Why Men™ Declared War on a Bean:
Masculinity on the Internet and the Aversion to the Feminine
Charles Laughton as King Henry VIII, eating chicken
If you go to Google, right now, and type "Does soy make you…", the first popular suggestion is "gassy," (the answer is yes, by the way, beware). The very next one, however, is "feminine." This is followed by "infertile", and further down "grow breasts". These concerns have no scientific basis. Studies have found no correlation between the consumption of soy and the feminisation of the male body. But, as this little exercise shows, it is a recurring worry.
The link between manliness and meat-eating, and inversely femininity with plant-eating is widespread. It surfaces across time and space: from Kenya, where tribesmen traditionally eat only meat and dairy during their warrior years, to Burger King’s 2006 “Manthem” campaign. Still, the association has recently gained new wings. In the age of the internet, as questions of identity and performance have become focal, what does a particular community’s attachment to these ideas say about gender in online culture?
Joe Rogan—star of one of the biggest podcasts in the world, UFC commentator, comedian, all-meat diet advocate, taker of horse medicine, currently under fire for spreading covid misinformation— describes it rather succinctly: The soybean is a “political vegetable.” In recent years the term “soy” has been employed as an insult against effeminate men. Urban dictionary, besides explaining its popular definition, also illustrates the derisive sentiment at the heart of its usage; “slang used to describe males who completely and utterly lack all necessary masculine qualities. This pathetic state is usually achieved by an over-indulgence of emasculating products and/or ideologies.” These, a more neutral description clarifies as “dairy-free milk alternatives”, feminism and left-wing ideas.
Rogan confirms this. After turning his nose at a soy-based candle in an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, he takes to educating his guest, Donnel Rawlings, on the issue. He describes how “people call weak men ‘soy boys,’ and then notes that the plant lowers testosterone levels. Yet, what is curious is that the host, after delivering these nuggets of wisdom, does go on to acknowledge the myth’s exaggeration. “It's just a vegetable," he now says. In the space of five minutes, he has both perpetuated and criticised the misconception. This is because the myth has value, not as a fact, but as a symbol.
Joe Rogan’s viewership is made up mostly of young-adult, right-leaning men. The rejection of the candle, even as a joke, is appealing to his audience. The myth isn’t really about soys' effects on one’s masculinity, nor is it upheld out of genuine belief. Rather, it serves to signify the “other,” their political antagonist, and therefore used to upkeep their masculine, conservative image.
Given the term describes a caricature, there’s more to gain from looking at who uses the insult. So, who exactly is this?
The term’s origins, though unclear like most creations of the internet, point to a meaningful association between its use and right-wing, potentially extremist, views. Some credit Mike Cernovich, alt-right personality, with its creation; others attribute this to users on 4Chan, a website globally known for cultivating far-right extremism. Furthermore, it’s been inducted into the cast of recurrent characters that make up the Incel’s world. Among the genetically favoured Chad, and his vapid counterpart Tracy, the average Beckys and the Normies, now joins the Soy boy.
To the blessedly uninitiated, the Incels are an online community of men who self-identify as "Involuntarily Celibate"—hence In-Cel. They are joined by shared grievances. They are hopeless of ever entering a relationship, romantic or sexual; they are deeply isolated, and lacking in self-worth. Unfortunately these communities, instead of offering support, have instead devolved into black holes of misogynistic resentment, and hostility against progressive political and social ideas. Hate for women is rampant, but, moreover, so is self-hatred, the latter underlying the prior. In Incel circles, it is common to believe that one’s flaws—especially physical flaws—make one inherently unworthy of affection. These detested features, however, are precisely those that fail to meet their own ideal of masculinity: softer jaw, shorter stature, any number of features that reads, to them, as effeminate.
To me it seems there is currently a crisis of masculinity. Since the second wave of feminism, around the 1970s, questions around what a woman is, what femininity is, have pervaded gender studies. Even nowadays as people thrash over the normalisation of transgender people it seems that women, trans-women, continue to be at the center of the debate. Men, masculinity, and trans-men fall and have fallen by the way side. We have discussed what toxic masculinity is. But what is positive masculinity? Who are good role models for masculinity? I can’t say, and I don’t think it is my place, as a woman, to say that. Yet, I can think of who represent visible models of masculinity—it tends to be the right, particularly the far right. And as these self-loathing men seek some type of guidance, self justification they find, along the reinforcing of negative ideals, a series of other reactionary, radical, at times violent ideas regarding gender, race, religion, which become essential to suspend their fragile sense of self.
These are, after all, men who feel deficient in themselves. They are immersed in a cult of hate based on insecurity. Struggling with their identities and identities as men, it is through the decanting of reality into caricatures—sharp bone structure for masculinity; "soy" for emasculation—that they can find a sense of self. They can feel superior, if only against that laughable, effeminate “other."