Let’s Dissect Toxic Masculinity

This post was prompted by some mild Facebook arguing, which is as useless as it is disingenuous, so c’est la vie. I’d also like to assuage any men out there who fervently believe that any woman who uses terms like “toxic masculinity,” MUST be a man-hater. We don’t hate men, we’re just kind-of-actually-totally-tired-of-fighting-to-prove-our-worth, which is not furthered along by man’s insistence upon being right and/or best.

Let’s begin at the beginning: where did the term “toxic masculinity” come from?

The term “toxic masculinity” was first used by psychologist Shepherd Bliss in the 1980’s. Bliss was trying to separate the negative traits of men from the positive ones and used the adjective “toxic” to do so. The term “toxic masculinity” came from a man. Bliss defined toxic traits as “over-aspiration for physical, sexual and intellectual dominance” and the “systematic devaluation of women’s opinions, bodies, and sense of self.”

To state the mundane and obvious: masculinity isn’t toxic in and of itself. Words like “masculinity” and “femininity” are pretty subjective anyway, and grounded in specific social norms that are only as real as we make them. What is masculine to you might not seem masculine to me, and so forth. Further, femininity isn’t commonly called “toxic” because we still…