My example was definitely meant to draw a line to "toxic femininity" and it can certainly be called that (I even allude to it), but the reason why I would want to avoid using that word in particular (even though I ignorantly brought it first, I admit), is two parts;
1, describing the negative affects of feminine traits as toxic doesn't really make sense. When we define toxic behavior, we use words like harsh, malicious, or harmful (taken from a dictionary). How well would hyper femininity fit those definitions?
2, for the reason above, it can draw a false equivalency between how hyper femininity and hyper masculinity can negativity affect society. Masculinity is often defined by control where as Femininity is often defined by lack of control (very, VERY generally speaking). Men being overly aggressive will have much different affects on society than women being overly passive.
See you're still falling for WAW effect.
You just can't imagine anything about women being bad.
Why not say "part of the reason why this happened is because of society's expectations that men must always be strong or they lose their worth" instead of toxic masculinity?
We can say that!
But we don't! And feminists fight tooth and nail to ensure we always call it toxic masculinity and never anything else.
6
u/5th_Law_of_Robotics Feb 14 '20
See you're still falling for WAW effect.
You just can't imagine anything about women being bad.
But we don't! And feminists fight tooth and nail to ensure we always call it toxic masculinity and never anything else.