"Toxic masculinity" and "toxic femininity." Real things or sexist mumbo-jumbo.

Great Debates
101

It’s been a long time since I’ve cried five times in a year, let alone in a month.

But it’s funny. When I’m telling other women tales about my various adventures, I tend to perpetrate like I cry all the time. I even simulate crying to make whomever I’m talking to laugh as I’m telling a story. It has been my experience that most women tend to find humor in crying jags. Especially hormone-induced crying jags.

But I don’t do this when I’m talking to guys. Probably because I want to be the “cool chick”. Cool chicks don’t cry. They make fun of women who cry.

(I once “shamed” a female coworker for crying at her desk when Heath Leather died. I’m glad she didn’t return the favor when I did the same over Prince’s death.)

102

Actually, thanks to your post, I’m more convinced than previously that you’re wrong and I’m right.

First of all, the APA guidelines that you linked to are political propaganda, not science. They make this clear enough starting off with unscientific political claims such as “boys and men, as a group, tend to hold privilege and power based on gender”.

The first paper that you link to contradicts your position. It discuss “emotional inexpression” among men involved in medical interviews. It notes that some men have difficulty expressing emotions but most men do not. It discusses differing possible explanations for “normative male alexithymia” (which is basically the theory you and others have been pushing in this thread, that males don’t express emotions because they been socialized to conform to a certain gender norm). The paper says that this has been theorized; it hasn’t been proven. It discusses different possible explanations for why a subset of men won’t express emotions, some biological and some social, without endorsing any particular one.

To state the obvious, declaring that there exists a phenomenon in which a subset of men do not talk about their emotions in one particular setting, does not prove that society overwhelmingly orders all men and boys to avoid expressing emotions.

103

…LOL. “Your cite is propaganga!” he says while he links to a cite that regularly disseminates alt-right propaganda.

104

Do you cry? When’s the last time you cried? Did you feel less of a man for doing it? Did your friends make fun of you?

105

I do exactly the same thing! I often say “I cried about X” when I am talking to women and I want to explain that I reached a certain level of emotional intensity. I overplay how much I cry because I feel like it’s expected in certain situations and not crying would make me seem cold. It’s also a useful short-hand to explain just how upset I was.

On the other hand, with men, I avoid mentioning that I cried even if I did, because I know that that causes me to lose status.

106

Let me start out by pointing out how immaterial the crying discussion is.

It doesn’t matter if current society considers crying something unmanly or not. What gets stereotyped as manly can change … one generation it may be being stoic and another braggadocio … the point is that there are stereotypes that become internalized, which in general are ones of toughness and assertiveness.

I do have no objection to the idea that sexist stereotypes, often internalized, are problematic.

I am pointing out that the phrase “toxic masculinity” is crap at communicating that concept and actually counterproductive. I would likewise object to labelling racist stereotyping and its myriad effects (including how they can be internalized, be implicitly held, and play out by institutional factors) as “toxic whiteness” or “toxic Blackness.” Or even the phenomena of white privilege as “toxic whiteness” and Black thuggery as “toxic Blackness.” They’d be crap in pretty much the same way. I’d doubt monstro would promote use of that phrase to discuss these issues because of toxic nature of the message of not getting mental health help, or because of the celebration in some cultural circles of “thug culture.”

The phrase does not well communicate the problem of monstro having considered certain traits as feminine and weak (to be avoided in a “man’s environment”), nor how she plays to the crying woman stereotype with females co-workers but tough cool chick who mocks women who cry with men.

What it messages to those who are not steeped in reading deeply, i.e. most myself inclusive, is that there is some subset of men that are a problem because they act excessively manly, with the traits we expect men to have if they are “manly men”. Not me and certainly not a problem that women contribute to with the stereotypes they hold …

107

Nope.

Physical traits are not what we are talking about. What are those differences in behaviors and personality traits that you are talking about?

Being tough vs fragile? Silently bearing it vs crying? Having a job like a lumberjack vs a nurse? Liking to hunt vs liking to shop? Being sexually aggressive vs a bit shy? Coming home and watching sports vs cooking dinner?

They freakin’ are the stereotypes.

With me so far?

108

Last multipost.

I have no doubt that I have internalized toughness, tenacity, and stoicism as values to aspire to. Thing is that I think I got that from both parents as role models, not just my WW2 era boxer is his youth 1950s stereotype of masculinity father. And I think my daughter gets them messaged by me as values for her as much as my boys have. (Her mom possibly tougher and as tenacious but less on the stoic side. And her toughness and tenacity are part of what makes her such an attractive woman. And why I live in fear!) Whether you think they are good values or harmful ones or fine unless too much and then toxic, they are values and traits that are not male or female.

109

…immaterial to whom? Its clear that its immaterial to you. But we have two posters in this very thread who have talked about how they feel they have to modify their behaviour based on if they are interacting with either men or women. So it isn’t immaterial to them.

It seems like you are having a very different conversation to the rest of us. Identifying and pointing out examples of toxic masculinity is a very different thing to affirming and accepting. They aren’t stereotypes. They aren’t a “widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing.” We are talking about specific behaviours: not general and oversimplified examples.

110

I have tried reading some articles in women’s studies and related journals. I can’t recall ever completing any of those articles, because the main takeaway from the first few pages is invariably that what I’m reading falls woefully short of the standards for academic writing in the fields that I pay more attention to. (Mainly physics, computer science, biology, and psychology.) When I get to a sentence like “Spaces where actual pumpkins reside differ from spaces in which metaphorical pumpkins are segregated in the social landscape of modern U.S. cultures”, I just find it difficult to convince myself that reading the entire paper is worth my time. I participated in a recent thread about a case where three pranksters submitted laughable papers to gender studies journals and got some of those papers published. I looked at some of the other papers from the same journals and noted that it was hard to discern a difference in quality between the prank papers and the “real ones”. We know the difference between a real and phony paper in a physics or biology journal–it’s determined by whether experimental results can be replicated. But what’s the difference between a real and phony feminist theory paper?

The common response when I or anyone says such things is along these lines: “Yes, there’s a lot of meaningless crap and phony research out there, but it’s unfair to dismiss the entire fields based on a few useless or laughable papers.” But I’ve never had anyone point me to any women’s studies or feminist theory papers that they would consider to be good stuff that contrasts with the bad stuff.

111

Well, good to know what position you’ve staked out, and that continuing this conversation is a huge waste of my time. I’m not going to try to debate someone out of a position that is exactly the opposite of a massive interdisciplinary consensus if their response to the freakin’ APA is “that’s propaganda”.

112

I didn’t even notice that your cite was Quilette.

Quilette: The Thinking Man’s Daily Stürmer. :rolleyes:

Clearly, this is a conversation that’s worth continuing.

113

I agree. It’s leading to a boring hijack.

Even if we stipulate that “toxic masculinity” is somehow inadequate, “sexist stereotypes” also doesn’t cut it. The problem here is that these behaviors are rooted in people’s core sense of themselves. “Stereotying” is super broad; one can stereotype engineers, Americans, cat-owners. Gender (and race) identity is more primal.

I’m going to shift to race again. I work in an intensive academic environment. As is pretty typical in this sort of environment, I deal with a lot of imposter syndrome and a lot of kids who worry they aren’t really “smart”. Some deal with this by working really, really hard. Others, however, deal with this by not working at all, and even lying about how little they work to make it sound like they do nothing at all. They seem to deal with the anxiety of potentially not living up to expectations by creating the impression that they don’t try at all, and considering that, the fact that the do so well must reveal impressive inherent abilities indeed.

Now, all sorts of kids display this sort of behavior, but it’s fundamentally different with the Asian kids that display this behavior. On both extremes–the hard-working and the extreme-slacking–there is more intensity to it. Furthermore, they persistently bring up their Asian-ness in relationship to their intelligence. Furthermore, in private conversations about their academics/college aspirations, this comes up all the time. Being “smart” is much more closely tied to their self-identity, and falling short of that standard is a threat to their identity. It’s a fundamentally different thing than the pressure to excel non-Asian kids might feel: this is pressure not to meet the minimum standards for your self-concept. And it comes both from within and from without–and, again, both from other Asian and non-Asian kids. It’s a pervasive thing.

Now, being smart isn’t a bad thing. I also think we’d agree that being “Asian”–a term that encompasses half the world–doesn’t indicate a genetic increase in intelligence. But the fact is that in the current construction of society, the stereotype that Asians are “smart” leads to a particular set of toxic behaviors that are counter-productive for everyone. I’m comfortable calling that “toxic Asian-ness”. It’s not enough to call it “internalized stereotypes”.

I also think that no matter what the phase, people are going to complain because the issue is with the underlying concept. ANY discussion about how qualities associated with manliness might be negative is going to inspire defensiveness in some portion of the population. As has been pointed out, we started having this conversation centuries ago about Toxic Femininity, and were allowed to have it. But anything perceived as an attack on masculinity has to be shut down before it starts.

114

The discussion of whether something commonly considered an archetypical example of toxic masculinity is in fact a male stereotype or toxic is immaterial, but the discussion of what to call the concept is important? :confused:

Well, okay. I mean, the other discussion clearly ain’t going anywhere, so I suppose it’s more productive to talk semantics.

What would you like to see it called? What term should we be using, if the one that’s generally agreed upon in sociology is so bad at communicating the concept?

Also, how do we discuss the existence of stereotypes without affirming stereotypes, in your view?

115

I wonder if the OP had been just about toxic femininity, would posters like ITR champion and DSeid be so adamant in their denial. Or would they concede that women are disproportionately likely to possess a set of traits that are fine in low doses and damaging at high doses–traits that are encouraged or at least tolerated by society with the excuse “That’s just how women are”.

I’m pretty sure that this is a noncontroversial issue for most people. I say this because it seems like that most people have some story about middle-age “Karen” doing something bad or some “gold-digging ho” doing something bad or some all-female workplace acting “bad”. Or some teenage girl doing something bad(everyone always seems quite familiar with the “mean girl” concept). And the “something bad” always seems to fit in with offenses that line up with extreme femininity. Karens become hysterical when the waitstaff don’t do something to their exact specification and use their hysteria as a weapon. Gold-digging hos are high maintenance narcissicists who use their feminine wiles to extract resources from others. All-female workplaces are petty and catty and backstabby. And teenaged girls are all about drama and shit-stirring and catching an attitude with people. These are stereotypes–yes–but there are some women who nonetheless fulfill them to a T. Are all of them carrying out social programming? Of course not. But I don’t think it’s crazy to think that some significant fraction engage in certain behaviors because they think that’s what they are “supposed” to do. Maybe they have been explicitly taught this or they just picked up it from their environments by studying others.

“My husband needs to show his love by buying me gifts all the time and taking care of all the finances. I shouldn’t have to lift a finger beyond running the vacuum and doing the dishes. Because that’s how a beautiful woman such as myself should be treated.”

“Yeah, I’m constantly talking shit about my best friend behind her back and that might not be nice, but that’s just how we girls are. That’s what we all do.”

“I have no problem barking orders at waitstaff because I’m a three time mother and a five time grandmother. I’m entitled to queen treatment as far as I’m concerned. I demand it!”

116

No, they are not male or female–but men or women are disproportionately pressured to exaggerate a set of traits as a condition of their gender. I lie and said I cried at a funeral because I didn’t want to be perceived as unemotional, unempathic–unfemale. And some dude drove to the ER with a knife in his leg because he didn’t want to be perceived as “unmanly”. I wasn’t just worked about looking too stoic; he wasn’t just worried about looking too weak; we both strove to live up to what Wollstonecraft called, 300 years ago, our “supposed sexual character”. What do you think is meant by “turn in your man card” or “quit acting like a girl”? It’s saying “this behavior is unbecoming to a man, if you display it, you lose an essential part of your identity”.

117

Manda JO I appreciate your post but I’d have the same discomfort with “toxic Asian-ness” as a popularized shorthand for what you were describing. It would similarly fail to as a shorthand to communicate the concept. Try just using the phrase by itself to the families of these students, to non-Asian students, and ask what they would think the phrase means and implies. Go to them and begin a conversation by saying “I’d like to have a conversation about toxic Asian-ness with you.” and report back if you think that set the table well for a productive conversation about the issues.

And the failure is precisely because these labels “are rooted in people’s core sense of themselves”, are fundamental aspects of their identities.

The broad concept is not mumbo jumbo; it’s the same concept as applies across the board with all stereotyped groupings in our society. And I admit that the ideas of stereotyped expectations, of implicit stereotype being held, of within-group reactions to stereotypes (how they are adopted or rejected by group members), institutional factors, are not easy to communicate broadly, whatever the identity in the blank X of the discussion.

Perhaps “harmful X stereotypes” is not a completely adequate shorthand for the broad subjects, but IMHO, “Toxic Xness” is a complete fail for any X. And the former is less, well, toxic, to productive conversation and broader communication.

Do another little experiment maybe: informally poll a few dozen people today and ask them if they’ve heard the phrase “toxic masculinity” and what it means.

I will be shocked if the near universal response of what it means is essentially just men who are being “bros”. Not sure how many have heard the phrase “toxic femininity” already … might be more confused responses … but I’d suspect the response would be dunno but it sounds sexist.

Yes, BPC, I think the crying discussion is analyzing not just one tree but one little bit of bark on one tree and missing the forest. OF COURSE there are stereotypes widely held over what are “manly” traits which in general include aspects of toughness and grit and the ability to endure and to persevere. Whether or not the stereotype is men don’t cry or men cry only for real good reasons or a belief that crying is not a sign of not being tough after all is, to me, dumb. But do carry on.

How we discuss stereotypes without affirming them is - carefully. We discuss the stereotypes as objects that are used but we don’t use them while we discuss them.

118

Perhaps a white person wouldn’t be the best person to deliver a sermon on “toxic Asianness”. Perhaps that would be a message better delivered by a member of that group, who has firsthand experience in the toxicity as well as the non-toxicity of the culture and thus can speak from a position of love and respect.

I probably wouldn’t want to sit through a lecture about toxic femininity from a guy unless he was a well-respected feminist scholar. I probably wouldn’t want to sit through a lecture about toxic African Americanness from a white person or a conservative black person. But all this means is that who the messager is is just as important as the message.

119

You’re using a textbook case of the ad hominem fallacy. I linked to a Quillette article in which twelve scientists and mental health experts use sound logic and science to show the many flaws in the APA’s reasoning. You cannot find any flaws in their arguments, so you instead try to smear the publication.

So in other words, you can’t back up your arguments with facts or logic.

120

While it’s true that the choice of messenger can make people bristle, that’s more the fault of the audience than the speaker - and it’s the audience who should change, not the messenger. If a white person delivers a talk about ‘toxic Asianness’ and people bristle because the white speaker isn’t Asian (but they would be perfectly fine with the speech had it come from an Asian speaker), that’s ad hominem on part of the audience.