Much of the dialogue about "toxic, positive, negative, etc" masculinity is exhausting to me since all too often the people who discuss these concepts do not seem to have a firm grasp on what definition of masculinity they are using.

One of the most common examples is the person who thinks masculinity refers to behavior alone. You see this a lot in the 'toxic/positive' camps, where the qualities and attributes tied to the male experience are shaved down only to the actions of men - and who benefits from them.

Yet this is a reductive definition of masculinity, as well as a sexist one too. I find it both amusing and depressing that the folks who continue to prattle on about 'toxic masculinity' or 'positive masculinity' act like they're such revolutionaries when they're just repackaging the same reductive stereotypes society has always held about men. Most especially: that men are only our actions, and never our experiences!

Another one that gets to me is how some people seem to think that masculinity's toxicity is inversely correlated to how many people with vaginas are supervising a group of men at a given time. Male only spaces are routinely declared toxic by default, how can this be unless women's supervision is to toxic masculinity as penicillin is to bacterial infections?

(As a side note, if women are so tired of 'man-babies' then why are they so busy defining men as in need of their constant surveillance?)

Last but not least, it never seems to fail that whenever some man is exclaimed to be the model of 'positive masculinity' it is because he's doing something for others - usually without any ostensible expectation for reward. But if we pursue that reasoning to its logical conclusion, doesn't that basically mean a man can only be an example of positive masculinity if he has built up enough surplus wealth/time/or other assets that he can be so selfless? So that means any man who is struggling is necessarily incapable of positive masculinity.

For me personally, all of this shit reeks of insincere manipulative pandering and I reject all of it. Men's rights are under threat because we have allowed masculinity to be distorted and whittled down to whatever is most useful to society, instead of what is most meaningful to us.

In my view masculinity is simply the aggregate qualities and attributes of the collective and individual male experience(s). To insist it has either intrinsic or conditional moral value is as incoherent as declaring a volcano or a whirlpool has moral value. Masculinity is a manifestation of nature, and the more we try to impose gynocentric notions of right and wrong onto it the more we lose our self respect as well as our way.