Science has now provided a preliminary answer to the most pressing question of our time, at least for men: “Does this reusable shopping bag cause you to question my sexuality?”
The answer,at least in a rough statistical sense, is yes — at least according to a new study by researchers at Penn State.
As a press release announcing the study explains:
In a series of studies, the researchers evaluated specific pro-environmental behaviors that previous research suggested were seen as either “feminine” or “masculine” and examined whether they affected how people were perceived.
They found that men and women were more likely to question a man’s sexual orientation if he engaged in “feminine” pro-environmental behaviors, such as using reusable shopping bags.
It works the other way, too:
They were also more likely to question a woman’s sexual orientation if she engaged in “masculine” pro-environmental behaviors, such as caulking windows.
Now, I’m no scientist, but if a woman likes caulk, wouldn’t that make her seem more straight? Evidently not to the men taking part in the survey, who were more likely to avoid women they saw engaging in more “manly” environmentalist activities.
Now, the study wasn’t able to determine whether or not men or women refrained from engaging in certain environmentalist behaviors because they thought it might make them look gay.
But we live in a world in which some guys refuse to wash or wipe their own asses because they think that it might make them gay, so I’m going to take a wild guess and say that, yes, there are more than a few dudes out there who refuse to use reusable shopping bags because they think it makes them look like a sissy.
–DF
H/T — Pacific Standard
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My reusable shopping bag is made from recycled garbage and has an Amnesty International logo on it (It’s also pretty dang sturdy). So I get to Virtue Signal the hell out of these jackasses while grocery shopping.
Off topic: Things I just learned from an internet rando: “incel” is not a real word, it’s just a vague slur meaning “bad man” and is often used to shame virgins. We should quit virgin-shaming and just let people be free to not have sex if they don’t want any. Also those supposed incels who went on killing sprees, they’re probably not really virgins, and if they were, they killed people because they were emotionally unstable, not because they were virgins. Also calling BS on those who claim to have been tracking incel boards for years, because if virginity boards existed then they’d be super boring.
Sadly this person did not seem to be trolling and even got a few defenders on their side.
I’m happy to report that here in Northern California pretty much everyone of every demographic employs reusable bags.
“Let the planet melt down because recycling is gay” is actually probably exactly the death our species deserves, TBH.
Another vote for reusable bags, especially the super-insulated kind that keep the cold stuff cold on the way home. Very useful in Texas summers.
Heh. I use a few sacks I got for free from Sephora. They’re nylon. One is pink, one is purple. They’re definitely coded feminine.
My main shopping bag is a collapsible solid black one I found thrown away.
Now that I think about it I actually acquired all my shopping bags that way. I’m not sure why some people do that with reusable things though, especially as some where brand new (admittedly those had the logo of a defunct grocery chain).
@Herbert West
Yeah, the meat craze seems like a recent thing. I’m guessing it’s a case of meat lobbyists convincing men that all the blood and stuff makes them manly. Really, I would think a man who doesn’t destroy the planet and is more conscientious would be the better man, but apparently the world at large doesn’t agree with me.
@Snowberry
Link? That sounds like something ideal for David to mock.
I don’t use a reusable shopping bag for the straightforward reason that I never remember to bring the ****ing thing and / or if I ever do buy one I keep losing them. I instead reuse the disposable plastic bags I had to buy last time I went shopping and forgot to bring a bag (there’s a compulsory 5p levy in the UK) and stuck in a drawer when I got home. My memory is killing the planet, it’s costing me a fortune and my house is full of plastic bags but at least I don’t look “gay” (/s).
As the proverbial annoying vegan ™ I feel morally bound to remind people that not only were gladiators vegetarians, so were the legionaries (arguably).
The most hardcore Imperial troops certainly frowned upon meat eating. They thought it was effete. Real men subsisted on raw radishes and stream water.
Julius Caesar used to show he was ‘one of the lads’ by munching on a radish during speeches.
(Although for a plausible argument that by the latter imperial period the army had moved from a vegetarian diet because of the influx of provincial troops, see here: https://www.jstor.org/stable/525803?origin=crossref&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents)
Whilst I’m on a roll…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSpglxHTJVM
https://gamechangersmovie.com
35300 C.E. The acrid wasteland formerly known as Earth.
Archaeologist cockroach, holding aloft the remains of a plastic bag: “At last! Conclusive proof that as this species drove themselves to extinction, they didn’t look gay.”
Of course. Why fight to remove our chains, when we can simply compare their lengths? Why step outside the box, when the box has these bad-ass flame decals on it? We men are cigarettes: dangerous, and poisonous, and stupid.
— Guante
I have an older canvas shopping bag I use… it’s a bit weather-worn, has a frayed torn spot on one of the handles, and quite a few stains (in a previous life, it was white) To my admittedly inexperienced eye, it just sez “MAN”… all over it!! I didn’t even BUY it, I found it at the laundry facility where I live (I ain’t gonna spend any o’ MY hard-earned money on any gah dahm BAG!!)
Tucker Carlson goes on vacation as criticism mounts over false claim about white supremacy ‘hoax’
and, in my dreams, it’s:
(with apologies to The Beach Boys)
Wouldn’t it be nice if he were fired
Then we wouldn’t have to hear his voice
And wouldn’t it be nice if he joined all the
Other assholes let go from Fox Noise
You know it’s gonna make the news much cleaner
Not having Tucker’s shitty demeanor
Wouldn’t it be nice to hear reported
Tucker Carlson’s been given the boot
‘n Listen to him cry ’bout bein’ run off
Yeah, t’ me that’d bee just a hoot
And in that blissful moment we would all know
It’s “one nore down, ten more million to go”
Oh, wouldn’t it be nice?
Good bye, to Tucker
Rot ‘n Hell, you fucker
Good bye, to Tucker
Rot ‘n Hell, you fucker
Victorious Parasol: oooh, those would have been useful when I was in Iqaluit. Turns out a 15-minute walk home on a warm spring day (a balmy -15 C) wilts your chard pretty hard.
Not Edward: the key is to not rely on memory but on habit. If you can form the habit of always having grocery bags in your purse / saddle-bag / backpack, then you don’t need to remember to bring them. Forming the habit takes some effort of course.
Lainy: while your mondegren is quite sensical and could become canon should we make a concerted effort, those are normally known as clothes pins — pins for clothes, rather than pins for closing.
True fact from my past: I was labeled gay due to reusable shopping bags once! My roommate was courting a woman, and she him, but they hadn’t quite declared this to each other yet. The three of us went shopping, and halfway from the car to the grocery my roommate and I discovered neither of us had taken the canvas bags out of the trunk; without exchanging many words I ran back to get them. From that interaction she assumed we must be lovers. (They worked it out eventually.)
@ Alan Robertshaw:
COMMENTS POLICY!!!!!!! (he said, sarcastically)
STOP with the “evidence”! We’ve talked about that repeatedly… we do NOT use “evidence” to substantiate our arguments. Simple argumentative reasoning such as “everybody knows”, “nuh-uh” and, in cases of VERY heated diatribe, “they say”…
thanx.
🙂 🙂 🙂
I guess buying a single-use grocery bag is a good way to message, “I usually delegate grocery shopping to my wife”.
In a totally contrary position, I carry a black canvas shopping bag practically everywhere. I feel it’s cheaper and more practical than a purse/whatever similar product is marketed for men, and marginally more professional looking than a plastic shopping bag.
My pants have decent pockets, but seemingly never large enough for all the stuff I want to lug along, aside from actual groceries.
I guess I was lucky to grow up in one of the more affluent parts of one of the more affluent western countries. I was brought up a daily meat eater from the time I was weaned in the 1960’s.
I’ve no idea where my mother got the idea that vegetarianism was inherently more expensive than a diet which included meat though.
I find a reusable cloth shopping bag which came with a shoe purchase really handy, it folds into a convenient pocket size, don’t really care what it might make anyone think of my orientation, but ,hey, I live in Brighton.
@Kevin
Usually vegetarianism is cheaper. Meat is expensive, at least where I live.
I shop at Aldis mostly so using canvas bags is a matter of practicality. Or, on occasion, well packed cardboard boxes when I’ve forgotten them.
Here’s a list of the stupid reasons I’ve had my masculinity questioned:
–using a shopping basket
–using a shopping cart
–asking a woman for help fixing a printer
–wearing a jacket when it was raining
–wearing a coat when it was cold
–using an umbrella
–wearing long sleeves
–liking movies with actual stories/plot
There’s more I’m sure, but I’m blanking at the moment.
@ Naglfar
A meat free diet is cheaper here too. My now late mum did give credence to some other odd ideas too, such as viewing a hot cup of tea on a hot day as being more refreshing than cold water or a soda pop, and covering mirrors with a cloth during thunderstorms.
Soda water is full of electrolytes so you can’t take in as much of the water; if you’re thirsty, tea or cold water will be better.
(Of course, if it’s very hot and you’re sweating a lot, eventually you need electrolytes.)
Plant based diets certainly can be cheaper. In the UK, vegans spend on average £645 less on food per year than meat/dairy eaters.
It may be similar in the US -(http://www.takepart.com/article/2015/10/12/vegetarian-diet-savings)
But it’s not necessarily that simple. Whether plant based diets, in the west at least, are a privileged thing, is a bit of a topic in vegan circles.
For most people they aren’t; but there’s the old adage of “it’s expensive being poor”.
When you get into issues like food deserts, access to cooking facilities, lack of resources to buy in bulk and store food, available time etc, it all gets a bit complex; and that’s before you get into governmental policy around food industry subsidies.
The UN though, through the auspices of the IPCC, have made it pretty clear that a global shift to plant based diet is the only way to save the planet. So let’s hope things keep moving in the right direction.
@Kevin
Well, drinking cold things actually does raise your body temperature, so there’s that. I knew someone who lived in a very hot place and ate hot soup every day for lunch.
Not sure what the mirrors being covered in thunderstorms accomplished. I’ve never done that.
@Naglfar
RooshV said it best: “The Alpha Male lives in his own reality!”
It sums up the whole manosphere…
@ Naglfar
I wouldn’t claim my intellect is exactly quicksilver fast these days, but I can see through a brick wall in time, as they say in Bree.
After a lifetime baffled by the cloth/mirrors practice, which was accompanied by closing the curtains at such times, I’m embarrassed it’s taken me until now to formulate a hypothesis that might be the view through that particular wall.
During the Troubles in Northern Ireland, there were pubs and restaurants that adopted the practice of putting sturdy net curtains in the windows, often weighted at the bottom, intended to contain glass fragments should there be an explosion.
This raises the thought that, although curtains clearly aren’t going to stop a lightning bolt, in the event of concussion from a near miss breaking windows/mirrors, the curtains or covering cloth might ameliorate the spread of broken glass.