So here's my perspective on the subject.

Despite my newer account I've been around for many year. I just change accounts regularly to avoid and mitigate any doxxing attempts.

So I have some ideas on the history of "Toxic Masculinity"

It first started around 2014 with Emma Watson's He for She speech.

Basically, men's rights was gaining traction and that was feminism's answer to men looking for a social justice cause. It starts with how "the patriarchy hurts men too" and ends with therefore men should help women and feminism defeat the patriarchy.

The goal here was transparent, society was being harmful to men, feminism had no intention of reducing that harm, so wanted to convince men that the cause of that harm was "patriarchy" which in turn is the thing that privileges men and oppresses women and therefore men should work towards redressing female oppression and eliminate male privilege and that that would somehow fix society's harm upon men.

From my perspective, that tactic was a complete failure.

The next step was the creation of MensLib and its underlying philosophy somewhere areound 2016 (creation date of subreddit was june 2015). The general logic behind it was as follows: men's misogyny and unchecked privilege sometimes backfired on themselves. Men needed to eliminate all behavior that might have a whiff of misogyny or empowerment in order to solve their problems.

This was almost blatant victim blaming. But many people fell for it and I do think it took a few months at least for the broader MRA community to get wise to the tactic and the gaslighting happening. Plenty of memes talking about how it is ok for men to cry were poping up on /r/mensrights around that time. (Not that it isn't OK, but it needs to be understood that the social cost for crying is much greater for men than it is for women and the odds of receiving the help needed is much greater for women than men).

I'm not sure if they started popularizing the term "toxic masculinity" at that time or if they waited longer. But the message was becoming clear: there is something wrong with many men's behavior and it needs to change.

This culminated in the one-two punch of the Gilette toxic masculinity Ad and the APA "harmful traditional masculinity" guidance publication. Both were very heavily publicized and were released days apart.

The grassroots backlash was harsh, but the propaganda machine was out in full force and the backlash never really took off.

Meanwhile the MensLib philosophy was pivoting. Ceding yet another little bit of ground. "Toxic Masculinity" today isn't about how harmful and toxic much of men behavior is. It's about the harmful effects of society's expectations on men.

This makes MensLib philosophy much more difficult to argue against. While at the same time MensLib philosophy is still able to divert efforts from materially helping men through social outreach programs (men's shelters are not needed, only anti "toxic masculinity" propaganda is needed), changes to legislation and institutions.

If you watch my history I've recently tried to argue against a Vaush clone. It is impossible to corner them. I can't tell if they genuinely believe in this propaganda or if they're being a disingenuous shill.

So my questions here are:

What do we do now?

Also, Am I insane? Have I gone off the deep end. To me there is a very clear timeline of efforts to divert MRAs efforts with year over year refinement of their techniques. But maybe that's what it looks like when a left wing community slowly come to realize that the group they've been maligning is in reality oppressed and in need of help? I find it difficult to believe.

They've been toning down their message (from, "don't even think about men's issues that much just help women" -> "to men's issues are because men are horrible" -> "men's issues are because society is telling men to behave badly"). Are they coming to the end of their rope and we'll soon have genuine change to address men's issues? Should we be trying to get one step ahead and watch for the next pivot? Or is the combination of all three tactics (along with the alt-rights takeover) enough to completely dilute the efforts of the MRA movement?

Also, how can I deal with this IRL? In one of my particularly left leaning friends group, one member has started regularly talking about toxic masculinity and the fragile male ego, with vague support from other members of the group. What do I do to put an end to this? Should I even put an end to this? "Toxic Masculinity"'s latest incarnation is legitimately not objectively anti-male. Many of societies expectations on men are harmful to men, and the discussion should be moved to which social expectations are actually harmful and how to address that and also pivot into, social expectations aren't the only things harming men: there are laws and regulations and lacking social services. Maybe to stop the "toxic masculinity" terminology is only a distraction.

I don't know. Just curious about what you guys have to say about it.