The toxic concept of toxic masculinity

Anyone who has passed through an education in the past decade will have encountered the term ‘toxic masculinity’. It is one of the many charming phrases that our age has come up with to pathologise ordinary people. Brewing for some decades, the concept of ‘toxic masculinity’ was brought into the mainstream in the last ten years by fourth-wave feminists intent on portraying half of our species as ‘problematic’, to use another of the delightful watchwords of our era.

The simple assertion of the ‘toxic masculinity’ crowd is that specifically male behaviours are a problem. The most extreme aspects of male misbehaviour are portrayed as though they are routine. So young feminists insist that we live in a ‘rape culture’, in which men are alleged to be allowed to rape with impunity. Likewise, male-on-female domestic violence is portrayed as a kind of pandemic. And the answer to all these things is essentially to feminise men – to tell specifically young heterosexual men that they must curb their masculinity and subdue many of their most natural instincts.