor wouldn’t discharge the child into an unsafe situation, so an investigation had to be launched quickly. He was granted full custody after the doctor looked at the boy’s feet and realised he wasn’t wearing the new, properly fitting shoes my friend had bought – he was wearing shoes that were much too small as a punishment. A growing child kept in the same shoes for two years.
Ironically, my friend would have a genuine reason to hate the family court and to believe they privilege women. But he doesn’t. Instead he’s a firm supporter of organisations that help women escape from violence, and mental illness charity, saying that his ex would never have stayed if she wasn’t terrified, depressed, and of the belief that she had nowhere else to go.
Wait, is the “Stsinimef” one real or a joke by David? I can’t even tell anymore.
I used to be a feminist, then I saw that firefighter meme and realised that statistically, at least one women in some part of the world and all of history has been incapacitated and needed rescuing (something which has of course never happened to a man), and therefore we are all inferior to men and feminism is worthless.
Glad the stringently logical brains of Male Lives Matter were able to sort this out.
@Zephkiel
That’s chilling. I’m so glad that child is now safe.
In my state, unless one parent is incarcerated or otherwise unable or unwilling to parent, all custody is shared. I am not the “custodial parent”. I am the “residential parent”. We both have full custody. We split tax credits. I can’t move out of the area without his permission. How we share that custody is up to us unless we can’t agree, then the court gets involved.
Who gets to be the residential parent? The parent who was the primary caregiver during the marriage, unless we decide otherwise.
Honestly, the court wants us to handle it and not involve them. My ex’s parental rights are just as important to the court as mine and they would defend them just as quickly if there were an issue.
I don’t know where these guys get their info, but it is incorrect.