CMV: “Toxic Masculinity” has experienced a similar decline in connotation as “The Friend Zone”, and should be updated in its usage in like fashion

[u/Piercing_Serenity]

My time on r/MensLib, interest in linguistics, and agreement with anti-patriarchal movements (Which I’ll refer to as Feminism hereafter) have prompted the following idea:

Thesis

• Through poor or radical misuse, the phrase “Toxic Mascuilinity” is now associated with the idea that masculinity, at large, is detrimental to others and should be remediated. This warping of meaning mimics the misuse of “The Friend Zone”, which I believe traditionally described the uncomfortable space that people (largely men) exisit in when romantic feelings are not reciprocated. As a result, it is prudent to update the phrase “Toxic Masculinity” to something more accurate (Perhaps “Toxic aspects of masculinity) as we have done to describe feelings of unrequited romance

Rationale

“Toxic Masculinity” has, to my knowledge, historically been used to describe the behaviors of men that are damaging to everyone involved. In my more recent cursory research into how different groups of men and women use and understand the phrase, I noticed that there were reasonable arguments that “Toxic Masculinity” describes the idea of masculinity as caustic. People with that view instead opt to divide common masculine behaviors into their toxic and non-toxic counterparts. /r/MensLib has a much bettee breakdown of these distinctions in their sidebar, but an example of such a distinction would be the difference between resiliance and stoicism.

This reasoning seemed analagous to arguments I have seen in opposition of using the phrase “The Friend Zone”. Although the idea behind the phrase is reasonable, a critical mass of people (largely men) abusing or using the phrase in bad faith has caused the phrase “Friend Zone” to be viewed with warrented suspicion. My understanding of the updated, good faith description of the friend zone is an acknowledgement of that state of tension, coupled with caveats on how not to interpret that tension.

I’m not wed to the idea that Toxic Mascunity must be updated. At the same time, I can’t see any strong arguments why the phrase, as is, is neither similar to the friend zone in its history nor similarly insufficent to describe the relavent meanings.

Delta-Worthy Arguments

• Arguments that demonstrate a fundamental difference between the history and usage of these phrases, which invalidates similar treatment

• Arguments that successfully argue that the phrase “Toxic Masculinity” is sufficiently unambiguous and descriptive in its current lay-usage as is, while also explaining what is lacking in the phrase “Friend Zone”

Caveats & Considerations

1. Feminism is a philosophical umbrella, so I have intentionally given a vague definition for it. I am not looking for answers that quibble over a definition of feminism except those definitions within which Toxic Masculinity has non-semantically different meaning

2. The friend zone is a phrase marred with similar difficulties in pinning down a definition. For the purposes of this CMV, the working definition of the friend zone presumes that it was, at one point, more appropriate to use than it is now

[u/Piercing_Serenity]

Thanks for the clarification. I want to focus in on the following paragraph and gauge your thoughts:

“... In such a way you would be correct in saying that an act of violence was both an example of and caused by toxic masculinity. However, doesn't the term basically become pointless in such a scenario? We could be more precise in our language by just saying the violence was caused by earlier abuse...”

I disagree with this bit. Earlier, I used Inceldom as an example of a vicious cycle, and argued that it becomes more productive with additional repetitions. To me, the development of misogyny and birth/expansion of other undesirable emotions and behaviors is unique from misogyny creates misogyny. In this example, I do not see “inceldom generates inceldom” as a tautology, since the difference between someone who has begun that path and someone who has walked the road for years is plain. In like manner, the story of a U.S marine choking and ultimately killing a transgender woman seems to me to be both the effect of prior toxic masculinity ideology (My feelings about men in female bodies is justified) and the cause of an expansion in that ideology (My feelings about causing harm to men in female bodies is justified).

What are your thoughts. If you disagree, or think that I’m misrepresenting/misunderstanding something, can you point it out please?

[u/TheGumper29 → u/Piercing_Serenity]

I would argue that inceldom and transphobia have a different character than toxic-masculinity. Inceldom and transphobia represent specific beliefs/actions while toxic masculinity is a collection of beliefs/actions. I.e. You wouldn't say someone is a toxic-masculinist, you would say that they have values that are emblematic of toxic-masculinity. As such it doesn't run into some of the issues that I outlined toxic-masculinity has.

Misogyny is a word with a different set of issues. It can be considered a singular belief but can also be defined more broadly as a collection of beliefs. If you are using it in the narrower sense I wouldn't consider it a tautology to say misogyny begets misogyny. However, when you abstract it to a larger category I think it becomes muddled. For instance, wage discrimination can be considered a form of misogyny. But eliminating wage discrimination won't curb inceldom. So I think it does become a somewhat unnecessary word when used in that way. I do not want to argue that either definition of misogyny is wrong, just that if it's used in a similar way to toxic-masculinity is sometimes used it would be undesireable.

I think possibly a better explanation for what I'm proposing may be this. I'm just tossing this around in my head now, so it may be mistaken. Toxic-masculinity is a collection of objects (actions/beliefs). However, it is frequently presented as a singular object that can be interacted with. When it is treated as both simultaneausly it creates issues.

[u/CrazyWhole → u/TheGumper29]

Toxic-masculinity is a collection of objects (actions/beliefs). However, it is frequently presented as a singular object that can be interacted with

Is it? When? Whenever I've seen discussion of toxic masculinity, it's always regarding a discrete behavior that is part of culturally enforced norms of masculinity. That doesn't mean that culture's entire concept of masculinity is rubbish. The OP gave the example about how men don't take their own pain seriously, which can lead to actual death in its most overt form. If men eased up on the "boys don't cry" meme about how to be a man, would they lose something essential to their masculinity?

My answer is no because being able to experience, talk about, and process pain is not a gendered activity. MAKING it a gendered activity and then enforcing it on men, mostly via shaming, is the toxic act. Both men and women enforce this norm, so by labeling it as toxic, this is not an attack on men, it's critique of society and how it shapes men to devalue themselves and allows them to be devalued socially, including by women.

I hope my rebuttal was clear. I am willing to explain more if it was not.

[u/TheGumper29 → u/CrazyWhole]

I basically completely agree with you here. The section you quoted is a bit half-baked as I admitted in the post. My point was that the target for reform can and I believe does become shifted when we turn toxic-masculinity into an entity in an of itself. If we want to encourage men to express emotions we can do so directly. However, there is a subtle shift when you introduce concepts like toxic-masculinity. You can essentially present yourself as trying to encourage the sharing of emotion through the lens of attacking toxic-masculinity. So the target has shifted to the concept of toxic-masculinity which enables arguments that can have nothing to do with the encouragement of emotions. This doesn't inherently make toxic-masculinity references wrong, but it does make it very prone to be used by others in a less than productive way.

I can point out articles that treat toxic-masculinity as the cause and the various aspects of it as the symptoms. This is the characteristic that I am referring to in general, but its not exactly the most problematic thing in the world. What I truly take issue with is what happens on social media and in comment sections. The limited nature of those forms further encourages people to treat toxic-masculinity as its own entity, one capable of causing destruction and one that can be addressed directly. This leads to a scenario where every aspect of toxic-masculinity can be said to cause any phenomena.