WHOOSH!
That, I imagine, was the sound of the point passing swiftly above the head of whoever made the response to this meme.
See, hard as this may be to believe, not everything is about "gender roles" or "muh patriarchy." Some things might be about, oh, I don't know, the appropriation of a rural identifier commonly worn by backwoods working class men by an urban elite which does not understand the significance of said identifier, but seeks to emulate it so as to remove the power of it as a symbol from that class.
Now if you're not familier with this concept, it's probably because you didn't read a lot of Marxist history, which primarily deals, as you might expect, with class struggle, power relationships between classes, and, yes, gender and race. You don't have to be a socialist to be a Marxist historian - I consider myself one, and I am a libertarian - but you do have to understand that gender, race, and class, the big three themes of this style of history, are important and relevant.
That being the case, you'd think the left (and most Marxist theorists are leftists; paging Mr. Foner) would LOVE a meme that calls out the hypocrisy and cultural appropriation that hipsters commit. But the new left didn't. They made it about literal beards. Because that's what they do.
See, this meme isn't REALLY about beards. It's not. It's about self-sufficiency as a way of life disappearing and being replaced by helpless urbanites who ACT like they know more than you, but don't. It's why your average hipster will turn his nose up at Coors Light but not know how to brew, wheras a real beer enthusiast will drink any beer, even a bad one, and be conversant in it, because he knows that different people like different things, and Coors, although not a great tasting or complex product, fufills the role of a cheap beer for people who like beer but don't want to pay a lot for it. It's a utilitarian beer. It works well for what it is. Do I like it? No, not especially. Do I think it's good? Nah. Will I drink it? Sure. I like beer. I'll try any beer. And I know enough about beer to understand why Coors exists. I don't NEED to turn my nose up at it.
Hipsters do, because they don't know anything about beer or brewing. Their modus operandi is essentially to look informed without BEING informed. If you grew up, as some people did, in a rural area, where you learned to DO things, and self sufficiency is a part of your identity as a rural person, someone who clearly DOESN'T know how to do things but acts like they do will piss you off. That's what this meme is about. Women can be, and are, self sufficient too, and they should be. Everyone should be. It's not about beards.
And there's the history to consider, too. Self-sufficiency is historically something Americans pride themselves on. The backwoods settler is integral to the American way of life and our national mythos. Take hipsters on booze again: specifically rum. I'm a huge fan of rum. Yes, I like the taste, but I also like the image. When a hipster sips a craft rum and feels superior and enlightened for doing it, because it's a CRAFT rum, he forgets that rum is the drink of pirates, sailors, smugglers, and outlaws. It's a drink for the common man of the Western Hemisphere, a robust drink for a robust man (or yes, woman) and a symbol not of civilization and the intelligentsia, but of its antipode: of being wild and independent, and making your own rules while disregarding those set by others. One of our founding fathers was a rum smuggler, for fuck's sake.
Don't get me wrong, I love craft rum. But again, this isn't about rum. Or beards. It's about an aesthetic and a way of life being appropriated by an element of society which, fundamentally, does not understand that aesthetic. Again, you would expect the left to be all over this. The left used to stand, after all, for the common man. But now, and this, I think is the problem, they don't really stand for anything.
It's a fine thing to have a tolerant society. The left's problem these days isn't that they're too tolerant. It's that they're trying too hard. Most people, myself included, are super ok with gays and transgenders, and we absolutely think women should have an equal say in society. These are just accepted values now. That's good. But it seems as though it's left the, well, left, with nowhere to go, and in an attempt to find their next great crusade, they've crossed a line into insanity.
You can't say being fat is unhealthy, or else you're "body shaming," despite the fact that being fat is unhealthy. You can't say you're proud of your body if you work out and eat right, because that was "just your genetics" and the work you put into maintaining your health is "privilege." (More sinister is the fact that if someone who is overweight is trying to fix it, you aren't allowed to be proud of them or encourage them or support them in it, for the same stated reasons.)
You can't like guns now or you're sexist and conservative and playing into male gender norms, despite the fact that women are the fastest growing demographic among gun owners and CCW holders and that feminism dictates that women be capable of defending themselves and their rights and that leftists and women have been arming themselves with firearms for centuries to fight oppression.
You can't share your opinions anymore if it might make someone uncomfortable, because that's invading their "safe space" and "triggering" them, despite the fact that exposure to multiple viewpoints and analysis of those viewpoints is the cornerstone of academia and, in fact, academia cannot continue without it.
You can't be head of a college anymore because someone drew a swastika out of poop on a bathroom wall.
Guys, come on. Can we just come out and say it? This is fucking stupid.
People wonder how people can get behind Donald Trump. Hell, I wonder that every day. But at the same time, if what you've offered them instead is an intellectual cage, it probably feels GOOD to say something and not have people call you racist. And from there, you might move on to saying ACTUALLY racist things. To paraphrase another meme: when everything is racist, nothing is.
The right has its own problems, and it could be the subject for an entire book let alone a simple blog post. But the left's primary and glaring problem is a distinct lack of the willingness to THINK. They are playing with ideas that they are not equipped to understand. Race, gender, identity, and class are major themes and subjects and they REQUIRE thought. They require discussion. If you disagree with something, you have to articulate why. You can't just throw around terms like "antiquated gender norms" and think you're qualified to discuss these things now, because what you actually mean is "beards as a symbol of masculinity and the pairing of them with self sufficiency implies that self sufficiency is a uniquely male trait, and is therefore sexist, since women can also be self sufficient." That's a REAL ARGUMENT and required you to think about WHY you thought the original meme was sexist. And that's what parsing political issues requires: thought.
The problem is that part of that thought requires you to understand issues like race, gender, class, and identity further than simply crying sexism or racism everywhere. You may be right. The picture may be sexist. But now that you know WHY it's sexist, you also have to look deeper into why it got posted in the first place, and now you're looking at a discussion about cultural appropriation and class conflict and oh my, wouldn't it just be easier to post a meme and say I "fixed" it so I can get a thousand likes and feel good about myself without putting 6 years into it?
It would be easier, but it wouldn't be helpful. Not if your goal is to actually fix the very real problems we as a country face.
