Toxic masculinity: Will the 'war on men' only backfire?

Submitted by Mastodon on Sat, 2017-01-28 05:37

Article here. Excerpt:

'The term 'toxic masculinity' has crept into the lexicon in the past 12 months, having appeared in mainstream news articles, popular feminist blogs and, as of November, the crowd-sourced online repository of slang words, Urban Dictionary.

Generally used to denote how some aspects of masculinity — such as entitlement, homophobia and sexual aggressiveness — can harm women and families and cripple men's own health, toxic masculinity, at its most extreme edges, has been linked with acts of violence like mass shootings and university campus sexual assault.

(For this reason, some US colleges have recently introduced 'toxic masculinity' courses, in which male students can reflect on topics like rape culture, machismo and pornography.)
...
And at the recent Women's March on Washington, a rally for which hundreds of thousands of demonstrators gathered to express their concern that women's and other minority groups' rights will be eroded under President Trump, many carried placards emblazoned with references to 'toxic masculinity'.

"I came here to march against a toxic masculinity and years of misogyny," Washington DC resident Andrew told TIME of his motivation for marching.
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"The first is emphasising how masculinity is patriarchal — based on entitlement, based on power, based on dominance — and fuels some men's violence and mistreatment of women or indeed other men," said Dr Flood.
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"To say 'toxic masculinity' — it does imply ... that all men are toxic.

"Clearly there is such a thing as toxicity in some of the ways that men are socialised, but to suggest that all masculinity is toxic and that all men are violent is completely wrong."'

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Comments

This article published in ABC news online as a feature article, feigns impartiality in its text, but clearly suggests all reasonable men should embrace the reality of "toxic masculinity" as fact, or be branded reactive misogynist women bashers.
Dr Michael Flood, a well know "straight white male" hater with an academic career based on stereotyping and condemning men using a shallow feminist view of masculinity, is the self proclaimed expert on masculinity referred to by the author to validate her bias position. This is in contrast to two more qualified experts, Profs MacDonald and Lumbly, who identify the term "toxic masculinity" as unhelpful, inflammatory and completely wrong!
Of course, this doesn't stop the author from taking on Dr Flood's gender hatred view of masculinity, and femsplaining to Australian males on how to be better men. After all, we all know women know what good men should be (obedient) and of course men have no idea!
Nor does the ABC shy away from publishing sexist generalisations that demean and dehumanise Australian men, and propagate vilification on the basis of sex. After all, discrimination laws were never designed to protect men.

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Submitted by rabel111 on Sun, 2017-01-29 08:24