Why the term “toxic masculinity” is functionally useless and should be retired (a thread)

The term toxic masculinity was coined to point out how men can be hurt by misogyny as well as women. However, it is more often used to paint men as the “true” victims of misogyny.

It is used to imply that men are forced by society to mistreat women and perpetuate homophobia, and only do so in order to please other men and maintain good social standing.

This is, of course, excuse-making that only serves to paint men as the victims of misogynistic violence instead of the perpetrators, and take away our ability to hold them accountable for their actions.

The second function of the term is to paint men who perform femininity as being incapable of misogyny (ex, all those posts with picture of Harry Styles wearing a pink shirt with captions like “he ended toxic masculinity!1!1!1!”)

This is equally harmful considering men who present femininely/are comfortable expressing femininity can obviously still be misogynistic/homophobic and violent, and oftentimes feminine behaviors are used by men to shield themselves from taking responsibility for their misogyny.

The third way to the term is used is to accuse masculine women and non-binary people (especially butch/stud lesbians) of perpetuating so-called “toxic masculinity.”

If the masc person being accused of toxic masculinity has actually exhibited toxic behavior, then the correct term would be “internalized misogyny.” More often than not, however, these are just general statements about how masc lesbians are toxic.

The truth is, masc lesbians exhibit misogyny FAR LESS than men, and even when they do exhibit misogyny it is waaaaay less harmful than the misogyny that men exhibit, because men actually hold societal power over women and masc lesbians don’t (.....duh).

Therefore, broad statements accusing masc lesbians of “toxic masculinity” are actually fueled 100% by lesbophobia and/or the belief that women have to present femininely in order to be morally good (which itself is based in misogyny).

Back to the topic at hand: when people use the term “toxic masculinity” they almost always mean something else. Usually they mean plain old misogyny, but sometimes they can be referring to what is actually called “hyper masculinity.”

Hyper masculinity is the term used to refer to the way that men are encouraged by society to act excessively and unnaturally masculine in exchange for brownie points from other men. Unlike “toxic” masculinity, hyper masculinity does not attempt to excuse the men who exhibit it.

While the term toxic masculinity can be useful in some contexts, it is almost always misused by those who don’t truly understand it’s meaning. Since there are plenty of terms that do the same job and are more easily understood, we should simply stop using it. End of thread.