Doesn't the concept of 'toxic masculinity' have clear parallels in women's behavior?
In debates on this topic, it is recurringly asserted that toxic masculinity does not have have a female analogue. That femininity as classically defined can't be toxic. There's nothing toxic about being too submissive, agreeable, etc.
Arguments that could be made against those traits defining femininity aside, there's a double standard in the underlying conceptual framework* of the term that I never see addressed.
Take a classic example of toxic masculinity: the fragile ego. It is often propounded that society's heavy emphasis on intolerance towards disrespect, as a core tenet of true masculinity, has given men fragile egos. Society punishes the acceptance of disrespect with such a steep loss of status: (pejoratives: you're a bitch; stigmas: you become an easy target, now anyone can disrespect you) that men feel tremendous pressure to take immediate action when disrespected, so to secure their status. and if they don't they experience enormous shame. This leads to a culture of macho-ism and violence settling a lot of heated encounters between men.
But doesn't the above just reduce to men caring a lot about what society tells them to care about? Doing it to avoid the drop in status if they don't? If toxic masculinity as currently defined boils down to improper behavior that is ultimately the result of social pressure, couldn't the same be said for improper female behavior that's also coaxed by society?
To use an example from a tv show: In the first season of the hit amazon series: 'The Boys' , one of the female characters(starlight) goes on a date with one of the main male characters(Hughie). During the date, which is a bowling night, Hughie confronts her on his suspicion that she's throwing the game and going easy on him. She recounts a past experience from high school where during a date, she and her date were assaulted by someone, maybe a group(can't remember), she kicks their perpetrator's ass and her date responded to all of this by proceeding to never speak to her again.
The lesson learned from all this according to her, is to never, as a woman, display strength in front of a guy, so as to avoid shaming him. Hugh says the guy had a small pee-pee(implying that his behavior was due to heavy insecurity), they both have a chuckle over this, he assures her he'd never react in a similar manner, cuz he's not that insecure - the lesson the show is pushing that guys should learn from this - the tension is dispelled and they move on with their date and starlight stops holding back.
So the behavior of the guy she went on the date with, is portrayed only as condemnable. This reflects the social feedback toward such behavior and buttresses the point I started with. When a man behaves in a way that's annoying, it is considered to be the token of a fragile ego and an example of toxic masculinity.
On the other hand, I can think of countless similar examples with women where an example of superficially reprehensible behavior is given, but almost always someone(usually a woman) explains that the behavior is a result of the heavy pressure society puts on women to care about whatever spurred the behavior. And they're usually showered with sympathy in response.
*not sure I used that term right
Arguments that could be made against those traits defining femininity aside, there's a double standard in the underlying conceptual framework* of the term that I never see addressed.
Take a classic example of toxic masculinity: the fragile ego. It is often propounded that society's heavy emphasis on intolerance towards disrespect, as a core tenet of true masculinity, has given men fragile egos. Society punishes the acceptance of disrespect with such a steep loss of status: (pejoratives: you're a bitch; stigmas: you become an easy target, now anyone can disrespect you) that men feel tremendous pressure to take immediate action when disrespected, so to secure their status. and if they don't they experience enormous shame. This leads to a culture of macho-ism and violence settling a lot of heated encounters between men.
But doesn't the above just reduce to men caring a lot about what society tells them to care about? Doing it to avoid the drop in status if they don't? If toxic masculinity as currently defined boils down to improper behavior that is ultimately the result of social pressure, couldn't the same be said for improper female behavior that's also coaxed by society?
To use an example from a tv show: In the first season of the hit amazon series: 'The Boys' , one of the female characters(starlight) goes on a date with one of the main male characters(Hughie). During the date, which is a bowling night, Hughie confronts her on his suspicion that she's throwing the game and going easy on him. She recounts a past experience from high school where during a date, she and her date were assaulted by someone, maybe a group(can't remember), she kicks their perpetrator's ass and her date responded to all of this by proceeding to never speak to her again.
The lesson learned from all this according to her, is to never, as a woman, display strength in front of a guy, so as to avoid shaming him. Hugh says the guy had a small pee-pee(implying that his behavior was due to heavy insecurity), they both have a chuckle over this, he assures her he'd never react in a similar manner, cuz he's not that insecure - the lesson the show is pushing that guys should learn from this - the tension is dispelled and they move on with their date and starlight stops holding back.
So the behavior of the guy she went on the date with, is portrayed only as condemnable. This reflects the social feedback toward such behavior and buttresses the point I started with. When a man behaves in a way that's annoying, it is considered to be the token of a fragile ego and an example of toxic masculinity.
On the other hand, I can think of countless similar examples with women where an example of superficially reprehensible behavior is given, but almost always someone(usually a woman) explains that the behavior is a result of the heavy pressure society puts on women to care about whatever spurred the behavior. And they're usually showered with sympathy in response.
*not sure I used that term right
Comments (39)
Here's a video to demonstrate my reasoning
Don't bother with philosophy if you want to understand women. All you have to do is improve your looks + work on your body + be more neurotypical.
A wise woman once taught me this - If the only way you can stand up for men is by putting women down, you're just playing the same game as the people you oppose.
Gonna get me a buzz cut too. Pussins crawl on top of me...
If only they had the power...
Like saying a woman is on the rag. Bad term.
Women exhibit all of these behaviors as well, including hyper masculinity (ironically).
The suggestion seems to be that only men can exhibit 'toxic masculine' behavior, which is inaccurate, sexist and putting women on a pedestal.
Quoting Tom Storm
Ah, there's the pedestal.
This is a myth.
This is great.
Toxic Femininity. :chin:
It appears that no qualities regarded as exclusively womanly can be weaponized if you catch my drift. If a woman is to become a royal pain in the ass, she must masculinize herself. Examples: Dominatrix, Virago, and so on.
Perhaps I'm mistaken; some feature overlap betwixt men and women seem to be dual-use tech. How cool is that, oui?
Statistically, there are fewer women in jail than men. This, however, is an argument from degree and not from type (women can be murderers, thieves, pirates, whathaveyou).
I wonder what this means? :chin:
Instead of regarding problematic behaviors as seperate phenomena, apparently the need is felt to link these behaviors to men and masculinity.
That is very problematic, and it has appeared to me as though the term has become a society-sanctioned way of projecting one's personal grievances with men on men as a whole.
The same was true of man in 1900s, 1800s, 1700s, .... back to the stone age. I don't see why there's a need to change the mass behavior of men suddenly. Asshole behavior is a side product of masculinity. This doesn't mean a masculine man can't be a nice guy but once you demonize the side product, masculinity self destructs gradually
Modernity has undoubtedly reduced the demand of traditional masculine value/skills in society but l don't see how it's possible to separate the alleged "toxic" masculine behavior from masculinity. It's a naive way of looking at our biological behavior.
That said, l admire Greek/Persian culture for promoting the androgynous Man as the ideal. An ideal man should possess feminine beauty and and adorn it with masculine strength
Totally agree.
I would say those men who are toxic are by no means in the majority.
Very interesting point; I never thought about this before. I actually think it does, but to a different extent.
You say
but Iâd disagree. If a woman is on a date with a man, and goes along with sexual activities she is not comfortable with to appease her partner without speaking her mind, this would be an example of submissiveness and agreeableness to a âtoxicâ level. Hence toxic femininity. One could also argue the obsession over looks, how fit one is, how slim one is, etc is another angle of toxic femininity.
Wish I'd gotten a chance to respond to this post since I think they brought up an interesting point that got to the heart of the matter. I questioned why "annoying" female behavior warranted sympathy for being the byproduct of social pressure while "toxic" male behavior wasn't given the same treatment. I asked why it was isolated and condemned in comparison.
The respondent honed in on my use of 'annoying' vs 'toxic' to describe the respective behaviors, and challenged my position by questioning the equating of the two. I'll give my thoughts on that later but for now I should clarify that I did not intend to use meaningfully different adjectives. In my mind I was using 'annoying' as synonymous with 'toxic' though I realize now I shouldn't have. But yeah, for the record, I'm saying that plenty of female behavior ought be considered just as toxic.
Let the mods know and they will probably fix you up. :)
It occurred to me that you might not know who the mods are, so: @baden
Rest assured, there's a dysfunctional side of stereotypical female behavior as well.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_Girls
Yes, I think it is. I've taken exactly the position you're taking in previous discussions. I came to realize that setting this up as a men vs. women thing hurts more than it helps. That's what infuriates me about a lot of feminist ideas.
Why is it putting them down as opposed to bringing them back down to your level? Generally, you only ever see the recognition of a form of hypocrisy be dismissed as baseless when, on close scrutiny, things aren't actually unequal.
With race for example, the outrage over the use of slurs being uneven between certain races. The common explanation for this is that the use of those words don't always carry the same weight given history, political power etc. So things can sometimes seem superficially uneven but not be in reality.
Otherwise however, isolating and condemning hypocrisy is typically considered an egalitarian activity. It is establishing what is generally accepted to be a core tenet of most moral systems: equality.
Even among deer (picture Bambi), the males are violent (during the rutting season), fatal injuries have been reported. What hope is there for apex predators like ourselves (h. sapiens)? Testosterone should be reclassified as a Class I (extremely hazardous) toxin. The Green Goblin was all DHT! :snicker:
Toxic: harmful or unpleasant in a pervasive or insidious way.
Itâs not really about âimproperâ behaviour, but about harmful or potentially harmful behaviour. The guy who ignores a girl because he once felt less capable than her is not just behaving âimproperlyâ towards her. Heâs also behaving improperly towards himself, and to anyone who may be guided by his actions. His behaviour is harmful in falsely implying that she did something âwrongâ.
But what makes this toxic masculinity is its pervasiveness as proper âmasculineâ behaviour - as reinforced not by some idea of âsocietyâ, but mostly by male behaviour and response - that the guyâs masculinity is in question. While the idea that the girl was âwrongâ per se appears to be challenged by Hughieâs response - itâs done in a way that only reinforces this questioning of the guyâs masculinity (small pee-pee) as the proper response to her behaviour.
What makes it difficult to describe femininity as âtoxicâ is that what is considered âproperâ feminine behaviour is determined and reinforced not so much by female behaviour, but largely by male behaviour and response.
I think the handle is better as it is. It suggests modesty: the value of your valued contributions will have at least the limitation of not being correctly spelled - and so not always beyond criticism.
That doesn't make sense to me. If it's wrong to put men down, it's wrong to do it to women too. Women are people before they're women. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Quoting Valued contributer
I'm not trying to put words in your mouth - Are you saying that the situation for black people is "superficially uneven?" If so, you and I couldn't disagree more.
Quoting Valued contributer
You're argument isn't with women, it's with people who show disrespect for men. In my experience, that doesn't include most women.
What about an uncomely reaction from a woman who feels her femininity being threatened? Say for example, a woman that flips out when her boyfriend turns down her sexual advances. I've seen a man complain about this and receive a response from a woman who explains how his girlfriend's reaction was a result of how strongly society attaches a woman's worth to her sexual appeal. She got a lot of upvotes and commiserating comments.
I'm juxtaposing something like that to how starlight's date reacted. It came from a similar place no? He felt his masculinity threatened/attacked and his response clearly reflected this.
Are you saying the difference here is that in both cases men are the ones reinforcing the values that lead to both reactions as opposed to society?
I guess I don't understand why shining a spotlight on a double standard is tantamount to putting women down then. Have women's movements not been rife with just that? Pointing out that: men were allowed to vote while they weren't; men had superior opportunities to pursue education, etc.
Actually, I'm curious now and I'll just ask and use the form of an example: with the concept of slut-shaming. When women point out the double standard in condemnation of their promiscuous behaviors in comparison to men, would you say they're putting men down and if so why?
Quoting T Clark
I'm referring for example, to when black people use "cracker" as a slur in reference to whites vs white people using the n-word as a slur against blacks and the equating by some, of both occurrences as carrying the same racist weight.
Women should have the vote because they are adult citizens of our country with as much right to the benefits of citizenship as anyone else, not because men have it. Ditto for education. For what it's worth, college enrollment is significantly higher for women than it is for men. People who are denied what they deserve just for being citizens, residents, human beings should get it, independent of who else gets what.
As for a double standard for sexual behavior, that's a social issue that it's not much use complaining about. It will require a change in attitude. It also would probably be helpful if both men and women were more responsible sexually. I wonder how many women apply the double standard you are talking about to other women. I don't know the answer to that.
So, the feminine contribution to expressions of masculinity are mostly those that the women choose to emphasize in their selection of mates.
Ironically, in societies where women do not depend on their male mates for survival, this may lead to them choosing more "toxic" masculine traits as these are not life threatening as they would have been.
The alpha male ideal came out of a misreading of biological behavior, and the actual "alpha males" in chimpanzee society are often older chimps that are able to achieve cohesion between individuals in a group. The "chad" chimp that is physically more powerful and aggressive is often an outsider as the "alpha" will have several allies who together can overpower that individual. Even after the alpha passes on his dominance to another younger chimp, he is still cared for by the group as his actions in the past proved beneficial to them so he retains his status as a good leader.
In this context, I think the comparative feminine stereotype to the toxic male or alpha male would be the overtly sexually attractive female that pursues this sort of male - the "starf**ker" - that exemplifies toxic male behavior or status, or women that capitalize on the stereotypical traits intended to attract this sort of person.
Ironically, the stereotypical "trophy wife" that pursues an actual alpha male - a successful man that is able to lead and create consensus but does not typify the aggressive, self-interested and physically superiority-focused stereotype of an "alpha male" (the Chad), is actually more socially positive in this sense. Not implicitly toxic to relationships even though she is often criticized and degraded for being a "gold digger."
This is a useful example to work with, although the details are unclear, and I donât want to make assumptions. I can understand how you would interpret this as similar, and in some ways it is, but not the crucial aspects. The difference is not in the behaviour of the person threatened - which in both cases can be considered âpoor behaviourâ regardless of gender - but in the subsequent social responses to that behaviour.
A man turns down his girlfriendâs sexual advances, and then complains when she âflips outâ - this gives no reasoning for either the manâs rejection nor the womanâs behaviour. And yet, before we even get to the question of sexual appeal, is it assumed (and reinforced by the use of language) that the man has a reasonable explanation for his behaviour, but the woman does not? Is it also assumed that the woman is supposed to accept his behaviour as âreasonableâ by his account, despite her own feelings? That she has no recourse to complain to him about his behaviour in the context of an emotional relationship, and yet he feels justified to complain about her emotional behaviour within an emotional relationship to anyone who will listen?
The fact that other women recognise the situation and commiserate with her demonstrates that these women are at least calling out the situation - that a womanâs worth is strongly determined by her sexual appeal - as unacceptable. And in direct defiance of that, they would seek to restore the womanâs sense of worth regardless of sexual appeal.
Starlightâs response to her dateâs behaviour was to automatically change her own behaviour in future social situations, assuming that it was her own behaviour that was âwrongâ. Note that she didnât complain about her treatment, but took it as deserved. Hughieâs response was to reassure her that the problem was not her behaviour, but rather confirmed the likely reason why her boyfriend had responded in that way in the first place: because his masculinity would be perceived as insufficient.
It is the pervasive and insidious nature of whatâs going on here around the boyfriendâs behaviour, in relation to masculinity, that leads to the label âtoxicâ.
It's been a while so I don't remember it vividly but I'm pretty sure the anecdote was given in the context of a discussion on the double standard between men and women where turning down one's partner for sex is concerned and how easily either gender accepts this rejection.
Quoting Possibility
Hmm, can we assume that starlight took her treatment as deserved simply because she adapted by changing her behavior? I'm actually not sure, it's one I'll have to mull over. Preliminarily though, I think one can believe oneself to have done nothing wrong in a given scenario yet consider a fight over it to not be worthwhile.
For what you say about the respective social responses being the central indicator of toxicity here to be meaningful, they would have to be representative of the broader pattern of responses to such scenarios. So would you say this is the case? That women generally respond to a man's resultant standoffishness, from them undermining his masculinity, by adaptation instead of standing up for what they know to be true? That they did nothing wrong? And that men generally react by mocking/calling the man's masculinity into question?
And this isn't paralleled in the social responses to women's bad behavior? A man would not adapt and change his behavior? Other woman would not say her reaction should call her femininity into question?
what do you think about Possibility's take on it:
"Toxic: harmful or unpleasant in a pervasive or insidious way.
Itâs not really about âimproperâ behaviour, but about harmful or potentially harmful behaviour. The guy who ignores a girl because he once felt less capable than her is not just behaving âimproperlyâ towards her. Heâs also behaving improperly towards himself, and to anyone who may be guided by his actions. His behaviour is harmful in falsely implying that she did something âwrongâ.
But what makes this toxic masculinity is its pervasiveness as proper âmasculineâ behaviour - as reinforced not by some idea of âsocietyâ, but mostly by male behaviour and response - that the guyâs masculinity is in question. While the idea that the girl was âwrongâ per se appears to be challenged by Hughieâs response - itâs done in a way that only reinforces this questioning of the guyâs masculinity (small pee-pee) as the proper response to her behaviour.
What makes it difficult to describe femininity as âtoxicâ is that what is considered âproperâ feminine behaviour is determined and reinforced not so much by female behaviour, but largely by male behaviour and response."
In terms of opposite poles over nurturing children can produce highly dysfunctional adults just as much as tyrannical nurturing can.
Toxic behaviour comes from both sexes just as often in my experience. Basing âbad behaviourâ on any singular psychological trait is ridiculous too. Masculinity in and of itself is not a bad thing at all the problem arises when there is lack or excess in other areas.
No one can be too masculine or too feminine because in and of themselves there is nothing âtoxicâ about either.
I donât think we can assume anything, tbh. I do think a persistent conflict between what we know about ourselves in our private moments and how we âshouldâ represent ourselves to others is a common societal issue. But it wasnât just that particular fight - she said that âlearnedâ, she changed how she represented herself in relation to guys she likes from that point. I think what we believe in terms of ârightâ and âwrongâ behaviour is less about what we know, and more about how it feels under the circumstances. She felt her behaviour to be âwrongâ under those kinds of circumstances - that doesnât change what she knows about herself. Sheâs still capable of kicking ass - she just believed it was âwrongâ to present that aspect of herself IF she wanted a guy to feel comfortable around her.
Quoting Valued contributer
As I mentioned above, I think it has a lot to do with how it feels under the circumstances. Yes, it is my experience that men are generally expected (regardless of what they might think or know) to react to a girl who is aggressively and physically defending her male partner by mocking/calling the manâs âmasculinityâ into question. And a man who identifies himself with this âmasculinityâ perceives a choice in these circumstances between being loved and being âmasculineâ.
And a woman whose male partnerâs response is to distance himself from her, when his âmasculinityâ appears to be undermined by her behaviour, perceives a choice between being loved and being herself - as if they are somehow mutually exclusive. Hughieâs response is to reassure her that they are not, while challenging this concept of âmasculinityâ himself - his own character is juxtaposed as âa white Steve Urkelâ.
Quoting Valued contributer
Sure - there is a societal expectation that a âmasculineâ man has no reason for turning down sex, and that a âfeminineâ woman would not behave aggressively or make emotional demands on her partner. But the forum situation presents an anecdote which challenges expectations about turning down sexual advances as well as responses to it. And he didnât exactly present just the facts. He described the circumstances in a way that attempted to restore his own ânormativeâ status, despite turning down sex, by presenting her response as not just emotional, but abnormally irrational.
Now, a man may very well adapt and accept his girlfriendâs offer of sex, despite a lack of interest, especially if he prefers to stay in a relationship. And this man may very well have done that, despite his complaints. Heâs just fishing here for public reassurance that heâs the ânormalâ one. And the women who respond are likely also trying to present the girlfriendâs reaction as a ânormalâ response to these expectations.
But the difference is that the women are attacking societyâs expectations, but the guy is attacking his girlfriendâs behaviour...