If you’re a vegan dude like myself, you’ve probably been called a “soyboy.” It’s a favorite term in the fascist alt-right community, meant to denote who is and is not manly and, by inference, who is right and who is wrong. Basically, if you’re a guy and write something on the internet that is (or can be interpreted as being) in favor of a left-of-center idea or policy, you’re a soyboy. It’s also directed at vegan guys for obvious reasons.
They actually seem to think this pitiful insult is worth lobbing. Of course, they’re really just telling on themselves with regard to their insecurities about their own masculinity.
From what I can tell, this insult really took off in culture wars during the lead up to the 2016 election. The morally reprehensible alt-right, a collective that largely consists of men with zero self-esteem and entirely unwarranted self-confidence, appointed themselves janitors of a non-existent “crisis of masculinity.” They generally like to see male liberals as disposable foot soldiers of third-wave feminism — traitors to their own kind. Of course, electing a female president was out of the question, so Trump was their guy.
These sell-out male liberals, as the alt-right perceives them, are soyboys: “men” who drink and eat so much soy that they essentially (or literally, in the case of transgenderism) become women. Of course, this perceived feminization renders whatever liberal men believe incorrect. So it’s not only meant as an insult, but a judgement of the truthfulness of whatever the liberal male says. Why won’t anyone believe the alt-right when they say they don’t hate women? It’s a mystery!
Anyway, they like to call vegans soyboys for an obvious reason: the vegan diet can consist of a lot of soy. In fact, most people consume more soy than they are probably aware. It’s in just about everything. A common stereotype about vegans is that we just can’t stop eating tofu and drinking soy milk. Ergo, male vegans are soyboys.
There are many reasons this insult is ironic. For one, as mentioned, soy is everywhere. If you think you’re avoiding soy because you don’t like tofu or soy milk, you’re just lying to yourself. For another, 98% of soybeans are used to feed livestock. If you’re eating animal products, you’re indirectly consuming soy — a lot of it.
By far the most hilarious reason the soyboy insult being directed towards vegans is ironic is because the alt-right has it completely backwards. The idea that soy causes feminization stems largely from an anecdote involving a man who drank exorbitant amounts of soy milk on a daily basis grew breasts. This has been attributed to the phytoestrogens — plant analogues of the mammalian female sex hormone — found in soy milk. Once he stopped drinking so much soy milk, his boobs stopped growing. Meanwhile, quantitative research has found no effect of soy consumption on hormones.
So it seems that the soy-manboob connection is all but nonexistent. Of course, the alt-right not exactly being the party of rational thought, scientific evidence doesn’t matter much to them. To own the libs, the alt-right apparently drinks cows milk. This, they apparently believe, is the uber-masculine alternative to feminizing soy milk. Cows milk makes you more of a man, they think.
Except, what’s in cows milk? Estrogen — a lot of it. And not the plant analogue that converts poorly to mammalian estrogen, but the real thing. I mean, think about it. They’re drinking liquid that squirts out of the nipples of a female animal. They quite literally haven’t outgrown breastfeeding. This is their definition of masculinity.
In any case, it doesn’t even appear that estrogen in either form causes men to become more feminine. It’s just another ploy for the alt-right to use to prove to themselves how manly they are. As they pathetically try to insult us for enjoying tofu, revel in the fact that their spiteful stupidity is leading them to consume significantly greater amounts of estrogen directly from the udders of a female in the name of masculinity.
And, not that it matters to most of us, but there is some evidence that testosterone levels may actually be higher in vegan men than vegetarian and non-vegetarian men. So that’s two strikes for the alt-right, two wins for veganism.
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