Toxic Masculinity

Submission 35,795

About

Toxic Masculinity is a neologism used to describe normative masculine behavior in Western society associated with behaviors linked to dominance, misogyny, homophobia and violence.

Origin

According to The Advocate,^[1] "toxic masculinity" may have been coined by psychologist Shepherd Bliss during the Mythopoetic men's movement in the 1980s and 1990s to describe a type of masculinity caused by a repression of "deep masculinity." The earliest known mention of the term in research can be found in Michael Kimmel and Amy Aronson's 2004 book Men and Masculinities: A Social, Cultural and Historical Encyclopedia.

Spread

On January 4th, 2013, an entry for "Toxic masculinity" was created on the Geek Feminism Wiki,^[9] describing the term as "one of the ways in which Patriarchy is harmful to men."

On June 26th, 2016, the Podcast Page YouTube channel uploaded a clip of comedian Joe Rogan criticizing the term during an episode of the Joe Rogan Experience podcast (shown below, left). On August 1st, the Pop Culture Detective YouTube channel uploaded a video titled "What Is Toxic Masculinity?" in which pop culture critic Jonathan McIntosh uses the character Biff from the Back to the Future series to explain the concept (shown below, right).

On November 12th, 2017, Urban Dictionary^[2] user SparklyNinja submitted an entry for "Toxic Masculinity," which defined the term as "A social science term that describes narrow repressive type of ideas about the male gender role" (shown below).

On November 19th, the men's grooming products company Harry's tweeted an ad denouncing toxic masculinity in honor of International Men's Day (shown below).

On February 8th, 2018, Redditor EndlessTrashposter submitted a Virgin vs. Chad image pitting "The Virgin Toxic Masculinity" against "The Chad Real Man" to /r/justneckbeardthings^[4] (shown below).

On March 7th, Tucker Carlson interviewed Jordan Peterson about toxic masculinity during an episode of the Fox News program Tucker Carlson Tonight (shown below). The following day, Psychology Today^[8] published an article by evolutionary scientist Gad Saad titled "Is Toxic Masculinity a Valid Concept?", which accused those using the term of "seeking to pathologize masculinity in ways that are profoundly harmful to the existential sense of self of young men."

On April 27th, 2018, Polygon^[6] published an article titled "God of War’s director on toxic masculinity and why Kratos had to change,"featuring an interview with "God of War": game director Cory Barlog. The following day, YouTuber OneyNG tweeted a screenshot of the headline along with the message "did the director forget the earlier games that he himself made, were to slice and cut through blood bucket badass monsters and feel like a badass manly man" (shown below).^[3] On May 5th, 2018, The Spectator^[7] published an op-ed criticizing the term titled "'Toxic Masculinity' Is a Toxic Phrase."