• socsa@piefed.socialEnglish
      292·
      2 days ago

      There’s nothing wrong with having a small penis. Mine is extremely small. I am proud of my micropenis, but there’s also nothing wrong with being insecure about it.

      What is a problem is being an insufferable asshole because you are insecure about your micropenis. That’s what is cringe. I take no offense to this comic, because I am not an insufferable asshole.

      • Feyd@programming.dev
        105·
        2 days ago

        The whole narrative that people are assholes because they have a small dick is problematic in the first place.

        While the joke is ostensibly that they have a small penis therefore they have a loud car to compensate, the cultural thought process is actually the other way around; they have a loud car, therefore they must have a small penis. Meaning, having a small penis is something to be hurled as an insult when you don’t like someone. It’s basically the same thing as using “gay” as a derogatory in the 90s and should be treated as such.

        • birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          82·
          2 days ago

          I mean, I think the insult is mostly used because it’s effective; it targets their insecurities.

          I don’t think anyone really cares what size dick a guy has (as long it doesn’t hurt too terribly), it’s moreso to point out:

          You are already a guy as you know. Why then buy a big car? That screams a fragile ego.

    • iAmTheTot@sh.itjust.works
      156·
      2 days ago

      It’s not really body shaming so much as unnecessarily loud car shaming. The joke here isn’t that they are bad because they have small penises, the joke is that they are bad because they have externalized that by making a decision that affects everyone else around them.

      • Feyd@programming.dev
        194·
        2 days ago

        If the joke doesn’t work without the body shaming then the body shaming is the joke. If the joke works without the body shaming then the joke should be made without the body shaming. It’s amazing that in this day and age we’re still making small dick jokes, because I guess body shaming is fine as long as it’s targeting men.

        • dohpaz42@lemmy.worldEnglish
          82·
          2 days ago

          Disagree. The joke exists because there are people out there that do feel shame for their body, and they are trying to cover it up by overcompensating in other areas; loud cars in this particular case. That does not mean the joke itself is body shaming, but yes, body shaming in general is a basic requirement for the joke to work.

          ~In my area one could use the anecdote of trucks with tall lifts and large tires. And/Or assholes who like to roll coal.~

          • Feyd@programming.dev
            101·
            2 days ago

            The joke exists because there are people out there that do feel shame for their body,

            Yeah. Because society is body shaming them. Like in this comic. It’s baffling to me that people are so attached to their small dick jokes they’ll do these mental gymnastics to try to assert it’s not body shaming. If you want to be an asshole at least be honest and own it.

            • dohpaz42@lemmy.worldEnglish
              43·
              2 days ago

              Society, yes. This joke, no.

              I applaud your ideal of trying to call out body shaming. However, in my opinion, I feel you’re projecting your beliefs where — in this case — they don’t actually fit. Your energy would be better suited in actual cases of body shaming, not how people react to perceived body shaming.

              • Feyd@programming.dev
                42·
                2 days ago

                There’s really nothing else to say here. Body shaming men is still body shaming, no matter what indirections occur in the joke or whatever mental gymnastics you do to try to launder it.

                • couldhavebeenyou@lemmy.zip
                  01·
                  2 days ago

                  You know reading your discussion I´m personally torn a bit in both ways.

                  Like, I kinda get your crusade against bodyshaming and how it´s righteous to call it out. And maybe I personally don´t think about it enough and the “GaY!”-joke was certainly an important part of my repertoire in my teens.

                  But on the other side these kind of jokes are also grounded in the fact that we´re not just a bunch of immaterial higher spirits meeting eachother in the aether - we´re also still a bunch of monkeys driven by physical needs and hormones, and all the righteous thinking in the world isn´t going to be able to erase that.

                  We can sit smoking over a glass of wine and berate how it´s oh so fundamentally wrong that a large percentage of the male monkeys goes ooga booga when a girl with big bad tiddies enters the bar, but that doesn´t suddenly makes it so that that´s not the reality of the world anymore.

                  And the joke here isn´t that haha this dude has a small penis. The joke is that the monkey inside his mind makes him act irrationally to try and make up for his self-perceived lack of manliness.

                  The logical counter to that is that he only perceives it in that way because of a social construct, which we can work together to break down, which is what you´re trying to do. Like how girls shouldn´t be taught that they shouldn´t have ambitions.

                  But the difference here is that you want to fight the monkeys that go “look at Urg, he got small penis!” but you lump them together and mistake them with the higher spirits, smoking over a glass of wine, that gaze over the entire group of monkeys and comment on the situation.

                  Statistically, more of the girl monkeys are going to look for penises on the center or right of the bell curve. This makes it harder for the boy monkeys on the left to score/find love, which in turn makes a percentage of them try to act extra manly to compensate. And that´s funny behaviour.

                  The spark that made me want to add my longer thoughts here was remembering part of the movie Boogie Nights (hope you know it but tldw: comedy about the porn industry in the ´70s): there´s a character who works as a technician thay´s nicknamed Tiny, because yeah. He´s living in a world where big dicks are admired and valued (because in the real world they make the monkeys go ooga booga more than the small dicks).

                  And even though this character, the other characters and us as viewers can try to reason it away all we want with all the power of our hearts on how it shouldn´t matter… We can´t. We can´t because it nags (or perhaps itches is a better word).

                  It nags because it´s part of reality that the monkeys are going to prefer the biggest baddest dicks, and Tiny´s body puts him down on the ladder and there´s nothing he can do about it.

                  I think it´s a great addition in this movie because it kinda encompasses this discussion. It´s very dramatic. It points out the flipside of the glorification of big dicks and the negative effect on Tiny is amplified to the extreme in the social context of the porn industry.

                  And that exact itch is something no argument for righteousness about bodyshaming can ever make to go away. Because it´s part of humanity.