The following is a comment by /u/oncefa2 on the /r/malementalhealth sub that I thought deserved it's own post here.

Friendly reminder that experts in men's psychology are decidedly against the concept of toxic masculinity (and the model of "masculinity as a deficit" in general). For one thing, the theory has never been supported by experimental evidence. But more importantly, it causes people to associate men and masculinity with the word toxic. Which is obviously bad for people's mental health and plays into existing negative stereotypes against men.

There's even one documented case of a suicide by an 11 year old boy after being exposed to this kind of stuff on Tiktok (not to mention all the threads we get here about this).

Labeling theory, which is a well supported concept in psychology, all but predicts this outcome. And there is already concrete evidence of this happening (see below):

Negative attitudes towards masculinity have become widely accepted in mainstream public discourse in recent years. In contrast to the “women are wonderful” effect (Eagly et al. 1991), contemporary men are subject to a “men are toxic” effect. The notion of “toxic masculinity” has emerged and has even gained widespread credence despite the lack of any empirical testing (see chapter on masculinity by Seager and Barry). In general terms it appears as if attitudes to men have been based on generalisations made from the most damaged and extreme individual males.

...

There is a serious risk arising from using terms such as “toxic masculinity”. Unlike “male depression”, which helps identify a set of symptoms that can be alleviated with therapy, the term “toxic masculinity” has no clinical value. In fact it is an example of another cognitive distortion called labelling (Yurica et al. 2005). Negative labelling and terminology usually have a negative impact, including self-fulfilling prophecies and alienation of the groups who are being labelled. We wouldn’t use the term “toxic” to describe any other human demographic. Such a term would be unthinkable with reference to age, disability, ethnicity or religion. The same principle of respect must surely apply to the male gender. It is likely therefore that developing a more realistic and positive narrative about masculinity in our culture will be a good thing for everyone.

(Original emphasis)

From:

Seager, M., & Barry, J. A. (2019). Cognitive distortion in thinking about gender issues: Gamma bias and the gender distortion matrix. In The Palgrave handbook of male psychology and mental health (pp. 87-104). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-04384-1_5

Doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-04384-1_5

(An excerpt from a published college level textbook about male psychology and mental health).

And before you say the theory is different and the problem is that people misunderstand it, keep in mind that the original version of toxic masculinity from the men's movement framed toxic masculinity as the "feminization" and "subjugation" of men in society. Which, among other things, caused them to be overly chivalric and subordinate to women in order to get laid. A pattern of behaviors that many people would call "white knights" (or "nice guys") in today's world. And they had a related concept called "deep masculinity" that largely referred to what we'd call "traditional masculinity" today.

Which is essentially opposite of how most people use the term.

This is what the "theory" actually is:

"Male energy" has been diluted through modern social institutions such as the feminist movement, industrialization, and separation of fathers from family life through working outside the home... men need to recover a pre-industrial conception of masculinity through spiritual camaraderie with other men in male-only gatherings.

From Iron John: A Book About Men, authored by one of the original people who coined the concept of toxic masculinity.

I am not traditionally masculine myself so I don't really have anything in this debate. But it's hard to not see the irony here. Many of the ideas wrapped up in the toxic masculinity narrative are the exact things the men's movement would have originally referred to as being toxic, and as causing toxicity. And the people (or patterns of behavior) that we call toxic today are actually pretty close to the masculine ideal that they called "deep masculinity". Which very specifically referred to an older, traditional form of masculinity that is being lost in the modern "feminized" world we live in today. Something that I guarantee doesn't jive with the dogma that many of these people are trying to spread.

All men are masculine because they are men. There is not a bad masculinity or a good masculinity. And before we try to shame people for being the wrong type of man, we should consider if that's just another form of gender norm enforcement wrapped up in different clothing.

Telling someone that they're not a "real" man isn't much different from telling someone that they're a "toxic" man. Don't become the very thing you hate in your effort to destroy it.

We can be better than that. And it shouldn't take people with PhD's authoring studies about this to convince everyone. It should be self-evident to anyone who sits down and honestly thinks about this for a second.