We’ve spent several years now talking about “toxic masculinity,” though I’m not sure what exactly it means. It’s a great example of what Andrew Hofer calls “Trojan terminology” — think “white supremacy,” “settler colonialism,” “anti-racism” etc. These are all phrases where Hofer notes there’s “a larger debate we need to have about the use of neologisms to sneak in all sorts of extra baggage that people disagree about.”
In the case of toxic masculinity, the vast majority of violence has always been committed by men. We can be honest about that and take reasonable steps to address male violence and misogyny. However, the rise of internet culture, and whatever else our woke montagnards are currently banging on about, doesn’t mean a problem inherent to the human condition has suddenly become uniquely “toxic.” By any historical standard, life for women in the West is the best it’s ever been. Not that reality stopped Democrats spending a tens of millions of dollars on ads implying hoards of abusive husbands are threatening their wives if they vote for Kamala Harris.
But by successfully branding men as toxic, no one hesitates anymore before disparaging men, whereas huge swaths of Americans are loathe to criticize feminism or make generalizations about women. Even when we can say that feminism has become, very literally, toxic.
Last week saw the rise of a TikTok trend that went by the moniker of “Make Aqua Tofana Great Again.” For those of you that are not feminist history nerds, Aqua Tofana was a deadly cocktail of arsenic and belladonna that was sold and marketed to women in 17th century Italy, who used it to off hundreds of men that were allegedly abusive or otherwise problematic. Anyway, the first video on this got 1.3 million likes and MATGA was off to the races.
Obviously, a lot of people weren’t taking the election results well, but this is something altogether different. I have a feeling if there was a major social media trend where men were plotting to off women en masse for voting for Kamala Harris, we’d be on the receiving end of a another media jeremiad about online radicalization and the need to censor social media. Instead, I’m not sure a single major media outlet even picked up on the Aqua Tofana insanity, let alone the less subtle vitriol. Here’s a video about shooting random white men from a woman whose only coherent motivation seems to be that she can’t regulate her emotions. (Read more from “We Need To Have A National Conversation About ‘Toxic Femininity’” HERE)
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