Yet, as there is only the narrative of "toxic masculinity" and not also discussion of "toxic femininity", the term implies masculinity can turn toxic in a way femininity can't.

There is a Wikipedia page on toxic masculinity, but not one on toxic femininity (it redirects to "Internalised sexism"). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internalized_sexism#%22Toxic...

> The term “toxic masculinity” does not and is not intended to imply that masculinity itself is toxic.

I much the same way that “unusually large microbe” does not imply that microbes are generally unusually large.

The “‘toxic masculinity’ means masculinity is uniformly toxic” thing is a reading so tendentious as to be incompatible with good faith.

That's how it's used and understood though.

I agree it was never intended to, but the reality is different. It should be dumped and a new term used.

> The term “toxic masculinity” does not and is not intended to imply that masculinity itself is toxic.

That's funny, really. I always only ever encounter it used by people who smear any and all masculinity as "toxic".

Do you have a link to a place "toxic masculinity" is used to describe a minority subset of the male population?

I don't know anyone who believes this. Words mean what they're intended to mean and interpreted to mean, and that's how it's used in practice. Claiming otherwise is just a bald-faced "nuh-uh" when people who use the term are confronted with the double standard.

If there wasn't at least a little bit of complicity in it being interpreted as a general diss on masculinity, the term would never have caught on, or a different term would have been chosen in the first place. In the face of repeated misunderstandings, people using the term would pick a new one. They haven't done that. Why? It seems to me that they are quite happy to be "misunderstood" 95% of the time.

The gender swapped equivalent seems to be "internalised misogyny". Do you think I could get away with calling it "toxic femininity" instead? Nobody would let that pass. Do you think I could get away with calling any obviously bad behaviour associated with femininity, "toxic femininity", at all? I don't think I could.

It's widely considered by men to be an insulting term, and if people who use it don't want to insult people, they should pick another one. They don't though, which is telling.

This is another very good example of a ‘motte-and-bailey’ term. The term means whatever you want it to mean, at any given moment. When the term is attacked, it retreats to mean only the toxic parts of masculinity. When not attacked, it means the inherent toxicity of all masculinity.

My first impulse is to agree but thinking about it more what positives are there to take away from masculinity. Is any feature of being masculine that is really desirable? I guess I think the whole idea of trying to be masculine to be kind of lame...

That might be the "theory" (a word which does some heavy lifting in venues infected by "critical theory") but in practice it comes down to straight males and traditional male virtues being "toxic".