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Comment by Kluny | Hacker News Reader

> In a place I worked, if someone left at 5:30 pm, the CTO used to joke "half day today?", even though the person came in at 9 am.

This shit is toxic masculinity in action – the part that affects men. Women protest this kind of thing because if they have children they need to go home to, then they are unable to compete on hours with men who can stay late and rely on their wives. But men deserve time with their families too, and single people deserve downtime. Toxic masculinity drives this competition of who can suffer more for the company, and everyone loses (except the shareholders).

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I don't think a CTO joshing you on how long you work has to anything to do with gender

"toxic masculinity "

Why make this a thing about gender? Abusers can be found in all genders. Making this about males is counterproductive.

Someone perpetuating toxic masculinity has little to do with the persons gender. It has to do with the cultural norms that they're choosing to enforce that result in a net negative.

A woman calling a man 'gay' because they have long hair is just as guilty of perpetuating toxic masculinity, for example. This has nothing to do with blaming men, it has to do with harmful stereotypes that hurt everyone.

Then don't call it "masculinity" and be more specific. Anything related to "masculinity" will be connected to males.

Yes, that's the point? It's a well defined term.

Toxic masculinity is connected to the masculine roles society forces on men and women. I'm not sure what else you'd call it, because the entire point is that it has everything to do with masculinity. Hence, toxic masculinity.

But again, anyone can perpetuate it.

I think the point is the definition of toxic masculinity that you are using differs from that of some of the other posters.

As I understand your definition toxic masculinity is the pressure society puts on people to conform to negative masculine roles.

My personal definition would be people expressing there masculinity in a way that is hurtful and belittling of others.

They both are part of the same problem where society creates and perpetuates and pushes people to toxic expressions of masculinity and that in turn hurts the public in general. Which looks something like:

Society -> Masculine Roles -> The Public

I'd call the negative expression of that chain Toxic Societal Norms and the second part would be Toxic Masculinity. In both cases it's the noun, societal norms or masculinity, that is the source of the toxicity.

> As I understand your definition toxic masculinity is the pressure society puts on people to conform to negative masculine roles.

> My personal definition would be people expressing there masculinity in a way that is hurtful and belittling of others.

It's both. The cultural norms, and people expressing them are both definitive of toxic masculinity.

The belittling is often a product of people internalizing those norms. They then ostracize or punish others who either fail to meet them in the eyes of the belittler, or are evocative to the belittler of the ways in which they, themselves, fail to meet them.

In fact, that kind of behavior is what the term "virtue signaling" is actually about: behavior that is performed to signal affiliation with and enforce the norms of some group. It doesn't actually mean the "you're all talk" kind of thing that it's broadly become.

Seems to me that if you're taking completely non-gender-specific toxic behavior like belittling employees for not staying late, and assigning it the label "masculinity", it is you who is engaging in the harmful stereotypes.

But this behavior stems from toxic masculinity. The culture of overwork in Japan has been predominantly a male phenomenon which is why Karoshi tends to occur among men.

However as women enter into the workforce they have to adapt these same norms in order to survive which is how toxic masculinity affects them as well.

The culture of overwork stems from the masculine stereotype of a man having to be the sole provider for the household which also means that they're expected to work extra hard and conform in ways that society demands. This is a textbook example of toxic masculinity. Another example is how some companies in Japan essentially demand you go out drinking with your superiors in order to keep up this facade. You can't talk about fixing issues stemming from male stereotypes without talking about masculinity. And as a man who has received insults and belittlement for having long hair, what else would you call that but a function of toxic masculinity?

"But this behavior stems from toxic masculinity. The culture of overwork in Japan has been predominantly a male phenomenon which is why Karoshi tends to occur among men."

It stems from overambitious people who don't care for others, not masculinity. Masculinity points towards males which doesn't help. Call it "overworking culture" to be inclusive. What do you do with a boss who has all attributes of "femininity" but works employees to the bone? Suddenly that's masculinity? Or is that not possible since feminine bosses don't do that?

It's a function of men being the main family provider for most of history, that's a fact not a toxic element of masculinity.

Saying that has negatively affected people and assigning it a label is fine, but how is this issue related to you being insulted for your appearance? How is men being the sole providers throughout history toxic? It in itself isn't and the concept of working hard is also not exclusively a masculine idea, just because in Japan male workers literally kill themselves doesn't mean that overworking yourself to death is a masculine idea does it?

And outside of Japan I don't see how it's a gender issue at all.

That's literally the definition of masculinity! The entire definition of masculinity is that it is the set of traits and attributes that a culture defines as being characteristically held by men.

So if one of the traits a culture holds is 'men must work themselves to death', then that's a toxic idea. It's an idea associated with what society expects of men, which makes it a masculine trait for that culture. Combined, these two form 'toxic masculinity'.

It's related what I mentioned because it all ties back to what a culture considers to be masculinity, which is the traits that a man has. Some of these traits can be positive, some can be negative. When we discuss 'toxic masculinity', that means things like men being called 'gay' because of their appearance, men having to be away from their family in order to appear like a hard worker for arbitrary reasons and so forth.

OK I understand the definition, but the idea men should work themselves to death is not one actually held by society at large. Is it only Japanese Male toxicity? Why don't other places have this idea is it just because Japan is not enlightened?

I don't think so. In my opinion it's about the workforce being traditionally male, not that it's a masculine idea to overwork yourself. That's why the argument doesn't hold water to me across a global population. That's why it's not a masculine idea and not toxic masculinity, men don't believe it and it's not a generally held belief about men. In my experiences men and women go home at roughly the same time and there are not problems relating to gender there.

And you can't blanket your argument by saying 'when we discuss toxic masculinity this is what we mean' because that is exactly what is being debated. I was strictly talking about the article not your personal issues they are not the same thing.

It's specifically a cultural thing in Japan, yes. Some cultures have other levels of overwork at play but Japan has some unique issues in that regard.

And your second paragraph makes no sense to me. Masculinity isn't about what is 'globally believed to be true', it's about what each individual culture believe constitutes masculinity. If you were to ask people from each culture what does it mean to be masculine or to be a man, you'll likely get wildly different definitions. Because as I keep saying over and over again, masculinity and toxic masculinity is one we discuss as it relates to culture.

You keep defining masculinity as if there is a global constant to masculinity when it can vary immensely from culture to culture. If one culture believes beards are part of being a man and another culture does not, then which is masculine? How do you define that? Is there some global standard?

What does this attitude have to do with being male? They have children also. A woman could just as easily have this viewpoint and your anecdotal story doesn't provide any evidence to the contrary. Calling this toxic masculinity isn't just incorrect, it shows that you have a problem with masculinity and are trying to attribute all kinds of negative actions to it.

It doesn't have much to do with being male- that's the point! It has to do with the roles men are expected to play in society, and how "being a man" is culturally defined.

Of course men have children too! Again, that's the point- to a significant degree, the "normal" family- where culture defines what's "normal"- consists of a man who works and focuses on his career, and a woman who takes care of the kids.

So when they talk about toxic masculinity, they're talking about norms. In this case, it seems GP's point is that society considers it more acceptable to expect men to stay at work for long hours than it would for women.

This isn't anything intrinsically male - these are external, social pressures that might influence that CTO's view of a male employee who leaves "early" v.s. a female employee who did the same.

That's the thing so often misunderstood about the term "toxic masculinity" - it's not about what it means to be a man, it's about what society at large expects men to be. It's about stuff like men being expected to be more stoic, and the negative outcomes that can result- things like men not going to the doctor as much and suffering negative health outcomes from treatable conditions as a result.

That said, in this case I think GP is overreaching a bit. A male employee who replied to the CTO's remark with a laugh and a "Got to get back home to my kids!" would probably not raise any eyebrows.

Except this isn't an area where there is toxicity related to gender roles. Women work as much as men do, and this CTO has an attitude that treats everyone equally. Where does the toxic masculinity enter this scenario?

"a male employee who leaves "early" v.s. a female employee who did the same" Is there a real problem for men leaving the same time as women? I've never encountered this at any job ever.

Right, this is why it seemed like an overreach to me. I guess you could say it's also related to men generally being encouraged to be more competitive- which might make them overwork to seem more committed- but that's an effect that's so indirect it's hard to pin down.

That's the thing so often misunderstood about the term "toxic masculinity" - it's not about what it means to be a man, it's about what society at large expects men to be.

Wouldn't it be more manly behaviour to stand up for yourself, and go home on time? It surely wouldn't be very masculine to sacrifice time with your family just because you get a bit of passive-aggressiveness from middle management.

I'd say the concept of what is and isn't masculinity is almost too nebulous to assign it good or bad qualities.

except the shareholders

And the boss, who looks good because his team works so hard.

The real story here is the issue of incentive structure and coordination games. If one company sends their workers home early, they risk being outcompeted by another that keeps workers late. Companies could attempt to coordinate in order to mandate sending people home early, but then a defector stands to profit immensely.

Even if we were to pass laws mandating shorter work days, companies would find ways around it using contracts or temporary workers.

You might point out that some companies do offer a lot of flexibility and relaxed hours. These companies can do this because their productivity isn't strictly tied to hours worked. Other companies don't have that luxury, however, and the pressure to work overtime will always be there.

Why are you assuming the CTO was a man?

The comment above is a little bit of a stretch (I'm not sure I'd equate working more to toxic masculinity exactly), but this isn't about being a man: the CTO may have been female, that in itself wouldn't invalidate the comment.

Masculinity in this context is about gendered behaviours (behaviours traditionally expected of men). Toxic masculinity is any such behaviours that have a negative impact on the subject, those around them, or society. Women can also contribute to toxic masculinity.

In fact, within certain corporate cultures, where promotions have traditionally been awarded to men, it may benefit women's careers to adopt such toxic behaviours.

Where did GP say the CEO was a man?

Oh, my God! I'm part of the problem!

> This shit is toxic masculinity in action

As the same time, you've just assumed the CTO was a man.

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