I always hated the "False Equivalency" comic.

Kuonji · 2013-08-04T05:23:54+00:00

I like how the classic argument about 'male power fantasy' is simply accepted at face value: "Guys have big muscles in games because it's a reflection of guys having power, but girls are sexy in games because guys want to see sexy girls!"

Says who?

You can't just make a claim like that and not back it up. Has anyone ever called out the person who has made this claim? Why are they the deciding factor on what guys and girls 'want' out of a game?

In the original comic, she says "Hey, that's not the kind of man I would want". Okay. Do you also speak for every other woman? Then don't act like you do.

The entire argument is ridiculous.

walruz · 2013-08-04T08:43:49+00:00

I think the main problem with this whole "objectification" business, is that nobody really seems to question why objectification is a bad thing.

If SRS linked to mensrights posts, they'd just link to that first paragraph and be outraged. But wait! There's more!

What I mean is that sure, if you're playing Dead or Alive Beach Volleyball, you're not really going to care much about what the brown-haired girl with the boobs does in her spare time, or what the blue-haired girl with the big boobs thinks about the sequester (probably not much, since she's a ninja, but whatever). And that's just because those things aren't the point. There are literally zero situations, maybe apart from finding a romantic partner, where you consider the entirety of a person's traits. If you're watching porn, you're only going to be interested in the performer's ability to be sexy. If you're divorcing your husband, you're only going to be interested in your lawyer's ability to get you a good deal. You're not going to care about your lawyer's personality and interests and beliefs and who he or she is as a person. Because you're not hiring a person, you're hiring a lawyer.

If you go to McDonald's, you're not going to care about whether the burger flipper guy liked Call of Duty 2 better than Call of Duty 3. You're going to care if he can flip your burgers.

Everybody objectifies people all the time, and it's completely normal behaviour. The bus driver is an object that gets me into town. The server is an object that brings me food. The girl with the chainmail bikini is an object that I use to kill orcs. The president is an object that makes sure the nukes don't go flying. My lawyer is an object that keeps me out of jail.

And sure, all of those (well, apart from the CGI'd lady in chainmail underwear) are people too, but the purpose that you interact with them isn't that they're people. It's that they fill some kind of professional role whose services you're willing to pay money to enjoy.

And sure, you might make the argument that you'd rather have a friendly and sociable server than on that just brings your your G&T. And you'd be right. However, would you rather choose a) a server who's a really good conversationalist, but refuses to serve you food, or b) a server who's shitty company, but brings you food and drinks like a world champion of food-bringing?

girlwriteswhat · 2013-08-04T06:04:08+00:00

Why do men fantasize about being powerful? Uh...maybe because women find power attractive in a man, and men instinctively want to be attractive to women? Didn't "50 Shades of Grey" prove the general (not universal, but predominant) female attraction to powerful, dominant men? Duh.

Heterohabilis · 2013-08-04T04:04:09+00:00

Wow! Women's espoused preferences don't match their real preferences?

I'm shocked!

grrw · 2013-08-04T07:31:45+00:00

I AM DRAWING I MUST STICK MY TONGUE OUT BECAUSE I AM PUTTING EFFORT INTO THIS DRAWING. ALSO I AM CUTE, WHILE THE GUY WHO IS WRONG IS FAT AND BALD: HA HA

HallOTMountainTroll · 2013-08-04T06:46:36+00:00

These sort of comics and comparisons that try to disprove male objectification always work the same way- they put a male in a position that objectified female characters take, or give the male features that objectified female characters have, and say, "Wouldn't this look ridiculous! Men are never really objectified!". Well, of course it looks ridiculous- as it would look ridiculous if you put a woman in a Conan the Barbarian outfit and muscles growing on top of their muscle's muscles.

Men and women are physically objectified in different ways. Women are objectified by making them look ultra-feminine, sort of submissive or mysterious or some rot like that.... because that's what drives male consumers who get off on objectifying women to buy the thing. Men are objectified by making them look ultra-masculine, muscle-bound, and powerful.... because that's what drives female consumers who get off on objectifying men to buy the thing.

Is it a 'male power fantasy' to show a powerful man? It's certainly a fantasy about male power and a powerful man, but that powerful man might not be geared towards helping male consumers live out a power fantasy. Often, it's geared towards women who find a powerful man hot. So, it depends on the context. If you're selling a comic book geared towards guys with a hulking gorilla-man on the cover, might be a male power fantasy (though that can obviously still engender body image issues). If you're selling a romance novel geared towards women with some rich, Adonis-bodied, ripped guy as the love interest, that's not a male empowerment fantasy- it's a sexual fantasy about a powerful man, geared towards women.

McFeely_Smackup · 2013-08-04T16:32:35+00:00

When women are objectified, it's a male fantasy.

When men are objectified, it's a male fantasy.

Women are victims, men are victimizers. Now you have a solid base education for reading feminist rhetoric.

2013-08-04T08:27:28+00:00

i like how she is drawn completely normal and cute and the person arguing with her is a fat bald hulk.

but but but false equivalence

ptgrenville · 2013-08-04T05:00:41+00:00

wtf is a male power fantasy?

Is it me or are feminist theories getting more and more bizarre everyday?

shoatGow · 2013-08-04T06:30:43+00:00

all those romance novels should just be ABS: THEY'RE GREAT

ElfmanLV · 2013-08-04T03:27:50+00:00

Somebody posted this in another thread in here, and I thought it was a good idea to share. This comic is always brought up when "male power fantasy" is brought up, this picture is definitely a good counter argument. :)

empirical_accuracy · 2013-08-04T04:26:20+00:00

[permanently deleted]

5th_Law_of_Robotics · 2013-08-04T16:24:42+00:00

It is a crime against humanity to judge a woman for her sexual preferences.

It is merely common sense to do the same to men.

psilorder · 2013-08-04T09:13:52+00:00

Usually dumpy disgruntled girls are the ones who gravitate towards the "dextrous" femme-faced bishounen type. I'm assuming the author of this comic is one of those types.

KinArt · 2013-08-04T14:36:15+00:00

I hate it when people claim that men are not also objectified in media or that somehow this objectification doesn't affect them like it does males. I mean, if men really wanted buff bodies like that, we'd have some kind of muscle-showing off contests, issues with self-image and masculinity, and even problems with drugs that enhance physique, regardless of negative side effects. Oh wait, that happens all the time. That being said, I'd prefer Spiderman's body to Superman or Batman's because that overly muscled looks just doesn't look natural to me. My mom (and many of my other female family and friends), however, drools over them and devours the romance novels mentioned in the post.

InfinitelyThirsting · 2013-08-04T05:49:21+00:00

Wow, what a sense of entitlement. So basically, males are only objectified when the particular feminist you are talking to in a given moment actually feels attracted to them!?

By the same token, fashion models in Vogue and other magazines are not being sexually objectified, just because I don't really fancy impossibly tall and skinny women without visible curves.

guttervoice · 2013-08-04T10:06:44+00:00

Duh. Clearly the romance novel industry is a patriarchal business, leaving oppressive rapists to further the agenda of convincing us that their own male power fantasies are also what we want. Monopolizing and propagandizing..

MechPlasma · 2013-08-04T12:30:31+00:00

http://img.buzznet.com/assets/imgx/7/5/1/1/5/0/1/orig-7511501.jpg

For the men in the audience. Obviously.

ucecatcher · 2013-08-04T06:03:47+00:00

When logic fails your zealotry, you can always turn to self-defined pseudo-scientific jargon to turn the tide. "Power fantasy" "privilege" "cis gender" "trigger". I sense a pattern here...

xDrSchnugglesx · 2013-08-04T06:39:06+00:00

If that picture she had drawn of Batman had less anime/girly eyes, it wouldn't be a problem. Spiderman isn't buff. The Flash isn't buff. There are superheros and shit that aren't buff and still look fine. She purposely drew Batman looking feminine or boyish. It's like drawing Superman in a skirt and saying 'See?' She even added the blush.

Spice_and_Doven_Wolf · 2013-08-04T20:17:50+00:00

It's not the double standard that bugs me about the "false equivalency" deal. It's not even that fact that the lady in this comic drew an Anime Batman, and somehow anime never gets called misandrist just for catering to women. It's the idea that male fantasies are inherently wrong, but women's fantasies are only fantasies.

I am going to make a small gender stereotype assumption on this Reddit and assume not many of you have read a women's romance novel. As a wee lad, I read a lot, even discovering what sex was in a medical text, and I read a few women's romance novels because I knew I wasn't supposed to use the Internet to look at 'that sort of thing', but there were no "only for people over the age of 18" warnings on romance novels.

Now, most of the romance novels I read back then were incredibly interesting, and I'll admit that it's one of the few places where the feminine perspective on sex actually matters. Fascinating stuff, and if I hadn't been attacked in the 7th grade by a woman and developed a phobia, I'd probably appreciate being introduced sex in this way rather than the comparatively boring porn I would have seen. But one of the most common traits of these books is women having sex under less-than-consensual circumstances. Everyone makes jokes about "those novels and the dashing pirate captain ravishing his beautiful female captive" but that was actually literally the plot of at least one I read.

No one ever believes that women read these novels because they want to actually be raped. Everyone is 100% clear on the idea that this is just a fantasy that the female reader has and never wants to actually live it. But that's never true from the male perspective. If a man reads a book where a woman is raped, even if it happens under negative circumstances (rather than positive, as it often is in romance novels), it's misogynistic.

It's one thing to say that using rape as a story tool is ham-fisted. It's an entirely different thing to say that someone reading a book that features rape actually wants to rape someone, or supports actual rapists--and only if that book is by and for men.

And, as usual, any movie, book, or video game that makes a prison rape joke is completely off the hook for social responsibility. If a woman isn't involved, it is clearly Just A Joke, not contributing to "rape culture."

So games like "Dragon's Crown" are misogynist because the female characters have large breasts, even though the men in that game have biceps the size of my damn torso; but as long as rape is only a good thing in novels largely by and for women, that's "just fantasy."

That's the REAL problem with "false equivalency": men are supposed to report their fantasies to Thoughtcrime, but women are judged solely by their actions and the causes they support, not what they do in their spare time.

2013-08-04T14:12:42+00:00

..Batman is still drawn muscular.

nwz123 · 2013-08-04T07:51:06+00:00

I'm going to bring up a logical fallacy....and instead of demonstrably proving that it applies to this situation, I'm going to just imply that it's stupid to even question it. Yea, i'm intellectually honest.

Second of all, does she (or the creator of the comic, rather) really believe that men don't experience that same kind of anxiety and feelings of insecurity when seeing distorted images/expectations of us by society? We're all human and we're gonna feel the hurt just the same. A man who's 'unable to provide' is shamed in our society. This is a gender construct that attacks the self-esteem of men by beating them over the head with the idea of 'what it means to be a man.'

Now this is an actual equivalency to her (or author's) example.

HallOTMountainTroll · 2013-08-04T06:23:46+00:00

There's this character called "Nightwing" that feminists apparently don't know about.

2013-08-04T10:47:21+00:00

Ok, so some women are attracted to safe non-threatening men. Those comics exist too btw:

"Most yaoi fans are either teenage girls or young women. The female readership in Thailand is estimated at 80%,[2] and the membership of Yaoi-Con, a yaoi convention in San Francisco, is 85% female. It is usually assumed that all female fans are heterosexual, but in Japan there is a presence of lesbian manga authors[3] and lesbian, bisexual or questioning female readers.[4] Recent online surveys of English-speaking readers of yaoi indicate that 50-60% of female readers self-identify as heterosexual."

At any rate, as pointed out by many others, the incredible hulk body type is also based on a standard of beauty, just a different one.

Personally I have no problem with yaoi, it doesn't make me uncomfortable because I don't feel threatened by other people having sex, or other people thinking about other people having sex, or even other people thinking about me having sex. Have at it, the imagination is a wonderful place.

_Mclintock · 2013-08-04T11:25:11+00:00

"False Equivalency" like most logic "terminology" is misunderstood and misused by people who just want to shut down debate and conversation.

Someone can dismiss an argument outright by calling it a "logical fallacy" and to rebut the dismissal takes a comparatively longer more elaborate explanation which usually exceeds their attention span.

Therefore it is a very effective tool. But most of these people, like the girl in the cartoon, "googled" these terms and abuse them. Any time two things are compared someone will say it's a "false equivalency". Most people seem to think that the definition of that term is "two things you wish were not similar". lol

luxury_banana · 2013-08-04T06:10:36+00:00

I think this might explain some of this.

Basically they found that men, in general, agree on what they find attractive in a partner, and women tend to have a more varied taste.

Since women tend to find wildly different people attractive it's more difficult to relate to most women in a story, and easier to relate to most men. Thus, easier to make a product to them. And easier for women to not understand why some women are attracted to certain male physiques. And since they don't understand that attraction, they blame men.

Ninja Edit: Also, Fabio

ThrowCarp · 2013-08-04T08:58:13+00:00

To begin with, that batman looks like fujoshi (lit. "rotten woman", reffers to a subculture of fangirls that like gay anime porn) fanart anyway.

throwawaymalebox · 2013-08-04T08:32:32+00:00

I don't get what the comic has to do with anything. I mean, I get what it's saying, but what does that matter? Basically it's trying to say that male stereotypes aren't created for sexual reasons. So? Realistic portrayal of men in media is just as rare as realistic portrayal of women. Doesn't fucking matter why, we're still being told what we "should be" as men, and it's still hurtful.

KRosen333 · 2013-08-04T03:37:28+00:00

lol this is fantastic...

Faryshta · 2013-08-04T07:36:06+00:00

The false equivalency guy got his fame by attacking other webcomic artists to draw attention to his comics.

2013-08-04T14:55:52+00:00

Twilight.... so on and so forth. just a load of shit so they can continue playing the victim card.

drinkthebleach · 2013-08-04T17:19:00+00:00

You know, I never got this, I have zero issue with Batman looking like that.

GenderEqualityKing · 2013-08-04T17:31:36+00:00

Thank you for posting this. This is a very good point.

SenorSpicyBeans · 2013-08-04T17:33:57+00:00

If the muscle-bound murder is a male power fantasy, than the scantily-clad bombshell is a female power fantasy.

2013-08-04T04:35:37+00:00

This is great! a perfectly valid counter-argument for the copy and paste bullshit of "male power fantasies".

themountaingoat · 2013-08-04T04:25:26+00:00

This is an amazing graphic and should be spread around every time the "male power fantasy" argument is brought up.

Frankly_No · 2013-08-04T15:54:45+00:00

Hey I made that one!!!

Goatkin · 2013-08-04T13:47:35+00:00

I find it ironic that a feminist comic mentions false equivalence. Saying men and women are equal is an equivalence fallacy. While I support policies that are genderblind, to not acknowledge that men and women are not exactly the same, and therefore also not equal, is a false equivalence.

note: A lack of equality does not imply a higher or lower value for either gender, that is not what equality means. Equality simply means "X is the same as Y" or "X is Y" .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence

The logic is. MEN and WOMEN are both subsets of the set GENDERS/SEXES therefore MEN and WOMEN are equal. This is a logically false statement and the proof by contradiction is that the next line of the argument is "MEN are the same as WOMEN".

A logically valid although silly argument is simply. "MEN have penises and WOMEN do not have penises. Therefore MEN and WOMEN do not share a genital equivalence relation. Therefore MEN are not equal to WOMEN."

zomgitsduke · 2013-08-04T13:18:27+00:00

Well, these comics also try to say "this is what every man/woman wants, and that is bad". Let people like what they like. Society shouldn't force you to feel a certain way by telling you it is wrong to like certain things, but rather it should correct problems when they arise, such as a person treating people horribly if they don't fit into their own idealized preferences(eg making someone feel bad for being overweight).

SheepInWolvesClothin · 2013-08-04T16:53:09+00:00

First of all, Google 'special pleading.'

mister_ghost · 2013-08-04T20:42:06+00:00

My issue with this is that it collapses back into gender roles in a really obvious way. Feminist rhetoric is all about not pigeonholing people by gender (which is great), and then this issue rolls around and it's all "Every man wants to grow big muscles and every woman hates that".

The 'male power fantasy' argument isn't just bad because it's obviously wrong, it's a problem because it implies that men all fantasize about the same thing and women unilaterally don't.

DerekAcorah · 2013-08-05T10:10:41+00:00

Whenever a game allows me, I always find myself making old or hideous characters. I wonder what that says about my power fantasies?

Jennazn · 2013-08-12T04:34:23+00:00

I hate when people try to cover up their agenda with humor.

Weedidiot · 2013-08-04T11:55:23+00:00

This is a great post. But let's discuss the truth of both sides shall we?

Objectifying people isn't okay..

Jazzeki · 2013-08-04T04:17:44+00:00

yeah and REAL men don't care about looks at all so the sexy babes in comics has nothing to do with... OH WAIT!

just because one gender claim something what sells doesn't fucking lie.

Offensive_Brute · 2013-08-04T08:17:36+00:00

when i was a little kid I used to have mutant power fantasies.

Kirkayak · 2013-08-04T19:16:23+00:00

Perhaps the first profile question on dating websites ought to be:

Are you mostly a "cavewoman" female (seeks a protector) or a "futurist" female (seeks a kindred spirit)?

(a similar construction could be asked of males)

TheGDBatman · 2013-08-04T22:35:43+00:00

That batman does make me uncomfortable, holy shit o.o

MasterDisast · 2013-08-05T02:13:05+00:00

The character is talking about what she likes. She does not represent the entire female population.

Heroic_Refugee · 2013-08-04T21:54:37+00:00

Aren't those covers designed by people who barely know what the book is about? Then again, the comic ignores that there are quite some dexterious heroes in comics (not to speak of anime) and that her taste is not representable for all women.

lazyrightsactivist · 2013-08-04T19:34:41+00:00

I don't get the argument at all. Personally, I think fiction worlds should be as ideal as possible. If that means that the women are perfect tens, then so should the guys. The lesson to be learned; is stop feeling bad about yourself. No one is honestly expecting to find picture perfect people in real life like we do in the media. Worrying about it is just making it harder on yourself. So, just enjoy good looking figures.

joshvillan · 2013-08-04T12:34:20+00:00

Haha accidentally down voted then realized that i was down voting because the comic made me mad too

Mystical_Engineer · 2013-08-04T17:08:18+00:00

[permanently deleted]

luxury_banana · 2013-08-04T08:04:58+00:00

For every decent post in MRA, there are five shit ones and this is one of them. You mean to tell me that women should be criticized over commercialized porn that only really appeals to a particular demographic? Because honestly there are a countless other commercialized products that objectify women and attempt to appeal to men in the same manner. Ultimately, a significant enough subset demographic in each gender allows this "sex sells" practice to continue and is hardly the justification to condemn either entire gender.

This whole argument is set up like "hey, you fucked up too so therefore it's okay for me to continue doing this", despite the insincere appeal to equality in the beginning.

newmobsforall · 2013-08-04T16:03:07+00:00

Not exactly an apples to apples comparison here.

Kirkayak · 2013-08-04T22:56:54+00:00

Many men want it both ways . . . they want to retain the advantages of the visage of power (beefcake), yet want to be judged sans that thing when lack is the case.

(they are greedy, in other words)

Title	I always hated the "False Equivalency" comic.
Author	ElfmanLV
Upvotes	1301
Comments	320
Date	August 4, 2013 3:24 AM UTC (12 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/1jnun7/i_always_hated_the_false_equivalency_comic/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/i-always-hated-the-false-equivalency-comic.1167248 https://theredarchive.com/post/1167248

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