Derail from Political Rant Funny Images II

[Toni]

This is a split from the “humor” forum. I agree w/Floof that the image is way more disgusting than funny. It’s also disgustingly accurate.
Fuck Texas. It would be fine with me to depict someone ripping the genitals off some male Texan, but it would lack the accuracy of the image under discussion because the Texans perpetrating this perverse madness don’t have any balls to rip off.

Indeed. Apparently Texans think the only way to protect the sanctity of male genitalia is to exert as much control as possible over girls and women.

 

[Angry Floof]

There must be a million ways to make that cartoon ideologically accurate without bloody images of little girls getting their wombs torn out.

 

[Angry Floof]

People are actually allowed to argue with the noisy feminist.

Political cartoons are not typically funny.

Typically, they are accurate in pointing out some injustice or inequity.

That one is pointing out that the wrong people seek and have control of other people's reproduction.

That cartoon is objecting to the violation of women and girls.

You are entitled to misunderstand, that happens, you are not entitled to abuse and name call.

No one here is applauding "images of brutalizing little girls"

For fuck's sake. I'm asking why is such depraved and traumatic imagery necessary to make a political point, and that question is rhetorical and needs no answer because the answer obviously is that depraved and traumatic imagery is not of any importance.

No one here accused anyone of applauding the image, but of making the political statement of utmost importance.

Am I really the only one here who can say that the political message can easily, in a thousand ways, be said without imagery of little girls having their wombs ripped out?

I don't object one bit to the political message. I know what it is, and I understand the humor in placing adult sarcasm onto children's book covers. Most of those memes are funny. The children's book meme format is not automatically funny. A Republican elephant telling a little girl, "It's my uterus now" would have been just as funny without a blood dripping uterus needing to be portrayed. No one would mistake the message or not get the humor.

People keep responding to me as if I'm criticizing their views or politics or sex or gender or understanding of a cartoon's message. I have yet to see a single comment from anyone who has any idea why I would ask those who laugh at the image whether they have any other reaction to it than laughter, and later I asked why such traumatic and violent imagery is so casually thrown around when the world is full of it. Once again, Republicans don't care about that imagery. They like imagery of themselves as masters over women and women's bodies. The party is overwhelmingly made up of sociopaths who actively wish harm on women.

I'm not mistreating anyone here. I don't control other people's reactions or feelings or (mis)interpretations of my comments. Please show me where I'm abusing anyone or calling anyone names. I will not let you misrepresent my posts as abusive or me as an abuser. If you don't like my posts, you can ignore them. Anyone can.

No-one is laughing.

How did you type that with a straight face? A number of people here laughed at it. They are defending that laughter in this thread, not denying it.

Imagery such as that is so widespread and unremarked upon that it's easier to just go along with it. It's hard to go against it or even question it, especially if the question is to an individual male about whether he has any other reaction than laughter to an image of a little girl getting her womb ripped out. Thank goodness this is the internet, because in-person discussions like this end badly for me, and I would have done nothing to deserve it. I leave discussions like this with knots in my stomach.

Men will not suffer discomfort or hard questions, or even annoying questions if they come from a woman about women. But I don't care what they will suffer or not, and I'm not doing harm or breaking any rules in engaging them.

 

[Metaphor]

Some seem to get it when the topic is circumcision. Or child support.

If I had the artistic skill (I don't), I would draw a cartoon showing a screaming infant boy, immediately post his genital mutilation euphemestically called 'circumcision', with his now severed and stolen foreskin on its way to a shop where a woman puts it on her face as part of a beauty treatment.

I may commission that actually. Is anyone here a good cartoonist?

 

[Toni]

Yep. That’s exactly what I thought.

 

[Toni]

I know how some people get off on violent imagery against women and girls, but does an image of a uterus apparently having been ripped out of a tiny girl need to be posted here? It doesn't matter if it's a painting and not a photograph. You really have no reaction to that except to laugh?

Note the flag of Texas on the elephant's shirt. I think it's brilliant.

I saw every bit of it. I get that it's about how the GOP controls women. That imagery is not funny, though. I mean, just take a few minutes to look at it and think about how women might feel when they see such imagery, and also check your own feelings as you do.

I agree with you. But somehow we need to wake women up that they are going to lose rights due to blindly supporting the republican party. I'm continuously stunned by the statistic that a majority of white women voted for Trump over Hillary. Trump put three staunch anti abortion justices to the court.

Men need to be woken up. They need to be awakened to the fact that the policies that the GOP is enacting harms the women and girls in their lives. Every single one of them. That should be reason enough to wake up but in case it isn’t: what hurts women ultimately hurts men as well.

What do you think we should do to wake men up about the idiocy of voting for Trump?

Trump made the world less safe for everyone on the planet. He undermined environmental protections. He undermined gains made by persons of color, LGBTQ community. He tremendously harmed the educational system.

Why do we only focus about changing women? Controlling women?

 

[Angry Floof]

I know how some people get off on violent imagery against women and girls, but does an image of a uterus apparently having been ripped out of a tiny girl need to be posted here? It doesn't matter if it's a painting and not a photograph. You really have no reaction to that except to laugh?

Note the flag of Texas on the elephant's shirt. I think it's brilliant.

I saw every bit of it. I get that it's about how the GOP controls women. That imagery is not funny, though. I mean, just take a few minutes to look at it and think about how women might feel when they see such imagery, and also check your own feelings as you do.

I agree with you. But somehow we need to wake women up that they are going to lose rights due to blindly supporting the republican party. I'm continuously stunned by the statistic that a majority of white women voted for Trump over Hillary. Trump put three staunch anti abortion justices to the court.

Men need to be woken up. They need to be awakened to the fact that the policies that the GOP is enacting harms the women and girls in their lives. Every single one of them. That should be reason enough to wake up but in case it isn’t: what hurts women ultimately hurts men as well.

What do you think we should do to wake men up about the idiocy of voting for Trump?

Trump made the world less safe for everyone on the planet. He undermined environmental protections. He undermined gains made by persons of color, LGBTQ community. He tremendously harmed the educational system.

Why do we only focus about changing women? Controlling women?

For the record, I don't think liberal men need to wake up to GOP cruelty and misogyny. I think they need to wake up to all the ways that they themselves inadvertently contribute to it and I think they need to actively, intentionally, consciously listen to women's perspectives and stories and voices.

And also for the record, I personally do not have a particular need to be heard by anyone in particular. All women and girls need to be heard by all men. And all men need to call out depictions of brutality against women and children for entertainment and condemn them.

What men don't want to hear is the question about why they don't do that already. That's also a rhetorical question because we already know the answer: They don't have to. Most men who are not abusers can go through life never having to think too much about how other men routinely abuse women and children. They benefit from it, in fact, even if they don't know it. Life is easier for all men because some men abuse and violate and terrorize women.

 

[Toni]

I know how some people get off on violent imagery against women and girls, but does an image of a uterus apparently having been ripped out of a tiny girl need to be posted here? It doesn't matter if it's a painting and not a photograph. You really have no reaction to that except to laugh?

Note the flag of Texas on the elephant's shirt. I think it's brilliant.

I saw every bit of it. I get that it's about how the GOP controls women. That imagery is not funny, though. I mean, just take a few minutes to look at it and think about how women might feel when they see such imagery, and also check your own feelings as you do.

I agree with you. But somehow we need to wake women up that they are going to lose rights due to blindly supporting the republican party. I'm continuously stunned by the statistic that a majority of white women voted for Trump over Hillary. Trump put three staunch anti abortion justices to the court.

Men need to be woken up. They need to be awakened to the fact that the policies that the GOP is enacting harms the women and girls in their lives. Every single one of them. That should be reason enough to wake up but in case it isn’t: what hurts women ultimately hurts men as well.

What do you think we should do to wake men up about the idiocy of voting for Trump?

Trump made the world less safe for everyone on the planet. He undermined environmental protections. He undermined gains made by persons of color, LGBTQ community. He tremendously harmed the educational system.

Why do we only focus about changing women? Controlling women?

For the record, I don't think liberal men need to wake up to GOP cruelty and misogyny. I think they need to wake up to all the ways that they themselves inadvertently contribute to it and I think they need to actively, intentionally, consciously listen to women's perspectives and stories and voices.

And also for the record, I personally do not have a particular need to be heard by anyone in particular. All women and girls need to be heard by all men. And all men need to call out depictions of brutality against women and children for entertainment and condemn them.

What men don't want to hear is the question about why they don't do that already. That's also a rhetorical question because we already know the answer: They don't have to. Most men who are not abusers can go through life never having to think too much about how other men routinely abuse women and children. They benefit from it, in fact, even if they don't know it. Life is easier for all men because some men abuse and violate and terrorize women.

I’m not certain I agree completely that all men benefit from the fact that some men abuse and brutalize women. As a group—yes, even if most won’t acknowledge it. Individually? I know men who are deeply and adversely affected by the abuse of women they care about.

 

[Angry Floof]

I’m not certain I agree completely that all men benefit from the fact that some men abuse and brutalize women. As a group—yes, even if most won’t acknowledge it. Individually? I know men who are deeply and adversely affected by the abuse of women they care about.

True, and so do I. But even those men don't always go forward doing anything differently in their lives. Those who do go forward and make the effort to call out abuse and violence and actively do something about it (such as Patrick Stewart) are few and far between, though their efforts are appreciated. They show other men how to do it.

 

[Metaphor]

And also for the record, I personally do not have a particular need to be heard by anyone in particular. All women and girls need to be heard by all men. And all men need to call out depictions of brutality against women and children for entertainment and condemn them.

Ludicrous. But, the art world survived angry feminists and it'll survive you.

 

[Toni]

Most decent men feel horrible if they know a woman they love has been sexually abused—disgusted, horrified, angry.

But most men are not able to actually empathize with a woman who has been abused or raped. They simply cannot quite put themselves in her shoes, so to speak—understand the sense of violation, feeling powerless. Anger? That they can relate to. Recognize that for at least some women at least for some amount if time that the anger and fear and absolute fury are directed on some level in a very generalized way towards men, including them? They get that the women feel shame —she should be ashamed! but they don’t quite get that a huge part of that shame comes from society blaming the women for their assaults when in fact none of the shame belongs to the victim. I think few can imagine being rendered helpless to fight off an attack—being physically overcome or drugged are made too drunk to put up an effective resistance.

I don’t know that many at all understand how utterly repugnant it is that so many depictions in pop culture depict women as victims of assault, sexual assault, rape. Or as whores or tramps. Or ‘good’ girls. Or mothers who might be good mothers —or might be horrible harpies. But not but not actually people. Women are accorded their own agency only so far as it relieves men of any responsibility for raping or otherwise abusing women.

 

[Toni]

And also for the record, I personally do not have a particular need to be heard by anyone in particular. All women and girls need to be heard by all men. And all men need to call out depictions of brutality against women and children for entertainment and condemn them.

Ludicrous. But, the art world survived angry feminists and it'll survive you.

In one post you are calling for an artist to realize your artistic/political ambitions by depicting a screaming male child and a woman wearing his foreskin in her face

And in the next you think only radical feminists, of which Angry and I certainly are two—would be offended by or opposed by depictions of women and children being abused and raped.

I’m disgusted but not surprised by your penis worship and utter and complete disregard for women and children.

 

[Metaphor]

And also for the record, I personally do not have a particular need to be heard by anyone in particular. All women and girls need to be heard by all men. And all men need to call out depictions of brutality against women and children for entertainment and condemn them.

Ludicrous. But, the art world survived angry feminists and it'll survive you.

In one post you are calling for an artist to realize your artistic/political ambitions by depicting a screaming male child and a woman wearing his foreskin in her face

And in the next you think only radical feminists, of which Angry and I certainly are two—would be offended by or opposed by depictions of women and children being abused and raped.

I’m disgusted but not surprised by your penis worship and utter and complete disregard for women and children.

What on earth are you talking about?

In one post, I propose collaborating on some art.

In another post, Angry Floof says all men need to condemn art she doesn't like.

I am disgusted but not surprised that you would libellously misrepresent me.

(Also, apparently asking adults not to mutilate the genitals of babies is 'penis worship'. That is a fucking sick thing to say, Toni.)

EDIT: Pre-emptively edited an accidental misnaming of a poster that reflects my perception of her but not her actual screen name)

 

[Toni]

And also for the record, I personally do not have a particular need to be heard by anyone in particular. All women and girls need to be heard by all men. And all men need to call out depictions of brutality against women and children for entertainment and condemn them.

Ludicrous. But, the art world survived angry feminists and it'll survive you.

In one post you are calling for an artist to realize your artistic/political ambitions by depicting a screaming male child and a woman wearing his foreskin in her face

And in the next you think only radical feminists, of which Angry and I certainly are two—would be offended by or opposed by depictions of women and children being abused and raped.

I’m disgusted but not surprised by your penis worship and utter and complete disregard for women and children.

What on earth are you talking about?

In one post, I propose collaborating on some art.

In another post, Angry Feminist says all men need to condemn art she doesn't like.

I am disgusted but not surprised that you would libellously misrepresent me.

(Also, apparently asking adults not to mutilate the genitals of babies is 'penis worship'. That is a fucking sick thing to say, Toni.)

I’m talking about your posts. Their content. You have an extreme negative reaction to a widely practiced medical procedure—and see no problem with depictions of women and children being abused and raped as entertainment.

And you gave misnamed another poster, which I believe is a TOU violation. (Maybe not-it’s late and I’m not bothering to look it up tonight)

You express extreme distress at the idea any man might be asked an uncomfortable question and could care less about how girls and women feel —about anything.

Your feelings are precious—and anyone else’s are open for ridicule and insult. In fact, you cry libel if you don’t like how other people view your words.

 

[Hermit]

But back to my question, which initially was to one person, but since so many others are interested, does anyone here other than me have any reaction to that image of a little girl having her uterus ripped out besides laughter?

Besides laughter? My immediate reaction was anger. At no stage did I see anything funny about it. This is a figurative depiction of what Republican Texan politicians, who are almost exclusively men (all but two of the 23 Texan members of Congress and both Senators are male) want to do; they want to be in full control of every woman's reproductive system, and it begins with what they want taught what they do not want taught to little girls at school. People who don't care so much about the issue need to be shocked and shaken out of their complacency.

The cartoon won't change the mind of any Republican, male or female, on the off chance that they would ever see it to begin with.

Exit polls indicate that 47% of Texan women voted for Trump in 2016. In 2020 48% voted for him again. What makes you think that not any of them would change their mind if they did see that image?

That cartoon was made for liberals, and it's liberals who laugh at it.

You sound totally convinced about that. Why? Have you asked the image's creator? If so, what did he say? If not, maybe you should. His name is Dwayne Booth. Most of his works are signed "Mr. Fish".

Apart from being a cartoonist, freelance writer and fine artist, he is also a lecturer at the Annenberg School of Communication of the University of Pennsylvania, where he conducts two undergrad courses. One is titled "Sick and Satired: The Insanity of Humor and How it Keeps Us Sane" and the other "WARNING! Graphic Content: Political Cartoons, Comix, and the Uncensored Artist". It seems he takes cartooning very seriously.

A couple of years ago Booth also published a book titled Nobody Left, which prompted one reviewer to write: "Mr. Fish's graphic broadsides can jolt viewers out of complacency." Maybe that is what motivates him. You can contact him via email here if you want to find out for yourself.

 

[Metaphor]

And also for the record, I personally do not have a particular need to be heard by anyone in particular. All women and girls need to be heard by all men. And all men need to call out depictions of brutality against women and children for entertainment and condemn them.

Ludicrous. But, the art world survived angry feminists and it'll survive you.

In one post you are calling for an artist to realize your artistic/political ambitions by depicting a screaming male child and a woman wearing his foreskin in her face

And in the next you think only radical feminists, of which Angry and I certainly are two—would be offended by or opposed by depictions of women and children being abused and raped.

I’m disgusted but not surprised by your penis worship and utter and complete disregard for women and children.

What on earth are you talking about?

In one post, I propose collaborating on some art.

In another post, Angry Feminist says all men need to condemn art she doesn't like.

I am disgusted but not surprised that you would libellously misrepresent me.

(Also, apparently asking adults not to mutilate the genitals of babies is 'penis worship'. That is a fucking sick thing to say, Toni.)

I’m talking about your posts. Their content. You have an extreme negative reaction to a widely practiced medical procedure

Yes, I have an extreme negative reaction to parents mutilating the genitals of their babies.

—and see no problem with depictions of women and children being abused and raped as entertainment.

and I would so no problem with depictions of men being abused and raped as entertainment, either.

I don't dictate to other people what they should watch or the art they be allowed to create.

And you gave misnamed another poster, which I believe is a TOU violation. (Maybe not-it’s late and I’m not bothering to look it up tonight)

Yes, I did accidentally misname Angry Floof, because I see her screen name and automatically register it as 'Angry Feminist' (though she claims she isn't angry even though she made it part of her screen name). So, I apologise for that but I would also point out that discussing TOU violations is a TOU violation, and you should alert moderators directly.

You express extreme distress at the idea any man might be asked an uncomfortable question

No I didn't. I didn't express 'extreme distress'.

and could care less about how girls and women feel —about anything.

Hi American. 'Could care less' means I care at least a little. You almost certainly mean 'I couldn't care less', which is false.

However, I do not prioritise the feelings of people by sex or 'gender'.

Your feelings are precious—and anyone else’s are open for ridicule and insult. In fact, you cry libel if you don’t like how other people view your words.

I point out when people misrepresent my view, as you often do, despite my having expressed my views, often multiple times, in whatever thread you misrepresent them in.

 

[Elixir]

the “artist” was surely not laughing.
I think they were tortured in fact, to the point where they felt that only shock value could express their disgust/ horror about Texas Republicans.
The error of their way is evident in the fact that nobody who needed to see it has shown up in this thread to express any dismay, and wherever it appears it is probably met by the guilty with the same blind eye.
So it’s totally unnecessary and counterproductive. The “shock value” is wasted.

 

[Metaphor]

the “artist” was surely not laughing.
I think they were tortured in fact, to the point where they felt that only shock value could express their disgust/ horror about Texas Republicans.
The error of their way is evident in the fact that nobody who needed to see it has shown up in this thread to express any dismay, and wherever it appears it is probably met by the guilty with the same blind eye.
So it’s totally unnecessary and counterproductive. The “shock value” is wasted.

What?

You think the influence of the image is evidenced by whether somebody shows up in this thread on an atheist board to confess the image made her question the Republican agenda?

 

[TomC]

People who don't care so much about the issue need to be shocked and shaken out of their complacency.

This is the point.
I'm not sure who the original audience it was intended to reach. Adults with at least a modicum of social awareness I presume.
The sputtering outrage though? It honestly reminds me of the Tennessean schools trying to ban "Maus" due to it containing images of genitals.
What's happening in Texas deserves mocking satire.
Tom

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

The cartoon however, is not aimed at mocking women or girls. The reason it is a girl has been provided an explanation.

No one said it's aimed at mocking women or girls. At least I didn't. I asked if the imagery elicited anything other than laughter.

Your explanation is after-the-fact bullshit as I noted earlier. It's not a matter of me agreeing with it. It's a matter of it being utter bullshit. No Republican is going to change their mind about misogynistic laws based on that image no matter how depraved it is even if they by chance should see it from within their bubble.

And that is quite possibly true. However, the explanation isn't remotely BS. It explains the who, what, and why. That you find it goes way too far is an opinion, of which many will likely agree. But it doesn't erase what the cartoon is actually presenting and why.

They're not going to relate to it. But I can tell you what demographic will relate to images of girls and women being brutalized.

I think the fight over the woman's uterus is certainly much more brutal than that cartoon could ever be. It is a physical and psychological attack against women. And unless something changes bigly on SCOTUS, access to birth control is going to sparse in a majority of states... and no one is going to give a fucking damn about this cartoon.