You don’t have to wait very long to be called a name on the internet. Trolls, stans, fangirls, snowflakes and truthers – we started popping people who annoy us into pigeonholes way back when dial-up was king and every internet session was preceded by a “Will you get off the sodding phone and clear the line? I want to go on Celebdaq!”

The thing with most nicknames we dole out, or labels we assign, is that they tend to say more about us than the people we’re describing. How we see people and the terms we use to dismiss or devalue them is much more revelatory than their behaviour – it’s the biggest tell of all about what kind of person you must be. The insult has to be something you would hate to be called yourself, the worst thing you could think of – it exposes your own doubts and fears.

And there’s no internet jibe more telling about who’s saying it than one of the most popular in recent years: "cuck".

The real meaning of 'cuck'

No, I haven’t misspelled “fuck” or “chuck” – although you get plenty of people calling you that on the internet depending on your shtick. Cuck has its roots in cuckold, an old-fashioned term for a man whose wife is having sex with another man. Because everything is porn eventually, this soon became an X-rated genre of its own with a (usually white) guy watching impassively while his wife has sex with another guy, who's often, but not always, black.

Porn with racial tension that plays to a white man's insecurities about his "possessions" being taken from him? You can see why cuck is the favoured insult of the racist, internet-literate far-right, can’t you?

'Cuck' as alt-right insult

Ah, the alt-right – the gleaming, bloodless rebrand of old-school hatred like misogyny, racism, fascism, sexism, homophobia and beyond. They’re the self-appointed opponents of the so-called “metropolitan liberal elite” we hear about almost as much. We know the drill, we’ve seen this played out across the political scene in one way or another since time immemorial; the only difference is the volume of what each is saying and who’s listening. But it’s really come to the fore in recent years, thanks to an increasingly opinion-reliant media, the never-ending two-way thirst of social media and the apparent death of truth.

Brexit and the rise of Donald Trump have been the jewels in a crown of wilful misunderstanding, dog-whistle politics, toxic views masquerading as "genuine concerns", of scare tactics, of a feeling that those who who were once in control – usually through nefarious or unjust means, or a luck of the draw they’ve exploited – are no longer.

Read more: Milo Yiannopoulos is teaching the internet how to hate

The wave of equality or fairness over the last few decades hasn't quite been the tsunami the right complain of, but this little trickle has been enough for them, and they want to stem the flow. After what, in the grand scheme of things, has been a mere few seconds of not being the loudest voice in the room, they suddenly want to make their voice heard, and to do that, they need to get you to stop talking.

To hotheaded white guys, a 'cuck' is the worst thing in the world

Don’t agree things have “gone too far”? Don’t want to fall to line? They wheel out the only thing that would make them feel pain to hear. They don’t care about being called sexist – how can they be? They have a wife! They care not for claims they’re racist – hey they have a lot of black friends, OK? (They don’t.) And homophobia? Nonsense – they don’t care that you do as long as it’s not rammed down your throats. But question the influence of their masculinity, and suggest perhaps the world does not belong to them, that it’s time for the spoiled brat to share his sweeties with the rest of the class, and he’ll react. Like the bully in the playground, he’ll turn his own insecurities back on you. “That’s not me! That’s you! You’re a cuck!” To them, to be a cuck is the worst thing in the world for a hotheaded white guy. It means being a witness to the doing-over of the one they love the most by the one they fear most, a black man in control – or at least that's how it works in their head.

When someone calls you a cuck they expose their own fears. They’re telling you that you’re allowing something to happen that will compromise your own power, that your possessions will be taken from you. That accuse you of bending over for other liberals – an obsession with passive anal sex is another thread running through most far-right insults, so you don’t even need to be cuckolded directly to be accused of being dangerously submissive; your own ass can betray you.

But, like all bullies, what they really mean is that you’re chipping away at their own power and challenging their supremacy. They’re claiming you’re weak and easily led, that you’re a joke or a coward – but really they’re worried your liberal thinking shines a light on their own weaknesses.

The far-right are obsessed with anal sex

So what kind of guy is actually calling you a cuck? Well, this person could also be a woman, of course, as plenty do buy into this idea, even though the movement itself seems to have scant regard for them, but your average cuck-caller will tick a few of the following boxes.

1) Believes that immigrants are coming over here and taking our jobs. When pressed to say which jobs in particular are being swallowed up non-nationals, he will stutter and say he “read in the Mail about a Polish teacher in Kettering once, shut up you cuck".

2) Talks a lot about “taking back control” for people just like him. He isn’t sure who has control right now that isn’t actually like him – given that most politicians are male and white – or what he would do with this control once he gets it, but if you don’t want control you are a cuck.

3) Is embittered about a horrible female boss he had years ago. That he’s had 10 make bosses who were equally mean to him is of no consequence – they were man and that’s just how it goes when men are being men. Big manly men behaving like power-hungry psychos in the workplace is absolutely fine, but a woman asking wearily if you can please reply to her email because the deadline is almost up is a controlling bitch who doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

4) Goes on dates and thinks the woman talks too much, despite the fact he has given nothing but monosyllabic answers to her questions and has asked none of his own. After the thirteenth awkward silence, the woman gives up trying to fill dead air and says she’s ordering a taxi. The man will then ask if he can come home with her.

5) Has a firmly anti-immigration stance which temporarily evaporates when he needs batteries for his children’s toys on Christmas Day and the only place open is the corner shop – owned by a Pakistani couple who know his name though he’s never bothered to ask theirs.

6) Has never told anyone in his family he loves them because it’s “sissy and sentimental” but cries openly when his favourite team loses.

Take heart when someone tries to shut you down and call you a cuck. While it’s frustrating that they won’t hear you and are, usually, encouraging other people just like them to pile on to you to make you feel inadequate or emasculated, you aren’t ever going to change their minds and it would be a waste of time to try.

Feel empowered, perhaps, that you’ve instilled enough fear into them to get them to even bother dismissing you. They’re frightened of equality, they’re frightened of progress, they’re frightened of other cultures, they’re frightened of change, they’re frightened of not being heard. They’re frightened of you. Who’s the coward now?

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