Yep, I’m still doing the 2015 retrospectives. I know that it’s now 2016. But hey, I did more than 500 posts in 2015, and there is so much ridiculousness in them I want to share with you all.
So let’s usher in 2016 with a look back at The 9 Most Gloriously Ridiculous Men’s Rights Memes of 2015, starting with two contributions from “Ian Ironwood,” an MRA whose opinions are as retro as the graphics he uses. That’s one of his above. But his most charmingly befuddling meme is probably this one:
“No vagina on the planet will give you superpowers!”
And you can find many equally baffling memes from him in this post of mine.
Now We Really Are Only After One Thing — Putting Our Penises in Vagina Dentatas
If I understand Mr. Galt’s logic here, feminism makes women so awful that men are no longer interested in anything about women except for their vaginas. Their TOOTH-FILLED VAGINAS.
You can find more weirdly sexualized memes from Mr. Galt and others in my post Someone could probably write a Master’s thesis about the sexual insecurities on display in A Voice for Men’s “memes.” (Seriously, someone could.)
Beware the Straw Feminist Finger Choppers!
I guess we have to give the MRAs credit for having vivid imaginations, at least. For more bizarre straw feminists oppressing men in stock photos, see my post “The right to kill, maim, and berate husbands,” and other Straw Feminist demands.
Violence Against Women is Like Stealing a Red Car. It Can’t Be Done!
Yeah, it doesn’t make much sense to me either. This is but one of a number of exceedingly perplexing AVFM memes I discuss here.
Saying She’s Not a Real Feminist is Like Playing Russian Roulette
Yet another head-scratcher of a meme, this one found on Twitter.
Uh, is that … Pink?
As one AVFM meme-maker sees it, the idea of equal pay for equal work is basically like Pink — the singer, not the color — if she were a zombie. I try to make sense of this one here.
“Teach Drivers Not to Hit People”
This meme, which can be found all over the manosphere in assorted variants, is intended as a sarcastic rebuttal of feminist anti-rape campaigns that center around teaching boys and young men what rape is and why they shouldn’t do it. The MRAs are apparently unaware that such programs, done correctly, actually have been shown to reduce rape.
What’s even stranger is that MRAs also seem unaware that WE DO IN FACT TEACH DRIVERS NOT TO HIT PEOPLE. You know, in DRIVER’S ED. (And if that doesn’t stick, in traffic school later.) Indeed, as apparently everyone but MRAs is aware, would-be drivers have to pass a driving test to prove that, if given a license, they won’t go around plowing their car into trees, other cars and, oh yeah, pedestrians.
More examples of this weird meme can be found in my post The MRA Meme That Would Not Die: “Teaching men not to rape is like teaching drivers not to run people over!”
Feminism’s Death Spiral
This infographic was so perplexing that the dude behind it — Nick Reading of Men’s Rights Edmonton — made an entire video trying to explain it. For some reason he decided to do the whole thing holding a hunting knife. MRAs really can’t do anything without making it creepy, huh? See my discussion of the graphic, the video, the knife, and Nick’s facial hair here.
So there you have it, The 9 Most Gloriously Ridiculous Men’s Rights Memes of 2015. Did I miss any of your favorites?
Oh, and if you noticed a distinct lack of references to “cucks,” Jews, and Donald Trump, don’t worry! I’ll be looking at the Year in Imaginary White Genocide in a future post!
Am I the first post of 2016??????
HAPPY NEW YEAR, DAVID! !!
Looking over those memes, I think…
…I need to find out where you get that old pulp art from. That stuff is rad.
A pity the modern messages attached to said art here are junk (to put it mildly) though. Good pulp art deserves better than that. >:|
Oh, yeah – Hoppy Gnu Deer, everyone!
MRA logic:
Raping a woman is like accidentally hitting her with my car. Because I can’t control my penis or a steering wheel, and really I shouldn’t be allowed to roam free.
Ahhh manosphere memes! My favourites for two reasons:
1. Fantasy, misguided outrage and lack of logic all on display in one (sometimes) concise image.
2. Obvious entertainment value.
Well thanks Jan Wormwood for nearly ruining my love of Frank Kelly Freas’ work. Redsilkphoenix, the classic pulp pic in the super power vagina mess (that’s how MRAs spell meme isn’t it) is by Paul Rader. Not the religious leader Paul Rader. I originally thought itvwas by Freas, who came into the game somewhat later, still in the Golden Age. Freas was notable for illustrating stories of compassion and tolerance, and a certain impish humour. Oh, and Queen (are you old enough to remember them) used his giant sad robot pic as an album cover. Do yourself a favour, google them both. Now I’m going to have to google “was Frank Kelly Freas an enormous misogynist douche” and cross my fingers it comes back no matches.
There’s an even better one for the “teaching drivers not to hit people” one – it shows a crossing guard holding up a stop sign, and the car stopped, allegedly illustrating the point that you can’t teach drivers not to hit people.
Seconding Leda Atomica: ah manosphere memes! Good times! I love pondering the perplexing pictures and text and wondering what is going on in these men’s minds. Do they even know any women? [Computer says no]
Update: of course google never comes up with no matches! But they could only give me something with Freas and douche as separate items on the same page. From now on I will be adding “misogynist douche” to all my searches. It can take you places you couldn’t imagine.
PS, Not when searching say Trump. Sometimes it’s clearly superfluous.
How is Alberta encouraging these kind of yahoos? Honey Badgers, Davis Aurini, this gentlemen. Not all of us are Conservative, misogynistic, racists but they seem to get the press.
Happy new year, David and everyone else. 🙂
That edmonton knife holding dude, yes, i tried to find him, but couldn’t remember his name…
I wonder what his logic is behind lecturing like that…
It really makes antifeminists look … kind and gentle. Hm.
Driver’s ed, as I recall, is all about teaching drivers not to run into others, in cars or not. In fact, one of the things they teach is that pedestrians have the right of way, no matter what.
Is teaching men the same basic things about women and rape really such a terrible idea? That you don’t have the right to just run right over what THEY want?
Happy New Year, all!
Happy New Year, David! ☺
The worst part is that you can explain why the memes don’t make sense to them until you’re blue in the face.
They don’t seem to have the ability to admit that they’re wrong, they believe that they’re right and we’re guilty of not seeing how glorious they truly are and we need to suffer for not recognizing their greatness..
Happy New Year to all on here!
Seconded on the “how about teaching drivers not to hit people” meme – this is pretty much what happened, and it worked.
Car fatalities were absolutely shocking in the early days of driving. In the UK they rose from around 5,000 in 1926 to over 7,000 in 1930. It was down to below 2,000 by 2013 – which is still way too many, but when you consider the difference in the number of cars on the road (and indeed the number of people in the country) it’s astonishing.
And most what changed was: teaching drivers not to hit people, making it compulsory for them to learn how not to hit people, and making it easier for them know when they might.
In 1926 there were no driving tests, no drink-driving laws, no road markings, no road crossings and few streetlights, plus of course none of the car safety features that protect drivers, passengers and anyone who is hit (you could be impaled by some of the more decorative 20s hood ornaments).
Looking at the stats, there was a big surge in road fatalities in 1941 during the blackout. Which goes to one of the other reasons that this meme is a crock of biodegradable waste: drivers mostly hit people by accident and almost always don’t really want to. Shutting off the street lights in 1941 made it harder for drivers to avoid involuntarily hitting people.
Rape is not an accident, it is not involuntary. If you wanted to avoid raping someone, you could.
(Well, except in very peculiar cases indeed… apparently http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/millionaire-ehsan-abdulaziz-who-said-he-accidentally-tripped-and-penetrated-teen-is-cleared-of-rape-a6774946.html )
I guess the Russain Roulette one is that you can’t tell what a feminist looks like from looks alone? And I guess since other memes show that they believe that feminists apparently have a giant maw filled with teeth instead of vaginas, you should just run away or something. (Though that meme also suggests that this only makes men want to have sex with them more. Or something. I can’t tell, the meme is awful in multiple ways)
Though other MRA types also seem to be really insistent that all feminists are ugly. They do like to contradict themselves for some reason.
When the denizens of the manosphere hate on women, do they quietly whisper, “Except for mommy”? Or do they also hate on their mothers and female relatives? Or perhaps they believe none of their female relatives is a feminist?
@MexicanHotChocolate
Stephen Molyneux.
If you don’t know his position on women, especially mothers, look it up.
It’s doubly terrifying because he’s a literal cult leader.
That incomprehensible infographic reminds me of a stylized lower GI tract. I wonder if that’s intentional?
Happy new year !
Is there a possibility that some are actually due to Poe’s law ? Especially the “drivers don’t learn to not hit people one”.
This is why I favor making our own memes.
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Also, I have found a old track from 1985. Among the numerous things it mock are some stuffs like “we can’t have fun with all thoses restrictions !” that resonate with the MRAs.
Hard to say if the singer was a feminist, but it made me much happier than it should have :p
I’ve told my vagina a million times that it’s rude of her to suggest that she will give men superpowers when she really can’t.
They are always so sad and disappointed when they find out that she lied about it.
Ah, good old MRA propaganda. It’s like someone who desperately wants to be taken seriously going around handing out a bunch of signs that say ‘please ridicule me’. That feminist death spiral is hilarious, once again revealing far more about it’s creator than anything else:
Except the only people who have ever lied about feminism are anti-feminist idiots. But OH YOU SO WISH it was all a bunch of lies!
Again, OH YOU SO WISH to be vindicated! (I’m guessing they don’t literally want to be galvanized, sounds painful) It’s all they have going for their shitty ideas. Also, gotta love how they just sorta knew that there was ‘something wrong with feminism’. They don’t know anything about it, but they know there’s something wrong with it.
Somehow they haven’t figured out that their greatest weakness is that they just refuse to actually listen to anyone who identifies as ‘feminist’.
@Bina
I’d half expect them to complain about ‘false pedestrian-hit-by-car accusations’
(TW for sarcastic car accident apologia)
Well what did you expect: dressed like that, you were obviously just asking to be hit by a car! You probably enjoyed getting hit by a car but then just regretted it later! Won’t anyone think of the poor car drivers who are accused of hitting pedestrians? They face a suffering far greater than those hit by cars.
/s
Their grasp of feminism (and reality) is so bad, their own analogies disprove them.
Meme harder, manureosphere.
Ooh! Are we making our own MRA memes!?
http://cdn.meme.am/instances2/500x/3621040.jpg