What is toxic masculinity?

[bomberfox]

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

Male gaze is about female characters written to please men. Its endemic to harem anime and the main guy is usually really unlikable. (Not to mention the ladies tend to be at the uhmmmm jail bait age….) Only Tenchi Muyo kind of got away with it because the characters were not really that one dimensional.

 

[bomberfox]

"Toxic masculinity" is just another buzzword to be tossed out when someone is losing a debate.

Nobody was really losing a debate.

 

[bomberfox]

Isn't it strange the only people complaining about the male gaze aren't the target of it?

The targets of this type of writing is men.

 

[bomberfox]

Your Andrew Tate like attitude towards women and masculinity isn’t unique. A lot of modern men are angry that many stereotyped masc tropes aren’t even societally relevant anymore. It’s created the kind of anger that insists the male gaze is a “fat girl problem”.

That would explain a lot about Clax.

 

[Ouroboros]

The targets of this type of writing is men.

But the point is, are the people raising the accusation of toxic masculinity beyond criticism? Here's a 2018 essay which shows a then-current image of Laura Mulvey, the originator of the term "male gaze."

Suddenly, a Woman Spectator: An Interview with Laura Mulvey - Another Gaze

Laura Mulvey (b. 1941) is best known for the groundbreaking essay ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ (1973, published 1975) in...

www.anothergaze.com

I couldn't find an image of Mulvey as a young woman, but I don't think she could have been a very good looking female in the day. I will be happy to be proven wrong if someone finds such an image, but it still remains a valid criticism that some if not all women complaining of the male gaze in entertainment may not have enjoyed much real "male gaze" in their personal lives. So we might be dealing with the old "fox and the grapes" paradigm.

As in the original "Narrative Pleasure" essay, I found Mulvey's arguments in the 2018 interview tendentious and facile, like this one.

AG – So when did this reflectiveness kick in? Was it from watching more avant-garde cinema, where the techniques were made deliberately more visible?
LM – No, my shift in spectatorship came very suddenly and specifically out of the influence of the women’s movement, so that I was suddenly watching films that I’d loved and films that had moved me with different eyes. Instead of being absorbed into the screen, into the story, into the mise-en-scène, into the cinema, I was irritated. And instead of being a voyeuristic spectator, a male spectator as it were, I suddenly became a woman spectator who watched the film from a distance and critically, rather than with those absorbed eyes.

So in this passage Mulvey admits that there was a time that the sort of "male gaze" films she excoriated were films that "had moved me," but she changed her perspective because of the influence of feminism. She implies that one can be only a "male spectator" if one invests in "male gaze" films. So does that mean that any woman who enjoyed GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES is a male spectator if she does not assume a feminist perspective? Of course that's what she means without directly saying so. But we only have her word for it, that the only factor in her perspective-change is that of other unnamed feminists. It could just as easily stem from a realization that most men would not consider her, Laura Mulvey, a "looker," and that therefore she turned against the "pleasures" of narrative cinema. Here she minimizes whatever factors "moved" her in the films she criticizes, just as she oversimplified the nature of "male looking" in her original 1975 essay. I smell deception.

 

[Gimmesometruth]

I know you want to believe that's a refutation, but women aren't thinking of real-world homicides when they yammer about toxic masculinity, They're thinking about guys who didn't call when they said they would and crap like that.

Sure, always happy to speak truth to falsehood.

I think everyone that is seriously debating toxic masculinity understands that homicide is an aspect of the issue. You need to handwave and minimize it while insulting women. You made yourself a poster child for the topic. Congrats.

 

[Gimmesometruth]

But the point is, are the people raising the accusation of toxic masculinity beyond criticism?

LOL...thats not a point, that is called a "whatabout".

I don't think she could have been a very good looking female in the day.

"She made it up"

Well played

 

[Ouroboros]

I think everyone that is seriously debating toxic masculinity understands that homicide is an aspect of the issue. You need to handwave and minimize it while insulting women. You made yourself a poster child for the topic. Congrats.

Nope, you're merely being credulous in taking the feminists at face value. There's no amount of cultural carping that will alter the course of real predators, be they serial killers or rich entitled bastards. (I guess I have to say "Weinstein" in the hope of forestalling the usual idiotic Trump calumny.) Such people figure out ways to do what they want to do and only vigilance, not facile political posturing, can prevent them. In the professional world, feminists target things like "the old boy's network," in order to insist that men should give women preferential treatment because of past abuses. In the private world, women try to control men by making it seem as if their natural urge to ogle women are "toxic." This is hypocritical in that hetero women continue to ogle himbos and lesbians still lust after female beauty-icons. You are welcome to wallow in your false view of things, though, since it's very amusing.

 

[Ouroboros]

LOL...thats not a point, that is called a "whatabout".
"She made it up"

Well played

Not even close to a refutation, BTW. Good job!

 

[Gimmesometruth]

Nope, you're merely being credulous in taking the feminists at face value. There's no amount of cultural carping that will alter the course of real predators, be they serial killers or rich entitled bastards.

I wasn't discussing the prevention of femicide, I was merely producing stats on the frequency of the occurrence. You reacted by initially denying it was happening so much so you argued the author was too ugly to know what a male gaze is and that women are just making up all of this anyway to manipulate men and society. You just keep ratcheting up the denials of reality while still insulting women.
You keep defining yourself throughout.

Keep yammering, you do yourself proud.

 

[Ouroboros]

I wasn't discussing the prevention of femicide, I was merely producing stats on the frequency of the occurrence. You reacted by initially denying it was happening so much so you argued the author was too ugly to know what a male gaze is and that women are just making up all of this anyway to manipulate men and society. You just keep ratcheting up the denials of reality while still insulting women.
You keep defining yourself throughout.

Keep yammering, you do yourself proud.

There's no relevance to citing femicide stats unless one thinks some form of prevention inheres in all the cant about toxic masculinity. That was the argument you implied and now you're denying for some vague reason, while assuming that the advocates of the "t.m." meme are automatically beyond reproach.

Keep on proving your credulity.

 

[Gimmesometruth]

There's no relevance to citing femicide stats

Yes, there was "relevance", you were denying that being killed by a partner was something women fear, think about. A domestic partner is who kills them most often, you just can't accept that and needed to distract, as always. Your diversions are ignorant, cynical and pathetic, but then I'm used to that.

 

[CLAX1911]

The targets of this type of writing is men.

The male gaze is just a fancy word for male attention. There are women who live for this there are entire industries built around it. It is a form of external validation. Some people get it others don't, at least not this specific form. So instead of complaining about it why not pursue authentic validation you'll get less of it but you'll also need less of it

 

[Jason Warfield]

The male gaze is just a fancy word for male attention. There are women who live for this there are entire industries built around it. It is a form of external validation. Some people get it others don't, at least not this specific form. So instead of complaining about it why not pursue authentic validation you'll get less of it but you'll also need less of it

Apply it to the Trump administration. Being serious, not snarky.

 

[CLAX1911]

Apply it to the Trump administration. Being serious, not snarky.

Are you suggesting you suffer from the Trump gaze as you have been completely hollowed out of all identity except for the way you feel about Trump I would agree you probably should see somebody about that.

There's more to life than thinking about someone that you'll never meet.

 

[Ouroboros]

Yes, there was "relevance", you were denying that being killed by a partner was something women fear, think about. A domestic partner is who kills them most often, you just can't accept that and needed to distract, as always. Your diversions are ignorant, cynical and pathetic, but then I'm used to that.

I denied that the specific meme of toxic masculinity is about controlling male-on-female violence, because the rhetoric is all about cultural marginalization, not physical violence. Yes, women can be worried about physical peril, but that's separate from the toxic masculinity carping. Also, women have also been known to court danger. The young women who were abused by P Diddy-- did he force them to attend his parties? No, they did so because he was a Rich and Famous Guy, and some or all of the women thought they could manipulate him with charm/beauty like they might with civilized men, only to get beat to shit. You could correctly claim that P Diddy is a toxic male. But Diddy, like the other examples I cited, are not the targets of the toxic rhetoric. It's aimed at what I called "civilized men," who will apologize for being men to curry favor. It's still your ignorance on display.

 

[SayMyName]

Hmmm, these days, grandson showing my daughter-n-law thanks for his mom tying his shoe? That's my boy!