I have just read the article in Wikipedia on “Toxic Masculinity,” and at the risk of entering the minefield of the weaponized gender wars, I must say I somewhat disagree with it. It is interesting, but not acceptable. Toxic males, yes. Toxic masculinity, no.
We can surely agree that there are toxic males, and we might even agree that there are toxic females too. But that is not what the phrase implies. The subtext is that (all?) masculinity is toxic and therefore that males are toxic, poisonous. (And if not all, then what little bits of masculinity might be salvageable? Do tell.) This is a bit unfair and unjust.
All this demonization persists while protesting gender equity, equal rights (even for toxic males?), and “leveling the playing field,” while sloping it steeply the other way. Which adds camouflage and hypocrisy to demonization.
While this misandry escalates, I think that misogyny has also escalated under Trumpism with his own infamous remarks and behavior, and with the emergence of the Incels, Bugaloos, the militia movement, Neo-Nazis, and the murders of transgender women. The political polarization and gender polarization have tended to coincide and to reinforce each other in symbiosis. The mass protests by women in France against spousal homicide and domestic violence are matched by annual memorial ceremonies in Canada on the anniversary of the killing of 14 women in Montreal by Marc Lepine in 1989.
This escalation of both misandry and misogyny is all very unfortunate and contributes to further militarization in the so-called gender wars and culture wars. The misandry of toxic masculinity expresses what I have called the "Cyclops Syndrome": seeing with only one eye, and seeing only what one wants to see. The "Nelson Syndrome" would also be suitable. (Blinded in one eye, he was unable to read a signal from his admiral at the battle of Copenhagen entirely because he put his telescope to his blind eye!—if you want to know. If not, forget it!).
This is too one-sided and even mistaken a view of men and masculinity. The Wikipedia article should not only say this but stress it.
My point is that one might adopt other more realistic perspectives on men other than simply labeling them poison. Men are not all the same, as Connell, Kimmel, and Cosmopolitan have clarified. One might refer to creative masculinity (including all the Nobel prizes and recognition for writers, musicians, artists, inventors, and manual construction workers), and heroic/altruistic masculinity (for the firefighters and military, the Bravery Awards, and for the caring professions: nurses and doctors and caregivers, social workers, teachers, especially kindergarten and primary—all include men and women), and victim masculinity (notably the homeless, the victims of homicide, suicide, war, and accidents, higher mortality and morbidity rates, punitive U.S. penal culture, and discriminatory education, health, and lethal justice policies).
Sure, add toxic masculinity for the megalomaniacs, psychopaths, and sociopaths, and the few murderers (especially mass and serial): exceptions, I would say, rather than the rule. Villainy is not typically masculine, nor exclusively so. Anyway, one might add toxic femininity to include Lucy Netby, an English nurse charged with eight murders and 10 attempted murders in November 2020, and the Canadian nurse Elizabeth Wettlaufer, charged with eight counts of first-degree murder in 2016. Not nearly as toxic as Ted Bundy or Dr. Harold Shipman, but still toxic within their realm of power.
A second point is that all four perspectives on men and masculinity also apply to women and femininity and provide more illumination and insight on occasionally toxic humans than the bipolar perspective of women as good, morally superior, sugar and spice, but oppressed, and men as slugs and snails, testosterone-poisoned, oppressive, misogynistic, homophobic, obsolete, dead-beat dads, and toxic. (2)
After writing this, I googled “I hate men” and found a large number of leads. In the interests of equity, I then googled “I hate women” and found another large number. This is horrifying.
It really is time to stop referring to either half of humanity as toxic, to stop all this hating, and to get on with being kind to each other.
References
Recommended Reading:
There is a fair amount written on masculinity. I recommend the classics Robert Bly “Iron John” (1990), and Warren Farrell “The Myth of Male Power” (1993), also Cathy Young “Ceasefire” (1999), R. Hise “The War against Men” (2004), the series by Paul Nathanson and Kathy Young, David Benatar “The Second Sexism” (2016), generally C.H. Sommers and Camille Paglia, F4J and CFM and of course Wikipedia on “Misandry,” “Toxic Masculinity,” and “Misandry.” An excellent comparison of male positive and male negative views is to be found in the Munk debate: “Are Men Obsolete?” (2014).
1. For more detail and other examples of misandry, see my “Re-Thinking Men” pp. 135-67, and various posts on Psychology Today (6 Oct 2010, 29 Nov 2015, 9 Feb 2017); and of misogyny see my “The Body Social” (1993) Ch. 2, and Wikipedia has a good bibliography.
2. A broader perspective of humans as toxic is interesting: toxic to our beloved pets (Woolfson 2020) and literally toxic to the environment with the poisoning of air, land, and sea, and now space.
Woolfson, Esther 2020. “Loved to Death.” Guardian Weekly 28 August: 34- 9.
