By Cake Staff:
Oh Internet, how we love you and despair! A quick scroll through your Facebook timeline in the morning can set off the widest range of emotions – there’s cat gifs to melt your heart and outrageous news clips. And then there are those meme pages, sometimes offering up a fair critique of the world, and sometimes just being powerhouses of sexist bile you wished you hadn’t seen.
On Aug. 12, 2016, one of those pages, the rather incongruously named Sarcasm Society, decided to deposit some of that bile into people’s newsfeeds with this inspired meme about the Delhi Metro’s coach for women. And with a ‘snarky’ caption that read “Talking about equality,” no less!
Six years ago, the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation introduced the women’s coach in all its trains, in a bid to make intra-city travel safer and more accessible to women. While it has been a crucial requirement for many women travelling late or alone, the presence of the women’s coach did not mean women were prohibited from using other coaches. In fact, there are between 20 and 28 seats reserved for women in the rest of the train, for the same reason the reserved coach exists – safety. And this isn’t a new concept either. Mumbai has had a Ladies Special train service for 24 years. And as much as MRA dudebros on the internet claim this is simply a case of the matriarchy laying them low, that just isn’t true.
So while Sarcasm Society was (presumably) revelling in their self-proclaimed anti-feminazi victory, waiting for a flood of praise for their “keen insights,” the internet did a rather beautiful 180 on them. And interestingly, it was a bunch of guys who called out the bullshit.
This top-voted comment is pretty much on point:
This guy who noticed a link between rape culture and access to public space:
This guy who knows what floundering, desperate patriarchy looks like:
This guy gets it:
So does this guy:
Aaaand this guy:
So why do memes like these even get made? Well, the admins might argue that their right to freedom of speech allows them to make terrible memes. But it’s important that men on the internet are also exercising their freedom of speech to challenge such backward, one-upping notions of “gender equality.” Of the nearly one thousand comments garnered by this post, a strong section has made their displeasure very clear. This was almost unthinkable even a few years ago. Times, they’re a-changing. And we’re so glad that men are calling out the sexist garbage being passed off as humour!
Featured Image Source: Sarcasm Society/Facebook.