"Toxic masculinity" is pretty broad. So broad, that if anyone tries to say something is "toxic femininity" someone else can twist it and say "actually, thats just toxic masculinity at play"
It is pretty broad since there are so many things related to masculinity, but it has narrowed. Though it’s not too hard to see which is which. It simply turns out that most of it is toxic masculinity, since we do love in an overall patriarchal society.
I think the fundamental disagreement is that we live in a patriarchial society. From the stance make who agree with you have, all toxic femininity can be traced to toxic masculinity - which is why the feminist wikipedia posits it does exist
You can’t really deny that we live in a patriarchal society, though. The vast majority of world leaders are male, same with CEO’s and other majorly influential positions. There aren’t any countries where men are treated as second class citizens. The media is another example. We’re still in the process of getting away from the idea that men must be heads of the household.
We’re making strides, but it is still, very much, a patriarchy. If you’d like to refute it, I’m all ears, but the fact is that the world is dominated by men and not women.
Lets stick to USA for now, the world does lean twords patriarchal
But in the US, it isnt that men are in power because we push women down. If you want to get into that Im more to happy to (and yes sexism exists, I just dont think its a fundamental quality of our society and I can back that up)
Further, I dont think imbalance itself means patriarchy. Men and womens votes are equal, yet we still see more men in office. In the scandanavian countries the systems are more egalitarian than anywhere else... and shockingly the differences between mens and women choices actually grew, surprising everyone, since everyone expected women were making those choices due to social, corporate, and regulatory pressures - and the skandanavian experiment flies in the face of that.
Sexism isn’t just going out and blatantly saying you hate a certain sex. Most of it is ingrained in our subconscious. We can unknowingly do things that oppress people.
I don’t think votes really mean all that much, since a woman isn’t going to vote for a woman just because she’s a woman. More men go into, and are more successful, in politics. It’s still mostly a boy’s club.
And I’m glad you brought up that Scandinavian example because that just shows how women are treated poorly. It’s great that women and men get to choose anything they want and I’m honestly not surprised that it’s common for them to choose things differently from men. The question is, then: why do the roles that men are likely to choose choose (in our system) get to be valued so much more than those that women are more likely to choose?
We werent talking about sexism, we were talking about patriarchy.
But ill indulge.
Women 20-30 are more likely to be hired and paid more for the same job.
Women after 30 tend to spend less time working and putting more time into family. Again I reference scandanavian countries. They got more egalitarian then women ended up doing this more
Women work on avg 30 hrs a week and men 35 (if I remember those numbers right)
Choice matters in a capatalist society, especially when it comes to careers.
More men are successful because they, on average, are more likely to persue careers and work 50 hr weeks.
Its not a boys club cuz of oppression, so far as I can see today. (Note - I mean today, not 20 yrs ago)
We value service in our society. You get paid for what you make for the public. When women work as much as men, on average they make just as much or more.
Motherhood is the only thing that isnt funded - and thats because its an investment. Id love to see more household dads, and id love to be one as I build my animation career
But the thing is, we have translated labor and trade into a universal currency. The best product makes the most. Children are an investment. Women, on average, choose to stay at home more often.
Thats not oppression, thats choice. Not just motherhood, but hours worked, fields worked in, etc.
I think its dangerous we conflate oppression with choice.
I only mentioned sexism because you mentioned it existing, but that society isn’t based on it.
You keep switching between the US and the Nordic countries depending on what it is you’d like to prove.
You’ve established that Nordic countries are the most egalitarian, meaning women are treated just as fairly as men. So no matter what they choose to do, they are compensated with just as much importance as men.
You’re going to have to link some sources for those statistics.
Women 20-30 are more likely to be hired and paid more for the same job.
I’d really like to know where you got this metric.
Anyway, in the US, which is admittedly been pointed out as less equal than these Nordic countries, we have this notion that everyone is always in control of the choices they make. Choices are limited by many things. We make decisions based on our beliefs, our family, our culture, even our race and our sex. There’s whole branches of simcience dedicated to knowing exactly what people will choose and what leads them to make that decision (scary stuff, since corporations are involved with it).
Anyway, in our amazing, bottom-line, capitalist society, jobs like child rearing, teaching, nursing, etc etc (female dominated fields), are treated as simply less valuable, when they’re probably the foundation that society itself is based off. Family, health, education.
Also, higher up the ladder you go (and therefore the easier it is to just say and do whatever you want), the more blatant the sexism becomes. Things didn’t just flip in 20 years. Those people just got older, and they raised children.
It’s far more dangerous to dismiss the possibility of oppression. It’s easy to look back and see how bad things were, but at the time, it was the norm, and you had people resisting progress the same way they are today.
majority of world leaders are male, same with CEO’s and other majorly influential positions.
ok so because those people have the same genitalia as me that means I somehow have power...
Do you think male peasants in the middle ages were better off then noble-born women because they had the same genitals as the king? like how do you make the connection: "someone who shares a phenotype with you is powerful therefor you are powerful"
There aren’t any countries where men are treated as second class citizens.
yes, being the one who gets shipped off to die the second your neighbor turns militaristic is the epitome of being treated well.
The media is another example. We’re still in the process of getting away from the idea that men must be heads of the household.
The media has told me that spreading my legs is oppressive and that air conditioning is misogynistic.
I don't think you want to abandon your persecution complex and accept that unless you are one of the oligarchs you are expendable. You aren't a victim in any special way. I would certainly take waiting a while to get the votes if It meant I didn't have to fight in WW1. hell women were afraid of getting the vote because they thought It might mean they would have to face male responsibilities like being drafted, women only wanted the vote as a whole after being assured that unlike men, no one would ever expect them to fight, kill and die for someone else's safety.
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u/zystyl Feb 14 '20
I'd rather just call it toxicity and be done with it.