5 ms·
It's such a confusing misnomer that the majority of both proponents and opponents of it wildly misuse it all the time. Just call it something like "toxic gende
by scarmig 6y ago
It's such a confusing misnomer that the majority of both proponents and opponents of it wildly misuse it all the time.
Just call it something like "toxic gender roles" or "toxic gender expectations" and you short circuit the entire debate.
- UncleMeat 6y agoI don't believe that it would actually short circuit the debate, since there is a contingent of people who insist on maximally misunderstanding work in this space. But regardless, the name does derive from some historical reasoning. For many decades feminist theory used to consider the feminine to be aberrant and the masculine to be the cultural norm and a pure good, only investigating the ways in which femininity trapped and harmed people. "Toxic masculinity" was a re-evaluation of these assumptions, identifying ways that masculinity, like femininity could trap and harm people. The term was positioned against the assumptions of the time and "toxic masculinity" expresses this position much better than "toxic gender roles" since it was explicitly about changing how feminism thought about masculinity. That is no longer especially significant to the term, but inertia exists.