Just in case someone misses what the gun is a metaphor for.
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I donât think itâs going to sell well, since ammosexuals so often fail to realize the subconscious feelings that drive their gun worship.
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Each by itself, or in combination, says so, so much more than âtoxic masculinityâ or âgun freaksâ. Toxic Human.
?
I think praising someone for having âbig ballsâ is all about toxic masculinity, no?
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Yeah, to me equating male sexuality with death instead of life is peak toxic masculinity.
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Iâm saying that the balls, the gun, or both together signal (to me) not just toxic masculinity, but some general across the board defect in character⌠and not just terminally bad taste.
Even if woman has this, itâs about defining masculinity (because, you know, BALLS) as being violent.
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Yes. Again, I understand that. Toxic masculinity (which is there) is one of the indicators of, I feel, other character aspects. The balls. The automatic rifle: In this day and age, what about such a person could one reasonably assume. Thatâs what Iâm talking about.
in the early 90s i began gendering the old idiomatic expression by saying âthat showed some real ovaries/balls/gonadsâ depending on whether i was speaking of someone who was female/male/unidentified gender.
i would also say in passing that in real life enlarged testicles are often a sign of a health issue like hydrocele, varicocele, or testicular cancer and not otherwise a sign of anything else. i imagine the same might hold true for ovaries as well.
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Well, if theyâre a guy (and Iâd wager that well over 90% of those who would adorn themselves with such a combination are), one could reasonably assume that theyâve fallen prey to the inducements of toxic masculinity. 
I also think itâs much more difficult to reasonably assume much of anything more about them, except that theyâre probably also an American.
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I think thatâs even true of women who would have this too, though. Women can believe in and embrace toxic masculine behavior too, of course.
True! Although every culture has itâs own kind of toxic masculinity.
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Reminds me of this.
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Strange use of the word fun but absolutely true. Males do have functional breast tissue, can even under some conditions lactate(*), and they certainly, certainly can get cancer in this cancer-prone tissue.
(*But do see a doctor when that happensâŚ)
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This post
on the Gaetz thread made me think of an old high school story.
A group of varsity football players (this was a class C school, about 70 - 80 students per year, so not huge like from the TV shows) started a thing my freshman year that they called âthwacking.â Theyâd attack and hold down a JV player in the locker room, and take turns âthwackingâ him slapping him in the face with their flaccid penises.
One of the victims, a sophomore at the time and a friend of mine, told his parents, who then told the school. It made the local news but I canât find it anymore, but our school got a bad name.
But the WORST part is, the school held meetings to figure out what to do about it, and it was utter weak sauce. The perpetrators were suspended for maybe 10 days, but then they were still allowed to play basketball and then baseball in the following seasons!!!
And the victim who came forward ended up having to change schools.
I remember I ran track with the ringleaderâs girlfriend the following spring, and when I asked her about what she thought of his actions she seemed utterly unphased. An early lesson in toxic masculinity and utter lack of consequences.
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My, like I guess every other manâs, testicles, are symbols of our cowardice. They shrink and try to crawl up into our torsos at the slightest danger. Even cold, which was what James Joyce meant with the âsnot green scrotum tightening seaâ.
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Well, itâs sportsball and itâs boys being boys, so what are you going to do? /s
And this is how you end up with people like Matt Gaetz in positions of real power.
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I played one season of high school football, and while I donât remember a systematic program of âthwackingâ it is emblematic of the kinds of things that were done to incoming players as part of the hazing ritual every fall.
In contrast, when I switched over to cross-country, hazing would have been more like being scolded into reading several paragraphs of James Phenimore Cooper. Out. Loud.
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