Doesnt Chinese philosophy say men are externally yang, but internally yin. Same with women. What you see is yin, but they're internally yang.

You pick universality or exceptions, not both. — fdrake

Because I have a concept of masculinity and femininity, I now have to provide explanations for all of the silly things people believe or do? — Tzeentch

Apparently you believe the answer to that question to be 'yes' - otherwise I would be 'obviating myself of the need to explain some of its manifestations'.

And then you pull up Socrates' chair and ask me "Let's hear this explanation for everything! Where does sushi come into all of this?"

It's black & white thinking at best - a dishonest trick at worst.

It does ring a bell somewhere, though I haven't heard it expressed as a general rule. The body of Taoist literature is gigantic.

Alright. Can you tell me some things that go into the archetypes?

Yin is:

feminine/the female force/feminine energy
black
dark
north
water (transformation)
passive
moon (weakness and the goddess Changxi)
earth
cold
old
even numbers
valleys
poor
soft
and provides spirit to all things.

Yin reaches it's height of influence with the winter solstice. Yin may also be represented by the tiger, the colour orange and a broken line in the trigrams of the I Ching (or Book of Changes).


Yang is:

masculine/the male force/masculine energy
white
light
south
fire (creativity)
active
sun (strength and the god Xihe)
heaven
warm
young
odd numbers
mountains
rich
hard
and provides form to all things.

Yang reaches it's height of influence with the summer solstice. Yang may also be represented by the dragon, the colour blue and a solid line trigram. — Yin and Yang

Alright. Can you tell me some things that go into the archetypes? — fdrake

In relation to Chinese thought, this is rather like asking a computer scientist which things are 1 and which are 0.
And if they cannot tell you, it's a false distinction?

In relation to Chinese thought, this is rather like asking a computer scientist which things are 1 and which are 0. — unenlightened

I would've thought it was more like asking someone who treats the world as 1s and 0s why nothing is essentially 0 or 1.

And if they cannot tell you, it's a false distinction? — unenlightened

If you can't say how you can tell something is an essential property, you've not established it's an essential property. Absolutely nothing in our discussion so far has been about odd numbers or mountains. If I had a bridge from odd numbers to femininity, I would walk it.

Absolutely nothing in our discussion so far has been about odd numbers or mountains. — fdrake

That's a bit rich, coming from someone who was expecting me to create a bridge to sushi not too long ago.

But you've got a list of earth, cold, mountains that you like. Where sushi belongs in the cosmic order is a perfectly cromulent question. I'd put it in with the feminine personally. Its dual would be burgers. Or pizza.

Right - and as expected, you have to pretend discernment doesn't exist and retreat to relativity.

Had you told me that 10 replies ago, we could have spared ourselves this pointless exhibition.

Right - and as expected, you have to pretend discernment doesn't exist and retreat to relativity. — Tzeentch

Can you tell me more about that please? I don't understand what error I've made.

You've not made an error - Socrates reigns supreme, after all. But you've simply made it clear that you're not genuinely interested in debate or understanding.

Okay!

The challenge of accidental crap counting as masculine or feminine poses to thinking of what counts as masculine or feminine as manifestations of a Jung-flavour archetype is rather great. The archetype either needs to explain too much, or obviates itself of the need to explain some of its manifestations - ie its capacity to explain anything. Like what @Tzeentch just did, to my sights. You pick universality or exceptions, not both.

I think it's probably unhelpful to look at archetypes as being something like sets or some sort of ranking on a spectrum.

It might it make more sense to say that, while sex is always filtered through a particular human culture, it is in some sense prior to it. There are not, and have never been "humans without culture," so this filtering always occurs.

I would liken it to how light looks after passing through different panes of glass or filters. How the light looks as it passes through the panes closest to the viewing screen depends on the properties of the panes further back (closer to the light source). And, to allow the analogy to encompass human individuality, we might suppose that each viewing screen is also different, and will reflect the light in its own distinct way (although obviously how it looks will always depend on all the intervening panes).

If one were faced with such a set up, it would obviously be easier to alter or change out the glass/filters that are closer to where we sit, as opposed to those that are further back. So for instance, the association of newborn girls with pink and boys with blue might not run very deep. Associations like parents (particularly mothers) having a preference for their own children, by contrast, appear very hard to change (as evidenced by the failure of attempts at communal child rearing by populations who were very ideologically committed to making it work).

The exact way in which an archetype is expressed in a given culture is particular to it, just like the phenotypical expression of the same gene might vary according to environmental triggers.

This might at least explain some of the paradoxes of equality. For instance, as equal opportunity for both genders opens up in economies, we see fields like early childhood education becoming less, not more diverse.

But your reply does make me curious: What would a so-called “non-mystical” account of masculinity then be? — javra

I'd call the account non-mystical if it tried to come up with an answer to why the things which count as masculine or feminine count as such. eg, skirts, where in the cosmic principle of yin and yang do skirts live? Why do they become masculine, feminine or neither depending on the context? — fdrake

First, I note that no such “non-mystical” answer to the question has been provided by anyone who looks down upon them “mystical” answers - one that thereby addresses what the heck female masculinity is supposed to mean.

I’ll venture that no “non-mystical” answer is then possible to provide for why women such as Margret Thatcher, RBG, and AOC might be deemed to exhibit masculine traits, including those of assertiveness and leadership. They, after all, are not of the male sex, so, again, why the attribute of “masculine traits”?

Secondly, I’m myself familiar with some Latin-based languages. All Latin-based languages that I know of will then specify ordinary items as either masculine or feminine or else as being neutral in the very noun utilized: as one generality, in Spanish, if it ends in an “-o” its masculine; if it ends in an “-a” its feminine. “Chair” in Spanish can translate as both “silla” (f) or “asiento” (m). And in Romanian the term is purely neutral. Which to me in part illustrates that the gender of objects is pretty much subject to cultural interpretations. Now, both linguistic and cultural plasticity is well known to occur. And a good sum, if not most, of what we are as individual humans is cultural rather than genetically hardwired. So to ask things such as “why is sushi feminine” is a bit of a misnomer: if it is feminine, it is so only due to cultural underpinnings rather than to some universal principle (although one could suppose it due to how the participants in the culture symbolically interpret and associate the universal principles), and it will likely not be so in all cultures out there.

Thirdly, I’ll point to a previous post I gave starting with:

-- The masculine is interpreted, be it psychologically or physically, as being “that which penetrates (alternatively expressed, as that which inseminates via information)”.

-- Whereas the feminine is interpreted, again either psychologically or physically, as “that which is penetrated (alternatively, as that which is inseminated by information)”. — javra

That penetrating will be active and hence yang. That penetrated will be passive and hence yin. Why is the phallus (or any phallic symbol) considered masculine? Because its purpose is to penetrate and thereby radiate its energy, information, or seed, and is thereby yang. Why is the yoni (or any yonic symbol) considered feminine? Because its purpose is to be penetrated and thereby to accept and converge that accepted, and is thereby yin. Turns out that men have dicks and women pussies, thereby physically grounding masculinity in men and femininity in women. No?

Call it mystical or not, this interpretation can then make ample sense of female masculinity: a pussy-endowed women that is assertive (thereby radiating her being, this being yang) and takes leadership (thereby informing others of what to do, which is a type of information penetration, being again yang).

Why is Earth generally feminine (e.g., “mother earth”)? Because it as source of sustenance is (in spiritual circles) often enough construed as passive and molded (hence in a sense penetrated) by psyche, soul, spirit, which (again in spiritual circles) is then construed as ultimately residing “above” (e.g., “father sky”, more commonly in the west “sky father”), with the latter then being active agency.

Why is the sword masculine and the chalice feminine? The sword actively penetrates and the chalice passively accepts, accommodates, and sustains.

Why are skirts considered feminine? Because they get heavily associated with that which women - who are physiologically feminine - wear (unless one starts talking about kilts, a different issue).

Why do some consider sushi “feminine”? I don’t quite know. Why? (insert answer in your reply)

First, I note that no such “non-mystical” answer to the question has been provided by anyone who looks down upon them “mystical” answers - one that thereby addresses what the heck female masculinity is supposed to mean. — javra

Absolutely. I don't want to provide an answer to what constitutes masculinity or femininity, on an essential level. Because I think that entire approach is misguided. I think archetypes are even worse, since they behave simultaneously like stereotypes and essences.

For a rough and ready definition of an essential property, I'd consider X as essential to Y if whenever Y exists in a world it has properties Y in that world. There are problems, but it will tell you that water is H20, boils at 100 celcius and so on. I don't think there are essential properties to gender.

Consider "is a man", imagine writing a list of things that a man must have. A penis? Can lose it in war. Confidence? Can have it undermined. So on. Whatever attribute that goes in the list must be predicated of a man, and then you can prescribe an event which removes that attribute. So they must not be personal attributes, as there are men without them.

Masculinity is what is emblematic of what is essential to manhood. If there are men without every property which is emblematic of manhood, then none of the properties which are emblematic of manhood must be essential. Which means they're contingent in some regard. Contingent commonalities.

There's then the question of where the commonalities come from. @unenlightened provided a scheme for this. A person learns that X counts as masculine through instruction and is compelled to identify with X. X was quite arbitrary. This says little more than the commonalities come from prior commonalities through some system of social propagation. I think that's almost all you can say sensibly about the content of gender. Contingent properties. Stereotypes. Expectations.

You can talk about cases, histories of stereotypes and social roles, perceptions but when you're talking about gender you're fundamentally about social stuff, politics, history. That is, norms.

There's a relevant question about the kind of socially constructed property that gender is, and you definitely hit on it below.

I’ll venture that no “non-mystical” answer is then possible to provide for why women such as Margret Thatcher, RBG, and AOL might be deemed to exhibit masculine traits, including those of assertiveness and leadership. They, after all, are not of the male sex, so, again, why the attribute of “masculine traits”? — javra

No I think there's a quite transparent answer as for why someone like Big Madge could be considered as having masculine traits. And you said it yourself. She counted as a decisive, rational, analytical and erudite leader - she worked as an excellent disciplinarian for her party, and she had vision. All of those are masculine properties, and they don't need to be held by someone who counts as a man. A good example there is woman bodybuilders, too - they exemplify strength, muscularity and so on. There isn't much to this besides "people have said so, look".

The type of predicate that "is masculine" is is more like a cluster of family resemblance. A vague hodgepodge of stuff that gets agglomerated together through the identification @unenlightened talked about. It resembles a giant, vaguely understood extension. Stuff like {muscles, wealth, power, violence, assertion, confidence,...} is masculine. Some of it is very hard to remove, perhaps even close to ever present - like beards and dicks - , even if it's not strictly speaking necessary.

Call it mystical or not, this interpretation can then make ample sense of female masculinity: a pussy-endowed women that is assertive (thereby radiating her being, this being yang) and takes leadership (thereby informing others of what to do, which is a type of information penetration, being again yang). — javra

Yes. Someone who counts as a woman can do things which count as masculine. It doesn't serve as much of an explanation to me? All it seems is that we've got different, but pretty similar, giant blobs that go into the "is masculine" or "is feminine" construct. Maybe some people think odd numbers are feminine, maybe some people think mountains are masculine, maybe the sky is like a dick or a pussy and the rain is androgyne?

It's all still yeeting nebulous lists of crap into a bucket man. Then putting your hands into the bucket for an explanation, getting your hands covered in crap, then wondering why the crap in your hands is grounded in the bucket. And it's not crap, it's essence.

Why are skirts considered feminine? Because they get heavily associated with that which women - who are physiologically feminine - wear (unless one starts talking about kilts, a different issue). — javra

Yes. That's the germinal form of the association @unenlightened referenced. Ultimately it's juxtaposition. Juxtaposition that people really care about.

Why is the sword masculine and the chalice feminine? The sword actively penetrates and the chalice passively accepts, accommodates, and sustains. — javra

Why's the chalice gotta be a pillow princess man god damn archetypes suck.

Consider "is a man", imagine writing a list of things that a man must have. A penis? Can lose it in war. Confidence? Can have it undermined. So on. Whatever attribute that goes in the list must be predicated of a man, and then you can prescribe an event which removes that attribute. So they must not be personal attributes, as there are men without them. — fdrake

Where I’m from, such a man is said to “lose his manliness” (which is a synonym for “masculinity”). So what you here say doesn’t seem to apply. The person remain of a phenotype resultant of the XY chromosomes – a man – but his masculinity is lost in proportion to those aspects of “yang” at large which he loses phenotypically, to include a penis or confidence (the latter, btw, being something I myself deem a neutral trait, finding confident women quite feminine and, generally, a desirable trait in a female mate).

----------

OK, I get the general vibe: it’s all cultural and relative. Still, I myself find that this interpretation of masculinity and femininity – itself exceedingly nebulous – denies physiological masculinity being biologically intrinsic to men and physiological femininity being biologically intrinsic to women. Which is exceedingly odd to me, and I’m guessing to many another as well.

Taking a step back from the basic (and overly simplistic) man/woman dyad of humans, almost all more evolved life is classified as either female, male, hermaphroditic. In most mammals, the XX chromosomes resulting in a female phenotype and XY chromosomes resulting in a male phenotype. Almost always, males penetrate their gametes (sperm or, in plants, pollen) into females of the species – so that the male gametes converge with the female gametes (the egg) into a zygote. Hermaphroditic species of animal, such as terrestrial snails, might mutually impregnate each other simultaneously during copulation – with each snail having both sperm and egg and the genitalia for these. Exceptions to males impregnating females do occur, such as in the male seahorse, which – as the provider of sperm - gets impregnated by the female’s single egg. But who on earth considers hermaphrodites to be physiologically masculine? Much less males which get pregnant and give birth to offspring???

The basic, and rather simple, principle of “masculine entails that which penetrates and feminine entails that which is penetrated” seems to me to hold – and this as one aspect to what can well be deemed universally applicable properties of masculine and feminine, as per for example depicted by the yin-yang.

And, again, it rather non-nebulously accounts for things such as female masculinity and male femininity in humans. As well as physiologically defining men as masculine and women as feminine.

Everything else - such as skirts and kilts - gets their gender-preference from associations with that which penetrates or else that penetrated.

BTW, criticisms of it notwithstanding, how could the view you've provided - in sum, that of gender being fully culturally relative - in any cogent way account of toxic masculinity?

In strictly simplistic terms, the understanding of masculinity I generally uphold will account of toxic masculinity as - here very abstractly expressed - "willfully forced penetration (physical and/or psychological) upon other without the other's consent". As two extreme examples of this: rape and murder (which sane people all know to be wrong). So too with subjugation and, in more extreme forms, slavery (abstractly, in which those subjugated are at minimum psychologically penetrated by the subjugator against their wishes such that the subjugated are forced to assume inferior roles and standing relative to the subjugator(s).)

And please note that I'm not specifying toxic masculinity to be strictly applicable to males. It can just as easily apply to females. Though, or course, often via differing avenues of (psychological or physical) penetration.

I would probably steer away from interpretations of Yinyang that are too dichotomous. If we assume yin = feminine = 'things women do' and yang = masculine = 'things men do', we have basically arrived back where we started, and I'd argue we'd be missing the point.

The main thing about Yinyang is that it is not dichotomous. People are an interplay of yin and yang energy, and these are in constant flux.

Things that appear yang on the outside must be balanced with yin on the inside, kind of in line with what suggested.

Even a very masculine man must still be capable of being receptive, calm, nurturing, etc. to be a father, husband, friend, etc.

Yinyang can be applied on micro levels, like how a single movement requires the accumulation (yin) and expenditure (yang) of energy, or it can be applied on macro levels.

Furthermore, the 'yin-in-yang' and 'yang-in-yin' principles are also fundamental (represented by the dots in the Yinyang symbol), again emphasizing its non-dichotomous nature. A simple example: a lot of people find relaxation in exercise - yin-in-yang.

Yinyang is of course only a single element from Taoist philosophy. It is often combined with Five Elements theory (Wuxing), and that's where it becomes quite comprehensive.

I'm myself in full agreement what what you say. You'll notice that my approach is not from the concrete sex to the abstract quality of gender, as you specify here:

If we assume yin = feminine = 'things women do' and yang = masculine = 'things men do', we have basically arrived back where we started, and I'd argue we'd be missing the point. — Tzeentch

But instead from the abstract to the concrete, as I tried to specify here:

That penetrating will be active and hence yang. That penetrated will be passive and hence yin. Why is the phallus (or any phallic symbol) considered masculine? Because its purpose is to penetrate and thereby radiate its energy, information, or seed, and is thereby yang. Why is the yoni (or any yonic symbol) considered feminine? Because its purpose is to be penetrated and thereby to accept and converge that accepted, and is thereby yin. Turns out that men have dicks and women pussies, thereby physically grounding masculinity in men and femininity in women. No? — javra

Nor am I intending to say that the penetrating/penetrated dynamic defines and is thereby the pivotal aspect of yin-yang. It is instead, to me, of itself one entailed aspect of the yin-yang.

The issue I was primarily addressing in the post you reference was that human males are physiologically, biologically, defined by genitals that are of a yang attribute, whereas women are physiologically defined by genitals that are of a yin attribute.

Then there's human hermaphrodites (birthed that way).

But all this was addressing physiological - and not psychological - aspects of the masculine / feminine, or else of the yang / yin, duality.

I'm working with basics so far. That said, even physiologically, all humans bodies are penetrated by things such as UV rays and other quanta. (Conversely, and all human bodies, male and female, are endowed with active agency.) So I'm not intending to postulate the male sex and the female sex as being physiologically absolute masculine and feminine either.

The yin within the yang and the yang within the yin, to me, remain a good symbolism in all cases I can currently think of.

Hoping that might clarify my current position?

Sure thing. I guess I took the opportunity to just elaborate on the concepts in a little more detail for anyone who might find it interesting. :smile:

Yeah. I primarily work with 5-12 year olds in education. I'm the only bloke in my work cohort. You work with kids yourself right? Do you also think that the boys are picking up relatively traditional norms - in the playground - at the same time as being demanded to follow other ones -in the classroom-? I think it's a great thing that all the kids I'm aware of are getting eg courses on self expression and emotion language, but the boys still can't use it without stigma. There also still seems to be that element of casual violence among the working class boys, which is still socially rewarded. — fdrake

Hi fdrake,

Sorry it took me a couple of days to reply.

I do (did) work with high school kids. There are more male adults in HS generally, mostly teachers - your PE teachers, tech, sometimes math and science. I teach English and Social Sciences, and those departments are heavily female. I did some coaching too, likely the environment in which I saw the most 'unguarded' or natural kid-behaviour, but to be honest, I saw more 'teen' behaviour than specifically gendered behaviour.

I guess where I saw gendered behaviour most was in the classroom, in what they were interested in / engaged by. High school kids have more options to pursue their own interests, but everybody has to take English every year, for example, and some of the boys have a less-favourable view of reading.

But reading - what we call literature - is as gendered as anything. Boys, for the entirety of my career, and per the literature I've seen, have been more likely to enjoy 'informational' or 'task-oriented' reading, which we often describe as 'not literature', whereas 'literature' - fiction - requires empathizing, provides no clear, tangible benefits (now I know how to ...) - things that girls are better at than boys

This isn't socialized behaviour I'm talking about, this is more evolutionary biology, and I know that discipline offends some people who feel that it delegitimizes their sense of agency, but that to me is misunderstanding the social sciences. On the aggregate, yes, there are behaviours that are more typical of boys - running around, taking risks, needing to move, requiring concrete reasons, and of girls - empathy, social intelligence, and so on.

I mean, just look at a class of grade 9s. Many of the girls appear to be young women, and most of the boys remain boys. Do you notice this at any point with your cohort?

So what we call 'gendered' behaviour is often not - it's natural behaviour, in an environment better suited to female success than male.

Even the 'emotion language' topic is 'feminized' or 'gendered' female, even though that's not a thing this subject addresses - we are only concerned with gendered 'male' behaviour, since 'maleness' is the problem, per the consensus. The entire project seems to be making the boys more like girls.

Not to mention the whole 'Bad Therapy' argument, Abigail Shrier's book, condemning the therapy culture that permeates our children's lives and which may be actually causing the spikes in youth mental health.

In other words, talking about your emotions all the time leads to hypersensitivity, rumination, etc.

All of this is generalization - there are definitely kids who benefit from emotional literacy, girls who can't sit still and boys who love Jane Austen.

I imagine it might be actually harder for boys your student's age to express emotions? By the time I was getting them, it seemed to have been relatively normalized.

Even in terms of student violence, I don't see a major distinction in terms of gender, which is alarming. Yes, social class is an indicator, but there was a distinct, female style of violent conflict. As for raw numbers, I don't know anything recently, and its definitely still more 'male' behaviour, but it feels like the girls are closing the gap.

How do these thoughts relate to your experiences with the younger students, and in a different country?

My assumption is that the WEIRD countries all have some sort of ideological capture of educational institutions. Here in Toronto, I work(ed) for what I jokingly started describing as the wokest institution in the world, the Toronto District School Board. I might be right in that joke.

Do you, as a guy, feel any differently from your colleagues on any of these subjects? Do you feel empowered to offer opinions or to disagree with orthodoxy? And did you catch that series, "Adolescence"? It seems of the gestalt that we are discussing here, and I thought it pretty good, certainly better than a lot of the hot takes it's generated in the 'press'.

Sorry for the long post, I was so engaged reading 'Bad Therapy' I had a lot of thoughts!

It's good to so elaborate. :grin: :up:

And did you catch that series, "Adolescence"? — Jeremy Murray

I did. Enjoyed it. There was never a satisfying answer to "why" the murder was done though. I'm quite glad of the latter, it would've been very easy to blame social media outright and it didn't.

Do you, as a guy, feel any differently from your colleagues on any of these subjects? — Jeremy Murray

I've never spoken about it. The only adjacent thing I've heard is surprise that a bloke wants to work with kids. It was also relatively good surprise, as they were cognisant of the impact having few male authority figures/role models has on the kids.

I imagine it might be actually harder for boys your student's age to express emotions? — Jeremy Murray

Maybe. I've very little experience with high school students to draw on.

Even the 'emotion language' topic is 'feminized' or 'gendered' female, even though that's not a thing this subject addresses - we are only concerned with gendered 'male' behaviour, since 'maleness' is the problem, per the consensus. The entire project seems to be making the boys more like girls. — Jeremy Murray

This is something I've noticed too. Just with adults though. Probably also with kids. Though I see the emotion language stuff specifically as "making the boys more like girls" in a slightly incidental fashion. An analogy, if it turned out a dress was body armour, people would be wearing dresses to protect themselves, even though boys would have to wear something feminine to do so. It's taking something that was more associated with feminine social styles and trying to open it up to boys as well.

Not to mention the whole 'Bad Therapy' argument, Abigail Shrier's book, condemning the therapy culture that permeates our children's lives and which may be actually causing the spikes in youth mental health. — Jeremy Murray

I agree that pathologizing every aspect of experience is bad. I doubt it's a cause for the spikes in young people's poorer mental health outcomes in recent years. That pattern seems connected to broader issues with living standards to me.

As for raw numbers, I don't know anything recently, and its definitely still more 'male' behaviour, but it feels like the girls are closing the gap. — Jeremy Murray

Interesting! I'm just going from vibes as well. I didn't see or hear of any violent "play" - you know 'play' that's basically intentionally hurting someone physically for the sole reason of hurting them - from the girls in the school I worked in recently, but I'm sure it happened.

Thank you for your thoughts.

But reading - what we call literature - is as gendered as anything. Boys, for the entirety of my career, and per the literature I've seen, have been more likely to enjoy 'informational' or 'task-oriented' reading, which we often describe as 'not literature', whereas 'literature' - fiction - requires empathizing, provides no clear, tangible benefits (now I know how to ...) - things that girls are better at than boys — Jeremy Murray

If many boys lack social intelligence, the ability to express emotions, an interest in reading literature, and so on we should compare them to boys who demonstrate the possession of these features. We will find some level of class influence. The higher the boys' parents' class, the higher the likelihood of their sons possessing these features. Why? Because maintaining or improving one's class standing requires social and emotional intelligence, and collegiate competence, whatever the major. These skills require a model and instruction. Working class parents are less likely than upper class parents to possess these skills, and are thus unable to pass these skills on.

If there are people who seem to have been born with the skills to get ahead in society, most of us have to learn it. If we don't learn it, we're kind of screwed.

Girls are no more likely than boys to be born with the suite of skills that leads to success in life. They also have to learn the various skills, and clearly, some don't. If more girls than boys possess the suite of get-ahead skills, it's because schools have devoted a lot of time to the task.

It wasn't that long ago that boys out-performed girls in high school, and men outnumbered women in college, In 1960, a greater number of boys than girls dropped out of high school; but a greater number of men than women entered college from high school. In 1988, this shifted slightly in favor of women, and has continued on. [there are, of course, various caveats about such stats.]

Some marxists propose that the red brick school house education is no longer very important. Mass media are in a better position to teach people how to live, what to want, and what to buy. Beyond "BUY IT!" the messages we receive are somewhat chaotic; they beckon in several directions all at once. A big problem wit this theory is that in order to buy, one has to have money, which usually requires work. Mass media doesn't tell us a lot about successful work.

Still, I myself find that this interpretation of masculinity and femininity – itself exceedingly nebulous – denies physiological masculinity being biologically intrinsic to men and physiological femininity being biologically intrinsic to women. Which is exceedingly odd to me, and I’m guessing to many another as well. — javra

I don't think that one needs deny that. Sex isn't something you can just define away.

If you're looking at it from this constructivist lens, you're going to pay attention to which properties get glued together to form part of a concept of gender and which don't. Some of the ones which go into identifying sex go into the gender concept, but they don't need to. Some identifications are largely done from style, and some done more robustly.

For example, having a Y chromosome gets put into the "man" category, but so does having a dick, having a beard, and having steak as your favourite food.

Though this doesn't see an of these properties as "intrinsic", in the sense of being a necessary part of the concept, it sees them as being ever-present at a given time and place. Some of those "given time and place" are expected to be very broad and held for strong reasons, like the identification of what counts as masculine with having a body with a Y chromosome, even though Big Madge can be viewed as masculine.

In strictly simplistic terms, the understanding of masculinity I generally uphold will account of toxic masculinity as - here very abstractly expressed - "willfully forced penetration (physical and/or psychological) upon other without the other's consent". As two extreme examples of this: rape and murder (which sane people all know to be wrong). So too with subjugation and, in more extreme forms, slavery (abstractly, in which those subjugated are at minimum psychologically penetrated by the subjugator against their wishes such that the subjugated are forced to assume inferior roles and standing relative to the subjugator(s).) — javra

I don't like toxic masculinity as a concept at all personally. I wish we cold stop speaking about it. From what I gather it's a hodgepodge. You have intuitions about violence and intrusion and subjugation in it. But those are also proxied with emblems, like being assertive in a conversation, speaking loudly, bragging. Also inside of it is prestige seeking and adherence to hierarchy. There's a lot of sense in viewing these things as a big corpuscle. But the act of identifying some other action as arising from toxic masculinity is not terribly explanatory. For me it's a liberal left version of mysticism.

For me it's a liberal left version of mysticism. — fdrake

For others it might be about living in a country with an outsized homicide rate. That's not about misogyny though. It's just a cultural thing.

Sex isn't something you can just define away. — fdrake

The biological science’s definition of sex, what a bunch mystical fluff that all is! Of course.

I don't like toxic masculinity as a concept at all personally. I wish we cold stop speaking about it.

[...]

For me it's a liberal left version of mysticism. — fdrake

In contrast to non-liberal-left versions of mysticism? Your “it’s all culturally relative so it can’t be defined” analysis, as it stands, can itself be fully construed as consisting of “obscure thoughts and speculations”. I guess that would be it, or an example of such.

So there’s no such thing as toxic masculinity then, not in reality, making it improper to talk about it. Got it. To me it’s somewhat in keeping with the “virtues of cruelty” theme I’ve been recently told about in another thread - at least, in so far as there being nothing toxic about activities such as rape and murder, masculine though they might be. These activities then potentially being virtues, after all, all depending on the relative culture one subscribes to and its relativistic stances on what masculinity ought to be and do.

In contrast to non-liberal-left versions of mysticism? — javra

Yes. People with right leaning sympathies tend to prefer Jung, conspiracies and the occult. People with left leaning sympathies use words like toxic masculinity, capitalism, patriarchy, privilege as if they're magic explanatory words. People often don't specify concrete mechanisms. The difference, as I see it, is that you tend to be able to specify concrete mechanisms for some of these terms and not others. You can't specify mechanisms for Jung, conspiracies or the occult, you tend to be able to gesture in that general direction for the left buzzwords. But not always, people are lazy. And toxic masculinity is particularly lazy!

To me it’s somewhat in keeping with the “virtues of cruelty” theme I’ve been recently told about in another thread - at least, in so far as there being nothing toxic about activities such as rape and murder, masculine though they might be. — javra

From my perspective, being irritated with toxic masculinity as a social construct is quite a lot different from endorsing the things it castigates. I dislike toxic masculinity as an explanatory concept because it's individual and psychological - about what a particular person values -, but it tends to be used from a place of the collective and social - about how values are created and expectations formed.

If you say someone acts in accordance with toxic masculinity, it's about as good as saying that someone falling asleep is acting in accordance with drowsiness. At least without specifying the hows and whys that drowsiness derived from.

If you want a stereotype to serve as an explanation, it's fine. That can even be rhetorically useful. But it's not a good lens to study anything by.

You can't specify mechanisms for Jung, conspiracies or the occult, you tend to be able to gesture in that general direction for the left buzzwords. — fdrake

Hey, I'm in no way antagonistic toward things such as synchronicities and the collective unconscious, rather liking the concepts. As to conspiracies of the occult, you got me there. The conspiracies of the Freemasonic American forefathers: this being their want for a democratic governance. No, not something I'm much into.

If you want a stereotype to serve as an explanation, it's fine. That can even be rhetorically useful. But it's not a good lens to study anything by. — fdrake

I've linked to the Wikipedia page on "toxic masculinity" before. It's open source, so its not as if its written by the left at the exclusion of the right. There's only three mentions of "stereotypical" and no mention of "stereotype" - in all three cases specifying "stereotypical masculinity", and in no instance addressed toxic masculinity as either stereotypical or as being a stereotype. Not even in the "criticism" section.

You're own view of toxic masculinity being a stereotype is therefore idiosyncratic, as evidenced by the open source article on the subject. You might want to have a read of it?