Not GP, but: I think it's a useful phrase, though it's often overloaded/misapplied/used vaguely.
Some (generally recognized as) non-toxic stereotypically masculine traits include having confidence, a can-do attitude, being protective, trying to be helpful, being intellectual, being silly, leading people towards common goals. Even anger in moderation is not inherently toxic (we all feel it). These things can all be terrible in excess, of course, so I think sometimes people fairly call an excess of these things toxic (even if the trait itself is great in moderation). It's also bad if you are only allowed to embody a specific set of traits and behaviors; clearly men should not be limited to these traits (though the societal pressures to conform to traits like these are strong and are often what are referred to as "toxic masculinity" in reasonable discourse). Likewise, women should clearly be seen as equally capable of possessing these stereotypically masculine traits.
I think a lot of the use of "toxic masculinity" is in reference to the fact that men are often strongly discouraged, explicitly and implicitly, from doing things that are seen as non-masculine. This causes behavior that's harmful to oneself and others, like taking out all your emotions as anger, or feeling like violence is the most powerful and respected way to make an impact. In more benign forms, it can come from an excess of an otherwise good trait, like going from confident to cocky. Many people will use the term vaguely/badly, but I think the usage I just described is useful.
I think the most important point is that "toxic masculinity" (in its useful and precise form) is very different from saying "men are toxic". It's closer to "men face toxic pressure due to people's gender expectations that cause them to suffer and sometimes hurt others as well". It's about the societal pressure to conform to a narrow and inadequate spectrum of behaviors. It's like men are expected to span a 3D emotional space with only 1 emotional "basis vector" since the other 2 are effeminate. The 1 basis vector is not itself "toxic"; it's the denial of the other 2 vectors.
Wow! This is such an awesome comment! I know some non hacker news people in the gender/feminism community who asked me to copy/send your comment to them via email.
Toxic masculinity does discuss a facet of our society that should absolutely be discussed, but I think part of the issue with the term is that its phrasing is unproductively antagonistic. It's like talking about neurotic femininity or violent blacks. While there is something real and interesting to be to discussed about those real social issues, the phrasing frames the conversation in an unhelpful and mildly accusatory manner that is not conducive to a productive conversation.
I know what you mean, and I agree that the term's construction can easily lend itself to unproductive and divisive rhetoric, though I think it's a bit more complicated.
I do think "toxic masculinity" is very different from a phrase like "violent blacks" because it specifies a behavioral trait/set of cultural mores (masculinity) over which people have a significant degree of control versus an intrinsic trait (like maleness or blackness) over which people have no control whatsoever. There's also not much of a history of men being violently repressed or disenfranchised purely for being men, so the potential antagonistic aspects of a phrase like "toxic masculinity" are not instantly amplified by association/context in the same way as your other examples. Also, "toxic" is not tied to a specific harmful stereotype; this leaves one open to dissect which aspects of stereotypical masculinity are toxic, rather than concluding a priori that men are "violent" or "neurotic" like in the other two examples. I think "toxic feminity" could similarly, in good faith, be used constructively in ways that "neurotic femininity" cannot.
That said, the fact that a good number of people use "toxic masculinity" in a vague and unproductively confrontational way has given it a bad connotation to many; this sort of usage is certainly enabled by the brevity of the term. I think a lot of people (I suspect the majority) don't make the distinctions I made in my previous comment, and it undermines their efforts to use the term or concept of "toxic masculinity" in a truly helpful way. I've seen many examples of this: right-aligned people trying to discredit feminists as misandrist; feminists unempathetically erasing these distinctions; angry people in Twitter comment sections complaining about toxic masculinity; people who actually know better lazily using it as jargon on public forums where it can be misinterpreted (I'm sometimes guilty of this); and so on.
The term is also problematic in its omitted connotations; one of these omitted connotations is the interconnectedness of traditional feminine gender roles with toxic masculine traits. Many people ignore how these roles interact with and reinforce each other.
For example, where I live (NYC), it's unclear what type of masculinity is desirable to straight women. Most straight women I know are having a hard time finding guys they want to date because they've been trained to be attracted to some traits of toxic masculinity. But since they live in NYC in 2019, they also have learned recently to be wary of those same traits. Most of them are aware of this weird cognitive dissonance, but they can't figure out how to resolve it. Many of the straight men I know genuinely want to avoid toxic stereotypical behavior, and they're concerned about things like coming on strong/harassing women, but because many of the women they want to date still expect men to do more of the pursuing, it's ambiguous how precisely they should behave to make their dates feel desired but not cornered.
There are many less benign examples; I've seen plenty of women who mock boys and men for being too emotional, too prissy, too pretty, or too physically weak. It's not just men who define manhood in an overly-restrictive way. And these same women have to deal with the negative aspects of feminine gender conditioning. It's a cyclical thing, and I think the only healthy way I've seen to deal with it is to think of everybody as both perpetrator and victim. You can use "toxic masculinity" as a shorthand for the component of this approach related to masculine stereotypes, or you can use it in a divisive way that is unhelpful.
The fundamental issue is that "toxic masculinity" is non-technical jargon; it has a highly compressed meaning, but without a technical framework to limit its interpretation, it's also prone to heavy semantic drift through vagueness, malice, laziness, or stupidity. I think that someone choosing an alternative to "toxic masculinity" will have to deal with jargon's fundamental tradeoff between brevity and specificity. I won't be surprised if such an improved term (or at least and attempt at such) comes about at some point, as often happens with non-technical jargon, but picking such a term effectively is a deep problem rooted in the weakness and strength of natural language's inherent vagueness.
The phrase doesn't mean that masculinity itself toxic. It means that our culture's expectations for men hurt them and others. For example, the masculine ideal we hold men to is an expectation of stoic emotionlessness and self-sufficiency. As a result, many men feel a pressure to push through emotional difficulties, and feel a deep shame when they have trouble doing so. Some might even feel a deeper shame for seeking out help when they can't do it on their own, so they avoid involving loved ones and professionals that could help them. Men commit suicide nearly 4x as much as women do.
Toxic expectations for masculine traits permeate throughout society, too. A lack of sensitivity and tenderness is one such expectation, along with aggressive sexual promiscuity. This might lead some to view men as questionable caregivers, especially to children. Some men feel a pressure to avoid careers involving children, like teaching, which robs children of positive male role models. One can even argue that it robs children of fathers when courts prefer giving custody of children to their mothers.
I disagree with any fad phrase (emerged in a year or so and suddenly used by everyone, the media, etc) to explain deep rooted human psychology, society, etc.
It just leads to a fashionable, shallow, understanding of any subject it concerns. And just as it come into existence, it will go out of fashion in a decade or so. We have had such terms in every decade, from all sides of the political spectrum.
Disagreeing with anything you deem a "fad phrase" has literally zero more intellectual rigor than those who follow them. You're using the same metric just backwards.
If I say "X is wrong" it doesn't mean I advocate -X ("the same metric just backwards"). I just say "don't use X". How about that?
Notice also how I didn't say I "Disagree with anything said using what I deem a fad phrase".
As I wrote I just disagree with the fad phrases themselves. One can write something right and clever even while using a fad phrase.
But they would have done better to write their arguments/thinking without resorting to fad phrases (is my point).
There's still the ages old, definition of what you want to say, in simple words (or more nuanced ones), without using pre-made, overplayed so that every source attaches their own irrelevant nuances, played to death, and ill-defined, framings.
That doesn’t make much sense. It’s like saying regarding with skepticism any market mania, hype, or any arbitrary claim without evidence, is the same as getting caught up in the hype. There are thousands of possible fads you can participate in. Being a skeptic and demanding proof is not equivalent to abrogating all standards.
>That is not skepticism, that's denial of anything remotely popular because of its popularity, not because of what it entails or puts forward.
Generally speaking, it's healthy (and good skepticism) to be suspect of "anything remotely popular because of its popularity". Not rejecting it outright, but being suspect of it. New things need to prove themselves. How is this in any way controversial?
That said, I didn't advocate rejecting "anything remotely popular". I said I reject "fad phrases", not "all new phrases" or "all popular phrases".
Fad: "a practice or interest followed for a time with exaggerated zeal"
That is, small terms that emerge out of nothing, are widely adopted from different sides for different purposes, are overloaded with different meanings, and after making their rounds, go out of fashion. And I specifically added the qualification that I'm mostly rejecting those supposed to address deep psychological/societal issues.
The dismissal of "what it entails or puts forward" is already present in my usage of "fad". I don't think those terms entail or put forward something significant, and they usually do more to confuse the issues.
(I've been old enough to see several such -- if I had been in the 60s and 70s I've had even more of those, now regarded as dead weight).
It's abouut as rigorously defined as most things in psychology and about as easy to replicate in a lab as most things in psychology. It labels repression of emotions as a bad thing, but you can find a half dozen studies showing people who ignore traumatic events have a faster and healthier recovery than those that don't - and then turn around and find a half dozen studies showing the opposite.
Its main value is as a political tool to try to change people's behavior you disagree with, simply because you don't like it. When it stops being useful, it will be dropped for the next fad.
> It labels repression of emotions as a bad thing, but you can find a half dozen studies showing people who ignore traumatic events have a faster and healthier recovery than those that don'
Genuinely interested in these studies, I didn't know they existed. Can you provide a reference?
So what do you think about "Tree shaking" as a Javascript minification strategy? The phrase ticks each of your boxes for a fad phrase, but I wouldn't consider it to be one.
Literally my first line was "I disagree with any fad phrase (...) to explain deep rooted human psychology, society, etc."
Whereas "tree shaking" is a technical term, used in a precise context to describe a well defined process. Not really different than "compiling", "garbage collection", and so on. And even as a technical term, it's not used by everyone, all the media, etc, heck, not even all the technical media, or all the JS media. You seldom see it.
If we wanted to drop the "to explain deep rooted human psychology, society" part, there are similar fads in the IT domain, but "tree-shaking" is not it.
literally all of them? toxic masculinity is not about the traits themselves being inherently bad, it's about them being elevated to the point of excluding other things, and the unhealthy ways this manifests in society.
> toxic masculinity is not about the traits themselves being inherently bad, it's about them being elevated to the point of excluding other things, and the unhealthy ways this manifests in society.
To me it seems as simplistic as speaking about female hysteria (which was the case in the medical profession for centuries, ever since the Greeks).
Thinking in terms of “female traits” that are taken to an extreme. That kind of thinking itself says women should be afraid to give in too much into “their nature”, because it’s just a societal construct where they are encouraged to be, say, irrational, catty, moody, whatever. (They have to question who they act and “be more logical like men” — a social conservative like Jesse Peterson would still advocate that today.)
(And frankly I believe that ADD is the new Hysteria, but for kids.)
Does that sound like a productive way to conduct public discourse and discuss issues among adults?
The concept "toxic masculinity" is just the opposite of "female hysteria", actually. Hysteria historically was basically always been used as a crutch by the medical profession as "there's something wrong with this woman due to their inherent female-ness". Literally, "women are crazy because they have uteruses".
Contrast with toxic masculinity, which focuses on external, societal pressures which force/encourage men to behave in ways that are harmful to themselves and others, rejecting the idea that men are "just like that".
(As for ADD being the hysteria being the new hysteria, I can totally see the resemblance)
Also, the website for your source is run by a fundamentalist, anti-LGBT hate group [1], so you might want to consider picking a different one.
Right, that was lazy, I try to pick less biased websites in general to illustrate points. Although to be honest, I myself prefer to read both sides of an issue from biases sources, as they are more diligent. See my reply to the sibling comment for that.
Yeah, ADD is the new hysteria in my opinion, although you can also split hairs and say it’s different because kids really DO bounce around and have more energy, vs saying all women have anxiety or whatever. It’s close enough, in my mind, to discuss the general attitude by analogy.
Whether it’s something intrinsic to the person, or something that society makes them do, is an interesting question. But every time I object, it is because is framed in words that evoke the former, that something is “inherent” in kids and women and men, such as “masculinity”, and it can go too far.
That is not so much a critique of society, at least because of the choice of words, as say if we said:
Schools are the reason more kids experience ADD (sit down and shut up for 10 hours a day, learn to work for corporations)
Conditions women were kept in were the reason for their anxiety (eg yellow wallpaper short story)
How society uses men to do physically demanding and risky jobs / go to war / make the first move leads them to act the way they act.
Instead, it says “boys were taught masculine trait X, and that leads to wife battering” but that’s a short hop skip and jump from that to “it leads to sexist behavior” to “it leads to microaggressions” and “it leads to unwanted advances in the form of a compliment or asking someone out who you barely know based on their beauty alone”. In short, it can be weaponized to further eliminate what has until now been considered “normal masculine” behavior, because gender dymorphism does actually exist, etc. So many men are threatened and many women feel also that “all the real men” have disappeared. But really, it’s because of all the uncertainty about whether traditional gender roles (I’m talking about a man making the first move or holding open a door or planning a date, say) are desirable or not.
Anyway, I just feel when it comes to ADD, Autism, Depression, Hysteria, Toxic Masculinity etc. I’d rather focus 90% of my efforts on what society is doing NOW, and not use words like “bitchy woman” or “toxic masculinity” and excuse it by saying you’re just talking about what was done to boys in the past, because a lot of time the solutions lie in the present. And society can make it a LOT easier for people without putting them in these situations NOW. With changing society, NOT just medicating or doing psychiatric interventions.
Obese? Consider what society is doing, systemically, subsidizing sugar, putting antibiotics in factory farm animals.
Depressed? Consider the family structure, living alone, social ties, physically meeting, exercise regimen and societal expectations.
ADHD? Consider whether the public school system has become a glorified daycare because BOTH parents have to work full days at corporations just to pay the rent.
And so on. The answer is to change society, not blame the individual. I am a progressive in the sense of technology! But I am more of a social conservative in that I think the individual is constantly being blamed to keep up with the latest plan for normal behavior, when in reality society can improve. I would even be so bold as to take it to race as well:
Black targeted more by police?
Blaming individuals: “Recognize your white privilege”
Blaming society: “Useless drug war incarcerates Blacks disproportionately, Contraception availability leads to premarital sex instead of early marriages and more single parent homes, Failing schools face no market discipline because parents have no vouchers or choice, police are unaccountable”
Solutions: School vouchers, UBI, abolish minimum wage, end drug war, body cameras for all cops
Notice that all these solutions are race/gender neutral and may work far better!! But we suck all the political capital out of the room when we start talking about this new kind of bashing the individual, which is sometimes derogatorily referred to as “the regressive left” or “cultural marxism”.
I wouldn't necessarily ascribe too much journalistic merit regarding your source link; it's quite clearly a biased source by design.
A cursory glance at their home page reveals as much, and they spell it out clearly themselves.
From their FAQ [1]:
>What is OneNewsNow.com and who operates this site?OneNewsNow.com is the website of the American Family News Network (AFN), a national Christian news service. Our goal is to present the day's news from a biblical perspective. We not only feature the latest breaking stories from across the United States and around the world, but also news of the challenges facing Christians in today's society.
Sure, I just grabbed the first link I found about this fact that Gillette lost billions. Here are some more links about the same thing, with their CEO addressing it:
To be sure, there is no way to prove causation from correlation. Perhaps it was a giant coincidence in timing. But I wouldn’t say there is “NO” evidence to support the thesis that men got offended:
There is no evidence that the "best a man can get" ads pushing back against sexism and bullying contributed to the $8 billion figure.
Can you name a few uniquely or predominantly masculine traits which would NOT be called toxic masculinity by someone prominent?