The phrase “toxic masculinity” is not blaming anything on anyone’s gender.
Comment on Why, as a male, when emotionally do I only feel accepted by women but not by men?
Not_Alec_Baldwin@lemmy.world 9 months agoEh, I hate the phrase toxic masculinity.
Some people are assholes. Men are assholes, and women are assholes. Don’t blame it on their gender.
JackbyDev@programming.dev 9 months ago
Ookami38@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
“toxic masculinity” isn’t anything to do with a single person. It’s the aspects of us, as a gender-based society, that we see as “masculine” but are really just… toxic. Toxic masculinity is telling your kids to have a stiff upper lip. Toxic masculinity is shoving those emotions down in the ‘man place’ because no one cares but you, bro. Society ain’t got time for a man that can’t stand.
Doing these things, experiencing these things, and being shaped by them doesn’t mean someone themselves is toxic, but that they’ve gotten the TOXIC parts of masculinity mixed up with real masculinity.
There’s toxic femininity, too. Off the top of my head, the culture around appearance is definitely an example. Yes, a lot of that was started, and still gets perpetuated, by men, but there’s a lot of women feeding into that as well. Masculinity just tends to be overpowering, in many ways, and so toxic masculinity is easier to see and be pissed at than toxic femininity.
Nashua@programming.dev 9 months ago
It’s not the gender being referred to as toxic, rather the societal expectation for men to behave a certain way - tougher, harder, to not show weakness through expressing emotion. Toxic masculinity can come from people of any gender.
OneWomanCreamTeam@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
Not to mention, toxic masculinity hurts men just as much as it hurts the people around them.
Men are victims of patriarchy too.
I hate that terms like toxic masculinity have been poisoned by such frequent misuse.