Yeah, the dying soldier trope is a traditonally male stereotype because men have traditionally been the only soldiers in front line combat in … almost all industrialized societies for hundreds of years, almost all civilized societies capable of fielding an army for all of recorded history… to the point that a depiction of a female soldier was seen as either taboo, exceptional, or intentionally provocative untill very, very recently.

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Patton Oswalts ‘pants-fitting’ joke doesn’t play off of the gender dynamics because the baseline social presumption (and literally stated premise) is that both he and the soldier are male, so there is no gender dichotomy to frame the joke as a woman contrasting themself against a man or visa versa…

… It does play off the trope of the dying soldier … because Patton is mocking himself, making himself the butt of the joke for treating himself being too fat to fit into the pants he fancies as gravely as a man facing imminent death.

Please, please note that the comparison to the dying soldier is a way of hyperbolizing comparative suffering in a way that mocks the person that is not the dying soldier.

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Why, he’s a man! He shouldn’t complain when he’s suffering at all! What a pussy!

Oh wait. She didn’t say that last part. She didn’t imply it. Cause that’s not what the joke is about. Cause the joke isn’t reliant on notions of gender roles.

The joke literally is the implied mockery via comparison to man ‘worthy’ of expressing pain, and the context of the joke is a dichotomy between the genders of the subject telling, and object of the joke.

It only works as a joke because of this unspoken implication, and the joke is that her husband’s suffering is invalid.

Without that implication, all the joke is, is:

But that silly billy was talking like a dying soldier when it was just a cold!!! Isn’t that a knee slapper.

If all the joke was, was ‘he act like one thing when he not that thing’ then no, it isn’t a good joke at all, which you yourself seem to affirm with your sarcasm.

‘He ate a red delicious apple, but he said to me, it didn’t taste like a green granny smith apple!’

This is a similarly structured ‘joke’, and you will likely note it is not funny, because it lacks any context, and is not very interesting on its own.

But if I now follow that up with:

‘…and that was how he discovered that he is colorblind.’

Now we have some additional context and implied mockery or maybe pity, and maybe this approaches being an actually funny joke.

Do you see now how jokes often rely context?

Additional information, either stated or generally assumed?

How the only part of the joke you seem to think is funny… isn’t? When it doesn’t coincide with the implication of mockery?

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The husband just has a cold! Why is he saying those things? Of course he’s going to “get better”.

You continue to just entirely disregard the validity of what I pointed out in my original post.

You… seem to think the joke hinges on this, that man is acting wildly unlike what he would be expected to act like in this situation.

So… that’s the entire problem, this comparison to expected behavior can only be made … if there is an expectation that men and women experience flus the same, and that men should generally act tougher than women.

My entire post was pointing out that men don’t have as strong immune responses to common flus, and … this apparently just is not computing in your head, so you’re disregarding it and acting like men and women experience flus the same.

You haven’t challenged this in any meaningful way, at all. You are just continuing forward with a total rejection of the core point I was making, and provided evidence for, without actually presenting an argument or counter evidence as to why or how it is invalid.

You are simply asserting ‘nuh-uh!’ and barreling forward.

You’ve encountered inconvenient information and are just knee jerk rejecting it without consideration, whilst being extremely rude in the process.

This is exactly what a braindead MAGA would do.

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Further, the kind of ‘speaking as if you are going to make it, and do your favorite thing one more time, even though the situation seems very dire’… you seem to just think this is entirely a fiction of media, and it isn’t.

There are numerous recorded historical instances of this happening on battlefields, in people’s memoirs, and with people in a hospital knowing there’s not a great liklihood they’ll survive.

You’ve obviously never served in combat or as a medic or doctor or nurse of any kind, or comforted a dying loved one in hospital.

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In conclusion:

Holy shit you are a condescending asshole.

That was the other assumption I was going to put but didn’t have time to write it appropriately.

In more “traditional” households, the man would go to work while the woman would take care of the home. When the wife got sick, the husband typically couldn’t/ wouldn’t stay home to take care of her, so she’d have to take care of herself (and usually still take care of the home too). But when the husband would get sick, he’d stay home from work, and essentially add themselves to the list of things their wife needs to take care of.

first half is iffy at best

She freaked out when we first got together and I cooked. She has literally never met or known a man that cooks.

She freaked out when we first got together and I cooked. She has literally never met or known a man that cooks.

Ok so this might sound completely unhinged but have you ever considered before that the fear of being stung by needles might have anything to do with not wanting to be stung by a penis?