I think this whole hormone angle misses the point. Toxic masculinity has nothing to do with hormones and it has nothing to do with being "too manly".
Toxic masculinity is a label for culturally reenforced expectations of how men should behave that are harmful to society. Men included.
All the guys here who are terrified that normal expressions of sexuality make them gay? And that's bad because.... The idea of them being gay is intrinsically undesirable?
That's an example of toxic masculinity hurting males. It's guys having anxieties and fears that are totally pointless because they fear how they'll be seen if they aren't "male enough" according to some dumbass cultural ideas of how men should behave.
It's nothing to do with testosterone, it's just destructive gendered cultural standards. That's it.
Generally speaking though no I don't think almost any women exhibit toxic masculinity since the very idea is about conforming to destructive ideas of what it means to be a man. If you're not a man you aren't being pressured to conform to those ideas anyway.
The mistake people make is they think toxic masculinity is an attack on males. It's not. It's an attack on bad cultural norms about what it means to be a man. Norms that hurt men and women alike and are completely arbitrary.
You are being very selective. First, regardless of any definition we pick for the term, it is bandied about very freely and fluidly in media, in academia and in people's conversation. And it is very often applied to masculine traits that are largely intrinsic Iand based on a combination of our biochemical make up andevolved neurology. I see competitiveness labelled toxic. I see being less talkative, less emotionally expressive, less eye contact labelled as toxic when what they are is not female tendencies. Boys are routinely corrected out of natural male behaviour--being rambunctious, loud, risk taking, aggression.
Masculinity and anything perceived as masculine is constantly under attack. The converse is true as well. Behaviours that are frowned upon become gendered as masculine, since masculinity is toxic after all. I always hear about "manspreading" but have only ever seen it occasionally in sullen teenagers of any gender, whereas I see women with bags spread about them, who do not move them even on a full bus, yet we have no derogatory word about all women because many do this. I hear mansplaining almost exclusively as "I don't have to hear your rebuttal because your a man". The actual phenomenon of know-it-all's, and people who try and explain something a person already knows well and didn't ask about is something men and women both do. I would argue that feminist ideology indoctrinate the behaviour into women. I would also argue that men aren't valued intrinsically as beings with value, we are valued for skills, accomplishments, status, providing. In that context if a man sometimes wants to be seen to be knowledgeable and hopefully useful is that really so toxic? What's women's excuse for being perpetually in lecture mode?
Toxic masculinity isn't a useful concept not just because it has no definition that people stick to, but because it is applied in a blame fashion as an individual failing that springs from another ideological fancy, the patriarchy, and somehow that always parses out to not hold 51% of the population. The half who do most acculturation of children, the half who do most teaching, the half who tend to control and administrate social functioning, the half who most psychology and psychotherapy was built from and for, the half who write all the rules and criticisms about gender and sex., that half somehow bears no responsibility for any of these cultural, psychological, ideological shackles men bear the burden of. The discourse of toxic masculinity is one of the meanest in spirit, punitive and judgemental. It never treats as legitimate rules men are raised with, just like you didn't, you bad ically belittled men if they fall prey to silly ideas of manhood. Manhood is rigid and narrowly defined and heavily policed by men and women. It is an impoverished austere existance compared to the wide open field that comes with a culture wide full time validation industry for female identities, roles, development mean ours, dress, etc. The very idea that people with so much freedom and so much authority and a monopoly on unquestioned revealed truth about gender would castigate and belittle men for the lives we are dealt is abhorrent beyond all reason. It is pure malevolent pathological misandry.
Women's discourse never starts with even the question, let alone onsideration of the value of male ways, the functions they served and often still serve. Men do every single one of the heavy, dangerous, body destroying jobs. Do you think it would be easy to do those jobs if they were reconstructed in feminine ways out of being stoic, idealizing toughness, being insensitive to suffering and buttoning down there internal lives to get th shitty but necessary job done? Nothing masculine is ever valued just as the incredible societies that evolved over the years and have steadily become more just, egalitarian, rational, safe, and aspirational for centuries should also be acknowledged in the discourse on the so-called patriarchy? But that doesn't happen because we, our whoke culture, is generations derp into the business of denigrating masculinity. Misandry has no time to be honest about men.
In anthropology. When you study a culture, you are supposed to try and leave your norms at the door and whatever you are witnessing, even if it looks silly, pointless or superstitious you are supposed to treat it as existing for a reason and uncover that. Most of the time, a cultural feature that looks absurd to us, in its roundabout way provides a value to the culture. When we train dogs, we observe their behaviour and reactions with the assumption there is a valid reason worth understanding so we can interact more productively with the dog. We give dogs more credit and benefit of the doubt than men. We give Tribes who believe ghosts live in trees and you can make curses out of snot are better validated than men.
Feminism's deconstruction if manhood, masculinity, maleness is toxic, its hate based and it starts with its conclusions and generates discourse arguments to reach the conclusions. It is not difficult to observe because there is nothing more common in feminism to look at a situation and find oppression, misogyny, and patriarchy at work and to find the same in the opposite situation or any variation contemporary feminists feel things are worse than ever. My government is feminist, named half the cabinet for women, speaks out harshly against men and for women and backs it with policy and spending. The education system is run by and fine tuned for females and their general learning styles. As a result, at every single level, men are failing, dropping out and are a shrinking minority. Not only are learning methods not where their strengths are, but they are fed a steady diet of how lousy they are, how dangerous and predatory they are, how low their empathy is, how they don't cooperate properly, how they can't understand consent, how they aren't really to be trusted with childcare, how they are violent, cruel and control women in a rape culture they supposedly own and designed for the control and torture of women. Meanwhile, aside from the education crisis with males, the vadt majority of violence victims are male, half of domestic violence comes from wives, the vast majority of suicides, addictions, overdoses, arrests, charges, convictions and sentences are male(even when compared by equal crime, they are heavily penalized by virtue of being male. 95% of homeless people are men. Men and boys are murdered and go missing at a rate of 4 to 1 compared to women and girls, but only the women and girls get talked about. There is an international academic, media infused, bureaucratic ideological propaganda producing culture defining apparatus that works full time year round, decade after decade, run by women and devoted to writing the narratives we live by that are based on gathering entitlements, privelege and power for women and leveraging it through a vast religion based on misandry and shaming men. Women have institutions within every institution, they have extra laws and policies, extra rights, they control the family. Their ideology offers no place for men, no sympathy, no understanding, no inclusion, no pathway out of the doghouse. Feminism actively fights to retain spotlight, attention, media and funding always in their demands and tries to suppress, discredit, dissemble or shame any attempt to address the many many crises that are absolutely gendered and it is men suffering. There is no place in a fair just world for the manipulative, controlling, shaming feminist lens called toxic masculinity. It does nothing but twist and distort. It doesn't honour men, doesn't validate the worlds that shape them, doesn't examine maleness with any honesty, or any science or other discipline for that matter, it doesn't work to make a world where different masculinity can flourish. What is most toxic about masculinity is the trauma it has suffered for decades under the autocratic rule of feminism. It was corrupt and hateful by design and cannot be tweaked into usefulness. We need deprogrammiing from all of it if we are to be fair and inclusive to nen and honour their role in the world and our species.
I've typed this all out on a crappy phone with a onscreen keyboard that is a cross between haunted and senile. As well, I've typed with fervour. The combination may be a mess.
The topic is close to my heart. I've worked with and fought for resources for men who are homeless, addicted, mentally ill for years and had my eyes opened wide to the systemic disparities and prejudices and how hard women work to keep it that way. Feminism is more corrupt doublespeak than anything Orwell came up with to satirize with. I consider feminism criminal and fascist and the greatest danger we face in the immediate times. I'm also aware that Nothing along those lines from the mildest suggestion to a 3am manifesto has a hope in hell of gaining any traction. I've just become fed up and will speak out angrily and vehemently anywhere I can. I come by it honestly. I spent most of my life on the left, a feminist, an activist, I've read my Foucault and kristeva. The perspective I have, I got on the inside. I still do, as the whole social work industry is women and explicitly taught using feminist socialist oppression victim models with hyper focus on women and groups who often are actually victims thst women politically align themselves with to retain oppressed status. Social work, health services, gov't grants and policy, family courts and and our police forces codified men as the problem to deal with. It's an ugly ugly world. Most days I'd happily see it razed to the ground.
