So I have to get something off my chest here.

Below is an image that has been "shared" by people on my facebook newsfeed on a daily basis, each time by someone new.

Spoiler

Now, if you've followed my posts (and a lot of my warnings!), you'll know that I do not like memes. I got over the fad pretty quickly and have just seen the light ever since. It's repeated and lazy humor, yadayada.

This thread is not about memes

This is thread is about these images in particular and what they represent. This is the line I draw when it comes to sexism. You can say Bayonetta, Wonder Pink, whoever is a character meant to represent titillation, but at least they have thoughts and identifiable character traits.

This is depicting a person, not a character; an actual living person, as nothing but a sex object to keep around the house. These images just exist to satisfy fantasies of males with power issues. I'm not saying desperate men either. They could be the jock who hooks up with a different sorority chick on a weekly basis, this would apply to them.

Here we have a stock image of a girl appealing a majority of people on meme sites. "Nerds." Fake nerds mind you, but we'll ignore that. To make sure she hits the whole demographic, she's wearing a t-shirt that advertises her fandom of the most popular video game character in the world. Next, we have the text. A lot of these are sexual. I'm not beating around the bush here- absolutely all of these reward the male for just doing what he does in his daily life. Fapping? Lemme finish. Playing an RPG? You need some head. Gets bored during a movie you enjoy? It's clear she should reward you with more head. You could even switch a lot of the media centric pictures and replace them with sports or working on a car and nothing would be lost. And it just gets worse! The ones that aren't sexual are things that dehumanize her further. What could just be silly banter about girlfriend tropes on the internet turns into things that only support the idea of the the girl existing to give you sexual pleasure in the man's daily life. Bathroom breaks on a long car ride? HOW ABSURD! Not wanting to bother people with your sh*t? How absurd!

And just take a second to look at a very specific one: "You're such a nice guy... Let's f*ck!" Is that the alternative to the friendzone? Rewarding niceness with sex? You're not a gentlemen, you just want to f*ck your hot friends. You're not a nice guy. You're a guy she's avoiding because she knows.


Guys, the rant aside- I'm serious here. I know this is the internet. I know these exist on the internet. I know the image credits /b/. This shouldn't one of the things we excuse as internet behavior. This type of thing will reach many more people than it ever would if it were in real life. I mean, look where I linked from. What even is that site? Why is it getting so much attention on facebook?

Bottomline, no matter where it was, this is offensive. This goes farther than my cliques and communities mentioned earlier beating on some video game characters I like. This goes into reinforcing a divide between the sexes. It's not even a divide, it's still an oppression. I personally work with a pregnant woman almost every day, and the amount of times she's told that she has no business there despite her knowledge, or the amount of times people tell her to bend over, or the amount of times people just try to stare at her ass is down right appalling. This sh*t happens outside of our comfortable little website. Even from another perspective, this gives women ample reason to hate men. "Why should I be looked upon as a sex object?" should be their first thought, and it should stay heated in the front of their head for awhile. You're a man, and you're not offended? You should be, this gives women a reason to hate you on a deep, personal level without even getting to know you. This gives women a reason to even be afraid of you. This doesn't just rustle my jimmies, this should piss off a lot more people than it is. If you see it anywhere, stand up to it and point out why it's wrong. This is a problem.

TL;DR- This set of images is offensive, if you see someone posting it and thinking it's funny- call them on it. You're not being a good friend by letting this keep growing. Believe me, it's on enough social networking sites for you to see it.

 

Thanks for bringing this up. Gamer girls are not automatically sluts, and nobody should be thinking that.

 

It's not even just gamer girls... You could throw in a band girl and it'd be the same level of offensive.

 

Yeah, I just said gamer girls since that's what I see most in my life.

Somewhat irrelevant, but I also hate how gay/bi people are labeled as having more sex than hetero people...it's a stupid label.

 

'Dem gays are just f*cking everywhere!

No seriously, that's a problem too. It's only because they're the only people we segregate because of sex, so, in the minds of someone not in their shoes, that's just the correlation.

That said, it's A LOT f*cking harder to find a partner if you're a homosexual. You are a minority. The fact there is there's a lot less sex to go around.

 

I was going to just write this off as something that I agree with wholeheartedly and then leave the thread, but then I came to this sentence:

Believe it or not, I have had people be afraid of me. Not just little kids with the whole "stranger danger" thing either, but grown men and women who were smaller and/or weaker than me who I could tell from a number of behavioral traits were scared to death (or at least reasonably intimidated for fear) that I might mug/rape/kill/etc. them. Making someone scared like that is one of the worst feelings I can imagine and even though this isn't quite the same, I'm glad you put it like that. It made the whole post hit home for me a lot more. That said, do you mind if I copy/paste this elsewhere? It's a good message and I don't think I could put it better than you have.

A lot of things are memes, though. A meme is just an idea that, by virtue of what it is, has a tendency to spread. In fact, I bet I could make a case that most ideas are memes. Atheism is a meme. All religions, by the very nature of what they are, are memes. Civil rights are not only a meme, but a damn good one. Your message here, because it seems like multiple people who have read this are going to work toward spreading it, could be considered a meme.

 

Go for it. In fact, let me know where you post it if it isn't personal so I can see the reactions. :)

This isn't a thread about memes, but I will say if that's the case, I need to put a limit on my words and say typical internet image memes. Structured images like these to get an 'lol' out of an audience.

 

Nice read, James. I agree with you on most points. I'm just a little bothered by this part right here. Statements like this have always annoyed me.

No, this doesn't give women ample reason to hate men. It gives them ample reason to hate certain men but not all of them. People have got to learn that just because certain members of a group act a certain way, that doesn't mean all of them do. Hate simply begets more hate and lashing out at the whole for the actions of the few is just stupid. In the end, you become just like the people you hate. If a woman hates me on a deep and personal level or is scared of me because of some picture on the internet, then honestly she's not worth my time anyway. Just like the people who came up with these pictures. I'd wag my finger and disapprove of the actions of the former just like the actions of the latter.

 

Man, you ARE Simon =P

You're right, I may have worded that bad. However, the image is stereotyping. It may be a double fault to stereotype back, but fear is irrational. The hatred that derives from that fear is also going to be irrational. This is something we must accept. This is why it's an ample reason. Does it excuse it? No, of course not. Going to extremes, it's no different than blaming ALL Muslims for 9/11. But it doesn't mean we can't still expect it and do something to prevent it. It doesn't mean we shouldn't stand up and call foul to show that there are people better than that.

 

I don't think he's talking about women hating or being afraid of "all men," but rather the collective group known as "men." Although you make a good point even in that context, there is a distinction that I would actually expect a smart person like you to understand.

Yes, but you're forgetting that the vast majority of humans are stupid; unbelievably so, in fact. Why else would we still have serious creationists, image macros like the ones Digital Atlas is taking a stand against here, every politician in the world, and twerking? It's because us humans are all goddamn morons. Yes, even you and I and everyone in this thread who's making all these super intelligent posts.

 

This is probably a cop-out, but it's a bit of both. The group can easily progress into the whole gender.

 

You're not Kamina, stop trying to make Kamina happen.[DOUBLEPOST=1380093865][/DOUBLEPOST]I can't take this thread seriously because someone who may have the dumbest screen name on the internet decided to post in it.

 

Simon as in DRRR!

 

This entire thing... thank you just THANK YOU. I'm honestly so sick of most of the things you've brought up here and I've dealt with a lot of these issues. For instance I've been bashed for saying "nothing is wrong" in a public place-- yeah, I get that it's ****ing annoying to do it, but sometimes it's better to just wait until later or think about it than to rush into an argument or something...especially in a public setting. As for all the sexual/nice guy stuff, I couldn't agree more. If you're talking to a girl solely to get in her pants, you aren't a nice guy. And seriously, I feel like the person/people who made these are setting up some ideal, robot girlfriend that probably doesn't even exist. And it's become stereotypical that girls are the ones with unrealistic expectations ("prince charming"). Also omg can we all just stop with thinking that girls are crazy or not down to earth? Like seriously, some of us just think differently. As I said before with saying "nothing is wrong" to avoid a scene, it's not that certain people are PMSing or crazy, sometimes there is a perfect explanation for an outburst or not talking. I mean people can be crazy, but the entire gender isn't a hormonal time bomb. The only one that calls for debate I feel is the one about not calling other girls ****s because I honestly think that most of the hate of the female gender is from the female gender. I've basically been calling people out on their **** lately when it comes to this. "Oh, you hate her because you think she's a ****? Did she **** your boyfriend? Oh, she didn't...and you don't have any other reason to dislike her other than what she doesn't with her own body???" I mean I'm starting to get sick of people hating other people because of their moral values or what they do to their bodies. But ALAS thank you for this post. You rock.

 

Oh phew, I thought this was going to be about me for a second.

But yeah, this is nice. A++

 

Nice read, but yeah, I agree.

These things are just wrong and shouldn't be happening. I know it's the Internet, but that doesn't excuse it at all.

 

You really could have just done this whole thread in one sentence: Sexism is bad and if you do it then you're bad, so don't be bad.

Bad Internet! *hits internet with rolled up newspaper* Bad! No cake for you!

 

Actually, it's the exact same idea. The concept of the "friendzone" tends to go hand in hand with the "Nice Guy" thing--a guy believes that by being a girl's friend he'll win her affections and it will be all blow jobs and rainbows. That image is a direct product of it: the idea that, simply because you have a healthy friendship with someone, they owe you sexual gratification.

I think a lot of people misunderstand hating the patriarchy (feminism) as misandry.

What SJ posted contains feminist ideals (even if I don't 100% agree with everything he said, but all feminists don't need to agree with each other), but hating the system that creates the men that make these memes isn't the same as hating the men. The men aren't entirely to blame, because they've been raised in a society that enables & supports this negative outlook and expectation of women. They've grown up watching their fathers and brothers calling women "crazy," seeing movies that exaggerate women as these irrational and emotional creatures, and so on (when both of those issues are also caused by patriarchy & an inability/unwillingness to understand human emotions), that these thoughts and behaviors seem okay to them. So they continue doing it. It's great to call out these images for the bullshit that they are, and (constructively) criticize the people who made them, so that they understand that this is wrong and they have some really problematic thinking that they need to address. Because their misogynistic behavior is caused by the patriarchy. These men are put out because their (problematic) expectations of how women "should" behave & treat them have not been realized. So when women seem misandric, that vitriol is also, more than likely, not what it seems on the surface: they have also been shaped by a problematic society into what they are. They're dissatisfied with the way society pushes them, and are unfortunately directing that anger at men... when it should be at the system.

 

I think you basically restated what I badly worded, lol. That's what I meant- that the ideas go hand-in-hand, but this is the opposite outcome. Could never put it that well though because I've never been harassed by a friend in that manner. That said, glad to see we're in agreement that calling "friendzone" is just as jerky as the crush the guys are usually against.[DOUBLEPOST=1380141877][/DOUBLEPOST]

Welp, I feel awesome.

As far the part I quoted goes, good things can come from bad things like that. I can laugh at Big Bang Theory, but it doesn't mean the show is less offensive. Same thing here. It's accurate that it would be cool for a girl not to call another girl a **** but that's endorsing a catty stereotype to begin with, let alone is it something that should justify this.