“Cuck,” short for “cuckold,” has become the insult of choice in this surreal political season, at least amongst alt-rightists and anime Nazis and other elements of Donald Trump’s political army.
The insult, inspired by a specialized porn genre in which white “hotwives” have sex with black men while their white “cuckold” husbands watch, is intended to suggest not just emasculation but also a kind of racial treason. Or at least that’s what the insult originally meant; at this point it gets thrown at anyone and everyone who stands in the way of the Trump revolution — including women, who by definition can’t be “cucked.”
The people who are most fond of this insult seem to think it has some sort of magical power. In a recent post on the alt-right site The Right Stuff, a guy who calls himself Auschwitz Soccer Ref declares that, in the word “cuck,” he and his comrades had found a sort of right-wing version of “racist,” which he describes as “a powerful, weaponized term” that leftists use to take down, well, racists like him.
The word “cuck” is an “absolutely devastating” insult, he explains.
“Cuck” works for the same reason that “racist” works: it is an irrational word that cannot be deconstructed with reasoning. Just as “racist” hits rightists hard because it attempts to psychopathologize the healthy preference for our own race, “cuck” is devastating to leftists because they are being described as the most humiliating kind of man possible, one who gets aroused by letting another man—or other men—have sex with his wife.
There’s only one problem with Mr. Soccer Ref’s theory: “cuck” isn’t “devastating to leftists,” or indeed to any white dude who isn’t pathologically preoccupied with the specter of black (or Muslim, or Mexican) men having sex with “our” white women. In other words, “cuck” only really stings as an insult to the very people who are tossing the insult around.
And insofar as the related term “cuckservative” actually bothers conservatives, I suspect they are less bothered by the sexual and racial overtones of the term than they are by the implication that they are not bona fide conservatives.
[J]ust like “racism” transcends political terminology like “fascist” and brings morality into the discussion, “cuck” transcends political terminology like “traitor” and brings sexuality and gender into the discussion, thus widening its implications. For years this kind of transcendent, weaponized term was missing from the right’s lexicon, but now it’s here, and that’s why “cuck” is so hurtful to the left and kosher conservatives.
Nope. One of the reasons that “racist” has the bite that it does is because the insult is so often true. What’s strange is that the insult doesn’t just bother garden variety racists; is also bothers alt-rightists and others on the far right whose ideologies are actually rooted in racism. Most racists hate to be labelled as such; that’s why you find so many of them on the far right resorting to euphemism, describing themselves as “race realists” or proponents of “Human Biodiversity” rather than simply admitting that, yes, they are huge bigots.
At-rightists and Trump enthusiasts aren’t the only ones obsessed with cuckolding. Men’s Rights activists are as well, though their definition of “cuckolding” comes not from porn but from one of the term’s original meanings. MRAs worry endlessly about the prospect of their wives (real or hypothetical) cuckolding them by conning them into raising children fathered by another man, presumably some alpha male lover she has on the side.
Indeed, many MRAs and Evo Psych professors have convinced themselves that this old-school variety of cuckolding is exceedingly common, with up to a third of the world’s ostensible fathers unknowingly raising kids who are not theirs.
But a new study published in Trends in Ecology and Evolution suggests that this is nonsense. Using genetic testing and genealogical research, the authors of the study found that the real rate of such cuckoldry has “stayed near constant at around 1% across several human societies over the past several hundred years.”
Somehow I doubt that this study will lead MRAs to be any less paranoid about being cuckolded, much less convince the internet’s Anime Nazis to give up an insult they think is “absolutely devastating.”
H/T — Thanks to both readers who alerted me to the new cuckolding study.
“You sleep with people outside your race/disagree with me, therefore you’re a cuck!”
“…Okay? You’re a racist because you literally believe that white people are better than every other race on the planet solely because they were born white.”
“FUCK OFF YOU CUCK!”
Yep. Can’t deconstruct that with reasoning.
I love how us LGBT folks don’t exist to these people sometimes. And I also love how he thinks “cuck” is a “devastating” word. At most, they just sound like a group of perpetually angry bigoted chickens, the imagery of which makes me giggle.
Also, how is having a kink “humiliating”? I have lots of kinks (TMI:
including humiliation under the right circumstances/TMI), but I don’t ever feel humiliated for them.Though, I suppose this ties into the misogyny that these buttholes share, which is: White cis women are the “property” of white cis men, and thus another (non-white) cis man having sex with your property while you watch is somehow “humiliating” like having someone defecate on your lawn while making eye-contact with you the whole time is supposed to “humiliate” you.
Pro-tip: Don’t lead with your kinks. It makes the whole conversation awkward.
Andy Richter had the best response to being called a “cuck”
https://twitter.com/AndyRichter/status/679085381644488706
a) Stop shaming male sexuality, alt rights.
b) Everyone knows the most humiliated kind of man possible is a man who belongs to the alt right.
I’m pretty thankful for “cuck.”
It’s like holding up a sign that reads, “No need to take me seriously.”
Cuck-cuck-cuck-buh-CAW-cuck!
Note: the comments in Ars Technica’s article are pretty much examination-worthy on their own, due to extreme cringe-factor contained within.
@Paradoxical Intention
They remind me of middle school bullies who use “fudge packer” as an insult. The stupid burns.
Oh boy, reminds me of some talks with some people I know.You’d be surprised how many men in Eastern Europe have an issue with women sleeping with non-white dudes (or that sleeping with non-white people is shameful).I think they’d get on pretty well with these gents.
I’ve seen the word often, and assume it was a shortened form of “cuckold.” But I’ve never understood its meaning in relationship to the strange philosophies of the alt-right and MRA practitioners.
I agree with the_real_Nick. It’s just a warning flag for the idiots who use it.
Much like being called a “fag.”
That they think it hurts us really says more about them than they know.
I remember reading that actual adultery and divorce rates went up briefly during the 1960’s through 1980’s (while sexual liberalism was becoming acceptable and states passed no-fault divorce laws) but they’ve gradually stabilized at a “normal” level since the 80’s. The main difference now is that people wait longer to get married. The “conventional wisdom” that adultery and divorce are out of control is wrong.
An animated gif from Arrested Development — with all the chicken impressions — would be wildly appropriate in response.
By “Devastating,” they mean “Confusing” or “Hilarious,” right? You’d think the 101st Flying Dictionary Brigade would’ve double-checked that first.
I’m going to make up/appropriate a word and start using it and then, because they won’t know it unless I tell them, telling the people I’ve used it on that they’ve been PWN’D SO HARD.
Er… do we still say “pwn”? Did I just show my age?
Well… shit.
I find the word cuck very useful. It lets me know right away that I can completely disregard the person throwing it around.
The answer to the question asked in the title of this post is quite simple: Because they are, themselves, deep in their hearts, desiring, with all their might, to be cuckold men. They do protest too much.
Agreed – as I have pointed out on twitter – use of the word cuck (amongs a few others) immediately disqualifies the user from adult conversation.
Perfect.
I’m really sorry to do this here, I know it’s not an open thread, but I figured this would be the best place to get legitimate and/or well thought out ideas for dealing with a bit of a situation I’m having at work.
A coworker of mine who happens to also be a friend, is a very kind and attractive woman. She has trouble saying no to people and generally tries to spare everyone’s feelings even if it’s at the expense of her own.
Because she is a young, friendly and beautiful woman, she has had a lot of experience dealing with sexual assault and harassment.
The problem here is that there’s a young man who was hired maybe 9 months ago who is a harasser. He got hired because he’s friends with the son of the president of the company. He does not fit in with our team, he is incredibly negative and he regularly wanders out of his department into ours to talk to his friend, who happens to sit next to my friend the beautiful woman he’s taken to bothering.
A note here, he makes radio commercials and she regularly does voicing for them, so she does, unfortunately have to work with him in his voicing booth fairly often.
He used to physically touch her, make inappropriate and/or sexual comments and was really clear that he wanted her to date/have sex with/be interested in him, despite her repeated reminders that she has a boyfriend and that this is a work environment and his advances were inappropriate.
She made a complaint about the touching etc. and he was reprimanded and the physical contact has stopped.
Unfortunately, he’s still coming over to her desk daily, and calling her all the time on the work phones to ask her to voice, or join in his time wasting conversations with his friend, sits next to her during group events etc. Whenever she tells him she’s too busy to do voicing for him, he gets angry and says that she needs to be making time to do that work and doesn’t she know his department is busy too?
He’s been talked to before and ultimately still doesn’t seem to understand where the boundaries are in a professional environment and clearly is still holding some sort of torch for her. I seriously do not believe that the company will take action against him if she complains again (outside of giving him a talking to which obviously isn’t enough). This company is rather conservative, run by old white christian men (we literally cannot use even the vaguest reference to alcohol in our ads), and the harasser is a friend of the family who runs the company. He is definitely not going to lose his job over this.
I’m really upset by this whole mess. She doesn’t want to make another complaint. She doesn’t want him to know she’s been complaining, it didn’t work the last time, and she doesn’t want to be the fun-allergic-feminist as a few of you have called it. But she’s been telling me that it makes her so uncomfortable she wants to cry when she thinks about it and that she gets a pain in her chest when he’s around.
I can’t stand watching her go through this, but I can’t force her to complain and I just don’t know how to help, and I was hoping some of you might have a suggestion?
Again, sorry for doing this here, and sorry for the extremely long explanation.
CUCKED IN THE CUCK BY MY OWN CUCK “CUCKED IN THE CUCK BY MY OWN CUCK” by Cuck Tingle
@ A Space Alpaca
My suggestion would be to ask your friend how she feels about having one of the guys in the office speak to him on like “dude to dude” terms? Obviously he doesn’t respect her boundaries but maybe if other men he respects let him know they disapprove, he’ll clue in. Not necessarily taking him aside and lecturing him but just being like “dude, come on” when he behaves inappropriately can go a long way sometimes. I wouldn’t do anything at all without making absolutely sure that your friend is 100% OK with it. She may very well feel that the best thing she can do is just try not to rock the boat.
Back on topic: I pretty much take ‘cuck’ to be code for “I am someone who shouldn’t be taken seriously about anything ever.”
That is a really difficult situation due to him being a friend of the manager/owner.
I’d start with getting her (and helping her) to document everything. Everything he says to her (that is inappropriate) and everything he does – all dated and timed.
When there is a sufficient body of evidence – then either confront him with it, informing him that it will be taken further if he carries on, or take it straight to the bosses – not with the aim of getting him fired, but with the aim of changing things so that he no longer has anything to do with her professionally, and has no excuse for interacting with her.
Of course neither of those approaches are risk free career wise – and it might be just easier to find another job elsewhere.
Probably others will have better advice than I have.
I don’t have any advice with SpaceAlpaca’s predicament, sadly.
What I do know however, is that “cuck” is a hilarious word. When me and my friend were laughing at least week’s troll, she was like “yep there it is, people getting called cuckolds”, like these guys have a checklist for being offensive.
How much wood would a woodcuck cuck if a woodcuck could cuck wood?
“Cuck” works for the same reason that “racist” works: it is an irrational word that cannot be deconstructed with reasoning.”
you know what, Im not sure I have the emotional fortitude to continue reading past that at this time.
@ FrickleFrackle
Right? They’re so predictable, you can practically set your watch according to the trajectory of their conversations.
“calls someone a cuck in 3…2…” *presses ‘set time’ button*
I don’t think he’s wrong when he says:
It’s one of those “fractally wrong” insults that is so wrong-headed and weird on so many levels that to engage in any way feels like losing.
However, he goes on to give some sort of “rational” definition of the insult and why he believes it is so insulting, so he kind of argues against himself here.