Do you agree with either of these concepts? Do you think there are traditional gender norms that are damaging to individuals and society as a whole? Or are people just trying to find a pseudo-intellectual way of describing “asshole”?
Do you agree with one but NOT the other? Toxic masculinity is talked about much more frequently than toxic femininity. I can see how someone might see how pushing both concepts into the discourse is a way to just play the lame “both sides” card, thereby diffusing blame. I can also see how someone might see “toxic femininity” as a constellation of behaviors that society has always looked down upon, whereas “toxic masculinity” is tightly wrapped around qualities that are widely esteemed. Like stoicism, self-reliance, and competitiveness. In contrast, “mean girls” might be tolerated, but apart from Scarlett O’Hara they have never been put up on a pedestal or held up as a paragon of virtue. So I can see how while someone might agree that there’s “toxicity” on both sides, they may think addressing one requires more of a sea change than the other.
Do you agree that Meghan McCain embodies “toxic femininity”? Personally, I don’t know. I don’t watch the View very often and I don’t know a lot about her. However, from the article’s description of her flying into tearful rages whenever she’s criticized, it certainly sounds like she defends herself through emotional manipulation and victimhood, and I do think those are “toxic” traits. Seems to me a person with that kind of style would not be well-suited for the media limelight, but there she is, on national TV. And I guess by calling the problem “toxic femininity” rather than “histrionic asshole”, those who are inclined to feel sympathy for her might step back and examine if they are responding more to a socially engrained cue (female tears) than a dispassionate analysis of facts. I think the article is good for at least being brave enough to pin a face to the “toxic femininity” label, even if I’m unsure whether Meghan McCain is the type specimen of this classification.
For 1), absolutely, at least for toxic masculinity. And I don’t doubt that there are negative factors to traditional notions of femininity as well – notions that women are incapable of being handy or mechanical, for example. I’m not sure if I’ve heard the term “toxic femininity”, though.
I don’t know enough about McCain to comment on her specifically.
Absolutely. There are pretty awful ways that folks enforce gender norms on each other and on themselves, and doing so causes a lot of misery in the world.
Whatever term it’s called by, toxic femininity describes a real constellation of behaviors.
I’ll read the article, but she’s not someone I’ve ever given much thought to.
If we agree that there exist unpleasant traits more peculiar to men than to women, and if we agree there exist unpleasant traits more common to women than to men, and if we agree that one’s “toxicity”, in this context, can be determined by measuring the extent to which one exhibits these traits, then I’d answer “Yes, yes, and I don’t know”.
The complicating factor is that one can’t just say “Behaviour X is objectively good or bad”. That’s a subjective value judgement, and it’s entirely situational. The question is, or should be, “Why is this person engaging in this behaviour?” If it’s for purely selfish reasons (like, say, blaming an innocent person for your mistake to get out of a well-deserved punishment), then I think it’s fair to call that instance of behaviour a “toxic display”. But to say a behaviour is, by definition, toxic is overly simplistic.
In other words, I think “toxic masculinity” and “toxic femininity” are, indeed, just pseudo-intellectual ways of describing people who act like assholes.
I think being an asshole is mostly behavior on the individual level. When we start talking about behavior that is not only widely accepted but is actively encouraged then we’re talking about established norms of behavior. And, yes, I think we can argue that some of the established norms of masculinity are certainly harmful to individuals and society as a whole. Homosexuals and especially transgender individuals have certainly suffered greatly because they don’t adhere to expected gender norms here in the United States. The Antebellum South was a fairly violent place where men were at risk of having an eye gouged out or a testicle ripped off in a fight to preserve their honor.
I think there’s usually a translation problem when one takes an academic concept and tries to use it when talking to lay people. (I see the same problem with privilege which I am a fan of.) People using toxic masculinity sometimes wield it as a club in arguments and sometimes they use the term incorrectly. People who aren’t in academia hear the phrase toxic masculinity and think it refers to any and all behaviors we associate with men.
A lot of people would argue that Meghan McCain’s behavior is just an example of her working within a system she didn’t create. i.e. Hate the game not the player. But then women are sometimes judged more harshly or in a different light than males who exhibit similar traits. I’ve certainly met plenty of men who played the victim when you call them on their bullshit but I generally wouldn’t ascribe that to a gendered behavior like some people are doing with McCain.
I once asked the same question as you. When is someone just being an asshole and when is it endemic to group behavior? I’m not sure I came up with a satisfactory question back then either.
Some new pop psychology term becomes trendy on the internet, toxic femininity" are simply the most recent examples. The same way “mansplaining” has been expanded to mean “anything a man says to woman” and “gaslighting” has been expanded to mean “disagreeing with someone on the details of something.” The fad will pass and the phrases will fade to the background within a couple of years.
Traditional gender norms are differently damaging to men, women, and others; but are damaging to all groups. So I say it’s possible to agree with both without saying that they’re the same.
Have not been following what Meghan McCain’s been doing.
Looking solely at the article posted: I think there’s a risk of conflating the claim within it that McCain is a religious bigot, and the claim that her way of expressing this uses the methods of stereotypical female roles to do so. The article reads to me as if it’s saying both of those things, and may not be separating them well. (It also reads to me as if I want to continue not to follow what Meghan McCain’s been up to; except possibly in order to keep an eye on warning signs.)
I wouldn’t say entirely situational. Human behavior can include, for instance, murdering one’s spouse and kids. Are you saying we can’t say that’s bad behavior?
And while it may indeed be a value judgement to say ‘people shouldn’t be prevented from doing work that they’re really good at and want to do just because they’ve got the “wrong” genitals for it’: I think a reasonable claim can be made that it’s objectively bad for the individual, who may well wind up miserable; and for the society, which loses out on what might have been a considerably useful talent.
But what if the answer to “why is this person engaging in this behavior” is “because they’ve been taught that this is the way proper members of their gender are supposed to behave”?
–Darren Garrison, IME the people expanding those terms in that fashion are the people objecting to them. The people actually wanting to use them don’t agree with the expanded meanings.
Re-defining what somebody else is saying in order to object to the re-definition is a pretty common arguing technique. Doesn’t mean that it’s a good one.
Sexist mumbo jumbo.
A person is a person, not a gender caricature.
Lousy human beings would probably be the same even if their biological sex was changed.
I think it’s real. After billion or so years of evolution why wouldn’t there be a diverse set of reproductive strategies that in some cases result in what appears to be sub optimal social behavior in the current era? Humans aren’t actually rational creatures.
I see no reason to believe that these toxic behaviors are due to evolution rather than culture. Their presence in various cultures is highly variable, from being frowned upon to the norm.
Even if toxic behaviors are coded into our DNA due to evolutionary forcing, that doesn’t mean they can’t be regulated.
For example, I have no problem accepting the idea that men are more likely to have a genetic predisposition towards aggression than women. But I also believe that aggressive males can learn how to handle their emotions so that their anger doesn’t manifest into violence.
Good point. I don’t mean to imply that there is absolutely zero biological difference, in brain chemistry, hormones, etc., between the biological sexes, just that the characteristics we’re calling “toxic” are more driven by culture than biology.
That’s your genes speaking! How does culture and other human artifacts even come into existence? By efforts of biological organisms governed by an evolved brain.
A lot of the toxicity of either expression comes from treating other people in a rigidly gendered way. Maintaining incredibly reductionistic and shitty views of the sex that is considered opposite.
90% of what remains is aimed at the same sex, and seems to take the form “If I’ve gotta compete in these masculinity (or femininity) sweepstakes, so do you, and yo, you’re falling short and I’m gonna win brownie points by pointing out your shortcomings”.
Some of what is described as toxic masculinity is a self-immersed race to the most aggressive and triumphant adversarial winner-position and if it ever had to do with how female folk viewed it that got lost in the endeavor. It’s nearly all aimed at the same sex, shaming other males about not measuring up to masculinity standards (we forget why it mattered…)
A meaningful percentage of toxic femininity is about policing – “if you break the rules you may screw things up for the rest of us”. It is, after all, a patriarchy. You could perhaps argue that it is moving towards a post-patriarchal system but if so the transition is spanning multiple generations and not finished by any means. And because it has historically been a patriarchy, women’s social postion even at best has been more dependent on marketing one’s self within an attenuated list of possibilities, and the oppressed do tend to lash out horizontally for lack of being able to lash out otherwise; and any women who didn’t play by girl rules of appropriate conduct could indeed mess up things for other women and were at least as often resented for it as admired for what they got away with.
I think they’re dumb buzzwords and not conducive to constructive discussion of anything. Similar to “white privilege”. We’ve had many years now of issues being debated using this kind of terminology and we are now MORE polarized and MORE divided than before.
The issues are real. The terminology is faulty and counterproductive.
I completely disagree and view it all as a load of meaningless crap. I have never seen anyone take the sort of gibberish that’s in that Wikipedia snippet, subject it to serious critical scrutiny and logical analysis, and still believe that it’s valid intellectual material. To note just a few of the more obvious flaws:
In a gender studies context, Raewyn Connell argues that toxic practices such as physical violence may serve to reinforce men’s dominance over women in Western societies.
So why does Raewyn Connell specifically say this about Western societies? Does Raewyn Connell think that there’s no physical violence in non-Western societies? If so, I think we can debunk that pretty easily. Or does Raewyn Connell think that is non-Western societies, physical violence exists but does not reinforce men’s dominance over women? If so, what’s the logic there? Anyone familiar with the life of women in, for example, Afghanistan or Sudan knows that violence against women is common and quite obviously used to keep women down. There’s nowhere in western society where it happens on the same scale that I know of. So why focus on “Western societies”?
In psychology, toxic masculinity refers to traditional cultural masculine norms that can be harmful to men, women, and society overall; this concept of toxic masculinity is not intended to demonize men or male attributes, but rather to emphasize the harmful effects of conformity to certain traditional masculine ideal behaviors such as dominance, self-reliance, and competition.
The obvious problem being that dominance, self-reliance, and competition are all good and necessary in some cases. Examples are so obvious that one feels rather strange stating them. To organize a military, a sports team, a government, or almost anything else, there must be some widely accepted dominance or certain individuals over others. Self-reliance? Why wouldn’t we think it a good thing for a man to be self-reliant rather than sapping someone else’s resources? And competition? Competition is what lead Isaac Newton to publish Principia Mathematica, Michael Jordan to become a great basketball player, and Steve Jobs to produce the iPhone.
…and limit their emotional range primarily to expressions of anger.
I am unaware of any social expectation that boys and men will do this.
Bill Burr is a hilarious comedian, the focus of much of his humor comes from his exposure throughout his young life of ‘toxic masculinity’. Of which, he acknowledges had a negative influence on his life. If you watch 20 years of his comedy it’s a path to being less angry and less ‘masculine’ in the way he was taught men should behave. He’s funny, because it comes from a place all men can relate to, but it is sad he and many other men are raised to think the way he thought.
Any male who has played a sport can remember the camaraderie, the mutually shared feelings of happiness when things are going well, and, ideally, expressions of encouragement from teammates when things aren’t going well. It’s not all anger and rage, even in the most full-contact of sports. The notion that boys are expected to limit their emotions to anger is bullshit.