Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey on The manly men.

The Republicans are the party of male fragility.

You can see it in their strutting attempts to equate gun ownership with machismo and their constant braggadocio about their willingness to engage in violence (the coup/civil war fantasies, the declarations of “here are my guns, just try to come take them!”).

You can see it in their attempts to fetishize Donald Trump, of all people, as a pillar of masculinity: those bizarre Ben Garrison cartoons depicting Trump as some muscular Adonis exist for a reason. There’s really nothing wrong with having a president who is elderly and overweight and not a prime physical specimen, but they can’t accept the possibility that they might respect and even worship anyone who isn’t a paragon of manhood, lest it reflect on their own masculinity, so they like to reimagine Trump as just such a paragon.

You can see it in their sneering attempts to dismiss Democrats or left-leaning men as not being wholly men: they’re “soy boys” or “metrosexuals,” or they eat arugula or don’t know the right way to order a cheesesteak or whatever.

So yeah, on any given issue, people like Tucker Carlson will attempt to frame the Republican position as the “manly” one, whether it makes any sense or not. Being afraid of getting a potentially deadly virus? That’s for losers and cucks. Being afraid that 75 Afghan refugees will overwhelm Montana, or of going to a coffee shop in broad daylight without packing an AR-15? That’s manly man stuff.

Ergo, soldiers who refuse vaccination must be the manliest soldiers of them all. The ones who get vaccinated aren’t REAL soldiers. Probably more of those wimpy “woke” soldiers who lost Afghanistan.