Opinion By Megan MacKenzie Sat at 1:00pm
Growing up in Moose Jaw, Canada, it never occurred to me that some people didn’t know what truck nuts were.
For all you city-slickers, truck nuts (or truck nutz, depending on your preferred provider) are crafted testicles designed to hang from the back of your truck. You’re welcome.
What’s the link between Australia’s politicians, truck nuts and big bush fires?
Photo Trucknuts
The answer to this question might be the key to overcoming the global climate crisis, so buckle up.
Trucks and fast cars have long been understood as symbols of wealth and masculinity. Truck nuts just added a ball-shaped exclamation point to this statement.
But driving a big truck has been used to convey more than manhood.
There’s a history of people coal rollin’ or retro-fitting trucks so they burn more diesel and produce heavy plumes of black smoke.
Consuming fuel and producing smoke are a way to both signal hyper-masculinity and an open distain for environmental concerns. A smoky middle finger to environmentalists, if you will.
There are entire Instagram pages dedicated to coal rollin’, with some drivers making a sport out of blasting smoke at bikers, protesters, Asian-made cars (called “rice-burners”), unsuspecting female pedestrians and hybrid cars.
Here’s where truck nuts and coal rollin’ become helpful in understanding why (mostly white male) political leaders like Trump, ScoMo and Albo champion fossil fuel extraction even as the country literally burns and in the face of overwhelming science regarding the climate crisis.
Put simply, fragile masculinity might be the biggest obstacle to real climate action. Masculinity has been associated with fossil fuel consumption, extraction, and burning for decades.
Who are our biggest climate deniers?
Cara Daggett uses the concept of “petro-masculinity” to describe the ways that fossil fuel extraction has historically been used to fuel western development and provide world leaders with power and a sense of manliness.
Leaving fossil fuels in the ground symbolises a loss of power and money. Some male leaders see real climate action as a threat to power and to profit, through extraction and exploitation of the environment.
Male resistance to climate action has bipartisan support. Any hope that the Labor party might offer climate policy alternatives the Liberals went up in smoke in the past few months as Anthony Albanese announced he doesn’t want to phase out coal.
Researchers in Norway also found what they call a “cool dude effect” when it comes to climate change.
Photo ‘I don’t believe in global warming’ art.
They show that white conservative men, especially those that think they understand the science of climate change, are the biggest climate deniers and the least likely to be moved by further research.
There are multiple examples of ‘cool climate dudes’ and petro-masculinity, including “right wingers…going crazy about meat”, by embracing diets called “the carnivore” or “the caveman” at the same time that vegans are belittled as “soyboys” and “beta males”.
Animal agriculture is the second largest contributor to human-made greenhouse gas emissions and researchers says plant-based diets are best for the environment and for our health.
Yet, a recent Twitter poll had 45 per cent men report that their biggest barrier to a vegan diet was social stigma.
In her incredible article, Victoria Galiardo-Silver concludes, “fragile masculinity says meat is manly”.
This researcher is united in the conclusion that white conservative men have been the ones with the most power in western countries and they have the most to lose by efforts to change long standing practices and structures, including those associated with the environment.
We must shift the way we see world leaders responding to the climate crisis. They are not ill-informed or ignorant, they are just fragile and anxious. We can help them recover.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
From the article: “For all you city-slickers, truck nuts (or truck nutz, depending on your preferred provider) are crafted testicles designed to hang from the back of your truck.”
Well, you learn something new every day here on WUWT. Truck nuts? Never heard of them before today. And I’m not a city-slicker.
You say truck nuts are designed to hang from the back of your truck? Why? What Earthly purpose do they serve?
That’s about as ignorant as having air-ride on your car and lowering the back end so far down that your tailpipes throw sparks on the road.
Yeah, if I see a truck like that with truck nuts I would certainly reflect on the intelligence of someone who would think that is a good idea. I would have a lot of questions.
Fortunately, we don’t have any characters with a truck nut fetish like that around here so I don’t have to shake my head in amazement at such antics.
Some people are nuts! 🙂
“You say truck nuts are designed to hang from the back of your truck? Why? What Earthly purpose do they serve?”
Successors to fox tails?
Yeah, I can just see a guy sitting a little higher in his truck because he has Truck Nuts hanging from his bumper. He’s probably eager for a good reaction from bystanders. Poor, sad, lonely fellow, searching for a way to be loved.
We all want to be loved, at least those of us who are sane, but I don’t think Truck Nuts are the vehicle. They might be counterproductive. What girl would want to have anything to do with a moron that hung Truck Nuts from his bumper?
“What girl would want to have anything to do with a moron that hung Truck Nuts from his bumper?”
The mudflap girl?
I hope Megan doesn’t receive payment for this BS. This belongs in the bottom of a bird cage.
Good thing birds can’t read.
Go to the original article. The writer is a Prof. of Gender and War at the U. of Sidney.
“… Leaving fossil fuels in the ground symbolises a loss of power and money …”.
Are you paying attention David Middleton?
What is missing from this post is what role the author actually holds.
She is Megan MacKenzie: Professor of Gender and War at the University of Sydney.
I kid you not.
Make of that what you will.
Sex: male and female. Gender: physical and mental (e.g. sexual orientation) sex-correlated attributes, masculine and feminine, respectively. War, including: abortion fields, catastrophic anthropogenic immigration reform (CAIR), regime changes. Social justice-mongering, including: abortion fields, CAIR, elective regime changes, etc.
She needs to get a life, though that would be difficult considering she has shut out half of the world’s population. How can she ‘label’ men with all these negative attributes when she is incapable of having a normal conversation with them?
Men are not the enemy Megan. Where does a ‘woman’ with views such as mine fit into her world? What ‘label’ would she apply to me. Has it not occurred to her that women equally disagree with the whole Climate Change scam, and that would be because even the laymen amongst us take the time to look at the whole picture. And yes I said ‘layman’, and everyone here knows what I mean, I don’t have to scramble to find a gender specific term.
”Professor of Gender and War”
No comment necessary…
Modern Universities are a total sc@m.
The higher education bubble will pop one day, and I can’t wait.
“Forget cost and gigawatts — lets solve climate by turning toxic white men into soy boys”
http://joannenova.com.au/2019/12/forget-cost-and-gigawatts-lets-solve-climate-by-turning-toxic-white-men-into-soy-boys/
“In her incredible article…..”
Quite so.
So, 45% of men who are on twitter and respond to a tweet on Veganism don’t want to be run over by the twitter mob or food police “say” they don’t go Vegan because of social pressure.
That proves fragile masculinity beyond a doubt. (Yeah, right.)
I wonder if Megan has tracked all the Vegan Influencers out there who are suddenly discovering that, to be healthy, they have to give up Veganism.
Is it perhaps a case of most women emote, and most men after about 30 think.
Sadly only when the lights and with it industry, stop working, will a degree of sanity return to the Western countries.
While I would not go as far as saying that its all a Chinese plot, certainly they have gained by the Wets “”Fairy tale “”
Our big business with their desire to kill any compertition does not help the deniers.
MJE VK5ELL
Yet, a recent Twitter poll had 45 per cent men report that their biggest barrier to a vegan diet was social stigma.
Rubbish. The biggest barrier to a vegan diet is that meat is delicious, and very nutritious.
And absent artificial supplements, meat is necessary for normal brain function.
Comparison
https://www.redpowermagazine.com/forums/topic/119434-the-cattle-thread/page/8/?tab=comments#comment-1363731
Doesn’t mention the price differential or who’s got their oar in production of same
Leftists are the by far the most racist, sexist, and generally divisive group of a significant size in the developed nations on this earth. They are so into sexual symbolism because it is a way to attack heterosexual white males. If it’s not truck nuts and climate change, it’s describing firearms as phallic symbols. I really don’t believe that to those leftists with a few functioning brain cells think they’re really props for a fragile white male masculinity as they claim but it’s just a handy juvenile way to try and attack heterosexual white males. A gender and sex which is the focus of the leftists ire because they are viewed as the primary obstacle to everyone coming together and singing Kumbaya and living in harmony in their socialist dreams. And so are an excuse for all the unhappiness and dissatisfaction in their lives. And no this heterosexual white male has no truck nuts nor has any intention of buying a pair.
Diversity (i.e. color judgment), including racial quotas, affirmative discrimination, sex chauvinism, denial of individual dignity, anti-nativism, and exclusion breeds adversity. It’s doctrine of the Pro-Choice, selective, opportunistic, politically congruent religion.
Ms Mackenzie has sure swallowed this global warming and of course has to blame white older males .
Surely that would be a racist statement if it concerned any other part of society .
The statement that I want to take issue with this woman is that she said that animal farming is the second largest contributor of human based greenhouse emissions .
This statement shows that this woman is just parroting what some one else has told her .
Farmed animals are carbon neutral as all forage that they consume has absorbed CO2 from the air .
A small amount of methane is belched as the animals are digesting their food .
This methane is broken down in the upper atmosphere into CO2 and water vapour in between 8 and 10 years The whole process is a cycle and not one atom of carbon or one additional molecule of CO2 or CH4 is added to the atmosphere .
Introducing biogenic methane emissions was done without any scientific scrutiny at the Kyoto Accord .
This is the biggest lie in a great litany of lies that are claimed to be facts that don’t stand up when the proper facts are put before people that are capable making rational decisions based on scientific facts .
Fossil fuels and limestone is all extracted from the earth where they have been locked up for millions of years
How does biogenic methane get put in with fossil fuels ?
Why do so called scientists not call this out for what it is ,a scam ,
Graham ,
Proud to be a farmer ,feeding the world with milk products and beef from New Zealand
feeding the world with milk products and beef
… complementing veggies, which assure that boys and girls develop healthy bodies and minds, without artificial supplements.
+100, and please send your comment to the NZ PM Jacinda Hardern (Sic) she needs a bit of education when it comes to climate and basic chemistry.
“overwhelming science regarding the climate crisis.”
What is this “overwhelming science?”
Feminist: noun.
A woman living in a society made safe, comfortable and prosperous, by the blood, sweat and inspiration of men…. and whining about “male privilege “.
Fragile masculinity is the kind that gives in to that nonsense.
When there is a fire, it’s more likely to be the “redneck” on the end of the hose, protecting your home and family, while the “fragile” complain over their lattes about the smell of smoke.Peter
A climate of denial, including conflation of logical domains, inference from proxies and myths, models or hypotheses in lieu of observation and testing, liberal license for assumptions/assertions, regular injections of brown matter (“fudging”), and empathetic appeals.
“They show that white conservative men, especially those that think they understand the science of climate change, are the biggest climate deniers and the least likely to be moved by further research.”
That would be the same group that gave us Democracy, Western Civilisation, Science and The Industrial Revolution – to name but a few of the sins of “white conservative men”
Perhaps, and I’m going out on a limb here, the preponderance of “white conservative men” in the perjorative “climate denier” group might be an indication that this group are better on average at discerning the truth value of both ideas and evidence.
As a good feminist she should have changed her name from the masculine Mac = son of to Nic = daughtef of. Or perhaps a gender neutral variant.
Ben Vorlich, no chance. ‘Nic’ in traditional Gaelic surnames is followed by a heriditary paternal name. It still stands for ‘daughter-of-a-bloke!’ As you probably know.
Of course, some neo-feminists await the day when IVF will provide female-female human conception (100% daughters of course, there being no male chromosomal input possible). All on the taxpayer’s tab, of course.
The technology has already been proven in mice.
They tried it with two male mice as well, but the pups died.
“Trump, ScoMo and Albo champion fossil fuel extraction even as the country literally burns and in the face of overwhelming science regarding the climate crisis. Put simply, fragile masculinity might be the biggest obstacle to real climate action”
Except that the pesky little female in me keeps wanting to look at the statistics.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/11/16/agw-issues/
I was wondering what to buy a couple of my friends who have most things any working male would want. Then I saw this article and realised, It is the perfect option for their ideal Christmas day surprise present. I haven’t checked,, if they do Truck Nutz that come as useful tail hitch covers, but I imagine they will.
Thanks WUWT and thank you Ms MacKenzie. They are going to get the biggest smile ever, as they drive down Chipping Norton High St.
“Hey “Dave” check out my ball hitch cover”!
I Googled “Buy Truck Nuts on Amazon” and got a results page with lots of links:
https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=buy+truck+nuts+on+Amazon&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
After reading this
my first thought was:
“If the Australian politicians nuts are causing big bush fires, maybe they should use a lubricant.”
Obviously, a fragile masculine mind at work.
I wish I could send her these comments: her hypothesis seems fully supported.
Cobblers. Another feminit, as Mrs Warner calls you.
Typical social justice nut. If you object to being insulted, that just proves my point.
One might think that meat-avoiding soy-boys ingesting all those estrogen-mimickers wouldn’t cause a long-term problem as they’d soon take themselves out of the gene pool (after all, male fertility is going down in a hurry as it is).
However, that could just be an excuse for more tax-funded IVF.
‘Fragile masculinity’ is actually swimming in the estrogen-mimickers of soy, while complaining about the potential estrogen-mimickers that may be found in herbicide, still yet oblivious to the increased rates of said herbicide use that would be required to feed more than seven billion people on a vegan diet.
A typical reversal of the facts, from the hard-left, masquerading as unbiased journalism.
As a beef-farmer, I can really relate* with the idea in the article above that almost half of men who are not vegan say social stigma is the main impediment… (45% via a Twitter poll, no less).
*Relate, that is, by laughing.
I urge strongly that every reader bothered by this article look up Professor MacKenzie’s work at the University of Sydney, Australia.
Seriously. It makes this article look tame.