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Toxic Masculinity

MrWonka

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Want To See What Toxic Masculinity Looks Like? Watch 'The Bachelorette.'

So, I can agree with women who say that men like this are horrible people, but if women really believe that why don't they just stop dating them? They seem pretty easy to spot. I mean how much you want to bet this D-bag actually makes it pretty far along into the season of this show? Guys wouldn't behave this way if they didn't think it was successful. I guarantee you this **** bag has an easier time meeting women than a lot of better men. Instead of complaining about the existence of men like this just don't date them. Don't marry them, don't have their kids, and they will go away.

Is there such a thing as Toxic Femininity? Why or why not?
 
Personally, I think the bigger problem is anyone watching 'The Bachelorette' and walking away thinking they have accurate representation of anyone (or any group.)

In those conditions where the film crew follows this "reality" around in the form of a show it makes sense for someone to become the "Toxic Masculinity" the article goes on about, and to answer your question the 'The Bachelor' produces quite a few villains as well. Perhaps not a mirror of what we are calling Toxic Masculinity, but perhaps something we could call Toxic Femininity where some contestant ends up removed from the other girls by being overly judgmental, combative, and effectively there for their own benefit.

Besides, the show overall has a horrible success rate at producing long term relationships for whoever "wins."

Just saying these reality tv shows product conflict, otherwise it would be boring to watch them. In some cases no matter how much drama is added they are still boring to watch.
 
How strange. It's almost like a devious group of television executives purposefully chose a bunch of ****** to put on television to amuse the masses.
 
Just saying these reality tv shows product conflict, otherwise it would be boring to watch them. In some cases no matter how much drama is added they are still boring to watch.

I understand that, but that's not really the point. There is no doubt that men like this exist, and clearly women claim to hate these guys yet they are quite common and the seem to be quite successful with women. Instead of complaining about "negging" why don't they stop letting it work? It seems to me like women complain about it because they know this stuff works, but they don't want to admit it out of fear more men will start doing it. It's like the "the lady protests too much me thinks."
 
I understand that, but that's not really the point. There is no doubt that men like this exist, and clearly women claim to hate these guys yet they are quite common and the seem to be quite successful with women. Instead of complaining about "negging" why don't they stop letting it work? It seems to me like women complain about it because they know this stuff works, but they don't want to admit it out of fear more men will start doing it. It's like the "the lady protests too much me thinks."

I'm sure they do exist, both male and female. The point is these shows make an effort of ensuring we see it in the context they wants us to see it. On purpose.
 
Personally, I think the bigger problem is anyone watching 'The Bachelorette' and walking away thinking they have accurate representation of anyone (or any group.)

In those conditions where the film crew follows this "reality" around in the form of a show it makes sense for someone to become the "Toxic Masculinity" the article goes on about, and to answer your question the 'The Bachelor' produces quite a few villains as well. Perhaps not a mirror of what we are calling Toxic Masculinity, but perhaps something we could call Toxic Femininity where some contestant ends up removed from the other girls by being overly judgmental, combative, and effectively there for their own benefit.

Besides, the show overall has a horrible success rate at producing long term relationships for whoever "wins."

Just saying these reality tv shows product conflict, otherwise it would be boring to watch them. In some cases no matter how much drama is added they are still boring to watch.

Agreed. Pseudo-reality TV isn't worth the time, and is actually very far removed from reality.
 
Want To See What Toxic Masculinity Looks Like? Watch 'The Bachelorette.'

So, I can agree with women who say that men like this are horrible people, but if women really believe that why don't they just stop dating them? They seem pretty easy to spot. I mean how much you want to bet this D-bag actually makes it pretty far along into the season of this show? Guys wouldn't behave this way if they didn't think it was successful. I guarantee you this **** bag has an easier time meeting women than a lot of better men. Instead of complaining about the existence of men like this just don't date them. Don't marry them, don't have their kids, and they will go away.

Is there such a thing as Toxic Femininity? Why or why not?

You make the mistake of assuming that women want what they say they want. This is very often not true. What you call toxicity is a large part of the appeal of these guys. Nice guys finish last in part because that is not what a lot of women want, they want someone who can get their motor running, and keep it running.
 
Well, firstly, most women actually don't date guys like that these days, let alone marry them. Not younger ones, anyway. In the younger generations, those guys seem to do ok in the first couple years of adulthood when most women aren't looking for anything but some fun, and their prospects worsen considerably in the following decade.

For those women who still do wind up with men like that, it's because those women were trained from birth that being treated that way is acceptable. They are further trained that their entire concept of worth hinges on whether a man thinks they are worth anything.

While you can stamp your feet all day about how they should simply know better, the fact is that human beings are social creatures who are programmed to take in and accept messages they receive while young, and require the presence of the people who are training them to be healthy both mentally and physically, so expecting them to simply upend their entire upbringing at the snap of their fingers is kind of an absurd expectation. Plenty of women spend an awful lot of years in therapy trying to do that, and it's not a simple proposition when the heart of that training is that their feelings simply don't matter.

A lot of women still living honestly believe they just can't do any better. In some communities, women might not have any other choice if they want relationships or kids: those kinds of men might be the only kind of men there are. There are still lots of places like that in America. I've seen plenty of them.

This is considerably less true of the younger generations, but I know very few women over 50 who expect much else from men, and for every good reason: that's what most men were like. I thank dog all the time that I grew up with a better pool to pick from, in a generation where "man" and "feeling human being" aren't considered to be antonyms anymore. But then, I still know some other women my age who weren't so lucky, because some communities still haven't joined the 21st century.

Is there such a thing as toxic femininity? Yes, but predominantly to the woman herself. The stereotype of femininity is, by its very message, meant to take away any amount of power she might have over her outside life or even her concept of herself. Femininity is defined as meekness and submissiveness in that stereotype. So, naturally, the damage a woman living by that stereotype can do is rather limited, except to herself. Such women are usually pretty severely self-abusive (lots of mental illness, substance abuse, self-harm, etc). But, again, this is fortunately getting much less common than it once was.

There are other toxicities that exist in the world of women that are related to our stereotypes of the genders, but they are not exactly related to femininity, per se. The most severe as far as I can see is in the way women see each other and seek to divorce themselves from being thought of as women. The old "I only have guy friends because women suck... except me." This is a way of managing the stigma against women being able to be competent and normal human beings by divorcing oneself from it by claiming exception. "I accept society's message that women as a whole are weak/less intelligent/crazy/insert stereotype here, but I'm the outlier who's not like the others." This is still quite common, in my experience.

Stigma management is something that all marginalized people deal with at some point. Some methods are healthy, others are not. This particular unhealthy method seems to be especially common with women. I think that, because women are such a huge percentage of the population, and because there's not really any such thing as a "woman's neighborhood" due to the mandates of familial and reproductive biology, it is harder for women to build solid communities, and therefore harder for them to find solidarity in each other. It's more difficult for women to organize the way, say, black people or gay people do, because they don't, and can't, have their own little enclaves. The most severely marginalized women are also the ones whose lives are the least within their control, so they can't really go seek that community easily.

Because women are inherently more fragmented from each other, it is easier for them to turn on each other as a form of stigma management.

In terms of how it affects men, honestly, I don't see any clear pattern. The bad ways women affect men seem to follow the expected randomness of "some people are just ****ty."

And before you talk to me about things like child custody and alimony, let's keep in mind that it's mostly old white men who are making those judgements, and they're doing so largely because they believe women are too helpless to support themselves, and men are too unfeeling to make good primary parents.
 
Want To See What Toxic Masculinity Looks Like? Watch 'The Bachelorette.'

So, I can agree with women who say that men like this are horrible people, but if women really believe that why don't they just stop dating them? They seem pretty easy to spot. I mean how much you want to bet this D-bag actually makes it pretty far along into the season of this show? Guys wouldn't behave this way if they didn't think it was successful. I guarantee you this **** bag has an easier time meeting women than a lot of better men. Instead of complaining about the existence of men like this just don't date them. Don't marry them, don't have their kids, and they will go away.

Is there such a thing as Toxic Femininity? Why or why not?

I don't look at shows like that and feel they represent anything but the show-makers desire to create and script something for dramatic television viewing purposes.

Successful . . .well it got you to talk about the show which is the whole point.
 
Who likes naggy people? And who in the hell likes someone that constantly asks them how they feel? I'm sorry, but that is naggy bull****.
 
You make the mistake of assuming that women want what they say they want. This is very often not true. What you call toxicity is a large part of the appeal of these guys. Nice guys finish last in part because that is not what a lot of women want, they want someone who can get their motor running, and keep it running.

What is funny is they will claim up and down that you're wrong like somehow everyone is blind and can't see the pattern of behavior. Furthermore, it's just scientific fact that women are on average more attracted to those kind of guys.
 
Yeah, the majority of that stuff is staged anyways.

Staged and really badly written. Two writer's strikes showed TV production companies that they make just as much money pandering to semi-literates with 'reality-TV' shows as they did by aiming for a quality product.
 
What is funny is they will claim up and down that you're wrong like somehow everyone is blind and can't see the pattern of behavior. Furthermore, it's just scientific fact that women are on average more attracted to those kind of guys.

Because they have been shamed into silence by the feminists, "you dear are strong enough, but think of all of your sisters, a lot of them will get hurt if men know that women very often want it raw and hard, acts which the law is increasingly criminalizing (men only natch) of course because MEN SUCK!.....we just cant tell the truth when asked...... tell everyone that you like the easy guys, maybe even a cuck but dont call it that cause we dont want the men to resist the yoke, and remember, you are doing this for your sisters, this is the right thing to do, because of just one clit possessor gets hurt it is war with men.....who suck.
 
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Because they have been shamed into silence by the feminists, "you dear are strong enough, but think of all of your sisters, a lot of them will get hurt if men know that women very often want it raw and hard, acts which the law is increasingly criminalizing of course because MEN SUCK!.....we just cant tell the truth when asked, tell everyone that you like the easy guys, maybe even a cuck but dont call it that cause we dont want the men to resist the yoke, and remember, you are doing this for your sisters, this is the right thing to do, because of just one clit possessor gets hurt it is war with men.....who suck.

The idea of toxic masculinity is really just feminist bull**** created in the attempt to make male behavior look awful. In reality women are attracted to the very guy they are claiming is toxic and unappealing. They are in fact more attracted to that kind of guy when they are ovulating, but according to feminists it's bad and biological fact is wrong. I say bull**** to them and their stupid and ignorant claims that touchy and feely girly boys is what women want.

If feminists didn't spend so much time and effort trying to change men I wouldn't have a problem with them, but sadly they are social fascists that do nothing but piss me off.
 
Well, firstly, most women actually don't date guys like that these days, let alone marry them. Not younger ones, anyway. In the younger generations, those guys seem to do ok in the first couple years of adulthood when most women aren't looking for anything but some fun, and their prospects worsen considerably in the following decade.

For those women who still do wind up with men like that, it's because those women were trained from birth that being treated that way is acceptable. They are further trained that their entire concept of worth hinges on whether a man thinks they are worth anything.

Not sure you can really chalk this up to women having low self-esteem, or women being stuck in the past with their attractions. We live in a post-modern world where, on paper, anyone can be anything to anyone. Perhaps, given that, there's something to be said for people still choosing a mid-20th century partnership style.

Also, it's a problem for many people that their self-worth hinges on what their partner thinks of them. Most people at some stage in their lives seek validation through partnerships and relationships. Some outgrow that and some don't. Most relationships in general are just a couple of people sharing experiences. and then they create a joint narrative in order to tell themselves that they have some kind of special life together in order to create a sense of security, whether real or imagined. Arguably all of humanity is looking for security. The relationship track is just one method.

The Bachelor(ette) still has a large following from all over, so there's an interest in seeing these narratives play out still. It may be self-deluded for some but a real aspiration for others, who are we to say? My point is... in an ideal world there should be a place for both. If people want to live out that narrative then let them do it. They can learn what it's about for themselves. When I was younger I was into the traditional narrative. I tried it and it didn't work. Then I got jealous that it worked for others and not for me. Then at some point I stopped caring because it's hard to judge anyone being on the outside looking in. So I lived my own life and did personal development, and I met my life partner after that.

It's difficult to be so formulaic about these things.
 
The idea of toxic masculinity is really just feminist bull****. In reality women are attracted to the very guy they are claiming is toxic and unappealing. They are in fact more attracted to that kind of guy when they are ovulating, but according to feminists it's bad and biological fact is wrong. I say bull**** to them and their stupid and ignorant claims that touchy and feely girly boys is what women want.

Ya I know dude, but we are not supposed to talk about it. There will be penalties imposed for saying it, cause America is a lot less free that it used to be. We piss all over our forefathers, those guys and gals and put forth such effort to try to gift their descendants freedom, something that is so shinny good, and so rare in history. Then we gave most of our freedom away after the elite whispered sweet nothings into our ears of how they could keep us safe if we did.

SAD.
 
Not sure you can really chalk this up to women having low self-esteem, or women being stuck in the past with their attractions. We live in a post-modern world where, on paper, anyone can be anything to anyone. Perhaps, given that, there's something to be said for people still choosing a mid-20th century partnership style.

Also, it's a problem for many people that their self-worth hinges on what their partner thinks of them. Most people at some stage in their lives seek validation through partnerships and relationships. Some outgrow that and some don't. Most relationships in general are just a couple of people sharing experiences. and then they create a joint narrative in order to tell themselves that they have some kind of special life together in order to create a sense of security, whether real or imagined. Arguably all of humanity is looking for security. The relationship track is just one method.

The Bachelor(ette) still has a large following from all over, so there's an interest in seeing these narratives play out still. It may be self-deluded for some but a real aspiration for others, who are we to say? My point is... in an ideal world there should be a place for both. If people want to live out that narrative then let them do it. They can learn what it's about for themselves. When I was younger I was into the traditional narrative. I tried it and it didn't work. Then I got jealous that it worked for others and not for me. Then at some point I stopped caring because it's hard to judge anyone being on the outside looking in. So I lived my own life and did personal development, and I met my life partner after that.

It's difficult to be so formulaic about these things.

I don't see it as being any different than people getting hooked on Soap Operas.

But this ...
Also, it's a problem for many people that their self-worth hinges on what their partner thinks of them. Most people at some stage in their lives seek validation through partnerships and relationships. Some outgrow that and some don't.

I think we have a lot of the opposite going on. All too often, especially women, don't give a flying **** about their husband's opinions and spend all their time insulting them and running them into the ground.

Validation too often comes from others outside a relationship (best friends / the random people on the internet).
 
Not sure you can really chalk this up to women having low self-esteem, or women being stuck in the past with their attractions. We live in a post-modern world where, on paper, anyone can be anything to anyone. Perhaps, given that, there's something to be said for people still choosing a mid-20th century partnership style.

Also, it's a problem for many people that their self-worth hinges on what their partner thinks of them. Most people at some stage in their lives seek validation through partnerships and relationships. Some outgrow that and some don't. Most relationships in general are just a couple of people sharing experiences. and then they create a joint narrative in order to tell themselves that they have some kind of special life together in order to create a sense of security, whether real or imagined. Arguably all of humanity is looking for security. The relationship track is just one method.

The Bachelor(ette) still has a large following from all over, so there's an interest in seeing these narratives play out still. It may be self-deluded for some but a real aspiration for others, who are we to say? My point is... in an ideal world there should be a place for both. If people want to live out that narrative then let them do it. They can learn what it's about for themselves. When I was younger I was into the traditional narrative. I tried it and it didn't work. Then I got jealous that it worked for others and not for me. Then at some point I stopped caring because it's hard to judge anyone being on the outside looking in. So I lived my own life and did personal development, and I met my life partner after that.

It's difficult to be so formulaic about these things.

Well, like I said, I don't see younger women actually dating men like that, unless they grew up in a rather backwards community or grew up in an unpleasant household. So I don't think the OP is even true, as a broad statement.

I agree a lot of people of either sex fall into that trap as well.

And when speaking about all of society, we sort of have to talk generally.

Part of the appeal of the Bachelorette will simply be schadenfreude, for people who would never deal with that kind of thing, but for some reason enjoy watching it. For others it is an ideal, yes. And as portrayed by the specific man this article talks about, I'm gonna come out and say that's just outrightly unacceptable and there shouldn't be a place for it. He's a jerk.

A man doesn't have to behave that way in order to live a traditional life. A woman doesn't have to accept that kind of behavior in order to live a traditional life. He can be a respectful and feeling human being, and still a traditionalist simultaneously. She can call out stupid behavior and be a traditionalist simultaneously.

The vision of traditionalism as a lifestyle doesn't necessarily dictate how a couple should communicate, or how they should be emotionally adjusted.

There are some plus sides to traditionalism, if you have the family structure for it and you want kids. But the early 20th century concept of men as unfeeling peacocks and women as meek is not one of them, and there's absolutely no reason it must exist alongside it. Even at the time, plenty of people broke that mold.

I'm not hatin' on the concept of traditional families, as I am so often perceived to be (though I am a bit down on the isolated unit variant, for purely practical reasons). Hell, I even stole a couple of facets of it while working on how to formulate my own extremely non-traditional family. But it doesn't need to go along with this patriarchrical concept of men being assholes.
 
It's more than little bizarre to call a traditional household backwards. It's also more than little bizarre to claim that traits that women do in fact find attractive are somehow toxic. :lamo
 
Why doesn't anyone ever come up with a term like Toxic Femininity?
 
Why doesn't anyone ever come up with a term like Toxic Femininity?

Can you give an example of toxic femininity?

Fun fact: The google searches for "national mens' day" spike several thousand percent. On national womens' day.

I feel like you're one of those searches.
 
I don't think either form of toxicity exists. My point is that only masculinity would be attacked in this way and the motives would never be questioned. But if the roles were reversed, the motives would be the main topic. And you've unwittingly proven my point.
 
I don't think either form of toxicity exists. My point is that only masculinity would be attacked in this way and the motives would never be questioned. But if the roles were reversed, the motives would be the main topic. And you've unwittingly proven my point.

Bingo. It is acceptable to attack men, male behavior and masculinity, but attack women, female behavior, and femininity in the same way and watch the fireworks.
 
Bingo. It is acceptable to attack men, male behavior and masculinity, but attack women, female behavior, and femininity in the same way and watch the fireworks.

Saying that, feminists don't much care for femininity either. If you're a woman you can in fact attack women, female behavior and femininity, but if you're a man it's off limits.
 
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