Carol Hanisch said "the personal is political" and feminism embraced that. Radical feminism looked not only at the big structural elements of oppression and the institutionalized unfairnesses that were ensconced in laws and policies, but at individual personality characteristics and the behaviors that go with them. The value systems and priorities that come directly out of a person's way of being in the world, a person's most fundamental personality attributes. And they said that masculinity was a political problem, the political problem, that being a man at the local individual level meant supporting patriarchy inside of every interpersonal interaction.
There are, of course, readers who are wanting to fling their hands in the air and protest, "No, you mean toxic masculinity. Not all masculinity is toxic!"
And they're right. We need to avoid oversimplification. There are many butch women whose trajectory in life has been a "yeah, so?" response whenever accused of acting masculine, butch women who found identify and validation there. There are transgender men as well who embrace masculinity as the best mirror of who they legitimately are. There are cis men who accept the mantle of what's expected of them but spend their lives contemplating how to be a good man in the modern world. So yes, there are people aligned with masculinity who value courage and willingness to risk, and the willingness to not be defined by the pack even if it means being a socially cut-off isolated individual, and a cut-to-the-chase raw honesty.
But whether toxic masculinity is just the extreme "turn it up to 11" overdose of masculinity or if it is a specific emphasis on the most antagonistic elements, toxic masculinity exists.
We live in the interesting times of long-wave culture wars coming to a decisive turning point: these are the last gasps of patriarchal hegemony, with patriarchal value systems's claims to legitimacy pushed back against the social ropes. And at the moment, the patriarchy's values are personally embodied to the hilt in one Donald Trump. This election, like the one before it in 2016, is all about patriarchy versus its opponents, and it is raw and undisguised, and we've had four years of seeing that on display.
It is because patriarchy is on the ropes that the masks are off. It is because they are on the losing side of history that they have given up on the middle and along with it the pretentions to debonair chivalry, the gestures of "we will take care of you, we are compassionate in our authority and power".
The Specifics
• Belligerence — masculinity values fighting, being aggressive, the notion that you get your way with other people by intimidating them with the threat of attacking them, and backing that up with actual violence when need be. Our nation has tried to cast itself on the world stage as a "good citizen" country that doesn't invade and conquer, but we've barged into several countries with tanks bombs and soldiers, and have more secretively toppled the duly elected leaders of others, and so we've exhibited plenty of belligerence. Donald Trump's entire way of interacting with everyone, domestic and foreign, official politics or unofficial interpersonal interaction, is belligerent; he is the personification of the notion that you get things done by intimidating ohters
• Defensive Fragility I: making mistakes or ever being wrong -- masculinity values absolute certainty and decisiveness, the attitude that there is something weak and ineffectual about considering alternative possibilities or remaining aware of your own fallibility. Our nation has a long tradition of believing itself to be anointed by God, American exceptionalism, that our way of doing things is guaranteed to to correct. We've made legitimate overtures to the rest of the world to come together respectfully and work out our differences peacefully -- the US is most directly responsible for the existence of the UN -- but a lot of our nation's behavior has had a wide streak of "we are giving the rest of you the opportunity to follow our lead and do things just like us". And we don't take kindly to criticism. Donald Trump is the quintessential stereotype of a person who can't ever consider the possibility that he is, or was, wrong. He will never apologize and will stick to his guns no matter how often he's shot his own foot off with them.
• Defensive Fragility II: needing others or ever being dependent on others -- masculinity is all about "going your own way" and "attending to my needs myself", and if the non-toxic form of that is about stepping up and doing what needs doing instead of waiting for someone else to do so, the toxic form exhibits utter contempt for anyone who ever needs anyone else for anything. As a nation we've become increasingly toxic in our insistence that we don't need the blessing or agreement of any other nation or people, we're going to do whatever we want and the rest of the world can go fuck themselves. We had the sympathies and compassionate regard of the overwhelming majority of the world after the 9/11 World Trade attacks, but squandered it as casually as tossing a piece of trash into the waste bin, attacking Iraq with no provocation and no coherent explanation. Donald Trump is very vocal about not needing anybody and not caring if his actions do not need with their approval. The Republicans in Congress and in his own administration found that out, often to their dismay: he doesn't need them, or believes that he doesn't and behaves as if he doesn't.
• All Differences are Superior/Inferior -- masculinity has a tendency to see every distinction as one in which one possible kind is better than the other, that there's always a "right way to be" or a "right kind to buy" or "best form of it to use". This is an outgrowth of the belligerence and the tendency to see everything in terms of the potential for competition and conflict. Feminists highlight this as "othering" and show how this tendency spreads oppression by encouraging people to see folks different from them as inferior and then use that to justify taking advantage of them whenever the possibility exists. Our nation began with a lot of lofty lip service about equality, and as a nation we've valued equality in principle, but parallel to that has been the long history of ways in which we've treated categories of people as less worthy, less human, as subordinate or substandard, or pathological and evil and in need of being eliminated by whatever means necessary. Donald Trump has made a career of disparaging the different, and tailoring his appeal to those who view themselves as "normal" and who also resent anyone who isn't "like us" who dare to demand their rights as fully human beings.
• Coercion and Control -- masculinity, again as an outgrowth of the belligerent anticipaton of conflict, tends to value winning more than any other goal, to the point of losing track of what goal made winning in this or that case important in the first place. This also goes hand-in-hand with the defensive fragility about ever considering the possibility of having made a mistake. The US became the poster child for this kind of masculine manifestion in the Vietnam War, where there was less and less clarity on what we were there for or what our goals were, but where nevertheless our leaders pursued winning the war as the first and most important consideration. Donald Trump epitomizes the spirit of "winning isn't the best thing, it's the only thing", and it means there is nothing he considers off-limits if it facilitates him winning.
• Polarization -- masculinity tends to carry the attitude into any confrontational argument or dissent that "you're either with me or you're against me". This, too, is an attitude that carries over from imagining being in a fight. In direct physical conflict, nuances of perspective and opinion aren't relevant, it's all about whether you're someone else representing a risk that I should attack lest I be attacked or I can count on you to fight on my side. Our nation has often played the polarization game outside of wartime, doing its best to force nations to take sides and divide the world-map into US and THEM factions. It was our behavior all throughout the cold war. We've never been very open to a multifaceted way of viewing international economic or political configurations, preferring the either/or and pressuring everyone else into buying into that. Donald Trump is the polarizer-in-chief, doing more to divide us internally than anyone else who has ever occupied the office. There is to be no forgiveness, no consideration of understandable reasons why someone would do something we would not ourselves do, nor any willingness to think of alliances as complex and shifting things. Everything becomes "us versus them".
• Oversimplification -- masculinity, with a military focus on quick decision and operating in fear and opportunistic aggression, tends not to trust complex thought in general. This feeds the notion that everything is actually quite simple and that anyone who claims to see complexity is weak and indecisive and wrong by definition. As a nation we've shifted from a faith in science (although one that automatically rejected any critical questions of how the science was put to use) to a sort of pride in not thinking too much. We still have good universities and educated people, but culturally we value them less, and have shifted to a shorter attention span that doesn't easily get immersed in complex explanations. Donald Trump has made denseness a virtue and continually exhibits the utmost contempt for actual thinking, insisting that everything worth thinking about has immediate and obvious answers.
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You're secluded in quarantine, and all the performances and events have been cancelled, so it's a good time to read a book!
My book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, has been published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page
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