By David Futrelle
Gillette’s new ad challenging toxic masculinity has got a lot of people talking. Unfortunately, most of them seem to be angry dudes attacking Gillette for challenging them to be “The Best Men Can Be,” and using the ad as an excuse to call other men “soy boys,” cucks, sissies, pansies and f***ots.
The ad, which took on an assortment of related issues ranging from bullying to sexual harassment, has gotten 5.6 million views on YouTube since it was released Sunday. It’s also gotten more than 400,000 “dislikes,” nearly four times the number of likes.
If you haven’t seen it yet, here it is. I have mixed feelings about giant corporations trying to position themselves as progressive entities, but the ad itself is pretty good, as these things go.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koPmuEyP3a0
So what are the online, er, critics saying? I spent a while reading through some of the reactions on Twitter, where the video was also posted, and, well, let’s just say that, just as comments on any article about feminism prove the need for feminism, Tweets about videos challenging toxic masculinity prove the need for videos challenging toxic masculinity.
Let’s start with Jeffrey here, who conveys some of the flavor of the response with this weird attack on Ana Kasparian of The Young Turks, who appears briefly in the video as an example of a journalist talking about the #MeeToo movement.
But most of the attacks weren’t misogynist attacks on women; they were, rather, misogynistic attacks on the allegedly insufficient masculinity of the Gillette executives behind the ad, and on those the ad was designed to appeal to.
Did I say men? I meant “soy boys.” Or at least that’s what the commenters meant.
Apparently, all the excess testosterone in these manly men’s systems has rendered them incapable of original thought. These aren’t the most creative of people.
Still, some eschewed the “soy boy” insult in favor of assorted old-school insinuations of inadequate manhood.
Others mixed-and-matched old and new school insults with gleeful abandon.
Others descended into straight-up homophobic attacks:
Others went with everyone’s favorite transphobic slur.
Such an inventive play on Gillette’s famous slogan “The Best a Man Can Get.”
And it’s not like anyone else thought of that joke. Oh, wait.
Yes, I’ll have the combo, please.
On second thought, I’ll have one with everything.
But perhaps the strangest contribution to this whole debate that I ran across while, er, researching this piece by bumbling around on Twitter came from our old friend Stefan Molyneux, the culty Canadian “philosopher” and YouTube blabber, who had this observation about the ad:
Stefan is suggesting, in a sly if not-quite-plausibly deniable way, that the ad is somehow going easy on Jewish men and exempting them from the “toxic masculinity” accusations, almost as if there were some big Jewish conspiracy on Madison Avenue to go along with the one in Hollywood.
How do I know this is what he’s getting at? Molyneux is an increasingly open anti-Semite who pretends to oppose anti-Semitism; he regularly tweets regurgitated anti-Semtiic talking points and, in a tweet the other day he explicitly denied that he has any Jewish blood in him. Which is evidently a big concern in the circles he hangs out in these days.
My question, of course, is how he can tell that none of the guys in the ad are Jewish. I mean, there are a LOT of boys and men in the ad, and it kind of seems statistically likely that at least a couple of them are Jewish. But evidently Stefan’s Jewdar is better than mine.
Turns out Stefan wasn’t the only one thinking about Jews. So were these guys, and they weren’t quite so subtle as Stefan in their tweets.
(I’m not quite sure how this fellow decided she was Jewish; I found no indications as to her religion online. “Gehring” is a German name but as far as I can tell not one specifically associated with Jews. Not that anti-Semites are big on accuracy.)
So I guess the problem isn’t just that a lot of men are poisoned by toxic masculinity. I guess a lot of them are also Nazis, who turn every discussion into an opportunity to talk shit about Jews.
I mean, we knew that already. But how convenient to be reminded of both facts so colorfully in this little collection of tweets.
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These guys make me sick. One day I hope they get toxic masculinity handed to them, in all its rotting glory. They could at least try and explain specifically what they find problematic about Gilette’s ads as opposed to the name-calling they’ve resorted to.
They could at least try and explain specifically what they find problematic about Gilette’s ads
Their problem is that “real men” are bullies, and anyone else is a weak loser, and Gillette is suddenly out of nowhere attempting to invalidate their identities by reversing that. Because jew attack.
It seems like anti-Semitic people confuse German-gentile names for Jewish names a lot. Kinda ironic.
@weirwoodtreehugger: chief manatee I admit I can confuse both German and Jewish names, but this is because I’ve neither been around Germans nor Jews that much. Generally, I don’t care about it otherwise.
@Snowberry: I hope that they don’t file a formal complaint against them because those shit-eating diseases don’t deserve to run the world – gender policing should be left to the last millennium, not brought back to this one. Then again, we don’t need corporations with their criminality on our side.
Sad to see the dislikers are out in full force over that Gilette ad. At least said ad is trending.
Now here’s something I find confusing
And not particularly sweet
In the nest of scum and bigotry
Filled by many a tweet
One particular comment
Stands out to me
Sayin’ that Gillette’s market in women
Can only be filled by…won’t say that, can’t lie
But nevertheless it shows
How much the wind blows
Through that guy’s head
I’ll tell you a story, no glory
About how when they still told me
I was a girl, and I didn’t know not to believe ’em
Before I was in sixth grade
Ma gave me a razor
Told me to shave
Specifically
Legs and pits
That’s what she did
That’s what I tried
She called me a gorilla if I didn’t
(Though other students didn’t seem to mind)
I could bitch about her all day
She sure ain’t on my side
But more to the point I’ll tell ya
A truth, can you abide?
People assigned female have hair too
It’s just that jackasses like you
Can’t stand it
They put up the ads, talk about smoothness
And if you don’t follow, well
People cock their heads and walk away
If only the day
Would come
But for now
I haven’t shaved my legs since summer
I’m no girl, of course
But something tells me that the kind of people
That bitch about an ad like this
Would reject anything
Past a binary
Think I’m just some posin’
SJW.
I’m no warrior.
Says in the name.
I’m more of a bard.
Mom told me boys wouldn’t like me
if I didn’t shave my legs.
I asked her
if she’d really want me to marry someone
so finicky.
She never had a very good answer.
Do you?
Does anyone?
I’m on the flip side of the public equation.
Looking for testosterone.
A little afraid of needles.
But hey.
Maybe I’ll grow a beard someday.
@Ooglyboggles one day we need a violent uprising against the right. The sooner the better.
“Women like real men!” shouts angry man to a room full of other angry men.
I’m not sure how a white supremacist can step back and look at his chums, see about 2 women in a group of 100, and still believe whole heartedly that women are so totally into them.
There are men who co-opt feminism to get laid, and I’m not saying they’re right, but at least they’re, like, 80% smarter than these guys if meeting women is their goal. Soy is good for the brain, I guess.
Also, I’m ready for them to move on from soy boy. Seriously, every new version of the original “libt*rd” continues to get dumber and dumber and more abstract. At least libt*rd made sense in a gross way. NPCs and soy boy does not. They just look like toddlers inventing new slurs to impress other toddlers who aren’t in their clique. As the great Regina George once said, “Stop trying to make fetch happen!”
Guyfriend Chatface just sent a message of “we should talk about this Gillette ad!” to me. Serendipitous!
Someone fetch me my demon-slaying spear
(Soy is, in fact, good for the brain)
(As in, plant oils and proteins are much better for the cytoskeletons of cells in comparison to animal proteins, and this applies double for those wiggly worms, the neurons and their glial friends.)
EDIT: It’s a shame that doesn’t say “Censor Incel”, Alan
@Scildfreja Unnyðnes
Doesn’t matter, estrogen in men is literally worse than cancer, and soy helps to promote that! [sarcasm clearly intended]. Hopefully they all become too malnourished to even carry out violent attacks with that attitude.
@rv97: Please do not advocate violent uprising.
It’s true that big corporations are, with rare exceptions, on nobody’s side but their own. Ads like these are pandering, and quite often, something close to *actual* virtue signalling. But at least we can appreciate that they are a good indication that the “baddies” are losing the culture war; big corporations aren’t known for taking major risks with their consumer base.
@Snowberry I feel like we have no influence though when it comes to stopping corporations just doing what they want, and it also seems like that the right are too resistant and successful in maintaining their repressive ways. Is there anything we can do? Anything I can do?
I live in the UK and I’m a full time university student. I admit that I’m not very politically active and I’m not sure if I’m prepared to be. My main concerns are about increasingly restrictive intellectual property law, gender, sexuality and the environment, and I am a little concerned by the role of corporate monopolies’ influence on our lives. The FCC in the US practically serves corporations since 2016. Fuck them.
Ah, the soy thing. Let’s take a look shall we?
Heh, what soyboy beta cuck came out with that? Oh..
http://www.schwarzenegger.com/fitness/post/4-new-nutrition-myths
“Soy boy” has never made any sense to me either, Wanda. Soy makes men low testosterone and unmasculine so they can’t get laid and won’t have children, but soy is a big part of the diet in many of the cultures in the world’s most populous continent, so how does that work? Plus, it’ll never stop amusing me that that Infowars dude Paul Watson or whatever his name is, rants about the damaging effects of a soy heavy diet while selling dietary supplements that contain a crap load of soy.
I think I might have to rewatch the hbomberguy video on soy boys. It’s one of his best.
The “soy = feminine” myth is just pure racism and bigotry. That’s all it is. Far as I can tell it started as “soy latte”, which just extended out from a disdain for people who drink coffee that isn’t plain-black. Real Americans drink their coffee black and strong, sitting in their trucks on the way to the job site to haul loads of pipe, after all. Liberal elites are the ones that drink fancy frou-frou mocha soy latte.
They’re just trying to smear a veneer of science on it with the estrogen thing, it’s all just macho posturing.
It’s kind of pathetic that the bulk of the opposition has nothing more to say than “CUSS CUSS CUSS ARGLE BARGLE YARRR!!!!”
But I suppose cave-man “logic” is the inevitable result of diving head-first into post-fact politics.
@Scildfreja Unnyðnes
Is this it?
http://pm1.narvii.com/6863/abc00f46ea72cb01f7bb10dcce5e0a7cb6c53dfcr1-800-566v2_00.jpg
I really hate the fact that we live in a world where, “You shouldn’t be a bad person,” is a controversial opinion.
@Scildfreja Unnyðnes I hope we get more working class individuals who are sympathetic to socially liberal causes, because by the looks of it from around the world, few are. It only helps to perpetuate liberal stereotypes that help to further aid their repressive goals.
@Scildfreja Unnyðnes:
The blue collar angle always makes me laugh. I work in piece-count, that supposed bastion of meritocracy where you’re (supposedly) paid according to how much shit you can do in a shift, and the only limit is your body. I routinely get told by my managers that I put most men to shame.
I love lattes. And also tofu. And also feminism is right about everything.
Anyone trying to use the “I lift things/build things/sweat lots for a living” to justify their conservatism/bigotry can stuff it.
Like a diamond in the manure pile:
Jeff-n-GA
Because nothing shows the depth of their manly outrage and their unshakeable commitment to principles, than using up those last few razor blades instead of tossing them……
@rv97:
Of course, part of the problem is that decades of wage stagnation and worse has left the working class in general with not enough time or energy to actually get up to speed on what’s going on. That helps make sure that they can only ever really get the sound bites that oversimplify and point in the wrong direction.
Decades of active anti-intellectualism then ensures that people refuse to listen to actual experts, especially when they start with ‘it’s complicated’ (which it always is).
We’re seeing the result of generations of deliberately making sure that people are uninformed and unable to inform themselves.
While I find big corporations doing these type of ads a bit pandering, at least their willing to throw their millions in ad money in at least suggesting people shouldn’t be shit heads, but of course “real men” find anything suggesting that being a dick to everyone isnt the most manly and sexy thing an attack on “all men”. Also I find it fucking hilarious that they keep peddling this soy shit even after a site ran by Schwarzenegger himself (the post may not be by him but he or someone he hired had to give it the go ahead), who actually ran as a republican, says that soy doesn’t lower testosterone, they won’t even trust the supposed “real men” they worship
@Jane Done good to hear that you put most men to shame. And yes, I wish radical feminists ran this world (just not TERFs).
My parents, from South East Asia (I was also born there but moved out from a young age), do hold some liberal beliefs, but one of them is sadly not about gender and sexuality, since they, like most Filipinos, adhere rather tightly to Catholic doctrine.