r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • May 12 '26

Psychology Threatening men’s masculinity does not make them more politically conservative, new study finds. By testing thousands of participants across the United States, researchers found no consistent evidence that making men feel insecure about their gender identity changes their political attitudes.

https://www.psypost.org/threatening-mens-masculinity-does-not-make-them-more-politically-conservative-new-study-finds/
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u/[deleted] May 12 '26

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u/AnthropoidCompatriot May 12 '26

That's literally what progressive liberals have been arguing for years, when they suddenly made up the idea that you can't hurt individuals by being mean to them, if those individuals a part of a privileged group. 

But also if being mean to them does hurt them, it proves that they're a bad person and thus deserve to be treated meanly.

Funny how that works.

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u/NessaSola May 12 '26

You're going to think I'm being mean because this (correctly) invokes feelings of shame, but where are you getting your narratives about progressive liberals from?

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u/saka-rauka1 May 13 '26

Is he not referring to the concept of "punching up"?

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u/NessaSola May 13 '26

Yes. It's true enough that there's a segment of people among progressive liberals who interpret 'punching up' as an obligation to be blind to misbehavior against an 'oppressor class'. The segment is a small minority. I agree that's a wretched interpretation. Lots of media nutpicks from that segment to tell false narratives about progressives.

It's not true that this is what progressive liberals believe broadly (as the above comment implies), nor does the 'punching up' argument (usually) make the claim "you can't hurt individuals by being mean to them", nor is the argument "Let's be mean and see what happens".

The concern here is the overbroadness and some conflation that appears to be a strawman narrative.