Categories
alt-lite alt-right anti-Semitism antifeminism beta males bullying cringe cuck entitled babies evil SJWs gender policing homophobia incoherent rage mantrum men who should not ever be with women ever misogyny oppressed men racism rape culture soyboys Stefan Molyneux toxic masculinity

Angry dudes prove “toxic masculinity” isn’t a thing by screeching about a Gillette ad and calling other men soy boys, cucks, and f***ots

Gillette ad from 1905. Has the razor company now alienated its manbaby customer base?

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.

Jeffrey
‏
 
@JayRosewater
Follow Follow @JayRosewater
More
#GetWokeGoBroke #fuckgillette #gillette  Dear Gillette, the thought of this hag shaving it's twat with your razor has unfortunately put me off buying them ever again.    Hope you can sustain your business selling to soy boys and hairy dykes.   Good luck buttercup!

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.

Lulu
‏
 
@StevenPlount
Follow Follow @StevenPlount
More
Replying to @Gillette
You idiots. I will never use anything you sell ever !!! You need some marketing directors with some balls instead of the soy boy snowflakes that thought up this bullshit advertisement . Good bye and good riddance!!
are you a Soy-Boy-non- gender-binding-beta-male ?

Do you constantly lean to the left like some kind of mindless robot?

Do you have zero self-discipline/commonsense and believe everything the MSM tells you ?

?...you do;
 “than soft-cock Gillette Shavers are for you
I'd like to know when BAD Boys real men stopped getting all the beautiful women.  It hasn't stopped.  No woman wants a wet noodle soy boy.  So @Gillette stop your virtue signaling real women like real men.

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.

The best THEY want us to be are mewling beta males.  Shaming the man-apes into submission is the narrative. #FuckGillette
I won't buy any Gillette products henceforth.  These preposterous attacks on masculinity are not going to work.  America doesn't deserve a nation of feminized sissy boys!
Men are not limp wristed girls, ok some are, but a real man is just that, a man. We wont give up our masculinity for gillette or anyone else. Go ahead and be a pansy if you want to. I will not.
What in God’s name is wrong with you people? You want men to be sissies, or mommy’s boys or something? Get over the PC crap and sell MENS products! When I run out of Turbo blades, I’m done with your brand! CEO must be a mamas boy now, huh??

Others mixed-and-matched old and new school insults with gleeful abandon.

Remember cucks, hairy femonists prefer that you shave your balls before surrendering them.
Gillette is the only razor with a patented soy based comfort coating so betas can shave their pits to please their girlfriends who refuse to.
Gillette ad brought to you by pansies, swishes, and soy boys.
Any real Man in his right mind would NEVER join a Emasculated Beta Org that is for Sissy Beta Soyboy

Others descended into straight-up homophobic attacks:

Do I have to shave my balls too, faggots?
Lick my ass u fucking cucks maybe u faggots can switch from razors to dildos fucking queers jam ur razors up ur assholes

Others went with everyone’s favorite transphobic slur.

Gillette The Best A Tranny Can Get

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.

Bye-bye Jill-ette "the best a cuck can get"
The best a total faggot can get.
Gillette: The Best A Bitch Boy Can Get. #TheBestMenCanBe
Gillette. The best a soy boy can get!
the best a pansy can get

Yes, I’ll have the combo, please.

Gillette, the best a soy boy, beta male, NPC, cuck, can get.

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:

Not one Jewish dude in the Gillette anti-male film about the #metoo movement?

Seems kinda anti-Semitic to me.

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.

It’s only the white men portrayed as the evil ones. Minorities were the white nights. @Gillette should review actual rape statistics and see they’re disproportionally committed by people of color, and the vast over representation of sexual harassment & rape by Hollywood Jews.
and the director of the ad is Kim Gehrig. Woman? Check. Jew? Check. Every. Fucking. Time.

(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.

We Hunted the Mammoth is independent and ad-free, and relies entirely on readers like you for its survival. If you appreciate our work, please send a few bucks our way! Thanks!

422 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Cat Mara
Cat Mara
5 years ago

@Weird Eddie:

Double-Yoo Tee EFFF?!?!?!?!?

That was my first reaction, followed by a great upwelling of empathy for Dr Lisa Dunne, whoever she is, and the terrible psychic aftermath she doubtless incurred as a result of her “search of more eclectic internet sites and forums”. Broscience and NoFap, can you imagine? She deserves some kind of medal.

Lukas Xavier
Lukas Xavier
5 years ago

I wonder if that was meant as some cargo-cult version of stem cell treatment.

For the record, don’t just inject things into your body. Science is a little bit more complicated than that.

jone
jone
5 years ago

I like the ad, and now I have to go buy some expensive razors to show my support.

I’m surprised and pleasantly shocked at this kind of advertisement….it makes me wonder if women now comprise the majority of their customer base. Venus razors.

I always liked the men’s ones better. I find the solid grip more practical.

Katamount
Katamount
5 years ago

I hate to say it, but… I have a nugget, a kernel of understanding where the feeling of upset comes from when an ad like this gets feted as being “woke” or “progressive.” Because this is a subsidiary company of Proctor & Gamble (motto: we only use child labour to harvest our palm oil some of the time) we’re talking about here. There is nothing “progressive” about a multinational; they make these decisions if they think there’s a market to be tapped, and they clearly think there is one to be tapped if they released a focus-grouped ad like this one.

So, they are kinda right when they call this “virtue signalling.” They’re paying lip service to a concept that they believe will net them sales without any investment in broader change.

That said, there is merit in the signal itself. Even if it is an ad for a product put out by a multinational only slightly less abhorrent than Unilever, representation does matter and if marginalized people see themselves represented in culture, that’s a good thing.

Naturally, assholes being assholes, their issue with the ad as less it being a cynical marketing gambit, but that the masculine ideal that Gillette was more than happy to contribute to since time immemorial is suddenly gone and replaced by that which they were told was the antithesis of the manly ideal (and their culture war enemy). They also seem oblivious to all of the cynical marketing gambits that Gillette played in being the “manly” choice for shaving.

Full disclosure: I use Gillette razors and will probably continue to use Gillette razors, as pricey as they are.

Victorious Parasol
Victorious Parasol
5 years ago

I can die now. A man on the internet has asked how WOMEN would like it if an ad told THEM that everything they were doing was WRONG.

Also, Speaker Pelosi is pretty badass:

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/16/18185226/nancy-pelosi-state-of-the-union-shutdown

Moggie
Moggie
5 years ago

@Cat Mara:

There were no cases of intravenous semen injection into humans found across the literature

It’s not exactly the kind of “literature” which is relevant to doctors, but the one example of intravenous semen injection I can think of is in Complicity, by Iain Banks. It… did not end well for the injectee. I wondered at the time how Banks researched that, but I suspect it involved a doctor saying “just fucking don’t, ok?”

Lumipuna (nee Arctic Ape)
Lumipuna (nee Arctic Ape)
5 years ago

When I was growing up, nearly all Gillette ads on TV seemed to be for women’s razors (sorry, “shavers”). Maybe I just paid more attention to those ads. Or maybe there’s more advertisement potential for selling overpriced stuff to women.

Weird (and tired of trumplings) Eddie
Weird (and tired of trumplings) Eddie
5 years ago

@ V.P.:

well, if losing an opportunity to get free t.v. time doesn’t get donald-the-dumpster-fire to open the government….

more advertisement potential for selling overpriced stuff to women.

THAT much is certain!!

moregeekthan
moregeekthan
5 years ago

About a decade ago, I am drinking beers in a camper with Tea-party-ish guy. (Short version: friend of a friend on a rainy afternoon on a group camp-out.) Most of the conversation was fairly anodyne, but at some point he brought up the Subaru commercial with the polar bear. He went on at length that, although Subarus were good cars, that the commercial was stupid, and targeted toward “gullible environmentalists who wanted to be congratulated for buying a car.” (probably not exact quote, but close) It became apparent that what he didn’t like was having a big T.V. ad campaign targeted not-at-him.

I suspect that is what has these manly, manly men so up-in-arms. There is a big ad campaign for a product they use, targeted not-at-them.

Victorious Parasol
Victorious Parasol
5 years ago

@Weird Eddie

Yep – he’s not getting into her House unless he behaves. But he can always submit the SOTU in writing.

Buttercup Q. Skullpants
Buttercup Q. Skullpants
5 years ago

Manospherians should switch to shaving with Occam’s razor, and then maybe they’ll stop seeing attacks on masculinity behind every tree.

Huggbees
Huggbees
5 years ago

What is it with MAGAs and their bizzare/lame insults? Cuck, soy boy, NPCs I mean yikes. Do they really think They’re being clever with these?

Weird (and tired of trumplings) Eddie
Weird (and tired of trumplings) Eddie
5 years ago

But he can always submit the SOTU in writing.

… ummm… you DO know that he can’t read or write… right??

Allandrel
Allandrel
5 years ago

@Victorious Parasol:

I can die now. A man on the internet has asked how WOMEN would like it if an ad told THEM that everything they were doing was WRONG.

I’m reminded of this great Mitchell and Webb Look sketch:

bluecat
bluecat
5 years ago

Manospherians should switch to shaving with Occam’s razor, and then maybe they’ll stop seeing attacks on masculinity behind every tree.

Buttercup Q Skullpants wins the internet, and my undying admiration.

Re: Jewish names: my family name is a bog-standard North British trade name, but my given name is from the Old Testament.

Also, in the UK, incredibly common in babies of any background assigned female between about 1958 and 1970. All over the country in the year of my birth were parents thinking “Hmm, we need something

really unusual

for our little darlin’.

In my parents case, the name they had picked for me – Thomas – could not be used due to my lack of penis and they decided against Thomasine for some reason. Anyway, all through my school and college days there were never fewer than half a dozen of us with that name.

Then I lived in Italy, where it’s regarded as exclusively a Jewish name – to the point where some people I met insisted I must be Jewish.

I’m not. But there came a point when I no longer bothered to deny it – it was around the time someone wondered aloud whether my parents just hadn’t admitted it to me (although at the same time giving me this dead-giveaway of a name, for some reason). Very odd indeed.

Victorious Parasol
Victorious Parasol
5 years ago

@Weird Eddie

*angelic look* Pelosi knows that, too.

Pie
Pie
5 years ago

@Weird Eddie

From an evolutionary perspective, I’d expect estrogen and testosterone to be really similar, as they probably used to be the same, and split sometime around the time we (we meaning “critters”) invented sex.

Steroid hormones (and indeed steroids) are all pretty similar. I don’t know why sterols are a popular design, but there you go… you get the same basic kinds of molecule in animals, plants and fungi, and the common ancestor of those three predates the invention of sex by quite some time.

Talonknife
Talonknife
5 years ago

I think what bugs me the most about this is that these shitgibbons always want to talk the talk about traditional masculinity, but they never want to walk the walk. My grandpa is one of the most traditionally masculine people I know – he’s done blue collar work all his life and just recently retired from his job as a weldor’s assistant, he drives a big tuck, drinks his coffee black, and his hobbies are hunting and working on guns. He’s also one of the absolute kindest people I’ve ever met, and staunchly liberal is his politics. I’ve never seen him fail to help someone in need or even hesitate. He just jumps right in when he sees something needs done. I actually sometimes have to ask him not to help me with things because he’s always wanting to help carry things even though his back is going bad and he might hurt himself. That’s what I really hate when people like this talk about the idea of “traditional masculinity” – they like all the easy parts that bring to mind the traditionally masculine symbols of American culture like John Wayne and Schwarzenegger, but they never want to actually walk the walk on the hard parts like helping those in need and showing respect to everyone until they prove themselves unworthy of it.

Moggie
Moggie
5 years ago

@Weird Eddie:

… ummm… you DO know that he can’t read or write… right??

But Stephen Miller can. You don’t think the Hamberdler himself writes the SOTU, do you?

Moggie
Moggie
5 years ago

@bluecat:

Re: Jewish names: my family name is a bog-standard North British trade name, but my given name is from the Old Testament.

Ruth Hovis?

TheKND
TheKND
5 years ago

Well, gives me hope that they all change to straight razors and cut their own throats…

Seriously, these are the same people who whine about male suicide. The thing that is often caused by exactly that toxic mentality.
Even if it pisses me off that Gillette jumps onto the “co-opt the left to sell shit” bandwagon. Can’t wait to see the spokesman stop a riot by letting both sides touch his smooth skin.

Ingmar
Ingmar
5 years ago

@one of the tweeters or hooters: The usual statistics on POC’s to imply they are somehow more genetically prone to criminality and have lower IQ, as Watson recently revamped btw thinking time are “mature” somehow, then letting people accuse the “PC” science establishment when revocating his awards, not because it’s a scientifically inconsistent or at least an extraordinary claim needing extraordinary evidence this is not there, but because of pc ideology.
On the content, notice he lamented a very likely non existent racism against whites which I can guess is not implied anywhere in the spot (weren’t there struggling black kids which got divided as well just like white ones?), as excuse to make an actual racist claim against black people!

Victorious Parasol
Victorious Parasol
5 years ago

@Moggie

Exactly. Trump isn’t in it for the writing of the speech – he outsources that. (As do other POTUSes, to be fair.) But the performance of the speech? All that television time? The post-speech attention? He eats all that up with a spoon.

As people have written elsenet, Trump built this cage himself, and walked right in. Pelosi’s just shut the door behind him.

tohka
tohka
5 years ago

The entire outcry from these guys was from an ad that literally only showed men doing the right thing under shitty circumstances. But that’s against masculinity according to Twitter guys.

Why is catcalling, bullying (physical I might add!), degradation of women, fighting and generally being a shit person so closely associated with masculinity with them? It’s called toxic masculinity for a reason..

They can’t comprehend that you can be a good person as a man and be masculine and not be an asshole… Right?? Being an asshole =/= being masculine. But that’s what we’re being told by this outrage. That being a decent human male is just bad a wrong and should be discouraged and mocked. Wow.

Ohlmann
Ohlmann
5 years ago

Actually, and to loop back to what Jane Done was saying, is there any actual trend common to the various european countries who isn’t also common elsewhere ?

I have the impression that Europa’s rise into the industrial age was entirely coincidental, and that on litteraly any point, be it good or bad, Europa isn’t exceptional. Both for positive stuff like the (long delayed) rise of democracy, and for negative stuff like being intolerant bigots that prefer to die than change their own opinions.