They’re the two words our trolls like to hang us with the most: BETA CUCK. They definitely frequently show up in our Facebook comments. There especially, we’re considered a bunch of giant fucking BETA CUCKS by a certain kind of male respondent. And while we take issue with the term — it’s super redundant, for starters — we’ve adopted it as a badge of honor, labeling anything that’s a traditionally less-than masculine curiosity of ours as our cuck content (or as part of our Snowflake Diaries series). Basically, we love to cuck ourselves. Here then are all the times we cucked ourselves the hardest this year.
Have You Encountered the Cuckboi?
Deputy Editor Alana Levinson kicked off our cuck beat this year with her homage to the cuckboi — a feminist fuckboi, a softboy who grew up going to communist summer camps, a cuck who likes to fuck:
“The cuckboi is a male feminist who makes fun of male feminists who publicly identify as male feminists. It’s confusing. The cuckboi tells his girlfriend he loves that she doesn’t shave her armpits, but is secretly glad she shaves her legs.”
I’m A Cuckquean Who Gets Off on Watching My Boyfriend in Bed With Other Women
Three years into their mostly monogamous relationship, Hina, a bisexual 28-year-old woman from Canada, suggested a threesome with her boyfriend. She soon discovered she enjoyed watching more than participating. Staff writer Tracy Moore interviewed Hina about how she now explores her cuckquean fetish regularly:
“Watching my partner with another woman made me really jealous. And it was actually that jealousy that was the driving factor in why I enjoyed it so much. I liked the idea that I was jealous because I’m not actually a possessive person. The whole idea that ‘if you love me, you only want to spend your life with me and have sex with me’ isn’t me. And in that moment, seeing someone who I loved and someone I do want to spend my life with, enjoying himself with someone else — it made me jealous in a way I didn’t even know I was capable of. But instead of letting it cloud my judgment and take over, I was like, Yes, I’m jealous, but this is what I enjoy most about it.”
Guys Who Rely on Their Wives to Be the Breadwinners Die Younger
Researchers found that men who earn less than their wives suffer significantly higher rates of stress-related illnesses — not to mention heart problems and diabetes — than dudes who are the primary breadwinners in their households. Assistant editor Ian Lecklitner spoke to Kristen Springer, who found similar results in 2010, to better understand why:
“Men who feel their masculinity is threatened often engage in health-harming behaviors to demonstrate their masculinity. We wanted to see if that was happening here, so we controlled for smoking, drinking and body weight; however, even when we controlled for these behaviors — as well as income, age, education, depressive symptoms and the husband’s’ childhood health — we found that men who are secondary earners for long periods of time still experience poorer physical health and are at increased risk of cardiometabolic diseases [e.g., diabetes, heart problems, high cholesterol, hypertension and stroke] and stress-related issues [e.g., back problems, chronic lung disease, psychiatric problems and stomach ulcers]. These results suggest that the stress of violating cultural expectations of masculinity is also a cause.”
The Snowflake Diaries: The Messy Perfection of Period Sex
Contributing writer — and resident cucktologist — Miles Klee outlined all the reasons why period sex is the bloody bang you’re missing out on:
“The more you have period sex, the more you notice its particular silkiness, a lubrication over and above the traditional mélange of pussy juices. If nothing else I say resonates with you, please understand that you are denying yourself this one-of-a-kind pleasure. I’m not sure if science has ever explained why period blood — which is to say “thickened endometrial cells that slough off if there isn’t a pregnancy, actual blood from arteries in the uterus, and sometimes clots” — functions so beautifully as an anti-friction substance, but the results plainly speak for themselves. KY has nothing on this magical stuff.”
‘Cuck’ Is So 2016 — Welcome to the Era of the ‘Soy Boy’
Get ready to update your political slang: According to Right Richter (a newsletter digest of right-wing troll media for people who value their sanity enough not to read that shit themselves), “soy boy” is on track to replace “cuck” as the insult of our time. It’s all fairly confusing, which is why Klee investigated whether “soy boy” is, in fact, the natural evolution of cuck:
“That anti-soy ideology seems to square with Nazi hostility toward an ill-defined ‘vegan agenda,’ which white supremacists protest in part by drinking and exalting milk, an animal product they associate with Northern European heritage due to unusually high levels of lactose tolerance in the region. (It may disappoint them to learn that this has less to do with racial identity than migration, a human habit they tend to condemn in every context.)”
The Snowflake Diaries: Screw ‘Boyfriend Jeans,’ I Wore My Girlfriend’s Jeans for a Day
We’ve all heard about so-called boyfriend jeans for women — relaxed fit jeans that look as though they’ve been borrowed from a boyfriend. But this being a men’s site, we decided to try the reverse version: The girlfriend jean. Klee donned a pair of his girlfriend’s black jeans, and the result was quite painful:
“Indeed, within an hour of sitting down to write, blood flow was all I could think about: I got pins and needles; my ass fell asleep, and my testicles throbbed. Below my hips, and where the rim of the jeans cut into my belly, everything ached as if I’d spent the night sleeping on a pull-out couch. Like any relatable human being, I love getting home and taking my pants off, but now I began to understand why for my girlfriend — and doubtless many other women — it comes as an even greater, ecstatic relief: Their jeans are an unforgiving challenge of endurance.”
The Snowflake Diaries: Bow Ties Are Chokers For Men
Contributing writer Allen Strickland Williams argued that sartorially speaking, the bow tie is basically the same thing as a choker for men:
“While the choker’s sexual implication is so obvious that it resides in the name itself, a bow tie’s message is somewhat more complex. Just like a note passed in junior high that was folded over and over and over again to hide its meaning from anyone other than for whom it was intended, the bow tie is folded, twisted, looped, swooped, stuffed through, pulled taut and painstakingly aligned.”
Man’s Never-Ending Search for an Insult to Replace ‘Pussy’
Calling another man a “pussy” is a relic of such a different era that not even our trolls will let the word leave their lips, which is why Klee examined the possible replacements for the passé label — including, of course, cuck (as well as “snowflake” and “corn cob”):
“Clearly, ‘cuck’ trades some of the misogynist flavor in ‘pussy’ for a lot more baggage: It implies that women are to be owned, dominated or stolen, and it uses female agency to diminish a man’s claims to power and control. Insults are meant to be nasty, of course, but this one stains the speaker rather than the target; it remains a tool of the trolls.”
I Had the Best Intentions to Vote for Hillary Clinton with My Daughter By My Side
Leave it to our cuck-in-chief Josh Schollmeyer to provide MEL’s cuckiest moment of the year. In a staff roundup about what we’d be willing to wait in line for, he relayed the story of attempting to vote for Hillary Clinton with his daughter in the voting booth with him. What a fucking beta cuck.
“Off the top of my head, here are a few of the things I know I’ve missed because I refuse to wait in line: A car wash last week. A full tank of gas shortly thereafter. A signed photo of Andre Dawson at the Cubs Convention (circa 2004). Numerous drinks at numerous college bars. Numerous drinks at numerous Chicago bars. Brunch. The omelette station at brunch. Many impulse buys. Any launch event of anything cool. Urinating. And most regrettably, voting for Hillary Clinton with my four-year-old daughter by my side.
“I had good intentions on that last count. We left the house about 15 minutes before early voting started at our nearest polling place — roughly a 15-minute drive, meaning we’d get there right as it opened (and seemingly before everyone else). But alas, that was one motherfucking long line. Long enough, in fact, that local TV crews were there to cover it. If memory serves, it was gonna take roughly eight hours to punch the ballot. And when you have a toddler — and no food or toys to keep them occupied — even waiting eight minutes can be an epic test of patience and grace that usually only results in a joint meltdown (me and her).
“So history be damned.
“We went to go get groceries instead. It was early, and the checkout line was nonexistent.”
