Yesterday, I chanced across the funniest, saddest, and weirdest shit I ever saw on Wonkette. Apparently there are all these dudes who’ve been creating “inspirational” propaganda — oh sorry, “art” — for the so-called men’s rights movement. But if what Wonkette has sifted out of the sludge of the “Manosphere” is any indication, I don’t think they’ll be gaining many converts of either sex to their way of thinking. Just take a gander at these little beauties:
Oh dear. Where to start with THIS hot mess?
Well. Let’s take it from the top. Have you ever seen a seven-year-old’s head perched on top of a woman’s body? No? Well, you have now! Those weird, wide, naïve eyes…that mouth, apparently missing a couple of teeth…yikes. This is the Manly Man’s ideal bride, I guess. A CHILD.
And then there’s that “provocative” pose. Which adds a whole ‘nother level of WTF. We’re supposed to believe that she saved that for her wedding night? That she’s so virginal, she doesn’t even have all her adult teeth yet? And yet there she is, the grown woman with the face of an idiotic little girl, somehow managing to strip off her elaborate gown without dislodging her headpiece (quite the feat, that; she must have had a dozen dress rehearsals to get it right!) And she’s turning her hindquarters in the classic, splay-legged “come and get it” pose. Which shows that she has, in fact, been around the mulberry bush before.
Several times.
Just not, alas, with her bridegroom. Of whom she would be absolutely terrified if in fact she were really a virgin, ignorant of sex until a Manly Man teaches her all about his big, bad, brutal, hymen-wrecking Manly Manhood. She’d be covering up and cowering under the bedsheets. Which, if we’re gonna take this madonna/whore complex nostalgia to its logical end, would have an embroidered orifice in the middle, to preserve her modesty while proffering her virginity for the obligatory wedding-night catastrophe. During the grand finale, she would not be smiling invitingly, but squinching up her eyes and thinking of England (per her mother’s helpful guidance, given just five minutes before the ceremony. That’s all the sex-ed they had back in the imaginary Golden Age of Manly Masculinity, poor things.) The next morning, her mother would be parading those bloodied bedclothes around the town to show what a Good Girl her daughter had been before the Big Bad Wolf debauched her. Ah, wedded bliss!
As for those big ol’ bloomers, which are more granny than my grannies’ grannies, best we say no more.
Here we have another fine exemplar of MRAsshat cognitive dissonance. We have a lovely, windy tirade of a caption explaining, in Reader’s Digest Condensed Book form, why we need to accept that we’re nothing to these guys except, of course, BOOBS.
So, we’re supposed to give up trying to think for ourselves and just submit to ravishment (there’s that Big Bad Wolf again!) We’re supposed to just naturally assume the subordinate pose this guy has already oh-so-helpfully mapped out for us in his mind. The one that reassures him that he’s The Man, we’re just the little women, and he has us all squirming in his ha-ha POWER!!!
But there’s something wrong with this picture. An unconscious projection of how these guys really see themselves in relation to us. He’s on his knees, but she’s still standing. If this is supposed to communicate absolute male dominance to us, it’s a little short of the mark.
As is his mouth, which is sucking on her luscious, juicy ribs. Foreplay FAIL, dude.
And finally, we have this touching tearjerker. Poor Carol is about to get dumped because she’s not young, dumb, and submissive enough.
She could, of course, take her cues from the lady in the second picture; she could turn around, fix him with a knowing smile, and start undoing the top buttons of her blouse, and that would be it for poor, penis-driven Bert. He’d be on his knees in a heartbeat, transfixed by her spectacular boobage and heading south fast.
But Carol has other ideas. The Zumba instructor? Nah. Little does Bert suspect that the Other Man in Carol’s life is really Alejandro, her tango teacher. Now there’s a guy who knows how to work his hips! Ale is so lovely, a real gentleman. His manners are impeccable; he makes her feel like a queen. He encourages her interests, unlike Bert; he’s thrilled that she follows the leftist political movements in Argentina, and that she understands what caused the crash of 2001. They have long, passionate conversations over coffee and cake in the little Argentine café below his dance studio, after class. He’s been teaching her the finer points of his dialect, too; she’s almost fluent now. He swears she’s starting to sound more like a porteño than he is. He’s often begged her to come back with him to Buenos Aires — “¡Carolita, aléjate de ese pelotudo, por Dios!” — but Carol has been putting him off because of Bert. Poor, poor Bert. She didn’t have the heart to tell him, or the nerve to end it. What a mistake! Bert doesn’t share any of her interests. He hates music, is stiffer than Mitt Romney, and can’t even do the Twist. He’s no fun to talk to; he’s constantly shushing her. He always was a dud in bed, and he’s been getting worse ever since he joined that “men’s rights” group. He’s been putting up hateful propaganda posters all over town; the university kids know who he is, and they laugh at him behind his back. Carol is ashamed to be seen with him. Two weeks ago he started withholding sex to “punish” her for any slightest infraction against his poor, fragile ego. At the encouragement of his Iron John study group, of course.
Now this? And he seriously thinks that at his age, he can find a 24-year-old…who likes anal? Yes, that sounds just like Bert, all right…immaturity and asininity, all rolled up into one stuffy, self-involved bundle. Suddenly, Buenos Aires is looking mighty seductive.
And Bert? He’s looking more and more like this:
…which is nothing more than he and all those other “artistic” MRAssholes deserve to be, anyway.
