By David Futrelle
The Daily Mail is famous for its uniquely British mixture of judgy prurience and good old-fashioned xenophobia. So naturally the comments section of its online edition is home to some of the worst takes the internet has to offer.
The other day I was introduced to a Twitter account that catalogs the worst of these terrible takes. Specifically, to this tweet, which I obviously needed to share with you all:
Bad science and racism, two terrible tastes that taste extra terrible together! And the misspelling of “testosterone” as “tostesterone” is … chef’s kiss!
Also, I’m pretty sure most French people aren’t vegan.
But this tweet is only the top of the iceberg. Here are some other, well, illuminating insights on assorted gender-related issues that The DM Reporter has plucked from the vast wasteland of the Daily Mail comments.
This final tweet really doesn’t have anything to do with gender but I feel sort of bad for the Daily Mail’s Russian Misery correspondent
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Hi John, ok, so the soy was the joke in the other thread
“Actually, just the first. It’s shorthand for feminized men.
All I have is my lived experience of becoming a much happier man when I started doing “performative masculinity” or whatever. I was soft and doughy from my mid 20’s to my late 30’s. I am much harder now, and have been rewarded for it, and not just sexually. ”
I still didn’t get if you think soy actually feminizes men?
What do you mean with performative masculinity? If you feel better about youself being more tonic or robust, great for you.
You seem to actually have a theory of weakening of men. Men specifically? Or acting “masculine” and performing gender roles? Mind that in this case feeling better might just mean that being society still permeated with these prescriptive roles, to an extend, could be like a woman saying “hey conforming to performative femininity, heels makeup, gives you higher chances with boys”. Or for these same reason you might feel more confident and positive about yourself and that has been appreciated.
If so it might be because of less men in manual labor jobs and more women into them and into fitness?
Conspiracionisty theorize “gay frogs” and soy feminization, but how does that address the supposed masculinization of women at the same time?
Not piling up, seriously, just curious of your theory.
The truth about Soy Boys:
https://youtu.be/C8dfiDeJeDU
@calmdown
Your points are all well taken!
@Lainy
If David bans me I probably had it coming. If he does, and there are conversations going, I hope he says “I banned John” because in my experience, the banhammer comes down mid conversation.
^^^^^^^
This, all of this. My fiancé is in the best shape of his life but he’s still really worried about gaining weight again. He gained 10 pounds because he hadn’t been going to PT and it bothered him so much that he didn’t want to take his shirt off for me even though he didn’t look that much different to me. His worries about this really makes me upset because I know I can’t take that off of him. The culture we live in hates people that are even the slightest bit over weight and it gets ingrained in us since birth. It’s really all bullshit that keeps people from enjoying their lives and loved ones. It’s harmful and it’s toxic and the gym/diet culture is all apart of that.
There is such a huge different between staying active and eating the right kinds of food versus being obsessed with appearance and fitting the mold of masculinity. It keeps people from being seen as fully human with deep complex inner self.
I feel like people are “softer” these days (in my neck of the woods) because our society doesn’t need a huge part of the population working in the fields. Industrialization kinda took a lot of the labor-intensive work out for certain sectors. But men becoming soft? *Rolling my eyes*
But who knows. Women do the majority of housework; holding babies and housework does create strength. Maybe het- men got softer because they are still refusing to equally share household chores. So whose fucking fault is that, dudes?
im talking somewhat out of my ass here, I dont have any data atm to back up my claims
Also, it’s also true that being capitalism or the current form of it based on creating problems, it’s realistic to say that “they” (btw you use the multiple parethesis too (( ))? What does it mean, I read it’s a dogwhistle as well) prey on insecurity, undermined confidence to sell products, insecurity on being bald, weak, you can notice that hair loss forums became incel like since long, they are convinced that even some recession wrecks your look and you have to rely on beta bucks or become the Rock :D. But seriously it’s desolating as they all replicate the same misogynistic patterns.
Do you think it’s only particularly bad now that it’s happening to men on top of women?
They see it as if look now counts more, but on look alone men are judged supposedly even harsher than men if they can’t leverage on status (remember Looks_Law btw, from very old threads, hilarious back then) because Tinder statistics etc.
About porn, why it’s bad for different reasons for women?
Thanks, btw I saw the Hbomberguy take down some time ago, seemed well researched and funny, although I didn’t sit through the whole video, as I more or less knew it was bs :).
Hello everyone! It’s been a long time since I commented on here (usually someone’s already said what I was going to say by the time I get to post) but this reminded me of something:
Didn’t Anders Breivik post on Pamela Geller’s site prior to the Utøya attack, boasting about how patriots were stockpiling weapons in Europe (he might have used the term ‘Christendom’) ready to take the fight to the enemy? His words were hyperbolic and grandiose, and actually fairly ridiculous (fascism often is). If your point is that most of these kinds of comments are describing violent fantasies that the posters will never act upon, or which will fall flat, I don’t think that’ll come as news to anyone here (see previous threads about online threats of violence/rape). It’s not always easy to distinguish a sincere from an idle threat, though.
@C4twoman
The CBC has sadly been eroding under budget cuts and a Tory-installed regime that has a mandate to destroy it from the inside. It’s a shell of its former self, but it still shambles along with the occasional nugget of good reporting.
Once piece of good news I saw was that the Canadian 10 Dollar Viola Desmond banknote was awarded International Banknote of the Year. So yayyyyy us!
@Ingmar
It’s an antisemitic dogwhistle and it’s disgusting that he’s using it, especially considering recent events.
They didn’t know what she was going to do at the time. They might have had ideas, but they couldn’t be 100% sure. The news pieces that came out are great examples of hindsight being 20-20. Plus, they are not going to put their own in harms way when they have another option.
Also, as much as people say, “they’re not going to let anyone carry bla bla bla gun into a school”, it keeps happening.
Definitely not. It’s a silly idea.
Nope. Women stand much to gain from weight training, and I hate how they’re scared off by gym bros.
I was scared off by the gym bros, so I spent $600 on my own barbell set that said, it’s also really convenient time wise.
If so it might be because of less men in manual labor jobs and more women into them and into fitness?
Women do the majority of housework; holding babies and housework does create strength. Maybe het- men got softer because they are still refusing to equally share household chores. So whose fucking fault is that, dudes?
im talking somewhat out of my ass here, I dont have any data atm to back up my claims
it’s realistic to say that “they” (btw you use the multiple parethesis too (( ))? What does it mean, I read it’s a dogwhistle as well)
About porn, why it’s bad for different reasons for women?
oh, you don’t?
@Kupo
How do you post gifs like that?
@Ingmar
Hbomberguy is a treasure. For more lulz look up his response to Paul Joseph Watson’s childish video reply. Basically PJW mocks HBomer….as a Soy Boy.
Sigh….
Crap! Messed up formatting again.
That’s exactly what it is.
Clearly I was not using in a sympathetic way. You can’t talk about Nazis without talking about Nazis.
@Katamount
Someone… Maybe you…explained about the CBC over at Wonkette. It’s sad and disappointing. I know it seems to be infested with “award winning” so called journalists who are woo merchants…
@Kupo seriously? I’m talking about alt right recruitment techniques. I was mocking the idea that any group has control.
But whatever. Enjoy your “gotcha”
Isn’t it amazing how John manages to turn every conversation into something about how ripped he is and how much he gets laid.
I wonder if he also has a house DIRECTLY ON THE BEACH.
That’s great if you can swing it. But you’ll need to invest in a cage and a good Olympic bar and plates to really go far.
Or you can find a real gym, the type of place most gymbros don’t last long at. Gold’s is good if there sure any left. Otherwise most reasonably large city have one or two old school gyms, usually run by relatives of the founder.
I go to one. It’s not pretty, you won’t pick up dates on the ellipticals, but you can lift with real equipment and pretty mellow people. They’re there to lift too. Gender ratio at mine is about 70/30 M/F. I’m one of the heavy lifting women.
Problem people don’t last long.
@John:
Taking a completely different approach… is this the hill that you want to die on? Even if you’re right, do you really need to prove it this badly?
There are things worth fighting for, and things not worth fighting for. Being able to tell the difference is one of the hallmarks of wisdom. Not seeing the difference (and treating everything as a personal threat that has to be fought against) is one of the common tells of exactly the sort of toxic masculinity this site exists to mock.
Basically, step back, take a deep breath, and go do something else for a while. At the very best, you’re engaging in pointless ‘someone is wrong on the Internet’-ism, and surely there have got to be better things you could be doing.
(Not seeing the difference and treating everything as not worth fighting for is a different problem, and one that the purveyors of toxic masculinity like to try to force everybody else into.)
@Lainy
You need to have the gif hosted somewhere on the web and you need a url that ends in .gif
Then you just paste it into a separate line from the rest of the text.
The hard part is getting that link. I used imgur for this for a while but now it’s too hard to get the link from there, so I use discord instead.
@John
Yes, seriously. You can discuss Nazis without using their terminology as if it’s a valid way to discuss the people they’re targeting. The way you use it, it’s completely ambiguous whether you think this is a valid way to talk about Jewish people. Personally, I don’t find any diffculty avoiding using the triple parentheses to discuss Nazis unless quoting one directly. Why is it so difficult for you?
This is all terribly interesting, but I’ve been waiting with bated breath for days to learn the reason that they call it “hen-pecked.”
I appreciate your point.
I gave it a hell of a shot. It is what it is.
No, you’re just wrong. And misreading ypur citations, which refer to grip strength and a proxy for general function, which is not at all the same as general strength. Turning wrenches is not generally about applying strength per se, but leverage and mass. Driving nails uses the arms and upper body generally, and grip a/strength is irrelevant after the level necessary to hold onto the hammer. General levels of physical strength, regardless of gender, are down (particularly in the industrialized world)compared to many times in the past, because the majority of people no longer do hard physical labour day in and day out to eat, clothe themselves, etc. on account of machines now doing much of that in our place. The preindustrial archetype of strength is the blacksmith, not rhe fisherman, and that work does not generate the kind of disproportionately large forearms that pulling nets does. Popeye is drawn the way he is to indicate that he is a fishermen, not to indicate that he is strong generally. Indeed, he appears to be drawn that way after a specific fisherman, one Olaf Olsen of Santa Monica.