The Roots of Toxic Femininity

Trauma, opportunism, and the myth of "safety"-- a male radical feminist analysis

"unlearn self-hatred"— bell hooks - "Feminism is for Everybody"

A male drag queen’s idea of femininity.

Just like masculinity, femininity has a shadow side.

I grew up as a young boy in the 1970’s in the age of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which said simply: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” It should have been uncontroversial. This law did not grant women “special rights” but equal rights.

Against a backdrop of unequal access and treatment, however, perhaps this morally obvious truth was too startling. Patriarchy (rule by men), despite what Jordan Peterson claims, has been a “thing” for thousands of years if one merely looks at who has called the shots from ancient cultures up to now. It was men, not women, who have almost universally been granted the right to participate in government and own property, including land.

Last time I checked that pretty solid evidence of pervasive sexism.

That landscape has changed only recently, and the growing pains have been significant for both men and women. There has been a backlash against women and women’s rights (detailed in a best-selling book, Backlash, by Susan Faludi) amid some of the triumphs of liberal feminism, and the entrance of large numbers of women into the workforce, resulting in some capacity for economic independence for many of them.

Battle between different types of feminism

Gloria Steinem was the champion for this type of “liberal” feminism which sought to give women access to male-dominated institutions WITHOUT fundamentally changing the structures and philosophies cooked up by a structurally violent patriarchy (love of war, dominance over nature, concentration of wealth, abuse of the powerless etc.) This liberal feminism oftentimes teamed up with what is called “essentialist” feminism, a reverse-sexist notion that women were by nature superior to men, and by implication more fit to rule by dint of women’s supposedly intrinsic “compassion, nurturing, and empathy”. Such feminists did not seem to detect the irony that the matriarchy this orientation implied would have violated the Equal Rights Amendments that feminists broadly were pushing for.

In contrast to this, I was on the side of radical and lesbian feminism. These feminisms sought to actually deconstruct and replace patriarchal institutions while retaining respect and admiration for the unique and important contributions that femininity offers. Women should be honored as women and not simply made to be like men in the supposed interests of equality. Equality should NOT mean “sameness” but equal regard, honor, and respect for the constructive difference we bring to the diverse table of human being and endeavor, including biological sex and sociological gender variations.

What is toxic masculinity and toxic femininity?

As a healthy, masculine man and a biological male, I see the corruption of character based on inequality given men on the basis of their sex or gender, toxic masculinity, as weakening and corrupting men, but I also believe this same hazard exists for women. Even under patriarchy, there has always been the undercurrent and possibility of toxic femininity, the misuse of power by women on the basis of their sex and gender to unfairly advantage themselves, oftentimes in subtler but no-less powerful ways, i.e. rule over the household. We see some evidence of this history of sex-based prejudice awarding them custody of children, being automatically believed in cases of alleged domestic violence, and double standards around the alimony awards, etc.

Therefore, I consider myself a decent arbiter of this topic. I have been a pro-feminist male my entire life, but I am also pro-masculinist. I have been an educational advocate all my life for strong, healthy girls and women, and boys and men. This comes from accentuating and supporting the BEST of those traits associated with sex and gender— assertion and deep ability to receive, courage and gentleness, risk and temperance, critical and creative, truth and love. This come from also calling out and confronting the WORST of those traits associated with sex and gender— domination and manipulation, violence and repression, sexual assumption and sexual denial, boasting and gossip, physical intimidation and emotional blackmail. You get the point.

Toxic masculinity has been given a lot of press in the wake of the #MeToo movement, but almost nowhere do I find a nuanced discussion of toxic femininity. There have been a growing raft of men’s sites on social media that decry the double-dipping of women, using “diversity, equity, and inclusion” to get a lift up over men in hiring, salary, and promotion, while still searching for a guy that earns more than them, that can protect them and “their” children (ummm, no, it’s both your children), and, of course, remain monogamous, handsome, in-shape, and hopelessly in love with her.

My journey to male pro-feminism and my defense of the honorable masculine

I saw this gender crash-course on the horizon decades ago when I took a personal interest in how masculinity could be ENHANCED by feminism by challenging patriarchy’s destructive aspects and showing men like me how the wisdom and history of women could develop awareness and attributes that might make us men better PERSONS. Concomitantly, I saw how patriarchal habits and realities were making women worse women and persons. The trauma, domination, and exclusion literally over the millennia were creating habits and cultures of abuse, survival, and disguised will to power that would not serve women nor men, nor (especially) their children who would learn to emulate these dysfunctions and pass them down through the generations.

I took Women’s Studies as an undergraduate class at The Ohio State University in the mid 1980’s. I was drawn to the critique that radical feminism, especially radical lesbian feminism, was applying to the social making of men and boys. As an emotionally feeling boy, I was heartened by an analysis that pointed to the damage that male “privilege” did, not only to women, but to boys and men. Patriarchy-promoted emotional stoicism, refusal to admit error, holding on to unmerited power by any means necessary all struck me as the OPPOSITE of the classic virtuous and strong male. Lesbian feminist, Marilyn Frye’s The Politics of Reality, was enormously influential because it addressed on the theoretical and practical level “power as access” and helped me see into male presumption in social and personal arenas including the sexual arena.

Sarah Lucia Hoagland and her book on cooperative ethics, Lesbian Ethics, was also influential, because it pointed the way to a new world in which I could imagine myself thriving with ALL OF ME and not simply those attributes that fed the patriarchal machine. One reviewer on Amazon summed it up rather nicely under the title “Indispensable.”:

…Hoagland presents with clarity, refreshing hope, and conviction the idea that it is indeed possible to have authentic, free, loving, and equal relationships between human beings, relationships that are simply not based on domination and submission. Her goal is "moral revolution", "a conceptual framework, a new paradigm, in which oppression is not automatic - where rape, pogroms, slavery, lynchings, and colonialism are not even _conceivable_."

… It is an excellent book for study in a community or collective with common goals, as it outlines concepts and tools that are essential to building authentic and egalitarian communities. This includes completely uprooting values about domination/subordination that are so central to mainstream (male-centered) anglo-european ethics from our thinking, our language, our behavior, our relationships, and our work, and replacing these values with a fundamental honoring of people's moral agency (our choices, our freedoms).

Who, really, could be against that? Practically no one, in the ideal. But who is willing to stick their neck out and help make that change happen in reality? Not many.

While getting my Ph.D. in philosophy of education at Syracuse University, I basically minored in gender studies before it became an actual field, taking an additional four classes in feminism and making the nascent field of “men’s studies” part of my dissertation along with radical feminism. This experience, and my grassroots political, educational, professional, and cultural advocacy for gay marriage, disability rights, Title IX (women rights in sports), men’s rights (around child custody, etc.), led me to an appreciation of broad-based social change which did not set one group against another.

Boy, did that change in the 2000’s, 2010’s, and 2020’s, based in the advent of social media and a sensationalist, monopolized exploitation of attention and debate. This has created the biggest division and dumbing-down of critical thought in favor of ignorant “self-interest” I have seen in my lifetime. The internet seems filled only with bearded men advocating for a return to the “real man” of the woods. Twenty- and thirty-something intellectually vacuous bimbos (as well as so-called “Real Housewives”) pine for “high value” men (i.e men who will materially gratify and take care of them), based on their sex appeal and status as internet influencers. When you throw in a banal corporatized broad-but-not-deep “diversity”, and Patriarchy 2.0, where men can claim women’s sports records based on their identification as women, you have a toxic cultural gas that pollutes the minds and lungs of all it touches.

Deep dive— Toxic femininity

This steep devolution of gender engagement has infected notions of both masculinity and femininity. I will focus here on toxic femininity, because I have already given toxic masculinity the full treatment in an entire chapter on “The Patriarchal Man” in my book, The Spiritually Confident Man. In that chapter, I critically deconstruct the holdover “ruler on the throne” habits of the post-modern Patriarchal Man, and I pose a co-creative, women-honoring alternative— the Emerging Man, “the provider of the feast.”

The Patriarchal Man is the unrepentant and willfully ignorant male, the one who would rather keep things as they are or, even worse, one who delights in the destruction and subjugation of the human spirit. The Emerging Man at every level, especially at his highest level of refinement (The Spiritually Confident Man), will have to confront the Patriarchal Man, both in society and community and in his own habits of heart, mind, and body.

Now it is time for all of us, women included, to identify and confront those poisonous aspects of femininity that arisen in response to the trauma of patriarchy, as well as a new and unethical form of opportunism which tempt women to “have their cake and eat it too.” This historical decision-point is being subsidized by appeal for women’s “safety” that seeks to “lock in” women’s social gains (opportunity), while drawing upon patriarchal imperatives to demand protection (tradition).

Here is why we should NOT go down that road of playing both ends of the patriarchal road against the middle…

Trauma

The first reason involves healing. Personal, internal healing is prevented by external social manipulation. I do not underestimate the power and history or patriarchy and the sexism that it expresses. For thousands of years women have been almost universally reinforced to believe that they are inferior, weak, less talented, and less intelligent than men. For millennia, most cultures have infantilized or subjugated women in the public sphere while according them limited power in the private sphere.

Just because the so-called “weaker sex” has learned to survive, and even manipulate men to their advantage does not mean they have enjoyed a proactive, affirmative, creative power to work from their deeper spirit. This should be everyone’s right and obligation to support in others. This is the very crux of equality, dignity, and health not only personally but societally.

Women have been expected to suborn their role in service to family or community and in the Bible “submit to their husbands in everything,” though to be fair to the same text (Ephesians 5: 21-33) also says that husbands are to “to love their wives as their own bodies” and that a man “must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect [not submit to] her husband.”

But the collective, historical repression of women, should NOT be used as an excuse to “flip the script” on men and bringing on an effective matriarchy and denigrate masculinity as somehow inherently toxic (and femininity as inherently good). Femininity has its toxic side, its shadow, a thirst to strike back and to attain the power denied it throughout history. You see this playing out in the acceptability of portraying men in popular culture as either lovable buffoons or as violent predators.

In short this orientation uses a female victimhood narrative to achieve female power, a negative and unhealthy basis for female power that not only emerges from a degenerative source (reaction to patriarchy vs. pro-action from feminine sensibility), but it also forecloses the deep, internal recognition and healing of women’s suffering over the centuries (not to mention foreclosing consideration of the male suffering created by a competitive and brutal patriarchal regime).

Victimhood on the part of both women and men re-inscribes and retrenches trauma, preventing healing, and creating more suffering. What we need is deep collaborative honesty between the sexes on the ways in which our roles are conditioned by authoritarian survival that has stood in the way of our deeper egalitarian thriving. We need a new story, new neural pathways, new networks of cooperation, new social agreements and practices.

Opportunism

This inappropriate and unhealthy “victimhood” response to trauma on the part of both women and men has led to opportunism. For women this opportunism has taken the form of insisting on being put on pedestal in the private sphere (and receive the benefits of being the protected “damsel in distress”) while simultaneously adopting an assertive, escalating expectation of greater professional salary, promotion, and leadership in the public, working world.

These same women are now looking to “marry up” for “high value” men that make more money and have greater social standing. Then these same women are surprised when the shrinking pool of marriageable men that have higher salary and social status (because they themselves have displaced these men) aren’t “committing.” Why should they? They have so many “successful” women competing for their affections! YouTube channels like Hoe_Math, Far From Eden, and Man Reacts have popularly pointed out these contradictions and the Gordian knot that such opportunism creates.

Then there is the toxic consumerism that has taken over many dating apps. These apps emphasize shallow physical attraction in mate selection, and then women wonder why they can’t get emotionally committed and intelligent men!

I was struck by the example of one couple who found each other on a dating app in the HBO documentary film, Swiped: Hooking Up in the Digital Age. They seemed very much in love. They had gotten uncharacteristically lucky in the meat market of attraction-driven dating apps. They should have simply left that hook-up culture world and committed to each other. Instead they both decided to continue dating and having an “open” relationship. The deadness in their eyes and their dispirited presence when interviewed later on testifies to the corrosive character of opportunism. You may get an infinity of “choices”, but this prevents you from getting what you really want, a fulfilling, high-quality, intimate committed relationship.

The myth of “safety”

It’s tough. I have sought to find a compatible connection with a woman on so-called “higher end” dating sites like eHarmony and Spiritual Singles. (Overall, Spiritual Singles has appeared to be more compatible with what I was looking for— educated, emotionally intelligent, growth-oriented women, and it’s significantly less expensive than eHarmony. However, high quality women with promising compatibilities have emerged on both sites.)

One woman, who responded to a message I sent, seemed to share many areas of interests and sensibilities, but I noticed her use of some interesting language: She was looking for “her man” that could provide her with “safety.” Now, of course, safety is a legitimate concern, and lord knows, the anonymity of dating sites, and the scams sometimes perpetrated on them (like the so-called “Tinder Swindler”) make caution and vetting not only advisable but necessary. However, this notion that it is a man’s continuing function to create an iron-clad guarantee against all the risks of the world, is unreasonable and counterproductive to the strength and independence of women, to say nothing about her healthy growth and development.

I should be axiomatic that any quality man would not simply desert his relationship or family at the drop of a hat, and that he should protect the women in his life from predatory men. However, protecting a woman from her own feelings of threat and fear is not a man’s job. It’s a woman’s job to responsibly work through her fears with the help of the men in her life. No man is “her man” to possess but rather her mate to hold in equal regard.

I clarified this stance in my reply to what I will call “Safety Woman.”

I believe protection from abuse is a necessity and a reality, as is mutual understanding, desire, and respect.  These are all essentials in a healthy, loving relationship on any level-- romantic, family, friend, and community. I challenge the notion of "safety", because it seems self-contradictory to me.  Life itself is never "safe" in the sense of being predictable and controllable.  Healthy life always involves risk, change, transformation, loss, and the list goes on.  What life CAN be is honest and up front and deeply honoring.  

I cannot provide "safety" to (anyone), but I can provide reliability, empathy, communication, genuine interest, healing, etc., and I would expect the same from…anyone else in close connection to me. 

The second problem with the notion of safety, especially in past romantic relationships I have had with women is that this can be turned into an expectation that I protect the woman against even her own FEELING or PERCEPTION of threat (oftentimes conditioned by past trauma or abuse).  That I cannot do.  I can be present and caring with another person in their pain, fear, healing, and growth from past trauma, suffering, and abuse, but I cannot do the work for them, nor would I allow myself to be pulled into a type of protection with attempts to preemptively protect someone from ever feeling triggered.  That would be agreeing to live under the dominion of fear, and I most devoutly refuse to do that.  

Not surprisingly, this woman bridled at this candid assessment, and talked about maybe I was the one who was triggered, etc., etc. It was a great way to discern whether this was a match. This most definitely was not.

Conclusion

If there is anything to be drawn from this, it is that we must start true, being candid with each other, about our hurts and hopes, NOT expecting the other person to simply “solve” or “serve” them. We must be committed to learning about the other person at a “core” level, and being vulnerable enough to share ourselves at our core level, rather than running into the sheltering arms of another to PROTECT ourselves from our deeper hurts and hopes and the inherent risks that emerge when one reveals both hurts and hopes. Finally, I believe, we must be committed to profound mutual advocacy, both in sensitive healing of the hurts and in co-creative, delighted engagement with each other around our “core” hopes and the divine genius each of us have to contribute the world from the depths of our own being.

As I recently penned in my other Substack blog, Spiritually Confident:

As one sheers away all the attributes of relationship and selfhood, as one ascends through having, doing, and becoming, a precious human/spiritual gem is uncovered, that of what I call “divine genius” in my book, The Spiritually Confident Man. Divine genius is that nowhere-else-in-the-universe special gift that you and you alone have to offer this existence. You have been honed and “sanded” through all the having, doing, (becoming) and being. Many of the conceits and insecurities have fallen away. Your mortality and vulnerability are at their utmost, allowing you to be creatively, lovingly, and urgently offering your “core” and deeply drinking in the core of your partner.

Gone are the conceits. Insecurities may still linger, but they do not exercise a censorious power. There is a certain boldness that comes from knowing you can leave everything on the table, so that you can “see what happens” if you fully open and devote yourself in trust of the spirit. This is the time of active faith within you and between you and a romantic partner. It is a time of integration more than a time of transcendence.

Many blessings,

Zeus