Being Callous to Animals isn't Manly

In fact, it's a bitch move.

I keep seeing the same person over and over. He writes “mmm, bacon” in comment sections, waves his sandwich at animal rights activists, and unironically uses terms like “soyboy” and “rabbit food”. He mocks vegans for being “soft”, his manhood is deeply tied to the consumption of meat, and he has a Joe Rogan calendar in his bedroom with the pages suspiciously stuck together.

I see this guy everywhere, operating under the impression that his uncaring attitude towards the plight of animals is the height of masculinity. I think this phenomenon can be explained by two things. One is that a stoic attitude towards the world is considered manly. Only weak men allow the world to shake their inner peace, and so laughing in the face of something terrible can look like when the protagonist spits out his tooth, and says “is that all you got?”. That attitude is cool, right?

Sometimes. Notice how in the cliché movie scenario it’s the protagonist getting hurt. He is facing adversity, and exhibiting resilience while doing so. He’s not unfeeling while seeing the plight of others (otherwise, he’d be a pretty mid protagonist), and he certainly doesn’t cause their plight himself. It feels like the men who are callous towards animals have applied the rule too broadly. They’ve heard that keeping your emotions in check is masculine, and imagined that that means showing any empathy is weak - which is total overkill, and not the point.

The other explanation is probably advertising. Kate Upton did this to them.

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“If I buy burger, maybe she’ll let me smell her hair!”

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Tying the consumption of meat to masculinity was such a slam dunk for the industry. If you can convince men that not buying your products threatens their masculinity, you have procured lifelong customers. Our shared concern over our manhood ties all our monkey brains together. We all want to look like Brad Pitt in Fight Club, and we all want women to think we could be in Seal Team 6 if we really wanted to.

Except, and I know this may come as a surprise, being a mindless drone that inherits their standards for masculinity from meat manufacturers doesn’t make you a man - it makes you a sucker. Being manipulated to hand over money to corporations does not embody strength, it betrays insecurity. Men are (allegedly) supposed to do things like take charge and be their own master, yet a lot of them take their cues for masculinity from whoever can cram the most patties into one sandwich. It’s servile.

There are a lot of virtues that people claim are masculine. I’m not sure whether a virtue can be gendered like that, but the manosphere do like to flex about all the good things men do. Providing for their families. Defending the weak. Keg stands. All the important stuff.

You would think, though, that veganism would be a total shoe in for these people! Eating meat is the exact opposite of what these men see as masculine. When we buy meat, we are exploiting and killing the weak. We also rarely have the stomach to do it ourselves, and so pay someone else to do it behind closed doors. Why? Because we like the taste, it’s convenient, and we lack the discipline to eat something else.

We couldn’t craft a less manly story if we tried. It’s like if Maximus from Gladiator was fighting kids, and paid someone else to do it for him - all so he could be rewarded with a sandwich that tasted slightly better. I have a feeling that “My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions and loyal servant to the TRUE emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Hider of consequences, suplex-er of nine year olds. And I will have my BLT, in this life or the next” would garner a little less Oscar buzz.

Vegans are mocked for being weak and eating like rabbits or, god forbid, women - even though they embody the exact sorts of virtues these people claim are manly. They make sacrifices for their principles, and endure ridicule for doing so. Tell me that’s not the sort of thing Aragorn would do! The brain rot has run so deep, we now have a society of scared and insecure boys imagining they’re men because of their Mcdonald’s order.