Toxic masculinity

The Vatican says gender theory threatens human dignity – but Judith Butler believes the ‘threat’ is social change

Retrieved on: 
Tuesday, April 9, 2024
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It has become an “overdetermined” concept, “absorbing wildly different ideas of what threatens the world”, writes American feminist philospher Judith Butler.

Key Points: 
  • It has become an “overdetermined” concept, “absorbing wildly different ideas of what threatens the world”, writes American feminist philospher Judith Butler.
  • For the Vatican, the traditional family will be ruined and children are now vulnerable to “ideological colonization”.
  • And for right-wing politicians and heads of state, (from Liberal senator Alex Antic, who believes gender dysphoria is a “trend”, to Marjorie Taylor Greene and Vladimir Putin), gender is a weapon of social destruction.
  • Butler’s overarching argument is that “gender” – the overdetermined concept to which “anti-gender ideologists” object –  is really a nightmarish bogeyman, a “phantasm with destructive powers, one way of collecting and escalating multitudes of modern panics”.
  • Read more:
    Judith Butler: their philosophy of gender explained

Misplaced fears and misunderstandings

  • The first, to which much of the book is dedicated, is to expose the absurdity of arguments against gender ideology.
  • Butler demonstrates the ways “gender ideology” critics invert, externalise and project the very harms they claim “gender ideologists” pose.
  • Then there’s the supposed threat of sexual violence to cisgender women if transgender women are allowed into single-sex spaces like prisons.
  • Read more:
    'Toxic masculinity': what does it mean, where did it come from – and is the term useful or harmful?

More than two sexes

  • Feminists like Butler reject “sexual dimorphism”: the belief there are two, and only two, sexes.
  • But we expect to find two sexes because that is how many sexes we have learned to see.
  • And we look for two sexes because we only recognise two genders.
  • And because we expect to find two sexes in humanity, we automatically start to explain away any evidence (like intersex diversity) that would contradict this received truth.

Fighting back

  • These rules, we think, apply both to ourselves and others.
  • To critics, “gender ideologues” are breaking all the organisational rules of gender, inverting all sense and order.
  • When we question gender as an organising principle, it introduces further questions about the right way to live.
  • Ultimately, Butler’s point is that while gender seems scary to many, the reality is: it’s not.
  • Take a pause and ask, they suggest: what are the agendas of those who may try to convince you otherwise?
  • But in imagining a shared future together, we can “emerge into a world committed to cohabitation and equality across difference”.


Louise Richardson-Self receives funding from the Australian Research Council for two projects: DE190100719: Hate Speech Against Women Online: Concepts and Countermeasures; and DP200100395: Religious Freedom, LGBT+ Employees, and the Right to Discriminate.

The movie 'Barbie' has put the phrase 'toxic femininity' back in the news – here's what it means and why you should care

Retrieved on: 
Tuesday, August 8, 2023
Linda, Fox News, McCann, Communication, Hostility, National Public Health Institute of Finland, MeToo movement, Culture, Woman, Aggression, Betrayal, Language, Passive, Masculinity, Man, Feminism, Femininity, Rigidity, Toxic masculinity, News, Behavior, Female, Hunting, Weaving, Toy, Candy, Cosmetics, Nursing

On National Public Radio’s “It’s Been a Minute,” panelists discussing “Barbie” speculated about whether toxic femininity exists as the opposite of toxic masculinity.

Key Points: 
  • On National Public Radio’s “It’s Been a Minute,” panelists discussing “Barbie” speculated about whether toxic femininity exists as the opposite of toxic masculinity.
  • On Fox News, conservative panelist Douglas Murray associated the movie – which he admitted to not having seen – with toxic femininity.
  • Examining how toxic femininity means different things to different people reveals important insights about gender, power and how language affects our well-being.

Toxic masculinity

    • First, it’s important to consider the role the predecessor of toxic femininity – “toxic masculinity” – has played in U.S. culture.
    • Cultural studies scholar Carol Harrington warns that labeling the outgrowths of patriarchy and misogyny as toxic masculinity shifts responsibility from harmful social systems to the behavior of “‘backward’ and ‘mentally unwell’ men,” making sexism an individual, rather than societal, problem.
    • Nevertheless, when critics talk about toxic masculinity they are invoking a term that has had a mostly consistent meaning for 30 years.

The many faces of toxic femininity

    • Psychologists such as Meaghan Rice see toxic femininity as the inverse of toxic masculinity – a constellation of characteristics like meekness, emotionalism, passivity and self-sacrifice.
    • In this formulation, toxic masculinity and toxic femininity are both fueled by sexism, and each erodes human thriving.
    • This version presents toxic femininity as a woman’s version of the domineering individualism that drives toxic masculinity.
    • Toxic femininity is regarded as equally dangerous to men – or even more – as toxic masculinity is to women.

Beyond a toxic gender binary

    • In her examination of popular discussions of toxic masculinity and femininity, McCann argues that what makes gender ideology toxic is rigidity – adherence to an inflexible gender binary.
    • Gender norms are scripts that direct people to behave in ways that are consistent with one group’s ideas about what it means to be a woman or a man.