Saturday, July 02, 2022

Those Incel Proud Boys

I just read that "Proud Boy" is rancher slang for a “proud cut” gelding with incomplete castration, i.e. the vet left all or part of a testicle behind, which continues to produce testosterone and can cause unruly and aggressive behavior.

The fellow who created the Proud Boys said he coined the term "as a joke" based on a convoluted story about a Disney song (Proud of Your Boy) that was written for Disney's 1992 film adaptation of Aladdin but was left out, and which only showed up in the 2011 musical adaptation.

It's a strange story -- an extremist homophobic and racist group named themselves after an obscure song sung in a rather swishy Disney-prince theatre production?

I suspect a different origin story: That Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes heard someone talking about unbranded "Maverick" horses (a term that the far-right was throwing around a lot back them) and someone told him "Proud Boy" was a term for a type of particularly unruly maverick with a lot of testosterone coursing through its veins.  McInnes embraced the term for his wanna be tough guy organization before be learned of the gelding part of the tale -- and so he quickly Googled around to come up with another plausible origin story, and thus the Disney tale was born.   

2 comments:

Karen Carroll said...

I've also heard from my husband that grew up with horses that also 'proud cut' is a term for a late cutting of a male horse after it's sexually mature and already has an asshole stallion attitude and it does not correct it.

Zhang Ke Wei said...

I'm no rancher or vet, but your husband's explanation of proud cut and subsequent "proud boy" is no doubt accurate.