It’s Time to Retire the Term ‘Toxic Masculinity’

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If you were alive in 2017—or better yet, like me, in your twenties and living in San Francisco—you probably heard a lot about “toxic masculinity.” I did, all the time, and it bugged me a little. Not because I felt personally attacked by the term (I am a woman, after all), but because nobody seemed entirely sure what the alternative was. How does one replace toxic masculinity without abandoning the concept of masculinity itself? To make matters worse, there was seemingly no way for men to escape the label. In a sort of nonsensical “if the witch drowns, she wasn’t actually a witch” train of logic, the only way to avoid the label was to “do the work” and own up to being toxic. The worst sin you could commit was to deny your toxic masculinity—which was apparently a symptom of toxic masculinity.

Most reasonable people agreed that it was bad to be boorish, arrogant, overly confrontational, and aggressive. Most people agreed it was bad to objectify or disrespect women. But if those things were toxic, what would a non-toxic masculinity look like? Assuming a man “did the work,” did his future involve endless groveling and the disavowal of his masculinity entirely, or was he able to remain masculine in some way that wasn’t a problem? And how would we square this with the long history of heterosexual women sexually desiring masculine men, whatever that meant? (I distinctly recall some women denying that women were attracted to masculine traits, but as one of the many studies I conducted for my Substack on relationships and culture later suggested, women desire dominance in men more than men desire submission in women!)

People did try to redefine masculinity, usually by replacing the “toxic” masculine traits with positive traits that, in fact, had nothing to do with masculinity at all. Being respectful, flexible, and attentive are good, but those traits have nothing to do with masculinity any more than they do with femininity. To me, the subtext to takes like these was, “Maybe masculinity and femininity just shouldn’t exist at all.”

And that kind of gave away the game, didn’t it? Toxic masculinity was masculinity. Replacements for toxic masculinity weren’t particularly masculine, and could have easily been replacements for “toxic femininity” too (had that existed). So what should we have done with masculinity? We should have acknowledged that aggression and dominance were masculine traits, and traits that women liked … in the right context, in the right amounts. Instead of doing away with it all, we should have acknowledged these traits can exist in harmony with a healthy dose of … femininity.