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