>I’ve never understood why this isn’t called toxic femininity. Because language itself is also subject to societal bias - it's turtles all the way down. Men a

>I’ve never understood why this isn’t called toxic femininity. Because language itself is also subject to societal bias - it's turtles all the way down. Men are by default the transgressor - they are actively aggressive and when good things happen to men it's because they went out and fought for it and got it done and when bad things happen to or because of a man it's because of a flaw in the man, a failure to actively improve ones self. These are both not true pictures of reality, of course, but the man is always the one depicted with the active tense, for better and worse. Women are by default the passive transgressee - when something bad happens to a woman it's often because they are the victim of a system or person that was stronger than them - they could hardly be expected to do otherwise. Similarly when something good happens it's often lucky, thanks to the support system of the people around them, or even worse painted as an 'inspirational' exception that is novel only for it's improbability. The truth is somewhere in there, but with all the layers of human abstraction on top of it it's hard to prise it apart, but one thing is for sure - our language informs how we think in a very concrete way.