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Are Women Actually Propping Up Toxic Masculinity At Some Level?
In the broader societal discourse of people who watch and consume too much news stuff, there are a lot of various gender role discussions, from “What is a woman?” to toxic masculinity to how to raise boys/girls and all the rest. Most of these discussions have been around for generations, but they seem new or more forceful now just because there are so many channels and ways to consume information, so it can feel like we’re drowning in it. Plus, many people have a platform, be it LinkedIn, X, Insta, Discord, Reddit, FB, or whatever. So, the hot take ecosystem is alive and well. I make some small amount of money within it myself.
The “toxic masculinity” concept is interesting. Personally, I think we had what we’d call semantic or scope creep on the idea. At first, it was a discussion about guys like Louis C.K. and Harvey Weinstein and the worst stuff that men do. Got it. But then, over a few years, it became that everything men do can be seen as “toxic,” and that triggered a corresponding backlash whereby now you have a lot of younger men going to the right side ideologically, because that’s where this “toxicity is fake news!” narrative lives.
In reality, part of the problem is how women have to be the active emotional parent in most relationships because a lot of men just can’t raise that bar, and women don’t always know what’s best to parent boys, because, well, (lot of commas here) they were never a boy themselves.
Alright, so we wring our hands a lot about “toxic masculinity.” And it definitely exists, whether it’s finance bros, gym bros, stalker bros, LinkedIn Lunatics, et al. There is a form of masculinity that’s “toxic.” I am not sure we have ever explicitly defined what makes X-behavior “toxic” as opposed to Y-behavior, aside from clear-cut things like rape, but we can move past that for right now.
