Toxic masculinity isn't real

[Foreigner]

I look forward to addressing this at greater length ...but as side note - yes there's more men in prison than women ... for all manner of crimes ... but there's one crime for which they rarely do time: spousal assault.

I was lucky to survive my ex's final beating/choking bonanza. He'd locked me in our flat. After he'd choked me twice and seemed to be coming at me for a third go, I picked up a rubber mallet and told
him to back off or I'd hit him. He kept coming at me so I hit him twice in the head. He was bleeding a lot and I begged him to let me call an ambulance. Instead he made a noose and said he was going to hang himself (nice move asshole, since my Mum hanged herself in 2013). But he kept rubbing his blood all over my face and suddenly I realised I
had to get out at any cost ... next thing I was trying to escape by climbing down from balcony of
my 4th floor apartment. Of course it couldn't be done. I fell fifty feet and would've been killed, except a small tree broke my fall. The fall did destroy my left knee, however.
The cops told me if I'd died he would've been charged with murder.
Since I did not die he only got charged with common assault (for choking me) and was sentenced to ten month supervision order (reporting once a week to cops).

this despite previous convictions for assault ...

in meantime he told everyone how he chivalrously didn't have
me charged with assault for hitting him with rubber mallet ... because he'd been choking me Oh and I'd broken his nose.

In fact he had 2 minor lacerations on his scalp and it was so obvious that I'd acted in self defense that one cop told me he was proud of me for hitting him.

And yet I still WOULDNT HAVE HIM CHARGED.
Cops had to charge him because I wouldnt.
And I didn't want him charged because I wanted to protect him from a gaol sentence ...
Since all this happened I had some group therapy.
Must say it was mostly bullshit since we were not allowed to explicitly talk about getting assaulted for fear of "triggering" happening. I think most of us had enough experience with scary situations to handle a little "triggering".
We were also made to do kindergarten-level stuff like fill in worksheets and colour in pictures.
The women's shelter was even worse!
Y'know why men don't need DV shelters! Cos they're able to physically remove their wives from the family home and lock the door. I met women who'd been locked out, along with kids, in their pjs or even just their underpants, without so much as a bus fare.rule..
Man thereby retains house and car.
The women I met in shelters - often encumbered with little kids - have to go from shelter to shitty little flat or community housing (sharing with strangers.)
One woman was sledged because she was meant to take her very young kids to share a house with 3 totally strange homeless men.
She was being "sexist".

I appreciate your story and even feel for you, but it's not really responding to anything I said. You brought up all the stuff about how women are disenfranchised and how men aren't, and that we should be less about emotions and more about facts. Then you go telling your story for... what reason? To elicit sympathy or something?

 

[JessFR]

How can the pay gap be because men are more likely to be garbage men or other undesirable jobs? That doesn't explain why they'd get paid more in those jobs or in other jobs.

 

[thegreenhand]

My take on toxic masculinity is that it has nothing to do with women

toxic masculinity is men being afraid of vulnerability. Repressing emotions. Trying to be “strong” through it

obv this will affect women indirectly but the culture of not discussing your feelings hits the individual man going through that the hardest. It’s a really traumatic thing to feel like you can’t talk about how you feel because of fear of embarrassment. And this mindset is created by both men AND women. The entire culture at large is to blame

 

[birdup.snaildown]

That doesn't explain why they'd get paid more in those jobs or in other jobs.

They don't get paid more in those jobs, really. If 99% of a particular workforce happens to be male (by choice), then men are more likely to hold higher positions in that industry. Men and women at the same position don't get significantly different paychecks. The alleged 20% pay gap is averaged across all industries and it also doesn't take into account hours worked or women taking years off to raise children. You can't expect a company to promote someone if they haven't put in the same time as someone else. That doesn't make any sense from a capitalist standpoint.

A thorough analysis of the pay gap argument reveals many flaws. Men working in particular industries is just one of those flaws. Hours worked is another. Overtime is another. Time off for child rearing is another... When you take all of these into account, there is no significant pay gap.

In some industries (human resources, nursing, etc) women earn more... because these are female dominated industries - since there are more women - women are more likely to succeed.

The 20% pay gap is the most misleading and dishonest of all the popular feminist myths. It is demonstrably nonsense. If you look into it with an open mind, you will see what I mean.

A lot of women I've discussed this with insist that the pay gap exists. They insist it is 20%... and they refuse to look into it. Why? Because: they want to believe it.

My take on toxic masculinity is that it has nothing to do with women

toxic masculinity is men being afraid of vulnerability. Repressing emotions. Trying to be “strong” through it

obv this will affect women indirectly but the culture of not discussing your feelings hits the individual man going through that the hardest. It’s a really traumatic thing to feel like you can’t talk about how you feel because of fear of embarrassment. And this mindset is created by both men AND women. The entire culture at large is to blame

I agree with you other than the word toxic.

The word toxic doesn't help.

We don't call anyone (other than men) toxic.

It is a negative word and it makes men feel worse than they already do.

 

[tubgirl.jpg]

Ok, I realize this is an extremely controversial and sensitive subject so please hear me out before you crucify me.

I was listening to a podcast and this subject was brought up.

Toxic masculinity isn't really a thing.

If a man is being "toxically masculine" it has nothing to do with masculinity. That person is just a piece of shit. If you beat women, display dominance to the detriment to others or any other signs of "toxic masculinity" you are simply a fucking asshole. Period. It has nothing to do with hormones or being a man. Real men do not hit women (in 99% of cases).

There has never been the concept of toxic femininity. In my view, extreme femininity is generally seen as a good thing by everyone else (my own opinion is a little more complex). Everything is duality. You can't have toxic masculinity without toxic femininity. Females can be extremely toxic and abusive, too. Again, there is no such thing as toxic masculinity - that person is just a fucking asshole piece of shit!

And to be clear: NO I am not trying to condone or excuse men who are assholes or abusive. I am NOT trying to explain domestic abuse or anything of that nature. I am simply playing devil's advocate and being logical about things.

I DO believe in things like the patriarchy to an extent, I DO believe women in general are oppressed even in these modern times.

However I DO NOT believe masculinity itself should be called toxic. It has nothing to do with toxic behaivor.

I agree, 110%. Unfortunately, being logical often falls short when competing with emotions.
You can't say that shit in Sweden or the PC-Police will have ye crucified on the town-square!

But yeah, I've known plenty of women (I was dating one for three years) with "toxic femininity".
I've seen it express itself in extreme physical ways (kitchen knives, my aunt put a small hatchet in my uncles head once, and drove a fork through his hand) as well as more manipulative ways, since women are generally more cunning and dare I say clever when it comes to enchantment and so-called witchcraft; getting things to go your way.

I've tried to argue this, and I've really made my "I DO" and "I DO NOT" explicitly clear.
I've got a sister in a protective home (whatthefuckisitcalled?) since her boyfriend was an abusie, cowardly little piece of shit.

BUT - if a bitch comes at me with any type of weapon - shit, a fork even - I'd try to knock her out as if the lady was a dude.


And mansplaining? Where the fuck is the term "femsplaining" whenever I need it?!

Can't we just agree that some people are fucking assholes. That's the first thing we evolve into. A floating asshole, or the beginning of the rectum, in the womb.
And some people never develops beyond that mentally.

 

[mtu mwendawazimu]

This is a bit off topic and controversial, but does anyone have sympathy for born psychopaths?

It irks me to know someone is being an asshole because of how society made them. I might even fall into this category (non psycho) because my "masculinity" passed down from how my dad behaves largely was being stoic. Not too much else, but i *can* help being a dick. I know better. Some other's cant.

I see psychopaths as largely confused. Clueless. Where someone who wasn't born this way may use "being a dick" as a survival mechanism to shield oneself from hurt, a psychopath is just rude and doesn't really understand social norms.

Part of me is writing this to get a rise, but part of me really does see psychopaths as cute little idiots who's wave of destruction is largely accidental, leaving them lonely and bruised.

Aww

Of course, some are very methodical about it, but mostly i pitty them.

 

[Foreigner]

How can the pay gap be because men are more likely to be garbage men or other undesirable jobs? That doesn't explain why they'd get paid more in those jobs or in other jobs.

They don't get paid more in those jobs (the dangerous or undesirable jobs). They're the only ones doing those jobs, by and large. Then those jobs get included in the "pay gap" aggregate that feminists use to explain why women get paid less in ALL jobs.

This was explained to you in the last post?

If you want to properly evaluate pay gap disparities, you have to look at jobs that have equal gender representation and opportunity. Take every job like that in existence and then average the pay data for that cohort. When you do that, the pay gap myth does not bear out. If you include the most dangerous and undesirable jobs in that cohort - jobs which are occupied by almost exclusively men because women don't want to do that work - then of course it's going to look like men get paid more.

The pay gap was real in the 60's, 70's and even 80's, but not in the year 2020. The way feminism perpetuates the pay gap myth now is with the false statistical model I mentioned at the beginning of this post. It's basically a statistical lie in order to reinforce patriarchy theory, which in of itself is also BS.

 

[F.U.B.A.R.]

I don't know about toxic masculinity, but toxic femininity is definitely real. Try spending a week with my wife - she'd eat you whole and spit you out: that's why I love her...

 

[Foreigner]

@JessFR

By the way, in the female dominated fields, like nursing and teaching, women make more than men, especially in nursing. Nobody seems to complain about that. Again, if we included nursing in the aggregate cohort I mentioned, it would then look like women make more than men.

I wish people would learn statistics.

 

[alasdairm]

By the way, in the female dominated fields, like nursing and teaching, women make more than men, especially in nursing.

can you help me understand why you say this? my (albeit cursory) initial reading suggests that's not true. indeed, the opposite appears to be true:

• Male nurses are paid more than female nurses - a pay gap that shows no sign of decreasing
• “I’ve been a nurse for 20 years. The male nurses I work with have a different pay track”
• Do Male Nurses Earn More? Survey Says Yes
• Male nurses still make $6,000-plus more than women, new survey shows
• Male Registered Nurses Make Thousands More in Salary Than Female Counterparts

alasdair

 

[RedRum OG]

In response to all the pay gap talk, I believe women may be get lower pay some times, but I've never seen a study/article that proves it

You cant just lump in all jobs. You have to define by performance, experience, good references, education, hours worked, local supply and demand for said position, personality/charisma, attractivenes, etc .. the list goes on. There are so many factors not being considered that affect salary/pay. If you just say "male nurse vs female nurse salary " well, are they all 25 year old, white, physically able, working 40 hour weeks, straight out of school, with great attitudes? Or are we lumping in a 40 year old black male nurse who works 50 hour weeks for the last 15 years in Georgia with a young asian female nurse who works 20 hours a week with a really bad attitude, and 0 past experience, in Wisconsin? Again, not saying I disagree, but very little is proven with so many unchecked factors.

Saying men make more than women as a whole may just mean that men work more hours. I'm not saying that, but it's possible without checking other factors.

 

[Xorkoth]

They don't get paid more in those jobs (the dangerous or undesirable jobs). They're the only ones doing those jobs, by and large. Then those jobs get included in the "pay gap" aggregate that feminists use to explain why women get paid less in ALL jobs.

This was explained to you in the last post?

If you want to properly evaluate pay gap disparities, you have to look at jobs that have equal gender representation and opportunity. Take every job like that in existence and then average the pay data for that cohort. When you do that, the pay gap myth does not bear out. If you include the most dangerous and undesirable jobs in that cohort - jobs which are occupied by almost exclusively men because women don't want to do that work - then of course it's going to look like men get paid more.

The pay gap was real in the 60's, 70's and even 80's, but not in the year 2020. The way feminism perpetuates the pay gap myth now is with the false statistical model I mentioned at the beginning of this post. It's basically a statistical lie in order to reinforce patriarchy theory, which in of itself is also BS.

I disagree that patriarchy theory is BS, our culture clearly was a patriarchal one until quite recently. And still is to some extent, ever diminishing. But, I agree with most of your post. I agree that the gender pay gap is not what people try to present it as. In my industry, there are all sorts of women (market research). My boss is a woman, and more than half of the senior vice presidents are, too. The same seems to be true with other companies we work with that I have gotten to know well enough to know a variety of people there. There are definitely some legacy companies and industries whose cultures are so entrenched in white male leadership, that there still aren't a lot of places for women at the top level, but this seems to be happening less and less as younger people take over leadership roles. Factors such as women typically being the ones to stay home and raise children as part of a domestic agreement to raise a family, in my opinion, can't be considered as a disadvantage to women. These days, plenty of men choose to do that instead, perhaps because the woman makes more money at her career.

There are still some serious problems women face, which are also being addressed in modern times... a big one is being taken advantage of sexually by men in power, and the culture supporting the man in those cases. But #metoo blew that wide open (which is awesome, fuck yeah). And now things are changing. One that still exists is the difficulty women experience with trying to report rapes, and the pitifully half-assed wrist slapping men get for domestic abuse in some cases. There is still some progress to be made, but I think we're really almost there in terms of equality of opportunity for women.

But seriously, it's not like women have a starting wage of $10 at a job, and men get a starting wage of $12. A woman can make as much money as a man if she takes the same career path, these days.

I think in general a lot of the problems related to patriarchy, and a lot of the racial problems, too - will get substantially better as the younger generation starts to take the power and the old lizards finally start to die off. Not that bigotry doesn't exist in the younger generations, obviously it does. But it seems like the younger generations are much less fixated on and concerned with race and gender.

 

[birdup.snaildown]

can you help me understand why you say this? my (albeit cursory) initial reading suggests that's not true. indeed, the opposite appears to be true:

• Male nurses are paid more than female nurses - a pay gap that shows no sign of decreasing
• “I’ve been a nurse for 20 years. The male nurses I work with have a different pay track”
• Do Male Nurses Earn More? Survey Says Yes
• Male nurses still make $6,000-plus more than women, new survey shows
• Male Registered Nurses Make Thousands More in Salary Than Female Counterparts

alasdair

This is not my experience as a nurse. Maybe it is true in other countries, but (from my experience) it isn't true where I live... I read through two of those links and neither of them appear to provide the statistics that these conclusions are based on. I'm curious if these are flawed like the pay gap myth. Do they take into account overall hours worked and overtime, etc? Do they take into account time off for raising kids? You could be right, but I'm skeptical because of how flawed and misleading pay gap analyses tend to be... I'd like to see the the data.

 

[RedRum OG]

In response to all the pay gap talk, I believe women may be get lower pay some times, but I've never seen a study/article that proves it

You cant just lump in all jobs. You have to define by performance, experience, good references, education, hours worked, local supply and demand for said position, personality/charisma, attractivenes, etc .. the list goes on. There are so many factors not being considered that affect salary/pay.

Example:

Person 1) Black 40 year old male with 15 years of experience, 50 hours/week, in Georgia

Person 2) Asian 24 year old female with 0 experience, a bad attitude, and 20 hours a week, in Wisconsin

These 2 have no business having their salaries compared on the basis of gender. Their location alone could account for a massive difference in pay.

Saying men make more than women as a whole may just mean that men work more hours. I'm not saying that, but it's possible without checking other unknown factors. I'm also avoiding the inevitably ugly conversation about generalising whether men or women perform better in different fields, but there are absolutely fields where different genders generally outperform each other.

 

[birdup.snaildown]

men work more hours. I'm not saying that

I am. It's a fact.

 

[Foreigner]

This is not my experience as a nurse. Maybe it is true in other countries, but (from my experience) it isn't true where I live... I read through two of those links and neither of them appear to provide the statistics that these conclusions are based on. I'm curious if these are flawed like the pay gap myth. Do they take into account overall hours worked and overtime, etc? Do they take into account time off for raising kids? You could be right, but I'm skeptical because of how flawed and misleading pay gap analyses tend to be... I'd like to see the the data.

I'm not a nurse but have many nurse friends, and they all say women get paid more and get more opportunities in nursing. There is preferential treatment for female nurses. The only area they don't get preference is in the training side. Male applicants to nursing programs are almost always taken because males are rarer.

 

[birdup.snaildown]

They certainly get more opportunities but I'm not convinced they get paid more at the same level of experience, working the same hours, etc. I haven't noticed that where I work anyway.

 

[Foreigner]

I disagree that patriarchy theory is BS, our culture clearly was a patriarchal one until quite recently. And still is to some extent, ever diminishing.

Patriarchy theory isn't just the idea that visible men are the rulers. It's the idea that the systems of oppression are structurally deliberate, were invented by men, benefit men exclusively, are reinforced by men (whether or not they realize it), and that all men are by default more privileged than women, regardless of other factors. This theory is weaponized to silence men who are critical of feminism, and who are proponents of male activism trying to expose the plight of men. Patriarchy theory says that men can't possibly be disenfranchised.

There's also no equivalent theory to explain the advantages that women get in society for being women. There's only theories to pathologize societal ills, and they all have names referring to men (like patriarchy); and conveniently, the solutions have names referring to women (i.e. feminism).

They need to pick a better name. Patriarchy theory could be easily called structural power theory, since even feminists admit that "patriarchy" negatively affects men through the creation of toxic masculinity. Well, if that's true, then it's not all about male privilege, now is it? Talk about any topic that falls under the category for patriarchy theory, and I can tell you a different reason for why it's happening than what feminists have come up with. Their theory does not hold water.

And need we talk about all the advantages that women have over men in systems of power? Women receive highly biased and preferential treatment in the family courts, in the criminal courts (especially around sentencing), etc. Some of these things come from the former division of labor in society just like the male biases did: women are family people so they are more deserving of having the children; women are the fairer and more innocent sex so we shouldn't punish them as harshly with sentencing. It's sexist, to be sure... but it favours women, so you don't see feminists tearing those inequalities down, just like we don't see feminists fighting for equal representation in the most dangerous jobs. Men are cannon fodder.

Do you know how many suicides there are every year just from fathers who have their children torn away from them unfairly by the courts? The family courts screw over men on a regular basis. You just have to google it to hear the endless stories.

Patriarchy theory is BS. It's too ideological. You can't separate the world entirely into gender A and gender B, and say that whatever ails gender B is because of systems of oppression created by gender A. It's divorced 100% from context. People don't exist in vacuums and they have dynamic qualities. It also pretends that women don't have unique social and legal advantages that men don't have.

 

[MrsGamp]

I appreciate your story and even feel for you, but it's not really responding to anything I said. You brought up all the stuff about how women are disenfranchised and how men aren't, and that we should be less about emotions and more about facts. Then you go telling your story for... what reason? To elicit sympathy or something?

Yeah, sorry, it was a bit all over the place. I wrote it on a bus ...

I DO have lots of relevant hard data I can share ... must admit that while in women's shelter I made a bit of a hobby out of challenging Reddit MRAS!

I'll go unearth all that if people are interested ...

I do recall that one rather widely accepted scholar that MRAs are fond of quoting is Murray Strauss, who has written prolifically about the "lie" that women suffer more than men from IPV ...

According to Strauss's adversaries, his research used a flawed method he developed, which he called the Conflict Tactics Scale.

Conflict tactics scale - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The above link is only wiki, I know, but it has links to some of work that can be accessed for free.

 

[birdup.snaildown]

@MrsGamp

I'm not sure what domestic violence has to do with "toxic masculinity"?

There is more domestic violence reported from men to women than vice-versa... but there is also a lot more domestic violence (roughly double what white women experience in heterosexual relationships) experienced by women in lesbian relationships and also experienced by black women in heterosexual relationships with black men.

So, if the rate of domestic violence is an indication of toxic masculinity... you should also acknowledge toxic lesbianism, and conclude that afro-masculinity is more toxic than masculinity.

Also - I couldn't be bothered researching it thoroughly - but it appears that African American men are victims of domestic abuse from African American women at a much higher rate than white men from white women.

When domestic abuse clearly exists in many different forms, why are only men toxic?