“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.
@dlouwe
Then I will continue doing it. :p
@Anarchonist
Yup, the internet seems to agree with you. Not sure if I’ll be drinking it anyway, but the cats need new water soon.
I just found out I’m supposed to have tap water back in 3-4 hours…
@ PI
Whether bottled water remains safe to drink is affected by a number of factors. The key one for your situation is probably, has it been exposed to the UV in sunlight (assuming it’s a plastic bottle) If you’ve kept it in the dark it can last for ages.
Oops!
Well, I think deconstructing it shows that it is not something that should happen at all, let alone something that feminists should endorse. The idea that being male-identified and being “a man” are different, and that the second status can be removed from you by someone else, are not ideas that meet with my personal approval. Your mileage may vary.
There actually is! Kind of. It is “unsexed.” It’s not a term that we use today, but it was applied with great enthusiasm to first-wave feminists and female abolitionists in the United States. It isn’t quite the same as “emasculation,” because emasculation does not necessarily imply that the emasculated man is becoming woman-like, and emasculation is something that is done to you. “Unsexed” does necessarily imply that the woman in question is becoming more man-like, and it is something that she can do to herself (and it usually carries the meaning that this is the case). So it’s actually more like a verb parallel of “effeminate.”
A woman would unsex herself by doing such unseemly things like speaking publicly, or asking for her rights, even if she is doing so meekly and politely. By nineteenth-century standards, everyone on this board and almost 100% of women in the west have unsexed themselves and are not actually women.
Hope that helps!
@Alan
It’s been sitting in a dark closet for a few years since the last time our water went out. It seems fine.
Yes. I remember posting on a story about Dyson (the novelty vacuum cleaner company) reinstating their advertising after a gamergate propaganda “operation”.
One Nazi branded me as one of “you cucks” after I had challenged them a few times. I laughed and asked them what they meant. They replied with a very sincere explanation that was strange to me at the time. And I now see that I had unwittingly given them an invitation to put forth their cucksaganda. Yes, “cucksaganda”. Oh well, why not? Don’t look at me like that…
Thank-you. Anyways, I must admit that David is in fine form these days. Getting better with age, eh David?
http://i.imgur.com/QlT5Fev.jpg
They sound ridiculous. Their glaring insecurity over not being in control of women’s sexuality only highlights the fragility of their masulinity. Screaming “cuck” doesn’t make them seem formidable. It just draws attention to how ridiculous they are.
They are angry about not being in control of women and they think a man who does not or cannot control women are the worst thing they can be? So they are feeling humiliated and think other men must feel the same way because they are not capable of empathy, only projection.
They honestly believe they are being oppressed by women not belonging to them because our humanity threatens their privledge. Their toxic version of manhood is defined by oppressing women. So literally everything women do scares them. Thats why women piss them off by having sex and by not having sex. We piss them off when we work outside the home and we piss them off when we don’t because what scares them is women making choices. They’ll be whining and sobbing all the way to the grave. Women aren’t going back to the bad old days. We aren’t even staying put here. We are changing the world for the better and we cannot be stopped. Progress is happening, no matter how many man tears these creeps shed.
What a bunch of silly people these douchebros are.
The Kesha thing…
Well, the New York Supreme court denied her appeal (perhaps because her lawyer, Mark Geragos claimed that by refusing to release her from her contract working with Dr. Luke, it was slavery…)…Dr. Luke previously had his lawyers offer her a deal where he’d release her from the contract IF she would publicly retract the rape allegations, it wasn’t clear if that would include the other abuses detailed in the civil complaint.
In a 2011 deposition, Kesha said under oath that Dr. Luke “never made sexual advances” toward her. When asked whether he’d given her the date-rape drug known as a “roofie,” she said, “No.” His lawyers point to this as evidence that her accusations are false, and an attempt to break her contract with Sony working with Dr Luke as producer.
While it’s been reported that Sony is planning to drop Dr. Luke before his contract with them expires next year, so far nothing has indicated they actually will. Even if they did he still gets to keep his significant $ advance which was part of his 5 year deal with Sony to fund his Kemosabe record label. New York courts have refused to allow Kesha to switch labels citing lack of evidence, and her appeal of that decision was just thrown out entirely by the NYSC, with that court stating that it is unreasonable to not have taken the option of working with other producers offered by Sony and rejecting her claims that she was a “Sony slave” and Dr. Luke “The Master” or that his actions were a hate crime.
I hate how the judge in the Kesha case condescendingly told that not every rape is a gender based hate crime. Which is true, but when do we ever call rape or any other violence against women a hate crime? I’ve never heard of it.
Harassing, abusing, and raping women is mainstream and normal that most people are incapable of viewing gender based violence the way they view any other hate based violence. Yet, many people think we don’t need feminism anymore?
@Lea
That’s a classic definition of an abuser.
Yes!
PoM, re “unsexing” (Lady Macbeth too 🙂 ) – maybe it’s another reflection of the assumption that a man is a person, the standard, the norm for a human being, and a woman is the non-standard, in this case the one with added sex-ness.
A bit like, when a stick-figure (or any cartoon character or fictional character) has no extra identifying markers it’s automatically male and you have te add a bow or long hair or a dress or cartoon breasts in order to make it into a female figure. So I guess if you “unsex” a woman, what’s left is a standard human being, i.e. a man.
I also thought that they wrote ‘cuck’ because they had a deep rooted fear that writing ‘cock’ would make them gay.
1) To be fair … finding out that you actually had been “cuckolded” (ie. your partner cheated on you, got pregnant, and then lied about that, by commission or omission, and fooled you into thinking it was yours ) would actually really massively suck. A friend of mine throw out a bed because it was a constant reminder of his partners infidelity – he couldn’t stand looking at it because it reminded him of her betrayal. I can only imagine how traumatic it would be if it was a child you loved who was now also a walking reminder of an even worse betrayal (ie. both the cheating AND the years of lies that followed).
That being said, their use of this term as a go-to insult is just a pathetic sign of their own insecurity.
2)
This is just wrong. As shown (below), the source of the higher numbers were results from human paternity tests. It was not from scientists just assuming that people acted like birds. That kind of assertion should have been a big red flag that the author of this article was a hack.
Here is a a better article with more complete figures and better explanations of methodology. ALWAYS beware of any article explaining what a “study” says that doesn’t tell you anything about it’s methodology or how it arrived at its results .. or even link to any place to get that info.
The ~30% figure is accurate … for cases where “paternity confidence is low” (ie. where the testing is sought out by fathers who were obviously suspicious to begin with). Not surprisingly, people who self-select based on being suspicious about the paternity of a child are far more likely to be right about their suspicions than people who have no reason to suspect the paternity of their children. And even so … they are at least still 2X+ as likely to actually be the father than not.
Anyone who unironically uses the word “cuck” is automatically outing themselves as a racist. Thanks for doing our work for us!
Calling someone a “cuck” is like spitting into a high wind: The insult never reaches its intended target, the spitter gets splattered, and bystanders are either confused, disgusted, or convulsed with laughter. Sometimes all three at once.
The implication being that mingling with other races is unhealthy?
I just realized that my cat *is* a cuck!
You know how a lot of cats will sniff you suspiciously when you come home from visiting a friend with other cats? I had a cat that would do that and also snub me for at least an hour, to boot!
The cat I have now doesn’t do that; he just doesn’t seem to care! He does more sniffing after husbeast and I have showered, tbh.
@Hambeast
Hahahahaha. Make sure to use this devastating insult with your cat!
Also “psychopathologize” is not a word. You can have psychopath, or pathologize. Not both.
@ThatBear
I believe that Hitchcocks famous “Shower scene” is a textbook case of psychobathologizing.
BA-BOOSH! NAILED IT!
“Furry” is a broad term with several tenuously connected meanings. It includes grown men and women who still enjoy Looney Toons, Tom & Jerry, and so on, it includes those who enjoy pornography with anthropomorphic animals, and it even includes people who wish they were anthropomorphic animals, with or without sexual encounters while wearing animal-people costumes.
As a long-time 4chan user, I used to love to hate the second and third groups. I’d like to hope I’ve gotten over hating people for their kinks. (And how could anyone hate the first group? Liking Tom & Jerry is called having good taste)
I’ve always thought they were infatuated with the word because it sounds similar to another insult, with an o instead if a u. Then again, these people latch onto anything that’s “edgy” so… yawn.
These people are so childish. They learn a new word that has bad implications and use it in a way a little kid would to sound edgy. They just come off as massive tools, instead. I would stay as far away from anyone who uses the term without any irony involved. It’s a good radar to tell who’s a shit person.
These guys all write as if women who prefer monogamy are some sort of rare species rapidly going extinct.
What might be true is that the population of women who prefer monogamy with insufferably racist and misogynist men, or who feel compelled to stay with someone who is an asshole, is rapidly dwindling.
For those of us who live in the real world, most people still prefer monogamy. The greater social acceptance of things like polyamory, or casual sexual relationships, doesn’t mean that they are right for everyone. The goal should be that no one feels forced into the kind of relationship that makes them uncomfortable and unhappy, no?
The obvious point, to me, is that nonconsensual nonmonogamy is more prevalent than consensual nonmonogamy. For the people (mostly men) who are concerned by people lobbying for nonmonogamous relationships — may I ask: what is the fear? Won’t there simply be less cheating, and the people who sincerely prefer monogamy will go on doing their thing?
If you want a monogamous partner who won’t cheat, wouldn’t you want a society where people can openly choose to be nonmonogamous without feeling social shame for it? Wouldn’t that be a society in which people don’t simply say they’re monogamous, when they really aren’t? In which, um, you’re less likely to be “cucked”?
And, hey, maybe, just maybe, if you didn’t tell people they were terrible people destroying society by being nonmonogamous, they would no longer have a problem with your monogamy? You know, because you’re no longer trying to force it on people for whom it doesn’t fit?
I realize this might be too complicated for regressive masculinists who like to say “cuck” to understand, but sometimes I enjoy talking to walls.
So, this just happened:
Me (coming home from a trip to the store): Hallo Bunny! How’s my sweet little cuck?
Cat: Purrow!
Me: Do you want a sniff to see where I’ve been? No? You’re such a cute little cuck kitty, aren’t you? Yes, you are!
Cat: *purrs*
@Hambeast
Purrfect! I trust he’s neutered?
@Moggie
hahahahahahaha… That’s so hilariously true. The alt right is full of pretentious pseudo-intellectuals who pretend to understand philosophy and to have a working grasp of all the social sciences, while jacking off to the highbrow greatest hits of Western Civilization yet their new claim to fame is channer anime Nazis yelling “cuck” at confused strangers on Twitter.
The word “CUCK” doesn’t faze David because you actually need to sleep with attractive women to be in danger of being cuckolded.