• AutistoMephisto@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    UPDATE: After taking all the responses to this into consideration, I now understand testosterone therapy to indeed be gender affirming care but Hegseth and the “Manosphere” crowd he identifies with prefer to affirm their gender by denying their age. They still want to be the “studs” they (thought) they were in high school. They’re the same guys who wax nostalgically about their “glory days” when they were on the football team and how they “led the team to win the regionals”(but not state) and they “coulda gone pro” but one of “those people(you know who they’re referring to)”, “stole” their scholarship.

      • AutistoMephisto@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        Hmm. I didn’t think of it like that, but I never considered that either gender has an “ideal state”. It’s also, I suppose that, for them, at least, that gender doesn’t really factor into their desired state.

          • AutistoMephisto@lemmy.world
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            3 days ago

            You know, now that you say it, it makes sense. They’re affirming their gender to deny their age. When they look back at their teenage years and/or their early 20’s, that’s when (they believe) they were at their “most maximal manliest manliness”, or in biology terms, the point when their testosterone levels were at their highest. As soon as a man hits 30, it’s all downhill from there. And I speak from experience as a 35-year-old white guy. Some of my shit doesn’t work how it did in my 20’s. Some parts of me now ache that previously did not. It’s harder for me to get up from a sitting position than it used to be. But I don’t think the answer for that is to amp up my testosterone levels to try and go through puberty again.

            • GreenBeard@lemmy.ca
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              3 days ago

              The real heart of the issue is that they have such a small idea of what constitutes masculinity, that they’re utterly incapable of defining male as anything but a 20 year old getting drunk, playing sports, and breaking things. They don’t understand anything that isn’t just that. Mature masculinity, doesn’t exist in their world. Men don’t nurture, men don’t learn, men don’t grow. They don’t teach, they scream. They don’t support, they attack. They don’t create, the break. It’s a very sad world view. Aging gracefully, mentoring, collaborating, building a community, engaging in art, in self-expression, investing time and effort into people, all of that is “girl stuff.” Even having a family, what they want are trophies of their sexual conquest, not relationships. They don’t want to guide and mentor or participate in their kids lives. They want the glory. They make themselves so shallow, anyone with any depth at all is a threat.

              • AutistoMephisto@lemmy.world
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                2 days ago

                they’re utterly incapable of defining male as anything but a 20 year old getting drunk, playing sports, and breaking things.

                Don’t forget ramming his cock into any woman he wants, regardless of whether they could give consent or not.

        • DokPsy@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          Oh, gender absolutely does factor in. Women are seen as lesser because misogyny. And, while the normal person wouldn’t consider there to be an ideal state, these people definitely have one in mind. It’s toxic hyper masculinity on meth

      • Kowowow@lemmy.ca
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        3 days ago

        The me I that I didn’t realize I was imagining when I was thinking of myself doing cool stuff