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Now, this may not be something that you’ve ‘heard about’ per se, and more something you have to confront on a daily basis because we live in a patriarchal society which constantly validates and encourages increasingly narrow and harmful expressions of manhood...sound familiar?
If you’ve heard the phrase #toxicmasculinity bandied about either online or in conversation, but you’re not quite sure what it means and that makes you feel afraid and defensive then NEVER FEAR! Your friendly neighbourhood tech-literate feminist is here to help (and challenge the very fabric which makes up ingrained gender roles and the values which are ascribed to them).
Now, before you get your undergarments in a twist, let’s be clear that #toxicmasculinity doesn’t refer to every, and any, display of masculinity. It isn’t labelling an entire gender expression as wrong or dangerous.
Pictured: "It shrinks down the possibilities of how men feel like they can behave, open up, form relationships and grow as people."
However (and that’s a MIGHTY BIG however), it is used to call out how society’s expectations of what manhood looks like and individuals’ perpetuation of these expectations leads to behaviour, which is misogynistic, bigoted and just generally harmful to others – no matter their gender.
Can I think of an example? Why yes, let me just refer to... ooh I don’t know, my entire lived experience, perhaps? Let’s take cat-calling. A man who wolf-whistles at a woman in the street is displaying #toxicmasculinity.
The fact he feels the need to perform his heterosexuality publicly in this aggressive fashion, most likely making the woman (the catcallee, if you will) feel uncomfortable and embarrassed, is rooted in harmful gender roles. Further to this, the narrative around cat-calling, justifying this kind of street harassment as “just a compliment” and “a bit of banter”, often perpetuated by other men is also an example of #toxicmasculinity as it perpetuates and upholds this harmful behaviour.
Pictured: "As well as being able to express #toxicmasculinity, they also have the power to challenge it, and call it out at its source."
The thing is, #toxicmasculinity is just as harmful to men and boys as it is to everyone else. It shrinks down the possibilities of how men feel like they can behave, open up, form relationships and grow as people. In a system that bestows such privilege to men (particularly those of the straight, white, cis-gendered variety), as well as being able to express #toxicmasculinity, they also have the power to challenge it, and call it out at its source.
I know so many wonderful men who do this on a regular basis, so let’s keep our masculinity the way it was meant to be: sweet, compassionate and DISMANTLING SYSTEMS OF OPPRESSION WHICH UNFAIRLY DISADVANTAGE HUGE SWATHES OF THE POPULATION!!!
Methinks that’s not going to fit on a T-shirt...
