• Mzuark
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    11 months ago

    By contrast, real masculinity is thus a stereotypical successful, authoritative, well off man who probably wears a suit and definitely isnt gay.

    The fetishization of Patrick Bateman from American Psycho factors into this a lot. People see an insane man who kills women and other men over minor slights as some alpha male who is just so manly he can do whatever he wants.

    • vexikron@lemmy.zip
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      11 months ago

      Yeah, I’ll be honest, I still get uh /triggered/ by people who are somehow so brainwashed, ignorant, malignant or all of those that do not understand that American Psycho is satire.

      It still astonishes me, on a personal level, that most reactionaries seem to be totally incapable of understanding humor and satire as anything beyond basically fart jokes and simply being cruel to and/or mocking people.

      Like Bateman literally murders a homeless man who just asks him for help, thanking him profusely while explaining that he lost his job. Apparently to reactionaries, Bateman is thus a double badass: 1) He kills a useless leech on society 2) His whole fucking job is mergers and acquisitions, which basically always /cause/ mass layoffs.

      But he wont kill a kitten when the ATM tells him to feed him one.

      A feral kitten is thus deserving of more sympathy from Bateman than a not even feral human. Likely entirely because of outward appearances: kittens are adorable and homeless people are dirty.

      The whole monologue with Bateman peeling off a face mask while he realizes there is nothing under his superficiality… other than cruelty, apparently, and an incredible drive for increasing his personal social standing… all of this is apparently, to reactionaries, is just a man being a badass winner.