Why the term ‘toxic masculinity’ needs to be retired

lightning_palm · 2021-07-10T21:07:26+00:00

I do not even consider myself as very masculine, and yet to me, it is really hurtful. It makes me feel wrong and guilty for being my gender. It makes me feel ashamed, like something is inherently wrong or inferior in me, because of the way I was born. You could say that this is just my attitude. But I do not think it is about that. It is about certain experiences I made growing up. Intuitively, I know many boys and men – not just MRAs and male advocates – feel like that, even if they would not say it out loud. It does not matter how it is used, but it is especially bad when it is used to victim blame men while simultaneously telling them to open up more.

The association with toxic and masculinity and by extension male makes me feel like something is inherently wrong with me, and if it is me who is wrong, how can I ever be a victim? It feels like a constant reminder of all the negative stereotypes associated with people of the male gender. I do not think girls and women would be happy with a constant reminder of their "toxic femininity" either, especially when it is used with them in the context of being a victim. It is not about what they are trying to say, but the term itself. It reinforces rigid gender norms, and according to labeling theory acts as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The term toxic masculinity contributes to the notion of male perpetrator-hood and by extension female victim-hood and thus directly plays into the Gamma Bias Hypothesis. I believe it is a really, really harmful term that makes it hard for boys and men to see themselves as victims, and directly goes against the notion that boys and men should open up about their emotions.

Conversely, the same "toxic masculine traits" are often celebrated in women, an effect described by the Delta Bias Hypothesis.

~~Additionally, according to~~ ~~Barry et al. 2020~~ ~~as cited by~~ ~~TheTinMenBlog~~:

~~87.9% of men and 84.6% of women agree that the term "toxic masculinity" is insulting.~~
~~88.4% of men and 82.7% of women agree that the term "toxic masculinity" has a harmful impact on boys.~~
~~7.5% of men and 9.6% of women agree that the term "toxic masculinity" helps men behave in a good way.~~

Note: I removed the study by Barry et al. 2020 because the participants were recruited via a post of the Male Psychology Network's Twitter account which was then subsequently re-shared. This gives a biased sample.

The term also conceals the effect female sexual mate selection has on male behavior and the fact that mothers, not fathers show a "boys don't cry" bias; see Hypergamy and Thomassin & Seddon (2019) – Implicit attitudes about gender and emotion are associated with mothers’ but not fathers’ emotion socialization (or the article summarizing the paper).

bunker_man · 2021-07-10T20:47:04+00:00

There is a wierd paradox of complaining that guys don't share their feelings, while also insisting they need to suck it up because the world caters to them so they must get enough attention already. It's not clear what feelings they are supposed to share if negative ones aren't allowed.

funkynotorious · 2021-07-10T19:29:20+00:00

The term toxic masculinity is the wrong term to use. How do you expect a person who doesn't want to share his feelings would feel if you tell him that's toxic masculinity. Shouldn't you be using more empathetic term for this.

Whiteliesmatter1 · 2021-07-10T21:46:30+00:00

This is exactly it. The whole concept is created by bending the frames of what is toxic and what is masculinity.

They take that aren’t necessarily toxic as toxic, for example, stoicism. Then they take things that aren’t masculine and frame them as masculine, for example, Donald Trump, whose whole personality seems to be made of failings of masculinity, became the poster boy for toxic masculinity.

infinitofluxo · 2021-07-10T20:10:05+00:00

There is no toxic masculinity, there are toxic people. Toxic people are those who act in ways that psychologically harm others, and both sexes are capable of this.

echonian · 2021-07-11T06:13:20+00:00

I disagree in principle.

It is true that masculinity is relatively subjective, but it also has many consistent aspects to it that I think are at least partially based in biology - not just culture.

Things like "men like to take more risks" are masculine, yet I would argue that "men are more likely to be aggressive" is also partially biological. Yet anyone who claimed that tendency towards aggression justifies men acting irresponsibly (boys will be boys and such) is guilty of "toxic masculinity" I believe.

Of course, in practice the phrase is consistently misused in order to mistreat men or generalize us in a way thay is harmful. But I do not believe that is the fault of the phrase, but rather is the fault of our culture as a whole. Many people think men being put down or stereotyped is okay, while women should always be given a more fair individualistic assessment. The way people take advantage of that poor ideology to mistreat others is not as relevant in my view as the ideology itself.

Oh, and I do think the phrase "toxic femininity" could have use in the same regard. If used to address women who, say, take advantage of men's protective instincts only when it suits them and basically turn that attitude into a sense of entitlement. Such behaviors are not unique to masculinity or femininity, but I think they are correlated with biology often enough that they are worth having around. Such phrasing should be used to call out those who use their biology as an excuse to behave like terrible people, or in a "toxic" way, effectively.

Edit: Upon reading some other replies here, I am open to the idea that the phrase should be discouraged as it may have become too toxic to be of use. But I think focusing on the phrase itself is not very meaningful in the grand scheme of things, as sexism and discrimination are what lead people to misuse language like this more-so that the reverse. Then again, the "reverse" situation may need more attention, and I admit I tend to be a bit biased - since I have never once in my life had any personal care for what words are used to describe me, only the intent of the person saying them.

step_aside_butch_ · 2021-07-10T22:15:55+00:00

The great Bill Burr describes it best right here

He's not wrong.

salbris · 2021-07-10T19:19:21+00:00

Has the definition slowly been changing? It was designed to describe all the different pressures on a man to act in an ideal masculine way. That seems like something we would want to continue to fight against. We should also fight any push to use the term "toxic masculinity" as a way to demonize men.

a-man-from-earth · 2021-07-10T23:30:52+00:00

/u/TheTinMenBlog made a great post about that: https://www.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/it5k0u/toxic_masculinity_as_a_term_is_toxic/

BloomingBrains · 2021-07-12T18:58:59+00:00

I think if you look at the term from a purely objective standpoint, you'll find that it does make some sense. We all know of those guys who take being "macho" wayyyy too seriously and are hyper insecure about being thought of as gay/weak/feminine to the point that they act obnoxious and do ridiculous things. Your frat boy type, basically. For example I saw a huge reddit thread where a woman was complaining her boyfriend doesn't wipe his ass because he thinks that's gay. The idea behind it is you take the standards of masculinity to a point where they become too extreme.

So under this definition, one could also apply the term to femininity as well. There are certainly ways that femininity is misused: feigned helplessness/hypergamy being excellent examples. And I argue that the term wouldn't be such a big deal if people also talked about the idea of toxic femininity and took it seriously, pointing out things both genders do that are bad instead of focusing only on the things that (some) men do wrong.

The problem is they don't, and only toxic masculinity is talked about. I'm also aware that when people use the term toxic masculinity, they aren't talking about bro culture, they're complaining that men glance at a woman's breasts or whatnot.

So the water is very muddied, and I do think think the term shouldn't be used if it isn't going to be used equally, especially when feminists aren't actually focusing on the real toxic behavior and instead using it to attack male behaviors that are harmless.

Overhazard10 · 2021-07-11T22:49:17+00:00

I personally do not like the phrase because it gets tossed around so much nearly everything men do or don't do is attributed to it.

It's the reason we don't recycle, it's the reason we don't eat vegetables, it's the reason we play violent games with high difficulty settings.

It's a catch all phrase for any male behavior, good or bad. Mostly bad. There are guys out there who beat themselves up for liking anything even vaguely traditionally male because they're worried they won't be seen as woke enough. Except the goalposts keep moving, no one is woke enough.

This is going to sound kind of crazy, but sometimes I think that progressives honestly have no idea what to do with men. They talk to us like we're stupid, throw vague platitudes and self help books at us, tell us to go to therapy, because they believe that therapy can fix anything, expect us to bootstrap our way out of patriarchy, and be happy about it the entire
goddamned time. If we don't want to do any of that, it's viewed as weakness, laziness, cowardice, or an individual moral failing. We aren't being treated like people, we're being treated like problems to be solved.

PassedPawn_ · 2021-07-10T19:19:00+00:00

The term used solely in the context of male mental health—similar to its original use in the mythopoetic men's movement—may have its merits, but seeing how it's typically being used by "progressives" today leaves much to be desired. It has just become another word to attack men.

matrixislife · 2021-07-11T06:57:34+00:00

There is no possibility of getting the term retired, there's too much invested in having it remain front and centre of the discussion.
It is in itself a very toxic concept, designedly so, so pushback against anyone using it is a valid route to go, imo ridiculing the whole idea and those who use it is quite reasonable.
You'll notice in conversation that feminists never accept the possibility that a woman might exhibit toxic femininity, despite there being plenty of traints appropriate to that.

Source_Virus · 2021-07-10T19:07:38+00:00

This

Enzi42 · 2021-07-12T14:32:44+00:00

Yes it definitely needs to be put out to pasture. I’ve said before that it’s honestly become the new “hysteria”, as in the sexist way the term was used against women. I do think Toxic Masculinity has a legitimate place and it was conceived in order to name a real problem.

But it was corrupted to mean any behavior I don’t like from a man and so has lost it’s place as a helpful term.

Comments