Do you know the origins of that meme? Are you sure you’re okay with repeating it yourself, even if it’s just meant as a joke?
Do you know the origins of that meme? Are you sure you’re okay with repeating it yourself, even if it’s just meant as a joke?
Resonosity@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 days ago
I thought I had already explained my idea of its origination, but according to Know Your Meme, the “soy” reference started around 2017 when information was hitting the mainstream about how soy contains phytoestrogens (isoflavones) [likely due to the rise in veganism at the time and people pushing for soy-based protein alternatives to meat] and people started to speculate (ignorantly) that consuming more soy makes people more feminine (but particularly more masculine). This may be true, but current it’s plausible due to a lack of sufficient evidence.
Know Your Meme then go on to explain how the term “soy” gets ascribed to a meme, “Soyjack”, and how his effeminate male persona gets compared to the ultimate masculine male persona “Chad”.
I take this meme to mostly refer to how some people in the world are changing their worldviews and behaviors to disform with the traditional patriarchy and order. People are upgrading their morality, whether that means abstaining or advocating for not consuming animals for food, or championing equity and minority rights like women’s, or touting the reality of the climate crisis and how we need to abandon fossil fuels in favor of clean energy.
This is in comparison to an older, narrower point of view that aims to regress worldviews and behaviors to a time when humanity dominated all other species on Earth (since we’re obviously better), neither women nor minorities had societal or individual powers or rights, or coal, natural gas, and oil are the best forms of energy because of how much they’ve contributed to humanity’s advancement.
People who subscribe to a worldview like the latter routinely would call people with the former worldview “soy”.
I am fine using that term myself only towards regressives that abandon their worldviews or fail to practice their beliefs out of cowardice or a lack of conviction specifically because those people claim superiority over progressives. I’d use the term on people who would call others out for being more feminine (i.e. showing compassion, talking things out before forcing people to do things, etc.) but then show those same characteristics themselves, often without them recognizing their hypocrisy.
So, I called Microsoft soy in this case not because they enjoyed relatively progressive policies on human rights for example, but because they regressed on those beliefs by foresaking them and firing one of their employees who acted fully within the policy framework Microsoft themselves had created.
We should not settle with only one side of the societal spectrum name-calling and bullying the other for how they live. All ways of life are acceptable, so long as they don’t impede other’s. Tolerance is not a paradox. It is earned, in trust, as a social contract. If people prove to (routinely) breach that contract, then they deserve no respect in my eyes.
I have no issue with calling people or groups or companies or countries soy in that way.