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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Aw dang, I missed the troll too. Looks like a bog-standard tone police(man).
Getting a lot of trolls around here of late, huh? At least the ones that Dave lets through his troll net.
(Katamount we have one over on the Majority Report thread right now)
Dang, that was an entertaining thread. Kudos to Rhuu, Scildfreja, Crip Dyke, and TheKND for your crisp and patient takedowns. You guys are amazing.
To paraphrase Upton Sinclair, it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his identity depends on his not understanding it. Rapists pretend not to understand consent, and men deeply invested in patriarchy and its benefits pretend not to understand toxic masculinity.
I think DA understands all too well what it is (heck, he gave us a master class in toxic masculinity, from barging in shouting DEBATE ME!! to the I HAVE A REAL PERSON WAITING IN BED FOR ME flounce), but acknowledging it would mean confronting the harmful consequences of his own behaviors and beliefs. That’s the very thing toxic masculinity whispers to men that they must NEVER do. And that’s what makes it so hard to eradicate.
Also, kudos to @kupo, who kicked the whole thing off, haha.
Hahaha, I sure got an interesting response for my boring-ass comment, but I’m not sure I can take credit for that. ?
urgh didn’t show up – realised I forgot a bunch of people, so thanks to everyone XD
1. I apparently misread your intentions, Who? thank you for your clarification.
2. “(heck, he gave us a master class in toxic masculinity, from barging in shouting DEBATE ME!! to the I HAVE A REAL PERSON WAITING IN BED FOR ME flounce)”
Did I indeed? Yet more proof that “toxic masculinity is whatever I say it is”.
3. All the catty, pop-psych analysis offered here notwithstanding, my reason for deferring to Mr. Futrelle is simple: This is his web-site. Not yours. He makes the rules, ergo, interpretation of said rules is his prerogative. Your opinions, regardless of how many other posters may share them, are irrelevant.
4. Speaking of Mr. Futrelle, he has given everyone fair notice: “This blog is NOT a safe space”. If you want to safety, GTFO and create your own, members-only echo-chamber.
5. For the record, Kat, yes you are fictional. At least for my purposes. Once I get up from my desk, you cease to exist. Hence, the reference to a “real person” waiting in bed for me.
6. And, with respect to said real person, my “brag” is in no way, shape or form “humble”. She is my world, and has been for 35 years. This is the kind of devotion you inspire when you bring something other than cattiness, bitchiness, rage and spite to the table.
7. Understand me, folks: This shit ain’t real. Screech like harpies if you want. Retire to your fainting couches with the vapors if you want. This is cyber-space, and it don’t mean shit to a tree.
The “I’m totally having real sex with a real person” flounce could never top the pancake misandry guy who claimed he was actually mid sex while he was typing his comments.
So nothing that happens in cyberspace is real?
On both a professional and a personal level, that assertion makes me laugh.
@Desperate Arsehole:
And yet you sure seem to feel like you have something to prove here. It apparently “means shit” to you.
Then again, you aren’t a tree, so …
Who said, “I’m totally having real sex with a real person”?
You did, my dude.
Catty – usually gendered female, so good jorb there.
Your reason for ‘deferring to Mr. Futrelle’ is because you’re trying to shut us up by pretending we are overstepping. We are not. This is how that rule is interpreted here.
??? And yet, we still have a comments policy? What he *means* is that this blog will cover subjects that will be triggering to people, and there is no way to soften that blow. If you know you are triggered by discussions of rape fantasies, this isn’t a safe space for you, because manosphere.
Etc.
… Um… Holy shit. Do… Do you know how the internet works? You know that the people on the other side of these comments are real, right?
Like, I know twitter has a russian troll problem, and tumblr has a bot problem, but here on this space… The regulars at least are all real people?
Anything you type is being read by a real person. It doesn’t matter if you don’t *know* us, you have now interacted with us.
This exact disconnect is a) not something I understand, and b) what lets people send messages like this. (CN for horrific harassment)
Yes, we get it, you have sex with a woman. Do you want a medal?
Here’s another return of ‘cattiness’, and now we’re bringing in ‘bitchiness’, for more gendered insults.
That’s your implication, my dude. Trust us, we’re all really impressed.
Screech and harpies are both also gendered insults. ‘Fainting couches with vapours’ would also be gendered, I believe, since it was victorian women who used them.
And I hate to tell you, but… This is real. Your words will be on the internet for all to see. I would laugh if, years down the line, someone who knows your ‘nym and you in real life stumbles across this, and goes “Holy shit, Ambrose, were you ever an ass.”
Re – your appeals to Mr. Futrelle – We get it, we get it. You want to be banned. You probably will be, eventually. But not until people are tired of you.
Then you can run back to your little hidey hole on the internet and let all the other manly men know how much you ‘triggered the feminazi lib cucks’ or something. I don’t really care.
Meh. Boring.
Mr Ambrose, you do realize that you’re talking to the regulars of this site, yes? That when we say “these are the rules” or the like, we’re talking from a generally long history of interaction with David? And that – maybe – those rules were agreed on communally by us and David?
Like, the whole ableism thing? That was something that the community asked to put in, he wrote a first draft, we debated it, and it was put into the policy after we’d hashed it out.
Perhaps we have a little more standing to say what the site’s about than you do.
You may notice that I’m a little more short tempered today; frankly it’s because I’m disappointed in you. You said that you were going to be addressing my points, that they were good and you wanted to do it. You had a day to suss out a reply. And this is not what you did.
You decided instead to gabble on with edge cases and how very offended you are instead of, you know, engaging with the meat of the argument.
Your pretenses of being here are a sham. You’ve already decided that you’re right and you’re thoroughly disinterested in evidence to the contrary. Your flaw is confirmation bias, amongst others.
As for us having to go find a safe space? I suggest that the end of this you’re going to be the one scarpering off to your echo chamber and we’re going to still be here after weathering the deluge of your erudition.
There’s still time for you to face this honestly, if you like. I suspect you won’t, but I’m ready to be surprised.
You should go back and reread the thread. We were actually mocking your attempts at sounding intimidating. We weren’t actually feeling particularly threatened by you. Then you brought out the defense that you weren’t using threatening language because the internet don’t real. Probably to distract from our lack of fear of you.
If we actually felt threatened or disturbed, David would’ve been contacted and you would’ve gotten the ban hammer hours ago.
That you seem to need to believe that you’ve brought the weak lady brained people to hysterics with your manly dominance in order to feel good about yourself reminds me of something. Maybe a topic that we discussed earlier? I think it was called toxic masculinity.
And who says cyberspace anymore? You sound like a dorky teacher in the 1990’s who’s trying and failing to sound like the teenagers. What’s next? A really bad educational rap?
I know you want us all to be jealous, but that doesn’t sound like an enviable relationship, frankly. Your “devotion” is conditional on her behaving a certain way. She’s not allowed to ever be angry or upset or critical. Only you are.
Orrrr you could just be making her up. After all, you aren’t even real.
“You did, my dude.”
Kindly direct me to the post, please.
@Desperate Ambrose
Couldn’t you have just come in as the pathetic misogynist that you are from the start. I feel dumber now for bothering with giving you clear definition and examples after clear definition and example and all I got was some snippy “You don’t even law” shite. And I had to drivel it down to pop-psychology because if I didn’t, your eyes would glaze over.
Seriously, what exactly was your end-game here? Besides definitely proving that male entitlement is a reality, no matter how much I dislike the concept. People like you make us all look bad!
Did you think you could pull a Shapiro, show up, awe everyone into silence with your massive ego and score some sort of win? Because there isn’t much rationality in being a defensive, insecure and willful ignoramus, so we can rule out the “rational argument”.
Seriously, the people in this section have been saintly patient. You seeing screeching harpies says everything about you that there is to know.
(and just to make sure: I am cis, male, white, work as a nurse assistant, studied psychology and nursing sciences with a year medicine in between and understand 3 languages including Latin. Because we are apparently five and have to show off our cool stuff- Or maybe I’m none of these because apparently I’m fictional and have to pull a Princess Tutu before I gain sentience)
“You should go back and reread the thread. We were actually mocking your attempts at sounding intimidating.”
Back-filling.
@Desperate Ambrose
Are you absolutely sure that YOU are real?
@ambrose
thank you so much for proving my point. My misogyny-dar is rarely wrong.
Andrew …..is that you!!??
SEAGULL BOYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
@TheKND
Is THAT why Scildfreja keeps calling people “my duck”?
OMG, we ARE ALL PRINCESS TUTU.
*pirouettes away*
@Scildfreja Unnyðnes:
http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/weeds.gif
Did we excavate you and now we’re burying you in ladylogic? ?
I don’t know what you mean by this? Do you think we’re trying to change the narrative? Because we were definitely both trying to engage with you, then making fun of you when it was obvious you weren’t here in good faith, my dude.
I can make fun of your internet tough guy act, while still saying that people behaving shitty on the internet can actually be threatening.
Did you look at the tweets that I linked to, above? That was one week of harassment.