I never in my wildest dreams – worst nightmares? – imagined that this is something the country would actually be talking about in the 21st Century: “Tucker Carlson Originals” homoerotic documentary in defense of toxic masculinity.
That’s right, this effeminate little fascist is worried about the feminization of American men (then lose the shirt, Tucker) and wants men to laser-light their testicles in order to increase their testosterone in promoting toxic masculinity.
I kid you not. This is an actual thing on Fox News. WTF is happening?
I know that the incels in the Proud Boys, Three Pecenters and Oath Keepers who engaged in a seditious conspiracy for a violent insurrection on January 6, 2021 were redirecting their sexual frustration that no woman wants to have sex with them into their cosplay civil war fantasies, but this is next level.
Huffington Post reported, Critics Stunned By Homoerotic Promo For Tucker Carlson Program On Testosterone:
Critics of Fox News host Tucker Carlson were taken aback by the striking homoerotic nature of the trailer for his upcoming “documentary” about what he calls the “collapse” of testosterone levels in men.
The steamy trailer for the first episode of his new season of “Tucker Carlson Originals” features a series of shots of half-nude, muscular (white) men. They’re pumping rubber, chopping wood, grilling, firing a gun — and wrestling — accompanied by the soaring, thumping musical theme “Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” which was widely popularized in the 1968 film “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
Oddly, many of the men’s faces are blurred out or hidden. In one scene, a naked man stands with arms outstretched and genitals illuminated behind what one observer said looks like a Tesla recharging station.
Daily Beast journalist Justin Baragona quipped in a tweet that the trailer would get Carlson “arrested” if he aired it in a classroom in Florida, where it’s now illegal to address sexual orientation in lower grades in schools.
Something about this seems oddly familiar to me from my studies of European Fascism. Ah yes, echoes of Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, the woman who directed the Nazi propaganda films Triumph des Willens (“Triumph of the Will”) and Olympia, resulting in worldwide attention and acclaim at the time. The films are widely considered two of the most effective and technically innovative propaganda films ever made.
Slow motion, naked dudes, posing against the sky, performing athletic feats, classical music… I’m gettingg strong Leni Riefenstahl “Olympia” vibes pic.twitter.com/DXY3GgzkdM
— Stop The Donald (@Stop_The_Donald) April 16, 2022
Carlson warns in a promo for the episode about the pending “end of men,” the title for the episode. He declares: “One of the biggest stories of our lifetimes is the total collapse in testosterone levels in American men.” He promises to share secrets on how to stop that from happening.
Dana Milbank explains, Why Tucker Carlson wants men to aim lasers at their private parts:
With the pandemic fading (at least for now), there are fewer occasions to swallow ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine or to inject oneself with bleach.
So what’s a Trump-loving, conspiracy-obsessed Fox News-viewing guy to do?
Tucker Carlson has the answer: He should stand naked and spread-eagle on top of a large rock at twilight and gaze heavenward as a red laser illuminates his genitals.
God, no. Put your pants back on, you freak!
After showing the teaser, Carlson brings in his expert “fitness professional” Andrew McGovern.
McGovern recommends that you “expose yourself to red-light therapy and the Joovv” — a brand of red light — “that we were using in the documentary.”
“Which is testicle tanning,” Carlson explains.
“It’s testicle tanning,” McGovern agrees, “but it’s also full-body red-light therapy.”
Carlson, the most-watched Fox News host, sums it up: “So, obviously, half the viewers are now like, ‘What? Testicle tanning — that’s crazy.’ But my view is, okay, testosterone levels have crashed and nobody says anything about it. That’s crazy.”
No, this is what’s crazy. To the extent declining testosterone levels are a problem, the correct solution would be to address a major cause: rising obesity. Instead of shining a red light on your private parts, dear Fox News viewer, turn off Tucker Carlson, get off the couch and go exercise.
But Carlson isn’t primarily hawking a genital-lighting device; he’s really touching all the erogenous zones of the Trumpian right.
There’s perceived loss of national pride: Carlson sees testosterone collapsing in “American men” (it’s a worldwide phenomenon). There’s paranoia about the government: “The NIH doesn’t seem interested in this at all,” Carlson says, impersonating some presumed official from the National Institutes of Health saying “it’s not a big deal” (the topic is widely studied). There’s paranoia about the media: McGovern claims the benefit of red-light therapy “isn’t being picked up on or covered” and says “there’s a lot of people out there that don’t trust the mainstream information.”
There’s the usual racist fearmongering: After the trailer shows several fit White bodies, the first Black body to appear is obese (as President John F. Kennedy intones that “there is nothing, I think, more unfortunate than to have soft, chubby, fat-looking children”), and an image from a street riot is used to convey “weak” America. There’s obsession with gender and sexuality: A shirtless man throws a javelin that turns into a flaming rocket; a man squeezes a cow’s udder; and other men, several also shirtless, exercise, fire a gun, wrestle, flip a tractor tire, swing an ax, swallow raw eggs and, of course, stand naked in front of red lights.
There’s the Trump right’s celebration of masculinity as aggression [toxic masculinity] rather than chivalry or gentlemanliness, a notion promoted lately by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and former Trump aide Sebastian Gorka.
Above all, there’s the unwavering faith in junk science — or, as Carlson’s “expert” calls it, “bromeopathy” (apparently a form of homeopathy in which you get advice from friends). Red-light treatment is used for various skin conditions, and it’s not impossible a man can boost his testosterone by plunking down four figures to aim such a device at his nether regions. But, as Marc Goldstein, a Weill Cornell Medicine male fertility expert told the publication Inverse, the claim lacks “convincing scientific evidence or properly done studies.”
Anti-vaxxer activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lends his expertise (sic) to the Carlson trailer to claim a “50 percent decline in sperm counts,” adding, “We’re headed for a calamity, and that’s not hyperbole. … It’s just a mathematical fact.”
[So] far, his greenlighting of red-light therapy seems to be telling them that what they really need to be true men is more testosterone. And though testosterone supplementation will indeed increase a man’s “manly” aggression, it will also reduce his fertility.
Millions of Tucker Carlson viewers unable to reproduce? Maybe junk science isn’t all bad.
All of this was just too much for the Ragin’ Cajun, Democratic consultant James Carville. James Carville: ‘Out-And-Out Weird’ GOP Is Now The Party Of ‘Testicle Tanning’:
Democratic political consultant James Carville called out the increasingly “weird” Republican Party for embracing wild conspiracy theories and other strange beliefs.
Carville pointed to recent comments made by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who warned that his party needed to put forward electable candidates or it could lose in this year’s midterm elections.
“When you have Moscow Mitch saying, ‘We need more sane people,’ that means you got a lot of really crazy people,” Carville told MSNBC’s Ari Melber on Tuesday.
“They are a weird political party,” he added. “These are people that talk about testicle tanning.”
Carville: These are people who talk about testicle tanning… By and large, a large part of the Republican Party is out-and-out weird. Look at Peter Navarro… You’re telling me he’s a normal human being?!? No. And he’s not even among the worst pic.twitter.com/dVhDGH0eKe
— Acyn (@Acyn) April 19, 2022
Carville was referring to a recent Fox News special on its digital outlet, Fox Nation, in which Tucker Carlson endorsed the practice as a means of restoring testosterone. Carville said these and other beliefs show the GOP just isn’t “normal” anymore.
“By and large, a large part of the Republican Party is just out-and-out weird,” he said.
Carville is always entertaining, but not always particularly informative. Political scientists and journalists who track the threat from right-wing domestic terrorists organizations see something far more menacing in Tucker Carlson’s obsession with masculinity as aggression (toxic masculinity). The Internet is laughing at Tucker Carlson’s new program. Experts say it’s no joke.
[E]xperts in masculinity and extremism say while promotion around Carlson’s program may appear ridiculous, it’s elevating dangerous propaganda. [See Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl.]
“He and his writers are seeking to exploit a popular line of discourse on the far-right fringe that mainstream audiences may not be aware of,” said Michael Edison Hayden, a senior investigative reporter with the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, which tracks the radical right. “It’s this hyper-masculinized propaganda that speaks to people who actually really admire the notion of ‘men returning to men.’ My concern is that it has more appeal; it is more exciting to people than perhaps liberals and centrists may realize.”
* * *
Carlson frequently uses his platform, the top-rated “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” to lament a masculinity crisis, and while many sociologists who study gender agree boys and men are struggling, they diverge from Carlson on the forces responsible as well as on the solutions necessary to address it. Carlson often suggests feminism is eroding manhood, but his detractors blame a rigid notion of masculinity that focuses on strength and dominance at the expense of all else. Radicalization experts say fitness-orientated culture intersects with extremism online, and the promo for Carlson’s program, with its framing of physical fitness and the pseudo-science around testosterone health, is one way that toxic online narratives play on men’s insecurities to recruit them into more extreme ideologies.
“This ‘bromeopathic’ idea to increase testosterone is there to counteract the effects of feminism and the feminization of the Western man,” said Pasha Dashtgard, director of research at American University’s Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab (PERIL). “This platforming by Tucker Carlson is happening because it falls into this narrative that there is a crisis of masculinity, that cancel culture and wokeness have emasculated men in America. Now conservative politics is pushing the narrative of recapturing the strong protector, fighter, testosterone-fueled American man. These ideas that on the surface feel ridiculous are being used to justify a pretty ugly conspiratorial narrative.”
Jackson Katz, creator of the film “The Man Card: White Male Identity Politics from Nixon to Trump,” said it’s short-sighted to mock or dismiss these appeals, because aggrieved white manhood is a crucial factor in the rise of virtually all right-wing cults and political movements.
Such as the personality cult of Donald Trump, which produced ridiculous shit like this. Reality: Trump is an obese old man.
“‘Lower levels of testosterone’ is a metaphor for what these movements are really concerned about: reclaiming white men’s loss of status and cultural centrality,” he said. “Tucker Carlson, Senator Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) and others on the right are driving the narrative that many of the problems white men in this country face are due not to macroeconomic factors like automation and wealthy corporations shipping jobs overseas to countries with weak labor and environmental protections. No, white men are suffering because feminists and LGBTQ folks have somehow made them passive and soft. Instead of talking honestly about the true source of these problems, the supposedly ‘conservative’ solution they offer these men is to man up.”
Mark Greene, author of “The Little #MeToo Book for Men,” said Carlson’s program is normalizing ideas from the manosphere, defined by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “a constellation of anti-women websites, subreddits, blogs and forums.”
“What I believe Tucker Carlson is doing is he’s taking a lot of the recruitment strategies that are out there online for white supremacy and extremist movements and he’s bringing them into broadcast television. And this is a big transition for that movement,” Greene said.
The language used to promote the documentary can appeal to impressionable young men, Greene said, who may be confused or insecure about their masculinity. It suggests men are being feminized and erased, and it uses pseudo-science to reinforce the gender binary through biological determination, an idea that says people’s behaviors are directly controlled by biology. It emphasizes that men are born to be strong, and that testosterone will help return them to a period when that strength was valued and unquestioned.
“Once a society collapses then, you’re in hard times … those hard times inevitably produce men who are tough, men who are resourceful, men who are strong enough to survive,” a narrator says during the trailer. “They go on to re-establish order, and so the cycle begins again.”
* * *
The trailer for Carlson’s documentary features white, muscular male bodies exercising, wrestling, cooking, and shooting. A nude man stands on a rock tanning his testicles. A Black body is shown from the neck down, stomach soft, just before a clip of President John F. Kennedy saying, “There’s nothing I think more unfortunate than to have soft, chubby fat-looking children.”
This framing aligns with concepts American University sociology professor Cynthia Miller-Idriss addresses in her book, “Hate in the Homeland: The New Global Far Right,” which explores how the far-right recruits through messaging about fitness and male bodies.
“The desire for perfectly sculpted male bodies situates physical fitness and muscular manhood as expressions of both individual moral virtues like willpower, decisiveness, and courage, and desired collective traits like national strength, virility, and manliness,” she writes.
Experts say in the online male supremacist world there are many subcultures fixated on the physical body. Men who participate in these communities are focused on physical attractiveness as the determinant of sexual success, which is a proxy for masculinity at large.
Experts argue hyper-masculinity isn’t the answer, it’s the problem
Hayden said it’s important to recognize that while the documentary seems outlandish, many figures the culture has found laughable have gone on to behave dangerously. Hayden said “Pizzagate” conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec and Infowars Alex Jones were widely mocked before helping to inspire the Stop the Steal campaign.
People on both sides of the culture wars are in agreement that men are in crisis, but Dashtgard said Carlson’s focus on testosterone is not a solution.
“Men are suffering. What can we do about that? We can offer them a vision of masculinity that is more expansive,” he said. “The idea is masculinities, plural, that you can ride horses and also write poetry. That you can be in a band and you can also work on your car.
Hayden said it’s critical for men watching programs like Carlson’s to be discerning about the content.
“There’s this idea in the culture that women and children are the people who are always being exploited, and men consider themselves impervious to that. It’s that very presumption that makes them so vulnerable to hard-right propaganda,” Hayden said. “These things are targeted to appeal to insecurities that men may not even realize that they have.”
Discover more from Blog for Arizona
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
“…the Proud Boys, Three Pecenters and Oath Keepers who engaged in a seditious conspiracy for a violent insurrection on January 6, 2021 were redirecting their sexual frustration that no woman wants to have sex with them…”
Ha ha. I’ve had this exact same thought but haven’t written about it until now. It has not escaped my notice (or that of millions of other women) that these guys are not the kind of men that women dream about. There’s a lot wrong with them, to be sure, but the first thing you see is how physically unattractive they are.
Life must be hard for ugly young men with no personality, no intelligence, no talent, and no money. All they’ve got is each other and their fantasies about being real men.
Many of them are “incels” (involuntarily celibate) and express their misogynistic hatred of women in their domestic terrorist chat rooms and social media postings. They don’t try to hide it.
Incel’s don’t see women as human beings, so good looking or not, they cannot connect in a way that would lead to what they literally feel women owe them.
It’s a serious mental health issue and they’re violent. Incel’s have committed mass shootings because they blame women for not sleeping with them and then that murderer becomes a hero to the rest.
Won’t help publicize the name, but search San Diego incel mass shooting. They love that guy.
White nationalists have been recruiting from marginalized groups for decades. Started in the 90’s when they ditched the skinhead look for the khaki’s and polo shirts, they went into stealth mode.
But this guy Tucker is just latent. How many times has someone come out late in life and everyone goes “oh, yeah, how did we miss that?”
I’m so straight I don’t see a man in the moon, I see a hot lady in the moon. On a clear night she looks like Raquel Welch in that fur bikini, but even I can see Tucker made soft core g ay po rn, he may pretend that it’s a recruiting effort, but it’s still g ay soft core p orn, and it’s his name on it.
If he wasn’t pitching dangerous pseudo-science to his millions of followers no one would care, but think about it, if you can get men to hard boil their own eggs, and pay to do it, what can’t you get them to do?
GD I hate this timeline.
What can one say? Tuckum’s homoerotic fantasy should have been titled “Triumph of the Shill”.