What I put together in my upbringing was that a man’s expectation is to master himself. Eventually, that looks like receiving respect and deferential treatment, being right most of the time, and being strong, courageous, and assertive. But while all of those things do lead to a stable & productive life, you simply can’t get them without first mastering yourself, unless you bully other people into giving them. Granted, there are a lot of people (in Eastern Oregon, evidently, as well as in politics) who don’t get that particular mechanism, but that doesn’t make them right. It makes them weak, predictable, and easily manipulated.
The problem is that good men aren’t interesting to watch as role models. The people around a good man do well with the stability he provides, but there is little glory in being a rock. But then, a good man doesn’t need, or necessarily even want, glory.
Fair enough, and that’s an argument for having a decent male role model in a kid’s life. So they learn that the aggressive impulses need to be checked at least as hard as the sissy ones.
What exactly are sissy or “effeminate or cowardly” impulses? So that I don’t make assumptions about your intended meaning I would appreciate clarification.
Nothing at all wrong with these expectations (in a healthy form, natch, rather than arrived at via the shortcut of insecurity, bullying and bossiness). They are of course somewhat incomplete, omitting other good traits such as compassion, gentleness, empathy, generosity, tact, and so forth.
But the real elephant in the room here is that everything about being respected and right and strong and courageous and assertive also makes those qualities a good expectation for a woman.
That overlap, I think, is at the heart of the modern “masculinity crisis”. Traditionally “manly” qualities such as strength and courage and wisdom have long been defined against traditionally “womanly” defects such as weakness and timidity and foolishness. The masculine commandment “Don’t Act Like A Girl” was predicated on the deep-rooted assumption that girls/women are not only naturally different from boys/men, but also in most respects objectively worse.
And now that girls/women are rejecting that dichotomy and embracing the idea that it’s natural, and okay, for women as well as men to be strong and brave and wise and knowledgeable and so forth, the persistent shibboleth “Don’t Act Like A Girl” is starting to squeeze men out of many of the positive aspects of traditional masculinity.
Sadly, whenever something in our society gets coded “feminine”, masculinity stereotypes start exerting pressure on men to avoid it. And this applies not just to traditionally feminine stuff like tears and flowers and high heels and empathy and poetry and the color pink (all of which are actually much more recent arrivals in the “feminine” category than many people realize), but also to stuff that was until a short time ago coded “masculine” until it became popular with women too.
For example, fictional adventure stories were traditionally considered “boys’ books” and avidly consumed by boys, with no concerns about seeming “feminine”. Now that girls read a lot of such books too, the whole area of fiction reading is viewed with more suspicion by boys as “girly” and boys are more resistant to reading overall (and consequently underperforming in literacy). (The related genres of comic books/graphic novels, narrative video games, etc., are still viewed as more “masculine” at present, but as girls branch out into those genres they will probably start to be seen as “feminine” too.)
Soccer, or what most of the world calls “football”, is seen as very masculine in most of the world, where it has a long tradition of being played by men and not by women. In the US, on the other hand, soccer grew to national prominence only comparatively recently, largely via youth leagues enrolling boys and girls in about equal numbers. So Americans widely consider soccer to be girly.
Same goes for violin playing, softball, wheat beers/witbier, and a host of other stuff. All originally strongly associated with men, and all now widely denigrated as “girly” because women started adopting them too.
So traditional masculinity stereotypes are slowly painting men into a corner: The more things that become theoretically “gender-neutral” because both men and women engage in them, the more things that in practice get coded “feminine”, so the more things that men start to avoid as insufficiently “manly”.
Even more unfortunately, this toxic-masculinity pressure is IMO encouraging many men to retreat to activities that are currently still perceived as “manly” and “safe” from women because they’re unhealthy or repulsive: e.g., unchecked aggression or drinking, or being a nasty troll online. (I’m not denying, btw, that there are plenty of women engaging in other unhealthy and repulsive behaviors that are traditionally coded feminine, such as “mean girl” clique wars, eating disorders, etc. I’m just saying that women/girls will be slower to “invade” the traditionally “masculine” activities that are unhealthy and repulsive, as opposed to the more appealing and healthy ones like reading adventure novels and playing soccer.)
I am unable to nuance anymore today. Bad brain and all. Were I able to do so, it would boil down to something like: everyone should be honest with themselves regarding strengths and weaknesses, and try not to be a dick to people whose weaknesses match up to your strengths. That kind of honesty takes courage (mental imperilment), and courage is in short supply. Bravery (physical imperilment) is easier to muster and too frequently is accepted as a substitute for courage.
I agree that what you describe exists and is a paradox, but I don’t think it’s necessary in order to read “toxic masculinity” as an insult. If you read “masculinity” as simply “what a man is”, and “toxic” as a descriptor rather than a qualifier, it appears to imply that all “male” traits are toxic.
I personally don’t think the term is used that sloppily all that much, and it’s less objectionable than some other catch phrases and memes going around about [white] males, but when you (meaning, “I”) read the phrase, my brain parses all possible meanings at once, as one must often do in order to read text without being “garden pathed” all the time, and so I automatically see a little bit of the worst possible interpretation there even if it is not meant.
What is the definition of ‘toxic manliness?’ Are we expected to only be manly when and where women believe it is appropriate? Who defined that?
If someone remarked about ‘toxic femininity’ every time they saw a female behave in a way they didn’t approve of - or perceived to be self destructive - people would scream at the top of their lungs. Who is the arbiter of what behavior is toxic?
Taking your questions seriously: The phrase “toxic masculinity” (which AFAIK is the more usual form of the term) seems to have gained currency (according to Google Ngram) some time in the mid-1980s.
It has been attributed to the psychologist Shepherd Bliss who used it “to describe a type of masculinity caused by a repression of ‘deep masculinity’.” In that link it is defined as “a neologism used to describe normative masculine behavior in Western society associated with behaviors linked to dominance, misogyny, homophobia and violence”.
And the point of rejecting toxic masculinity is not to let women define “when and where” men can be “manly”, but to stop letting traditional rigid gender norms define what it means to be “manly”.
Actually, “toxic femininity” is in fact a widely used term whose meaning is the exact counterpart of “toxic masculinity”: namely, letting traditional rigid gender norms define what it means to be “womanly” or “feminine”.
Here are some examples of behavior that fall into the categories of “toxic masculinity” and “toxic femininity” as typically interpreted:
Toxic Masculinity:I can’t take such a big duffel bag on the team trip! My teammates will tease me that I packed like a girl! [Honesttogod true story of behavior observed in a friend’s teenage son.]
Toxic Femininity:I can’t be expected to carry this big suitcase I packed! Find some man to help me. [Also true-story observed behavior.] TM:I can’t drink a pink cocktail, it’s not manly.
TF:I can’t drink a beer, it’s not ladylike. TM:I can’t stand those sissy-looking Eurofags with their fancy hairstyles. Are they even men?
TF:I can’t stand those awful bulked-up dykey chicks in those unbecoming uniforms. Are they even women?
Well, you get the idea. Notice, btw, the very typical uniformity of the first two words in all of those sample remarks. Toxic masculinity and toxic femininity are, first and foremost, all about embracing artificial limitations that are not actually required by any genuine sex-linked constraints.
I get what ‘toxic masculinity’ is supposed to mean, but I genuinely did not know that it had an objective definition.
I have literally never heard the phrase ‘toxic femininity.’ I will check it out.
I have the feeling that if I saw my wife displaying some unpleasant behaviors, and told her that she was displaying ‘toxic femininity,’ she would lose her mind. It would be something along the lines of, “Who are you to tell me that I can’t be feminine? So I’m only allowed to be feminine when it’s on your terms?” If I told her that certain feminine behaviors were considered ‘toxic’ she would probably interpret it as an attack on her agency and independence.
I think the only real rule to determine the “toxicity” of the phenomenon is “Are you embracing artificial limitations because traditional rigid gender norms tell you you’re supposed to?”
That is, there’s nothing in the world wrong with, say, a man liking to drink a beer or a woman liking to drink a pink cocktail, if that’s what that particular man and woman happen to like.
When it becomes “toxic” is when they start to think that it’s somehow “against the rules” or an attack on their very nature as a man or a woman for them to drink the “forbidden” kind of drink.
There has been the rise of the metrosexual and the hipster, who aren’t afraid to wear pink, groom their body hair, drink mixed drinks, drive small cars, etc. So it’s not just a one way street, but I’d agree that in general, especially in the men who peacock the most, the masculinity has tended more towards the toxic rather than the self-assured and independent.
As the gender gap narrows(women are already a majority of college graduates and show no sign of that relenting, eventually this will bubble up into positions of power in corporate/political structures) men are going to have to find a new source for their self worth against a society that doesn’t instantaneously validate them like it once did. The days are rapidly passing of mothers telling their kids “A man’s sense of self-worth comes from his work and a woman’s comes from her man.”
There’s a local NPR station with a program called “Think” that’s hosted by one of my favorite personalities, she’s a very bright and insightful lady. I read a bio of her and she mentioned how she met her husband. He put in his online dating profile that he thought Sarah Vowell was sexier than Kim Kardashian and that’s the line that made her want to meet him. There are men out there finding different ways of relating to women, but they’re not the ones making the headlines.
I think for it to be truly toxic it needs to be a bit more significant than drink choice. No-one’s actually being harmed by being limiting themselves to ‘girly’ or ‘men’s’ drinks, (and I’m saying that as a woman who’s had a multi-year campaign to get offered a beer at my aunt and uncle’s, like my brother, rather than the cloying sweet stuff my uncle insists I should like). It’s from the same mindset, but if it was just little things like drinks, it’d be a minor annoyance, and I think using minor annoyances as examples of toxicity is part of why some people write the concept off as petty SJW nonsense.
The real toxic is stuff like men refusing to go to the doctors when they’re ill, because that’s weak, and for women not putting themselves forward for things they want (and disparaging women who do), because pushy=bitchy and unfeminine. Stuff that can really negatively affect the course of someone’s life, simply because they’re trying to live up to some made up concept of gender norms.
I know it does all jumble together, but someone can cheerfully abandon the concept that men shouldn’t wear pink but still firmly believe that men shouldn’t have to cook or clean, because that’s women’s work. Likewise, I actually heard someone I know describe a co-worker as ‘such a female’ for refusing to clean up after himself once (the guy I know is a chef, the other guy’s one of the line cooks), people’s concepts of gender norms can be really weird.
Absolutely: it’s up to guys to check how they’re acting.
At the same time, women hold an important role: don’t make this shit harder. Women need to watch for ways they might be strengthening toxic masculine stereotypes, and knock that shit off.
Examples:
-Telling a boy to be a man.
-Telling a man to be more manly.
-Teasing, even lightheartedly, a man for engaging in a “feminine” hobby like knitting, or a “feminine” job like nursing.
-Mocking men for expressing vulnerability (there’s a poster on this board who delights in talking about men’s “pwecious hurt fweelings,” and that’s some bullshit toxic masculinity support right there)
I’m not including anything about sexual attraction, because the parts want what they want. But reinforcing the stereotypes is real easy to do, and not at all helpful.
Again: there’s no burden for women in this case except for the burden of not adding to the burden for men who are trying to do the work that needs doing.
