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They're really gonna put The Onion out of work (europe.pub)
submitted 5 days ago by to c/politicalmemes@lemmy.world
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[–] 195 points 5 days ago (42 children)

It's a wild thing. So the term grew out of the manosphere actually, it was mainly a term for present fathers who steered their boys away from that garbage because they recognized it was only going to hurt them. It kind of grew from there to encapsulate everything they hate. Now, they associate beards with hipsters, dads, LGBT+, nerds who like games, music, books, theatre, and basically any man with a soul and two brain cells to rub together, which is precisely who they see as the enemy because they're so transparently evil.

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  • [–] 151 points 5 days ago (18 children)

    So basically a wholesome father with a big bushy beard.

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  • [–] 100 points 5 days ago (15 children)

    Exactly. They've been working real hard to make it about gas masks in the military, which is a thing, but that's not why they're going off about it. "Beardos and Weirdos" specifically is a dog-whistle for men who actually have honestly held values, don't consider sex, violence, and substance abuse the point of life, and try to be a mentor, a partner, a part of a community or who otherwise contradicts their narrow, machismo-laced, lecherous and reductive definition of "Man."

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  • [–] 51 points 5 days ago

    Look here now, a man can enjoy sex, violence, and substance abuse(not necessarily in that order) a whole lot without it becoming a part of their personality. Plenty of us are happy to be degenerates in private

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  • [–] 23 points 5 days ago (2 children)

    No it’s just a racist dog whistle. By far the group that gets the most facial hair waivers in the military are black men. They just don’t want blacks in the military anymore.

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  • [–] 16 points 5 days ago* (1 child)

    To explain the facial hair wavers to my fellow straight-hair-phenotypes: forcing to shave too closely, can lead to really big, painful infections and scars from ingrown hairs if you have curly-phenotype hair.

    You can shave close enough for a gas mask to work, but in an organization that had its rules build around the bodily and cultural "normal" of white people, you might still need a facial hair waver.

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  • [–] 6 points 4 days ago

    Yeah the waivers are definitely a good thing. Black men often have very coarse, tightly wound facial hair. Some of the dudes I served with would get the worst ingrowns and without a waiver they'd still have to just shave over them, causing nasty sores.

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  • [–] 27 points 5 days ago (1 child)

    Oh ya I get it, just wanted to shorten your more complex definition for some folks. I can hardly comprehend the amount of fucking idiocy and blind hate occurring in the us gov right now. They shit all over the so-called values they very vaguely pretend to support.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 days ago (3 children)

    Damn, and here I was thinking it was about no-shave chits (which has racial undertones, because black men are more prone to razorbumps (basically ingrown hairs which can be extremely painful)).

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  • [–] 2 points 4 days ago (2 children)

    I mean, it's the US, you dig into anything deep enough and you can find racist undertones, because American society is built on racism. That said the particular phrase "Beardos and Weirdos" did in fact evolve out of the manosphere to describe any man of any race who didn't fall in line with them ideologically. Like so much of what they do, it just happens to also particularly disadvantage black men by virtue of their ideal being grounded in "whiteness."

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  • [–] 1 point 4 days ago (1 child)

    Well I'm saying that in the military context specifically, it's well-known that the vast majority of shave-chit holders (i.e., people who can have beards) are black men. There was a whole thing a few months ago when they banned shave-chits, and a large part of the discussion was how it would disproportionately affect black men, and how this is one part of a larger strategy to push black men out of the military.

    So within that context, yes, this statement by Hegseth absolutely does carry racial undertones, and you don't have to dig very deep to uncover that. It's not a conjecture, that statement was thinly-veiled racism.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 days ago

    I'm not disagreeing. The policy itself is definitely an attack on black people. His choice of phrasing merely suggests he was trying to slur a lot of people, black people chief among them as usual.

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  • [–] 24 points 5 days ago (6 children)

    Specifically in the military it refers to those in favor of loosening facial hair standards beyond just tiny mustaches, plus some service members that discovered and successfully exploited the "Heathen loophole."

    Really it's just Pete's preference toward big burly white hairless men that will follow his commands.

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  • [–] 14 points 5 days ago (2 children)

    A tiny mustache that fits under a gas mask 🤔

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  • [–] 1 point 5 days ago (2 children)

    What's the heathen loophole?

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  • [–] 4 points 4 days ago (1 child)

    Beards are apparently a part of Heathen and Norse Pagan religion, so claiming the religion allowed them to grow and maintain a full beard as a religious exemption. That's since gone away with Hegseth's purge of almost all non-Abrahamic religions.

    Everyone knew it was a loophole being exploited and not a bunch of people having spiritual awakenings all of a sudden. But a loophole is much more preferable to a Christian Nationalist leader determining what is and isn't a valid religion.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 days ago

    Ok, yeah that makes a lot of sense. And yeah, when it comes to stuff like this you wind up in an awkward position where you have to allow loopholes to avoid prohibiting sincere religious convictions, especially among neopagans. Speaking as one, we're eclectic in what we consider religious (for example I consider my being trans to have religious significance and if I were to file a first amendment complaint against restrictions on my hormones it would be entirely sincere)

    I'm not even necessarily opposed to not giving facial hair/uniform passes to members of particularly disorganized religions. We aren't like the Sikhs where it's easy to see their conviction and there's a continuous practice that can be pointed to. That said, first amendment complaints are first amendment complaints. Just because I think a compromise might be reasonable, doesn't mean that's in line with the law. Us pagans get fucked six ways to sunday on religious freedom and we do need to stand up and demand it apply to us.

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