I take little interest in men’s balls. Unlike Tucker Carlson … | Arwa Mahdawi

I'm not an expert on testicles. I'm not an amateur enthusiast, if I'm being honest. I was taken aback by the recent claims that applying IR beams to the little guys might be the key to saving men and averting the apocalypse.

The source of the claims? Fox News has a long tradition of spuriouslysourced wisdom. Tucker Carlson, one of the most popular pundits on the network, recently had Andrew McGovern, a fitness professional from Ohio, on his show to discuss how one might reverse the effects of falling testosterone. If you have a question about hormones, personal trainers are better sources than endocrinologists.

Red light therapy, also known as testicles tanning, was one of McGovern's ideas to increase testosterone. Carlson, who has spent much of the past year spreading misinformation about Covid vaccines, and recently joked about how he's unvaccinated, appeared intrigued by the idea.

Carlson's mind has been opening up recently with testosterone. The End of Men is a new documentary that is about how men aren't as tough as they used to be and don't produce as much sperm as they used to. The trailer for the documentary doesn't contain a coherent argument, just lots and lots of crotch. There is a naked man standing in front of a large flow test with a red glow around his manly bits in an incredibly Homoerotic sequence of muscly men.

Carlson's visual metaphors are inspired, but the meat of his documentary appears to be anything but. I would have more money than Musk if I had a penny for every time a highly privileged rightwing man said he was in danger. Josh Hawley, a Republican politician, lamented last year that feminists and the left want to give us a world beyond men. The evil forces forced the men to withdraw into pornography and video games. It doesn't sound like a bad deal to me.

I will give credit where it is due. Carlson's opinions on the crisis of masculinity may be trite, but I think his embrace of testicle tanning is a positive development. The man spends most of his time peddling racist and hate-filled ideas to large swathes of the US. If we can turn him into a male like Gwyneth Paltrow, we can minimize his harm. He sells tanners on his own version of Goop, which is better than peddling hate on Fox News.

I don't want to imply that people like Carlson and Hawley are off base when they complain about being in danger. The modern world is bad for men. Toxic chemicals and pollution, not gender theory, are what men need to be worried about. How do we get these rightwingers to realize that they need to be more concerned about the climate crisis than the left? It is a difficult nut to crack.