Say a leader in your family, like a father, dies. What good does it do a man to completely break down emotionally and be of no value. In an ideal scenario, a man will step up and become truly useful during this time of trouble. Somebody has to make funeral plans and deal with the logistics of the whole crisis. This is a selfless action that gives others a time to mourn and you will get your time to mourn after everyone else has collected themselves.
Additionally, while deep and dangerous feelings, such as depression, should not be suppressed, many of the things you feel don't need to be shared. Maybe you don't feel like working out, or you feel like going off on an annoying coworker. These feelings do no good for you or the people around you, or are afraid to do the things you know you should be doing, but you still feel them. It would be better to suppress them, face your fears, and do something useful. There are times to share your emotions and there are times to suppress them, and it only takes a little bit of wisdom to tell the difference.
These points of yours about feelings are very deep, and speak to my male identity. It might be tempting for some to brush these points off as antiquated patriarchal notions of human relationships. That would be foolish to do.
What I read in your discussion is the value and power of self-control and the positive effects that that consequently has on our relationships. I hear you saying that controlling the natural emotions that well up within us is not an unhealthy repression!
We need to celebrate the quite typical, quite healthy, self-regulated male. That person can lead, and we all crave leadership in the family, office, church, gov't, etc. Self-regulation is not solely a male attribute, but it certainly should be promoted and carefully cultivated in males given their biological free agency.
Emotions are healthy to repress when, as you say, there would be a detriment to self or group in engaging in those emotions. It is competence and being truthful to self and group that lets one know when to emote or not.
I believe that view of things is an example of toxic masculinity. The person's father died. It's only human to show some emotion.
"In an ideal scenario, a man will step up and become truly useful during this time of trouble."
Saying that it has to be a man is part of the problem of toxic masculinity. Anyone can do this.
"Additionally, while deep and dangerous feelings, such as depression, should not be suppressed, many of the things you feel don't need to be shared."
They don't need to, but doing so doesn't hurt either.
"These feelings do no good for you or the people around you"
That can be a pretty toxic attitude toward feelings.
I hope you'll be pleased to learn that aggressive tendencies can encouraged, shepherded, and focused towards the positive. So, perhaps "unfocused aggression" is the more politically correct negative label you were searching for? Your word choice is too full of hurt. (I'm sorry if some men have hurt you.)
It's not a spite thing, but we just cannot let your feelings win the day, and you have to lose this fight for all our sakes. We want our men to be aggressive, competent, and noble creatures after all. We'll silence your "toxic masculinity" messages at every opportunity with our powerful charm and energy. We'll show our young men how to be the boss and love our women too. ;)
The literal meaning of the words is “a subset of the traits traditionally associated with men that is toxic”, not “being male, which is inherently toxic”, as you seem to have interpreted it, which both incorrectly understands the literal meaning of masculinity, and incorrectly understands the literal meaning of applying an adjective to modify a noun: my two year old son has little trouble understanding that the phrase “red cars” refers to the subset of cars which are red rather than asserting that all cars are red.
So, even to the extent that young people might be unable to see past the literal meaning of words, the literal meaning here is exactly what is intended, and entirely unlike the decidedly non-literal interpretation you've misrepresented as the literal meaning.
> We want our men to be aggressive
We who?
You are being pedantic. Kids won't hit Wikipedia to get the full nuance of your preferred labels.
I haven't misrepresented anything. Have you ever asked kids if they've heard the term 'toxic masculinity' used and if they have, what they think it means/how it makes them feel? You're going to get some shockingly low resolution answers.
> We who?
As much 'we' as we can get. On this board, that might tend towards the royal we. ;) Consider that aggression has a positive application. Mastery and domination can occur in and over the self first and then outward in the world as required next, and that's the 'good' kind of aggression we like to foster. Self-control is learned, and boys need guidance channeling their instinct for achievement towards applicable skills development.
I welcome questions like yours though as it spurs these illuminating discussions. I'm hoping you can appreciate a different but logically consistent and legitimate worldview from your own.
I want to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative just as much as the next person. I suspect you and I view typical male attributes differently where you might seek to suppress rather than celebrate/foster appropriately.
No, the core of the objection is the way adjectives apply to nouns in a way that even toddlers correctly understand without difficulty. Even without a nuanced understanding of “maleness” vs. “masculinity” (which, honestly, I think most kids who have any understanding of what “toxic” means in any sense wouldn't need to look up), modifying a noun with an adjective normally means you are referring to an instance of the the thing named by the noun which also has the trait described by the adjective, not that all instances of the thing named by the noun have that trait.
If I say that colorblind people have problems with a certain site design, it doesn't mean, literally or otherwise, that all people are colorblind, and if I say toxic masculinity produces certain social problems, it doesn't mean either that all masculinity is toxic or that all problems are social. That's just not the way adjectives work, and even very young kids have no problem at all understanding that.
> if I say toxic masculinity produces certain social problems, it doesn't mean either that all masculinity is toxic ...
That is your opinion. That's a taking a very nuanced view.
"Toxic masculinity" is not a specifically addressed term and therefore it may be interpreted as a universal male trait by the young listener.
> ... or that all problems are social
This makes toxic masculinity even worse by your own definition: the toxicity might be understood as a natural and unalterable part of the poor little guy.
The messaging is just sloppy and is quite frankly hurtful, possibly intentionally, though not by you. You've partially conceded this sloppiness in your response even without my cajoling.
> That is your opinion
It's just the normal literal meaning of adjectives modifying nouns.
> That's a taking a very nuanced view.
No, it's not. It's the simple literal meaning. Reading any more into such a construct is a non-literal reading which involves some (perhaps incorrectly inferred) nuance.
> This makes toxic masculinity even worse by your own definition:
I have presented no definition by which this barely-coherent claim is true.
You seem to be saying that applying grammar rules to literal word definitions should provide 100% of the information conveyed in a conversation.
The phrase "toxic masculinity" is only a small piece of information in related conversations between people.
There's context, body language, tone, emotional states, memory of past conversations, number of participants, etc that provides all the meaning to the conversation.
Are you not confronting the issue in terms of real human communications especially regarding kids and choosing only to discuss word meanings? That's not very helpful. :shrug:
And that "and love our women too" bit is really creepy. Especially the "our" part, indicating that they are your property. That is a textbook sign of toxic masculinity, and a big red flag in the advent of the "incel" movement. Far, far too many of those young men see women as property that they are owed.
My wife is a third wave feminist, she wouldn't be dominated by me if I tried. And that's not right to think that way, and I don't act like a dominant a-hole that way, for the record.
But she clearly looks to me for leadership of the family, and I gratefully, joyfully provide that leadership. So I am legitimately dominant in many aspects of our relationship, just not by force.
No they aren't, and they don't. I can garauntee that most kids (who you don't seem have to much experience with) have more than enough intelligence to understand how adjectives and nouns work.
Please tell me you forgot the /s on this post.