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People who use the term "toxic masculinity" will always be perceived by others as wailed misandry, just as "toxic [target demographic] would get perceived as some form of wailed -ism. Bringing an association between a strongly negative stereotype of an a demographic is an invitation for harm.

A litmus test I often use in politics is to switch the target demographic of a negative stereotype with one of the opposite side of the political spectrum. It usually show if a phrase, term or statement is acceptable or an -ism. In the case of feminism, switching the target demographic of "men" with "immigrants" and "women" with "natively born" works pretty well. Someone talking about "toxic immigrants", listing points of negative stereotypes of immigrants, and it would enlist feelings of racism. One can have a level discussion about crime, theft, murder or rape, but if it get associate directly to a discussion about toxic immigrants then what people see is racism. People can write "It's not all immigrants!" as much as they want and it won't change a thing. People will see it as an attack and rush to defend themselves.

The only thing talking about "toxic masculinity" results in is harm, as has been demonstrated every single time it get discussed here on HN.

attacking toxic masculinity is not attacking masculinity

Yes it is. It's an inappropriate and offensive term to use. The lady who wrote the article is correct to be upset about it on her son's behalf.

Precision has value. If you're upset about violence, complain about violence. If you're upset about someone praising physical strength or other classical aspects of manhood, respond to that specific argument. Don't use sweeping, general terms phrased in deliberately ambiguous ways that collect anything "masculine" under one roof.

The simplest way to see you're wrong is to ask yourself how you'd feel if it suddenly became common to write op-eds in major media outlets on the topic of "bitchy women" and how "bitchy women" are a widespread problem that all women need to step up and fix. I think you'd find it troubling.

>If you feel attacks on toxic masculinity are attacks on you fathers/husbands/sons maybe there should be some thought about what about their behavior overlaps the above, and whether you think that's ok?

My favorite part of social commentary these days is how it's layered in "I'm not poorly conveying a point, you're hearing me wrong and/or you're the problem."

You’re not fooling anyone.

Your comment seems to be assuming bad faith. This is not helpful for a discussion, nor does it add anything to it.

My own problem with GP is that they claim "attacking toxic masculinity is not attacking masculinity", but I don't think the people using this term would defend similar language if the genders were reversed. If we called stereotypically bad feminine traits "toxic femininity" it would be called out as sexist. Indeed, it is[0]. I can't imagine most racial descriptors would fair much better. "The limits of my language are the limits of my world," and we shouldn't be surprised when attaching a descriptor of a subset of humanity to a negative term sparks backlash. It seems like we face this general problem where it's shitty to use group descriptors for negative behavior, but sometimes groups of people are disproportionately responsible for some subset of negative behavior, and we've traditionally been more willing to attach negative terminology to oppressed groups, but now some of us are simultaneously realising that was a shitty practice and deciding to attach negative descriptors to the oppressive groups instead... which is kind of understandable, since those groups have been oppressive, but we're still dealing in broad group identities that encompass some individuals who have behaved less oppressively than other individuals who fall into less oppressive group identities, and using group identities as a linguistic weapon in this way is sort of obviously going to engender mistrust and negative reactions. So, maybe it would be more helpful for the dialogue if we found linguistic constructs that didn't pair "man-" or "male-" with some harmful follow-up. If we find ourselves in a situation where it is useful to discuss the intersection of group identity and negative behavior, it might be nice to slow down and say exactly what we mean rather than calling it "toxic masculinity" and then being surprised when this is taken as an attack on men.

That said, I do agree that GP's subpoints are actual issues which we should address. I just have serious reservations about this language.

[0]: https://geekfeminism.wikia.org/wiki/Toxic_femininity

If we want to focus the discussion on those four subpoints then we should leave behind the notion that they have anything to do with a specific gender.

* Sexism, or the notion that gender has roles. In many cultures there are the idea that each gender has a set of roles and domains with is exclusively theirs. Typically those align with concept from reproduction, such as women role are to give birth and nurture children while mens role are to support the nurture of children through food and protection. Social status under those rules results in men being valued based on their wealth and ability to protect children, while womens social status gets defined by signals of high fertility. Individuals of both genders that transgress gender roles tend to be punished socially, both directly in the form of violence and indirectly by low social status and social isolation. Violence directed at non-comformative gender behavior is usually committed by those within the same gender, ie women are more likely to punish other women who aren't sufficiently "feminine" and men are more likely to punish other men who aren't sufficiently "masculine".

* Displace violence, a typical behavior found in most animals. It is estimated as making up the majority of all form of violence. It is associated with stress management and in humans causes dopamine releases when applied. It can be observed at all ages and cultures. It does not make it acceptable, but it should give insight to why it happen and how to reduce it.

Associating negative traits with men is exactly the point. The basic notion seems to be that men are “privileged oppressors” and women are “oppressed”, which fundamentally means that even if a woman engages in the exact same behavior, it somehow doesn’t count because women are collectively the victims in all of this anyway.

The thing is, it’s not a good faith instance of accidentally misleading terminology, and the sheer fact that these people condemn the phrase “toxic femininity” is an illustration of that fact. I would characterize it as an instance of motte-and-bailey rhetoric. It’s not quite a dog whistle because the whole point is that it’s pretty obvious what “toxic masculinity” really means, even if they are reluctant to openly admit it.

Language, and communication in general, is hard. I have used terminology in good faith that later iterations of myself have found issue with, and I expect that later-still iterations of myself will find issues with my current language.

Please don't react to a comment by breaking the site guidelines, no matter how wrong it is or how strongly you feel about it. Instead, reply substantively and respectfully, or don't reply. I know how hard the latter can be sometimes, but it's preferable to posting like this.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

You’re right. I’m sorry.