No, this is real. I didn’t make it up. I just blurred out the c-word.
Last week I wrote about the fondness of a certain Men’s Rights website for a certain four-letter word starting with the letter c. This week they’ve topped themselves — with a postering campaign based on the c-word.
Yep: A Voice for Men has thrown its support behind a postering campaign with the slogan: “Having a vagina is no excuse for being a C*NT.”
They don’t use an asterisk.
The postering campaign, spearheaded by a Youtube antifeminist calling himself Bane666au, feature what purport to be real quotes from feminists alongside not-exactly-subtle stock photos depicting comically angry women. For example:
I’m the one who blurred out the c-word; they left it intact. Other alleged feminist quotes include:
If a woman has drunk any amount of alcohol, she can’t consent to sex.
Nothing gives me more pleasure than the suffering of men.
Historically, women have been oppressed worse than black slaves.
That last one is a tad ironic. Not just because it’s a bit odd to contrast “women” and “black slaves” when half of all black slaves were women and girls. And not just because I never hear feminists making this claim. No, it’s a tad ironic because AVFM is constantly comparing men to slaves and suggesting that men are being “enslaved” by everything from child support payments to the women they date.
But I digress. You may wonder where exactly all these alleged quotes come from. In the comments to his AVFM post promoting the postering campaign, AVFM’s Dean Esmay blithely assures readers that “most or all” of the sources of the quotes can be found “right at the end of the video.”
This is not — how should I put it? — true. In fact, the percentage of quotations accurately sourced at the end of the video is a lot closer to “none” than to “most.” Bane666au, for his part, only claims that “all comments are based on actual comments I’ve seen or heard from self proclaimed feminists.”
Apparently he has an extremely loose definition of “based on” because only a couple of the actual quotes from Tumblr feminists he includes at the end of his video bear much resemblance to his, er, paraphrases.
Many of the alleged “hateful” quotes are obvious jokes, taken completely out of context, taking aim at popular perceptions of feminists. Here’s one screenshot from his video (with the name of the poster blurred out):
So who is the terrible misandrist who posted this terrible thing? I went and looked at her Tumblr. It consists of a lot of arty photos of her, mixed with pictures of favorite bands, some of her own artwork — and various pictures of various boyfriends, all evidently remembered with much fondness. On Valentine’s Day she posted some Valentine’s Day cards she designed and drew, inspired by The Smiths and Fleetwood Mac. She’s an excellent artist. There was no hatred to be found there.
And it’s a little hard to see how anyone but a misogynist who has named himself after a Batman villain could possibly interpret this comment, from another Tumblr feminist, as “misandry.”
And speaking of reasonable statements interpreted as misandry, here’s my favorite poster in Bane666‘s batch of posters:
Now, I hope I don’t shock anyone here by saying it, but the wage gap is real. There’s some debate over the size of it, and to what degree it is appropriate to attribute the gap to women’s “choices” rather than discrimination. But it exists. Even the study most cited by those who like to downplay the gap, a 2009 Labor Department report prepared by the CONSAD Research Corp., found a roughly 5-7% wage gap that couldn’t be explained away by women’s “choices.” (See here for more.)
But MRAs have convinced themselves that the gender wage gap is a “myth.” Having failed to win over the rest of the world to this incorrect belief through the power of simple repetition, the folks at AVFM have evidently decided to move on to gendered slurs.
It will be interesting to see how this works out for them.
BTW, thanks are in order for David’s realization that he needs to actively mod people like sirtooting. Spaces where that kind of pointless wanking is allowed invariably become no fun at all to engage in.
Seconded.
Thirded. I appreciate that the host of this particular movable feast is so committed to seeing that the dialog remains interesting and lively by having the punch-bowl-sitters escorted to the curb!
@Ally
Honestly, what possible “discussion” is there to be had between feminists and MRAs/anti-feminists? The issue(s) was long ago settled when it was decided that human woman are actually people and should have the same rights and privileges as human men.
Out of all the bloggers at FtB, yours is the one I stay away from because I know you give quarter to those who think my rights are up for debate. They’re not. That’s why they’re called rights (thank you, Rachel Maddow). The ‘no such thing as Natural Rights’ discussion aside.
An anti-feminist/MRA doesn’t need to “debate” a feminist(s) in order to have his or her mind changed. The information is already out there and in abundance.
Answer this truthfully: Do you honestly think anything discussed in a comment section would be enough to change the minds of the Paul Elams of the world? ‘Cos I don’t think so.
Heh. That’s funn–
Hah!
Wait, are we doing this?
Oh dear. We’re doing this.
… all right.
…. I hope I don’t seem like a brute if I burst in with a mood to be less mute and speak up, re: Sirtoot, whose propositions were easy to refute, his wax standard pregoratives of grammar less astute than a new recruit fresh from boot (camp, that is) – lacking the fact that words permute and lacking the tact to not be a newt, I’m glad he got his last toot and had to scoot because his points were moot, floundering down a route not worthy of salute!
As for Mr. Frog, I must refute your lovely desire to be held beyond dispute, for it does not compute, as the root is the crux of the stuff and this is such, two positions held absolute need not combine to make a thing like a two piece suit, in pursuit of finding truth, commentators often aggregate and present opinions not fool proof, less acute, of ill repute, and letting their voices fester renders any dialogue perhaps not dead but suffering things subacute, vapid wandering word warriors simply come to loot any chance of common ground and just impute that women wanton wreck the world, and all the blame lies with the girls
afore they chatter, boot them down the chute, or else like sirtoot they will pollute and uproot your lovely place of thoughts and talks, they are just there to dilute the conversation into a spectrum where one side is “They want agency, cute!” and the other “Icky women, hirsute, should get the boot”.
Be a better person, not a low hanging ideological fruit
Ally: I’m human. Please encourage your friends to treat me as such, or you are a horrible person. Still a person. Just horrible. And not respectable.
That’s really all there is to say on the subject.
Fibinachi wins poetry and puns.
*Beatboxes behind Fib*
Welp. No one’s going to top THAT!
*Applauds Fibinachi*
Lawd, who’s the guy with the Furrinati disguise, leatapp? 😀
And this thread can die a happy, satisfied death, having provided an opportunity for Fibinachi’s artistry.
Argenti:
I would rather agree with Emilygoddess that “don’t be that feminist” is just glib recycling of an existing meme. It isn’t meant to imply that some feminists are OK. It’s not specifically meant to imply that all feminists are evil, either. The whole campaign seems such an “inside MRM” memefest I’d be surprised if they ever bother to print the posters.
As for “don’t be that guy”, I think the MRAs were mostly just vaguely annoyed at what was quite generic anti-rape campaign. Thus, their intuitive response was “don’t be that girl”, even though they couldn’t decide whether it was a parody campaign or honest hand-wringing on false rape accusations. Only the pro-rape sentiment was clear.
Now, when this sentiment ws criticised, a lot of them backpedaled to “the original campaign implies that all men are rapists”.
No it doesn’t, it was pointed out.
Then, they backpedaled to “the original campaign implies that all rapists are men”.
Yes, sorta, although that’s probably not far from reality. And you could have made rape committed by women the focus of your own campaign, if you took it that seriously. Instead you focused on false accusers, whom, by the way, you implied are all women even though the original campaign mentioned also men as rape victims.
I live in Tooting and deeply hope sir-dictionary-stinkpoop does not.
As others have said, the tw word is gendered in the UK. Come on.
As for the posters, surely they should read ‘having a vagina is no excuse for having opinions’. It doesn’t really matter what these scary harridans are saying, the problem is that they’re speaking at all. Just the sight of a grumpy woman is enough to get certain mens’ hackles up. Which is adorable in a way.
Hi. This is kinda off topic, but latching onto comment idea.
Just reading the language stuff. I know this *technically* isn’t a slur, but as a sex worker (and I can safely say that my SW friends feel the same way about this) that the word “prostitute” is awful for us.
Why? Because it is associated with crime, criminal behaviour and prosecution. It is a word used to lessen sex workers as human beings and make us essentially subhuman. No matter that is the “dictionary word” for sex work, it is a word that makes me physically ill when people use it continually when talking about me (because they talk ABOUT me, not to me – in some peoples minds sex workers are public property and don’t deserve humanisation).
Sorry for the off shoot. Just was on a prominent mummy blogger in Australia who has been told multiple times the correct language, but she gleefully chooses to ignore and block comments that point this out. Because to her, we aren’t human. Which really, is what a slur is meant to achieve.
Ugh, @hookerwithaheartofmuscle (is there a way you would like us to shorten that?) I’m sorry she keeps using that word, even after being told how it’s harmful.
Hi, hookerwithaheartofmuscle – are you an Ozite too? (More of us the merrier, we will take over Manboobz with the power of Drop Bears.)
I am Australian. Try HMuscle. I’ll understand 🙂
She (the mummy blogger) is a nasty person. Very spiteful. Also a victim blamer for rape victims. Sigh
Or hookergal. That’s shorter!
Yay for another Aussie! 🙂
Gah. Glad I haven’t encountered that mummy blogger, then. Sounds like she’d be great mates with Bettina Fucking Misogynist Arndt.
Someone give Fibinachi a trophy; that was glorious.
I was wondering whereabouts you were at, hookergal! And I’m really glad you’ve chosen to weigh in; I don’t know of any other sex workers on manboobz at the moment, and it’s a line of work I don’t know much about.
Those quotes aren’t proof that men need rights, it’s just feminists going about it the wrong way. Its just reverse sexism. I absolutely hate that feminism is characterized that way. The French fashion show where FEMEN members running on the catwalk topless anyone? That is the wrong way to do feminism. What should’ve been done is a press conference and not lift some model’s skirt up.
wow, i just read so much bullshit
Abuse incubates the best rapists.
God spare your son from yourself.
Really? “best rapist”? Nice oxymoron there. And thanks for the insult for all the abuse survivors who grew up to be decent human beings and, in particular, non-rapists. And thanks for the excusing of all the rapists who are not abuse survivors but whom you are giving a pass by implying they must have been driven to rape by their parents.
Go stand on a few lego. It might awaken your empathy and understanding.
Degast,
Rapists choose to rape. I’m seconding titianblue. Go step on Legos.
Way to go and shit on abuse victims, Degast. That’s exactly the kind of attitude we need to deal with the problem. Not.
Degast, who are you even addressing?
What an odd way to necro a thread.
What the hell is Degast talking about?
Also, “Having a penis is no excuse for being a dick” But we could go with the non gender specific formulation and say “Having an anus is no excuse for being an asshole!” 😉
Arielle, they were using a gendered slur as an insult and a claim that a certain gender has a monopoly on jerk behavior. By stripping out the gendered component, you’re missing the whole point.
Unfortunately feminism does not have its heart in equality. It never did. Anyone who has studied American history in the early 1900’s know that the early suffrage movement committed several acts of bigotry against black men and women. They fundamentally hijacked the civil rights movement when they found out that black men would have the right to vote and upset their white privilege. That was one of the main drivers for the early suffrage movement. And they climbed on the backs of African American women to achieve that. They supported Jim Crow laws blocking the rights of others. They even tried to block the passage of the 15th amendment that allowed black men to vote. Even after when a woman was largely responsible for the passage of the 19th amendment in 1920 allowing ALL women to vote (Frances Willard) – Alice Paul prominent feminist worked hand in hand with people like Howard Smith to suppress black women from having that right until only recently with the passage of the ERA. White privileged women were not dis-empowered back then – they were the ones that got the prohibition going and there were several influential organizations (like the highly powerful (Womans Christian Temperance Union) that give them significant powers. White women actually thought that they were morally superior to everyone else and they had to ban alcohol and other male activities. White men became afraid after the 19th and 20th amendments were passed (largely by the efforts of feminist Frances Willard). And they continuously contributed significantly to the oppression of African American citizens. To this day, African Americans remain the most oppressed group – and the silence of American feminists on this is deafening, considering the fact that they conned black women to help them a hundred years ago (1913 is a significant date) There are many quotes from Susan Anthony, Liz Stanton, Laura Clay, Frances Willard and more about their racist agenda.
For equality to prevail Feminism has to be dismantled and replaced by egalitarianism. Feminism is worse than bigotry, it is a hate virus that latches on to men’s weakness to please women, it’s about creating a privilege class while oppressing others, in several types of political and social settings, it has infiltrated academia, laws, and schools – and worse it was never about equality.
Please stop mangling and distorting my country’s history, William Ganness.
You do know the ERA was never ratified, right?
Crimany. We were just discussing the expectation that feminism take a back seat to all other social justice movements the other day. Here William is, kindly showing us an example of this! Pro tip William, it’s hypocritical to criticize feminism for its issues with intersectionality
If you’re going to play oppression Olympics by declaring one group the most oppressed.
Sorry that was in two posts. My phone sucks.