I was inspired to write this article because of a video by Xidnaf titled I'm a Brony Because Feminism. The reason being that we both have pretty much the same perception towards My Little Pony and its value to us but we hold pretty much the opposite beliefs and experiences that got us to that point. If it weren't for the fact that it relates to MLP, I would have disregarded it as leftist slop I refuse to watch but I'm going to take this opportunity to discuss what's mentioned in the video relating it my own experiences and explain the stupidity of one aspect of leftist philosophy and somehow relate it to MLP.
One of the main topics discussed revolves around gender norms and identity relating it to the leftist concepts of these topics. Xidnaf discusses his experience around these gender norms and how becoming a brony helped him to get rid of traits of toxic masculinity as he implies later, giving him courage to embrace more non-masculine-perceived things. My experience up to being a brony and during has been the opposite and forms a sort of dichotomy with this perception of toxic masculinity.
I know people hate leftist phrases like "toxic masculinity" and I do too but we are going to go with it as it's the language used in the video. Now, the toxic masculinity discussed is relating to men's societal expectations of hiding emotions and the perceived need to exuberate the essence of masculinity which can be in aggressive or hostile manners.
My experience of societal expectations has not been of this but quite the opposite. In terms of emotions, I am inherently unemotional. Throughout my life, people have tried to get me to express emotion that I simply do not feel. I refuse to fake emotions too. The societal expectations cast towards me throughout my life has been to express emotions but this expectation and people treating me as if there's something wrong with me is antithetical to the experience of being treated as having something wrong with you for expressing emotions as a male like mentioned in the video.
Now regarding toxic masculinity encouraging aggression in men, I have experienced the exact opposite throughout my entire life and this anti-aggression idea that so many people and institutions have tried to push onto me is a core reason for my perhaps extreme beliefs towards things like self-defense and decentralisation of violence. Throughout my childhood, I wanted to be simply left alone but I never was. I was constantly harassed and eventually I started to just use violence to stop it as it was genuinely the only thing that would stop it. There was absolutely nothing else that helped. Teachers didn't help, the school administration didn't help, parents didn't help, and police just mocked me. Because I was violent due to this being the only thing that worked, I kept getting in more and more trouble as the consequences compounded. I was punished pretty much my entire sapient childhood and my entire adolescence for doing the only thing that stopped the constant bullshit I went through. Society tried so hard to reinforce the idea that I should be passive, obedient and just take the abuse and obey my masters because I was just a subhuman child to them. This is in extreme opposition to the idea that society reinforces an idea of aggression in males and encourages it as a form of toxic masculinity.
Now how does this relate to My Little Pony? Well, in regards to emotional inability, My Little Pony has been one of the few things that can actually make me feel emotions. The people basically begging me to stop being an apathetic emotionless schizoid couldn't do anything while a girly TV show actually gave me joy and in the case of fanworks, negative emotion that isn't just emptiness.
Now in terms of aggression, My Little Pony to me was this world opposite of what I was experiencing. In real life, there was no friendship. There was no joy. There was only obedience and punishment for disobedience. I didn't want to be violent but it was literally my only option. My Little Pony though showed a world where there was actual joy to be had; friendship was real and not some fake bullshit where anyone is willing to abandon you because they're insecure about their reputation or disregard you because they view you as a psychotic lunatic. Compound my infamy with being a sperg, friendship was inconceivable, only existing in pony land.
Even in MLP there are still scenarios where violence is used in defense showing that MLP still understood that there were situations when fighting is necessary. This further instilled perfection of the ponies in my perception.
Let's discuss bronies and gender now. So obviously bronies are gonna be disillusioned when it comes to stuff like gender roles. However, when you become disillusioned to gender roles, you often learn of further concepts when it comes to gender. A common thing among leftist ideology is the social constructionism aspect towards gender. This is where I believe leftist philosophy becomes hypocritical towards itself.
In leftist philosophy, gender is separated from biological sex as a social construct, a concept I have already discussed in Memes, Constructs, Illusions and briefly explain my opinions towards gender constructionism. But the problem with leftist thinking is that they don't actually get rid of arbitrary constructs but instead further absurdise them.
Most of us should know about the people that identify themselves as non-binary genders even sometimes freely changing genders whenever. People like this prove that their own thinking is hypocritical and absurd. If gender as separated from biological sex is a social construct and not really real, it would make sense to reject the concept of gender entirely but these people choose to instead strengthen the construct they aimed to dismantle. This is why I don't respect people's gender outside of binary identities, because the very existence of non-binary gender is a paradox of its own philosophy.
You see this with "identity" in general in leftist-thinking people. They often obsess over identities that are themselves constructs existing to destroy constructs.
Relating to bronies, because bronies are prone to going down this way of thinking due to the whole girly show gender roles are dumb thing, I see this way of thinking very frequently among bronies and to the point it may be the majority belief among bronies. I have also noticed bronies evolve in their average demeanors across the years. They have evolved from 4Chan shitposters and slowly but surely became more and more leftist as time went on and starting around the time Gen 5 came out, I really noticed just how much average brony demeanor has shifted. Obviously there are non-leftist bronies and plenty of them but even then, the shifting is much more towards leftist philosophies.
Now back to my problems with these leftist beliefs. Because leftist ideology is in a large part composed of this hypocritical constructionism, I don't ascribe to it. I have noticed myself through my own discoveries a nihilistic worldview. Problems of social constructs are simply philosophically remedied by nihilistic beliefs but I very rarely see nihilistic philosophies discussed unless I actively search for it. For example, I have stated that it would actually make more sense to reject gender entirely if it's just a social construct but I don't think I've ever seen someone discuss this. I have noticed among pretty much all political and philosophical thinking a fear of nihilism. People disregard nihilism as cringe or liken it to non-related crap like defeatism or pessimism when nihilism is simply the rejection of a value of something.
People can't seem to cope with nihilistic thought processes even with mundane things which is possibly why leftism is filled with such absurd and hypocritical logic and is the most popular political philosophy that critiques constructs.
Nihilism towards many things would actually result in more freedom. Take marriage for example. In regards to gay marriage, most political philosophies that are for freedom say that the government should allow gay marriage and that it should be legally recognized as a real marriage. However, in a nihilistic belief towards the matter of gay marriage, I believe we should reject any value the government applies to the matter whether they accept it as legally valid marriage or not. Even the concept of marriage itself could be rejected since it is after all a social construct. But because this kind of nihilism is very rare, we are stuck playing bullshit games of legalization and acceptance.
Now how does this relate to MLP? Well it doesn't really but I can tell you that because I don't care about normativity, this has benefitted me being a brony since I simply reject and don't care about the gender stuff relating to liking the pony show. And whereas being a brony is representative of Xidnaf's equivalent of feminism empowering him through dismantling the expectations of masculinity, being a brony is sort of representative of my nihilism liberating me from the confines of arbitrary value.
Further on, it is discussed in the video the negative perceptions towards bronies showing the edgier side of them. It is explained in the video how the majority of bronies aren't like that and how these critiques are false but I have a different response: So what? Towards both sides, people critiquing bronies for being racists, homophobes, nazis, sexualizers of a kids' cartoon, whatever and also bronies trying to defend themselves against accusations of bronies being like this. So what? I like a show about little cute friendship horses. On that fact alone, I am a degenerate to many people. If me saying we shouldn't censor Aryanne or liking really edgy and dark pony stuff makes me a horrible dirty brony in someone's eyes, I don't care. We've already gone down a similar route of disregarding people's perception of us in regards to gender expectations like previously discussed so we can do it again with this crap. And it's discussed how bronies had a "fuck you" mentality of men posting girly ponies to piss people off; it's in our blood to say "fuck you" and troll even if it takes an Aryanne.
Really, the reason I was inspired to write this is the things Xidnaf had to say at the end. In these regards, we are extremely similar, he brings up that being a brony to him is a like a nationality or ethnicity or religion or whatever. I feel the exact same way. I don't hold any value in any aspects of my inherent traits like nationality and crap due to my individualistic beliefs making me feel nothing towards inherent stuff I have no control over but I do feel a connection towards being a brony. I have always considered bronies as my people. I chose to be a brony. I chose to partake in this culture. Stuff like nationality or race, you are compelled through propaganda and a forced collectivism to be "patriotic" or "prideful" towards something you are either born as or are inherently. Being a brony is something I genuinely feel a connection to and as said in my Brony Ramblings article, I'm sure I will die a brony.
Xidnaf also talks about pony music in which he says pretty much the same things I said in my Brony Ramblings article.
Another thing stated that I have always believed is that bronies have a much stronger comradery than other groups of people. We all had to break through the barrier of enjoying a little girls' TV show. We all know how we are perceived negatively by many. We partake in the same macro-culture. The bond between bronies is strong. We do have a solidarity and we are in this together.
Written 2024-9-1 Published 2024-10-1