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What is toxic masculinity?

CLAX1911 said:
Isn't it strange the only people complaining about the male gaze aren't the target of it?
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Are you making a point similar to George Carlin's "How come pro life folks are people you wouldn't want to **** in the first place?" Cause I don't think that fits what the "male gaze" is. It's specific to heterosexual men and the sexualization of women. You seem to feel its about, like. high school cliques or something 🤣
 
The Brad Dad said:
Are you making a point similar to George Carlin's "How come pro life folks are people you wouldn't want to **** in the first place?"
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That's pro choice people.
The Brad Dad said:
Cause I don't think that fits what the "male gaze" is.
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It's not really anything except shaming straight men for their sexuality.
The Brad Dad said:
It's specific to heterosexual men and the sexualization of women.
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So blaming men for women's behavior?
The Brad Dad said:
You seem to feel its about, like. high school cliques or something 🤣
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You come up with some strange crap sometimes.
 
CLAX1911 said:
It's not really anything except shaming straight men for their sexuality.
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So you're back to arguing rape is part of mens sexuality. Good luck with that.
 
Toxic masculinity is 14 beers and large pizza in a male Auburn fan watching a football game.
 
Northern Light said:
I don't believe in these highfalutin terms.
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Northern Light said:
There's no such thing as toxic masculinity or toxic femininity, there are only toxic people.
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Toxic people. I agree with that.
Further, it sure seems that the dems, libs and progs have many more than their share of toxic people.

Northern Light said:
The terms are also abused to come after people for having different values, such as traditional values.
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Also agreed.

Northern Light said:
Personally I don't think feminism is reliable for telling us how men should be because their reframing is about serving women. Likewise I don't think men should be dictating to women what their role in the world is.
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The world is for each to find their own way in, yes.

Northern Light said:
These types of rhetoric are divisive and often applied in a manipulative manner.
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Yes, and now look which groups of people are pushing 'toxic masculinity', it should be of no surprise that they are engaged in manipulating.

Northern Light said:
I think framing someone as a toxic man or a toxic woman instead of just a toxic person, or perhaps just a person with different values than you, is ironically sexist.
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j brown's body said:
There's an old expression"

"Men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid men will kill them."
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Now, thanks to toxic femininity, it's become:

Men are afraid women are going to cancel them and ruin their lives.

Women are afraid men won't lick their feet after they've accused the men of every enormity possible.
 
The biggest problem with the idea of "toxic masculinity" is once through the political spin machine we landed on a concept that can mean any number of things.

It really is no different than other terms going through the same thing. Woke, critical race theory, feminism, politically correct, metoo, modern monetary theory, etc. All of these terms are susceptible to wide interpretations and when applied in our fast moving social media climate can become derogatory and bogeyman.

Anything that impacts sociology and/or economics all experiences this mess.

What toxic masculinity used to mean was a reasonable and needed sociological address of certain male behaviors that resulted in misogynistic views on the "role" of men as superior to women. Rooted in upbringing, social accepted norms generation to generation, religion and other inputs, whatever the ultimate need was to deal with the resistance to some of the results from various women's rights movements generation to generation. Handling a level of dominance level thinking that was more prevalent in prior generations but became applied to other behaviors such as aggression (example.)

But that is not the discussion now, the inverse has become toxic feminism and it all ends up adversarial. Even the definition of what is acceptable masculinity or femininity is now messy, suggesting confinement and in some cases one way accepted dominance roles based on condition.

In short, now it is just a f'ing toxic mess for the fringe of whatever ideology to continue to make a bigger mess of.

Over 80% of all violent crime is committed by men, so the answer from modern liberalism is "all men are violent." That conclusion helps no one, and does nothing for why it happens. That is just an example of what these conversations yield, where there is more interest in branding someone something derogatory than talking about what to do about it.

Shame social media meme style is not working, we are seeing sociological consequences to male isolation and/or difficulty understanding what to do. This is even in the DSM guides now.

I simply doubt many are ready for that conversation, the in thing these days is just brand someone and move on.
 
The Epstein birthday book appears to be a shining example of toxic masculinity.

"The Trump letter makes the birthday book inherently newsworthy. But it is far from the most disturbing or lecherous of the book’s contents. A section titled “Brooklyn” includes recollections of Epstein’s horrible sexual escapades, apparently including making a maid watch people have sex and holding a knife up while telling women to take off their swimsuits on a boat—a story told in the book under the heading “Girls on My Boat.” Given what we know about Epstein’s sex crimes, including his sex crimes against minors, the birthday book is a sickening document. Over its 238 pages, Epstein’s friends, “girlfriends,” and business acquaintances offer lurid tributes to the pedophilic multimillionaire in the form of acrostic poems, drawings, and letters extolling him as “a liver, a lover,” and, affectionately, the “Degenerate One.” Individual contributions vary but it is the sheer volume of sexual references and jokes that ends up being most shocking. So much so that I suggest you read the document yourself."

Link
 
j brown's body said:
The Epstein birthday book appears to be a shining example of toxic masculinity.
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If that's masculinity to you maybe you didn't have a male role model
j brown's body said:
"The Trump letter makes the birthday book inherently newsworthy. But it is far from the most disturbing or lecherous of the book’s contents. A section titled “Brooklyn” includes recollections of Epstein’s horrible sexual escapades, apparently including making a maid watch people have sex and holding a knife up while telling women to take off their swimsuits on a boat—a story told in the book under the heading “Girls on My Boat.” Given what we know about Epstein’s sex crimes, including his sex crimes against minors, the birthday book is a sickening document. Over its 238 pages, Epstein’s friends, “girlfriends,” and business acquaintances offer lurid tributes to the pedophilic multimillionaire in the form of acrostic poems, drawings, and letters extolling him as “a liver, a lover,” and, affectionately, the “Degenerate One.” Individual contributions vary but it is the sheer volume of sexual references and jokes that ends up being most shocking. So much so that I suggest you read the document yourself."

Link
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Toxic masculinity is exactly the same as toxic femininity.
Picking out the worst traits of one, and trying to claim this is how that sex is - while ignoring the other, or even praising it.
 
iamwhatiseem said:
Toxic masculinity is exactly the same as toxic femininity.
Picking out the worst traits of one, and trying to claim this is how that sex is - while ignoring the other, or even praising it.
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No.

It's masculinity that's adopted in conformity to status and other pressures, but which harms those who perform it and damages those people who are near to them.
 
reinaert said:
No.

It's masculinity that's adopted in conformity to status and other pressures, but which harms those who perform it and damages those people who are near to them.
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Yes, it is toxic femininity that's adopted in conformity to status and other pressures, but which harms those who perform it and damages those people who are near them.
 
iamwhatiseem said:
Yes, it is toxic femininity that's adopted in conformity to status and other pressures, but which harms those who perform it and damages those people who are near them.
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There is a version of this. Feminists have been addressing the problem with gender roles for nearly a century

I'm not sure why you thought it would just be about men.
 
"Toxic masculinity" is just another buzzword to be tossed out when someone is losing a debate.
 
Clothahump said:
"Toxic masculinity" is just another buzzword to be tossed out when someone is losing a debate.
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I'd go a little farther and say that it's mostly used to villainize men. Particularly straight men.

A lot of people and I've been guilty of this myself I have a bit of feeling of being inadequate because maybe we're not as masculine as some people. Or lack of masculinity is used to deride us for something. And instead of seeing that person as a jerk because there's maybe more than just one person saying it we start to believe that we really are inadequate and therefore that inadequacy is projected as toxicity.

One really the toxicity is insecurity. The reason why it's connected to masculinity and it's because there is a cultural standard although very broad that constitutes masculinity. And if you're particularly a man and you don't exactly fit that definition you're going to feel inadequate.

The more secure you become and I've gone through this really the more masculine you are so it's really a toxic lack of masculinity but I would say it's more connected to insecurity.

It's like people thinking that white people are somehow out to get them it's because they feel inferior and they project that feeling they have on to other people that it's because of their racism that I feel inferior.

I've had to do a lot of personal work to get out of this.
 
There certainly are counterproductive behaviors that are predominantly exhibited by one of the genders: for instance, men tend to be more outwardly aggressive, while women tend to perform character assassinations by talking about someone behind their back. I suppose you could call these behaviors "toxic masculinity" or "toxic femininity". That the former is a commonly used term nowadays, while the latter is virtually unheard of - that, though, is quite curious. ;)

Hope someone will get the joke.
 
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