Now the alt-right/MRAs/neo-Nazis are appropriating…beards.
The subject of masculinity comes up and the White man’s ability to grow a luxurious beard. According to early racial science the original Negro and Chinaman were unable to grow beards and the fact that the White man could, showed that our race was more mature and fully grown than the others. The fact that some Negroes now have beards shows that they are mulattoes. Matt encourages men to grow well-kept beards as a sign of being anti-feminist, as feminists hate them.
I am so confused. Being excessively hairy is now a sign of the white man’s more evolved status? And it’s a measure of greater masculinity, but women hate them? So Nazis are going to grow this symbol of manliness to repel women?
Oh, no. I’m not confused. They are, because none of that makes any sense at all.
So I guess they like imams.
So… your wife has been resenting that beard all along? No wonder your marriage fell apart decades ago wait no it didn’t.
She has actually told me I’m not allowed to shave it off.
I suspect it is because she’d rather not reveal the batrachian horror beneath it, and considers the beard to be the only thin barrier standing between her and nightmarish madness.
The Alt-Right can have my beard when they pry it from my cold, dead chin.
Batrachian horror? Is this your way of telling us that unclefrogy is a sock?
Welcome to the far-flung, futuristic world of 1851!
Ok, that’s nonsense, but I can at least follow the reasoning.
Erm… I think the needle skipped out of the groove? Have we missed ten minutes here? PZ, are you quote mining? How… what… does this have any relation to the last thought?
Do we?! Fuck, I’d better shave!
I guess that means we Ashkenazim are more advanced than mere Caucasians (my noon shadow is what Hollywood stubble wants to be when it grows up). Perhaps it’s a Jewish (ancestry) conspiracy…
I thought in the Pacific Northwest, the neo-nazis were the guys without beards. Have they ever been to Portland?
Is the ‘permanent two-day growth’ look classified as a beard?
Aren’t these the same idiots who routinely spread bullshit anti-Semitic memes with a bearded hand-wringing Jew?
Not to mention the weird Christian Identity part of the alt-right, what with the worshipping a bearded Half-Jewish Half-Deity dude who supposedly titled himself the King of the Jews…
Good grief. The idiots that write that sort of crap have never met a Pacific Islander or a Maori have they? Or for that matter men from many many parts of the world where beards better than the average can appear over lunch. But still, anything to make them happy as they sit around in their women free zones admiring each others virility. Nothing wrong with homo-erotica at all if that’s what they’re into.
I no longer wear my trilby hat, a hat that I love, because it became a symbol of El Douches everywhere. I can live with that; I have other hats.*
I cannot live with shaving. If I must I’ll have SWJ tattooed on my forehead to distinguish me from these idiots should beards come to mean what they wish them to.
*I’ve been meaning to resurrect it by putting on a rainbow hat band. I’m not sure if that would work, but it will be an interesting experiment.
@Vivec, 8
Yes, but those are badbeards. White people beards are goodbeards.
Or maybe it’s just the inevitable result of a relatively diverse group of people with a conclusion, desperately seeking premises to shove ahead of it? The ones who like beards see it as a sign of their masculinity; those who dislike beards see them as a sign of depravity. Kind of like how right wing misogynists see feminism as a left wing conspiracy against the natural order, while left wing misogynists see it as a right wing conspiracy against the working class. They’ve got the conclusion already, all they need are premises that fit with their other beliefs.
FossilFishy — same for me with fedoras. Great hat. Now virtually unwearable unless you want people to think of you as a slimy dudebro.
I wear a fedora and I am now growing a quite nice little mustache.
I am white but I’m also 60+ years old and female.
Where do I fit?
ugh, as a beard owner, it is true that a brand new beard is kinda scratchy to an adjacent face (for the kissing activity), but let the hair age a week or so and he ends become a little softer and less irritating and similar to mink fur. Like fine wine beards get better with age (and I don’t mean the length).
but that is just personal experience, not necessarily universal.
and with a “vintage” beard, no more worries of “5oclock shadows” that makes ones face effectively an emery board.
Then again, shaving is too much maintenance for this lazy guy. Beards are pretty forkin easy to maintain, tri-monthly trim is all mine gets (gets washed daily during my daily shower, so it does stay clean between trims, of course).
gosh, it is fun to talk about that fur I keep on my face. Yet I hate it being used as a prop for disgusting viewpoints. shuckz
All of that makes me want to shave twice a day. As my five o’clock shadow comes in quite early and retains the consistency of a steel wire brush, my wife would likely be thankful.
Wow, but the term dim witted seems generous when applied to them!
Their heads would explode if they found out about Guan Yu.
I’d just like to note that these mischievous rascals have claimed to own heterosexuality for years and have always had their filthy mitts all over it. NO. Put it DOWN. Naughty alt-righters, you can’t have it! Now go wash your hands and sit up the table, I said NOW.
=8)-DX
Well, dang. My beard grows only as a Vandyke, commonly called a goatee (the real goatee is only on the chin) these days. I hates to shave, so I’ve been sporting a style with dudebro associations for far too long. Now they are staking out all beards?
I keeps my face fur all trimmed and neat while employed, and just got a compliment on it from a lesbian friend. I guess I should go tell her she isn’t a feminist.
So….Nazis in the 30s and 40s had short hair, Nazis in the 80s had no hair and millennial Nazis are hairy…
…also none of them had much going on in the skull under those hair follicles, about right?
Remember when you were fourteen and you grew your first crop of baby fine mustache hair? And how proud you were of the achievement and vowed to never shave it off? I guess some guys don’t move on from that point, hey.
I mean, beards can look great and beards can look awful, but unless you’re a trans man that had to work and fight for the right to grow facial hair, it happens fuckin naturally. I don’t understand venerating something which is almost literally the least you can do with your face as a man.
I have a well established beard that varies in luxuriance with the temperature of the seasons. I’m not sure what a ‘luxurious’ beard might be. A designer chin wig made of mink fur perhaps.
Athywren @ 5
Hey I am not a sock! though I do like wearing wool ones in the winter.
Should I be flattered to be mistaken for PZ?
I do have a separate existence such as it is and I am sure I could not maintain his workload at all.
uncle frogy
Oh and I last shaved my face in 1970 when I shaved my whole head except eyebrows.
as it has been said them guys are dim in fact they give the dim a bad name.
uncle frogy
Yet another advantage to having a beard strongly resembling a hedgehog being swallowed sideways, only a walrus would consider it “well kept”. A friendly walrus can be quite useful when encountering one (or even several) of these eejits, the tonne-or-more of walrus simply sits on them. Works better than a can of compressed cootie spray.
You know, without really thinking it through, I rather assumed that very pale skin, facial hair, blond or red hair and pale eyes came from Neanderthal DNA.
(I know Neanderthals weren’t stupid brutes, but I suspect the average Nazi doesn’t. This makes me giggle.)
Then I remembered that South Asian men often have great beards, particularly Sikhs. And fundamentalist Muslims and Jews. So no, unless I’m also wrong about where Neanderthals lived. Could someone enlighten me? Not that it cosmically matters, but I’m curious now.
I’m whiter than Dracula and I can’t grow a beard worth shit.
When 2 men with beards pass in the street their partners smile knowingly.
“Chinaman”?, Dude, Chinaman is not the preferred nomenclature.
DO feminists hate beards? Because that’s news to me. Most of the feminists I’ve ever known think a man has a right to his own bodily autonomy, and most of the women I’ve ever known like facial hair on a man.
My husband and I both have fine, manly Van Dykes (me because I have a bald patch if I grow a full beard, he because he likes it). I’ve had facial hair since I was fifteen and able to grow a proper moustache (it was the seventies, you could wear moustaches then), I’ll still have it in the grave, and he is absolutely forbidden to shave his off, on penalty of…well, I haven’t decided.
@11 Fossil Fishy, 13 chrislawson:
You think you have it bad? I have a neckbeard. The ultimate in Slimy Dudebro fashion. And I can’t do anything about it— it just won’t grow in fully and I don’t have the spoons to manage shaving everyday.
@6 jaws:
I’m Ashkenazi so how come I’ve been condemned to a life of chin nudity?
Weirdly enough a full beard was considered decadent and effeminate by xenophobic Romans of the late Republic and early Empire. Romans traditionally went clean-shaven, whereas those dastardly Greeks and Persians (not to mention the Celts and Gauls) tended to have full beards. The Persians in particular, who often curled, styled and perfumed their beards, came in for scorn over it. But fashions change in all things. Some time during the 2nd century AD the hitherto clean-shaven Roman Emperors started to sport beards in all their portrait busts. Nobody is quite sure why this happened, though by the late 4th century Julian the Apostate associated it with being a philosopher and proudly pagan, going so far as to write a book (the misopogon) to lambast Christian critics of his facial hair. Nobody has yet blamed the popularity of beards for the decline and fall of Rome, but it’s only a matter of time.
I hate the things personally. They’re just about the biggest turn-off of all in my eyes. So I’m hoping the fashion for them dissipates soon. Batrachian horror would be better!
Mary Beard excepted, naturally!
So the white menz are now accepting at least Jewish, Arab and South Asians as their brethren. Good start I guess.
Hmmmm… I realize this is anecdotal but I suspect my experience isn’t that far outside of the norm. When I joined OKCupid, I found that the overwhelming majority of the women who are good matches for me (feminists and non-religious) either preferred beards or, at worst, had no opinion of them.
So in the interest of making myself more marketable, I started growing out a beard (not a difficult thing for me with my Jewish roots).
Kind of the opposite occurred with US Presidents:
All were clean-shaven until MANLY Abraham Lincoln sported his mustacheless beard (the Quaker Special?). Andrew Johnson and his smooth chin was an obvious throwback and only got the office due to a fluke of circumstances.
Chester Arthur, with his wimpy sideburns, killed the manly beard dead, although it flickered back one last time for Benjamin Harrison’s administration.
We’ve since suffered for ONE HUNDRED THREE YEARS of clean-shaven shame. Note: Richard Milhous Nixon was a sweaty, stubbly dudebro, however his semi-permanent 5-o’clock shadow doesn’t count as facial hair, as his official portrait has been whitewashed by the Illuminati.
Nuff said.
Jim Phynn, #35
I see what you did there.
Setting aside the fact that I’m not so sure about the veracity about the beards claim, I can pretty much guarantee that if they had been told the opposite: that white people had more trouble growing beards, they would see it as 100% proof that whites had “evolved further from apes” than other groups.
Racists are incredibly silly. They’re like angrier, scarier versions of creationists.
Matt encourages men to grow well-kept beards as a sign of being anti-feminist, as feminists hate them.
Seems like a bit of overgeneralization.
@39 Iankoro
That’s pretty much a given. As for the veracity, it’s dubious at best and only reaches that mark because it might be true that “early racial science” is being quoted accurately and the wrongness isn’t new. The whole idea that people from China can’t grow beards is downright hilarious though. We’re talking about a culture where a famous book based on historical events has a character with a beard so magnificent that when someone wants to get in his good graces he gives him a massive protective beard bag so that said magnificent beard isn’t too exposed to the elements in winter. We’re talking about a culture with depiction after depiction of bearded emperors, generals, scholars, etc – all of these go way back, and the whole hypothesis that this is because of white ancestors is ludicrous. Meanwhile the evidence on the other side is what, an immigrant community that was relatively clean shaven back in the days of “early racial science”?
I think their logic goes something like this:
I’m hoping otherwise-non-douches won’t actively collaborate with this/seize on as a lazy metonym the beard thing the way they did the hats.
On the alleged trilby / fedora hat problem: Wear a pink one, or some other “girly” colour. Other options might be a feather, badge, patch, or do a Archchancellor Ridcully and stick a crossbow in the headband.
(Admittedly, I’m guessing, but I rather doubt the eejits would want to be seen in something that isn’t . The crossbow might be misinterpreted, at least until you point it at them…)
I’m not giving up on the fedora. I have a really nice Panama fedora that I wear in the summer, and I’m not letting these bastards stop me. Most of the world is unaware of their attempts to lay claim to it anyway. Plus, the true distinguishing feature of an MRA/PUA asshole is not the hat, it’s the arsehole wearing it.
Also, they usually wear bad hats which with scuzzy outfits, whereas I wear a resplendent hat with a nice linen suit or jacket. They can bite me.
I really don’t think a pink fedora would go with my linen suit.
Your “resplendent hat with a nice linen suit or jacket” is the same concept as a “pink or other ‘girly’ colour hat”, implemented differently. The point is it’s not a “bad hat with a scuzzy outfit” whilst still being a hat / overall-style you are comfortable with.
Also, you’re probably not sitting in your parent’s basement angry at the world.
@11
Tatto artist: Well, there you go, big as I could make it. SWJ on your forehead!
FossilFishy: Say WHAT????
Jake @31:
<sarcasm> You’re obviously racially impure, with too much Cossack in your Ashkenazim ancestry. I bet you don’t even know the full chorus of “Tradition”! Ancestry matters more than what you do with it, after all: That’s what makes for leadership among the dudebros. </sarcasm>
I’ll be 50 years old next month and I haven’t seen my chin since 1985. That, and my wife has threatened bodily harm if I shave it off and force her to endure stubble burns. The MRA assholes aren’t claiming this beard.
@cartomancer #32:
The Emperor Hadrian was a philhellene. It was only one aspect of the remarkable influence he had upon the Empire in the 2nd century and beyond.
Rich Woods, #50
Hadrian’s philhellenic proclivities are certainly connected to changing Roman attitudes to the symbolism of beards and masculinity, but precisely how is difficult to pin down. Many of his successors were anything but urbane, philhellenic culture vultures, but the Imperial image retained the beard from reign to reign. It is hard to imagine a Commodus or a Septimius Severus or a Caracalla exulting in the beard as a symbol of philosophical refinement. In fact, another theory would have it that the beard was a throwback to a much earlier Roman model of masculine power – that of early Republican heroes like Scipio Barbatus and the progenitors of the Ahenobarbus family. Imperial portrait busts were a peculiar form of artistic PR, and it seems unlikely that there would be such a change in presentation if there weren’t a deeper cultural shift to go with it among the Roman populace generally.
By which, of course, we mean the populace of the whole Empire, given that Imperial images were disseminated across its territories by this stage. What I think might be happening here is the gradual de-Romanisation of Imperial attitudes towards the beard and the adoption of not specifically Greek but more universally mediterranean attitudes. The Severans were of Libyan origin, after all, Macrinus was a Berber, Trajan hailed from Spain and by the end of the second century all adult males in the Empire were considered citizens – it seems to be linked to globalization. It is tempting to think that beard = Greek, clean shaven = Roman, but ethnicity and outlook were much more complicated than that, as they still are today.
Horseshite. Slaves were never considered citizens nor, as far as I know, persons (in a legal sense). I think you are missing a “free” there.
Ancient Egyptians usually went clean-shaven, but there’s one statue from circa 2,600 BCE of a Prince named Rahotep that always amuses me. His neat little mo is so 20th century. CE, I mean.
Beards come in, beards go out. You can’t explain that.
blf, #52
Yes, of course. I did indeed forget that. All free adult males (and free adult females, sort of, since they did have a kind of Roman citizenship with various caveats and exceptions). Though with the usual Roman custom of manumitting most slaves after a period of service an awful lot of the servile population did evntually get their citizenship and feed into free society.
My son, if we let him, would have a full beard. He is fourteen. By internet nazi standards of reasoning, he is therefore at least equal to them in maturity.
I have to say that it does seem unfair that younger son has been gifted with facial-hair growth before he is even remotely capable of shaving. Also, Sasquatchian legs. We could probably make a sweater if we sheared him.
Not too sure what this says about my other half: I’ve seen more impressive beards on old bread-crusts. After a week it looks like he needs to wash his face.
On the one hand, he’s as white as a flounder’s belly, and what beard there is is copper (with blond hair, just for maximum Aryan-ness). On the other hand, he does have a possibly *gasp* Jewish surname, so presumably his whiteness doesn’t really count.
On the manliness front, he’s a feminist. I guess it could be that I’ve unconsciously gelded him somehow.
But don’t North Africans Middle Easterners and South Asians generally have the most beard growth as well as general hairiness? I thought they hated these guys as much as “negroes” and “chinamen”?