If your first impulse when confronted with the concept of toxic masculinity is to explain how it's unfair to tie in masculinity with toxic behaviour, you're _so_ close to getting it.

Not "masculinity is toxic" but "the way that masculinity is constructed in patriarchy is toxic".

Not "men cannot help being toxic" but "men suffer from a societal conditioning that endorses toxic behaviour from men".

It's not your fault if you're part of it. You didn't get to choose. But you get to choose now.

@iyalei one good analogy that helped a friend to get away from this whole "toxic masculinity means masculinity per se is toxic" nonsense is the idea of a pepper.

If somebody complains about red peppers that doesn't mean all peppers are red. It would actually be quite silly to logically conclude one from the other.

And yeah, it gets much easier to talk about once somebody is out of that weird logical misconception.

@DommeFridge the idea that any qualifier applied to masculinity automatically subsumes that all masculinity is described thus, that there can only be one kind of masculinity, the one endorsed by the patriarchy, is itself toxic.