Content uploaded by Carol Harrington
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Carol Harrington on Feb 24, 2023
Content may be subject to copyright.
1
This was accepted for publication and appeared in Men and Masculinities, vol. 24, issue 2, June
2021, pp. 345-352. https://doi.org/10.1177/1097184X20943254
What is “Toxic Masculinity” and Why Does it Matter?
Abstract
Coined in late 20th century men’s movements, “toxic masculinity” spread to therapeutic and social
policy settings in the early 21st century. Since 2013, feminists began attributing misogyny, homophobia
and men’s violence to toxic masculinity. Around the same time, feminism enjoyed renewed
popularization. While some feminist scholars use the concept, it is often left under-defined. I argue that
talk of toxic masculinity provides an intriguing window into gender politics in any given context.
However, feminists should not adopt toxic masculinity as an analytical concept. I consider the term’s
origins, history, and usage, arguing that it appears in individualising discourses that have historically
targeted marginalized men. Thus, accusations of toxic masculinity often work to maintain gender
hierarchies and individualise responsibility for gender inequalities to certain bad men.
I’ve been teaching and studying gender-based violence since around 2000. For most of that time I rarely
encountered the term “toxic masculinity,” despite relying on the concept of masculinity in my research
and teaching. In my undergraduate course, “Reflecting on Violence,” I introduce students to the concept
of masculinity and teach them that gender-based violence is historically and culturally specific,
involving both structural and situational power relations. However toxic masculinity is not part of the
sociological or feminist theories I have drawn on to analyse gender-based violence.
This changed in 2018 when during a discussion of mass rampage shootings in my “Violence” class, one
student commented that the weekly reading’s analysis of mass shooters described “toxic masculinity,”
although it did not use the phrase. I was struck by the confidence with which the student referenced the
term as a concept anyone would know. On my way home that day, I tuned into a radio interview with
Clementine Ford discussing toxic masculinity as the theme of her book Boys Will be Boys. I wondered
where this term had come from and why everyone was suddenly talking about it.
2
I searched academic databases to learn more about toxic masculinity. My searches confirmed that the
term had suddenly exploded into popular feminist usage: Between 1990 and 2011 texts referring to
toxic masculinity never numbered above 20 a year. Academic texts made up the largest proportion of
returns until 2014; after 2017 returns numbered in the thousands, mostly non-academic. Nevertheless,
toxic masculinity increasingly appeared in academic texts after 2016.
The term took off as part of what some scholars have called a new “feminist moment,” intensifying
after 2014 (e.g. Banet-Weiser and Portwood-Stacer 2017, 885) with Beyoncé’s MTV Video Music
Awards performance in front of a giant, glowing sign reading, “FEMINIST.” This performance
prompted Jessica Valenti (2014) to write that today’s “zeitgeist is irrefutably feminist: its name literally
in bright lights.” Critics argue that this newly popularized feminism conflates political resistance with
women’s individual defiance and achievement, but distracts us from making structural changes (Gill,
2016). Rosalind Gill (2016) argues that popular feminist media articulates a post-feminist sensibility: a
neo-liberal relegation of gender inequality to the past.
Toxic masculinity appears as a key term within this newly “post-femininst” popular feminist vernacular,
treating sexism as a character flaw of some men. The term has shaped conversations about Trumpism
and the #metoo movement (Pettyjohn et al., 2019). It appears in feminist scholarship on issues such as
sexual harassment (McGinley, 2018) and mass shootings (Blair, 2016). Indeed, toxic masculinity has
become a framework for popular and scholarly understandings of the gender factor in social problems.
However, scholars who use the concept frequently fail to define it or integrate it within broader
theorization of masculinity. I surveyed 60 scholarly articles published since 2016 mentioning toxic
masculinity. More than half of those did not define it, relying on it to signal disapproval. The book
Toxic Geek Masculinity (Salter & Blodgett, 2017), for instance, uses the term frequently without
definition.
This essay suggests that feminists should treat talk of “toxic masculinity” as a window into
contemporary gender politics but not adopt the term as an analytical concept. I argue, in agreement with
Andrea Waling (2019), that the term depends on an individualizing toxic/healthy binary that serves to
reproduce gender hierarchies. Here, I do not define the concept, but rather articulate how it has been
3
understood and used since it first appeared. I trace the term’s origins in late twentieth century men’s
movements and its adoption by, often conservative, policy makers, therapists, and others engaged in
working with troubled/troubling men. I argue that the therapeutic concerns of such actors produced an
individualizing discourse that sought to reform marginalized men labelled as “toxic,” because of
violence, lack of engagement in family life, and employment. I then unpack feminists’ scholarly
adoption of the term, highlighting the lack of conceptual clarity. Finally, I discuss feminist research
which analyses how condemnation of toxic masculinity by elite men can bolster gender hegemony. I
conclude that feminists should critically analyse the meanings attributed to toxic masculinity but not
assume those meanings are stable, well-conceptualised, or even feminist.
Origins
Toxic masculinity emerged within the mythopoetic men’s movement of the 1980s, coined by Shepherd
Bliss. Bliss confirmed to me in a 2019 email that he coined the term to characterize his father’s
militarized, authoritarian masculinity. In a 1990 interview, Bliss told Daniel Gross: “I use a medical
term because I believe that like every sickness, toxic masculinity has an antidote” (Gross, 1990, p. 14).
During the 1990s and early 2000s, toxic masculinity spread from men’s movements to wider self-help,
academic and policy literature. This literature posited that emotionally distant father-son relationships
produced “toxically” masculine men. In Man Enough: Fathers, Sons, and the Search for Masculinity
(1993), family therapist Frank Pittman argues that men who lack adequate fathering pursue unrealistic
cultural images of masculinity and feel a constant need to prove their manhood. Pittman’s regular
column on men’s issues in New Women Magazine may have helped popularize the term. Family
therapist Steve Biddulph (1997) similarly argued that boys need a strong bond with a father figure/male
mentor to avoid becoming toxically masculine men. Boys need the right kind of masculinity, the idea
goes, and mothers can’t give this to them.
These psychologists posited toxic masculinity as culturally normative but curable through engaging
men with fatherhood, positing an essentialist notion of masculine emotional development. Turn-of-the-
century policy discourse picked up on this prescription. For example, the founder of the U.S. National
Fatherhood Initiative, Don Eberly (1999a, 1999b), cited Pittman on fathering as an antidote to toxic
4
masculinity in both his 1999 testimony to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on youth culture and
violence (called to discuss the Columbine school massacre), and in his edited book, Renewing the
Sacred Vocation of Fathering (Eberly 1999a). Eberly suggested that emotionally absent fathers
contributed to young men’s violence and was likely a factor in the Columbine shootings: “Young men
badly need to see mature masculinity modeled (sic) out. Well seasoned masculinity fundamentally
transforms the aggression of young males by capturing their masculine energy and directing it toward
socially constructive pursuits” (Eberly, 1999b). For Eberly, if young men turn to violence, they probably
grew up with single mothers or at least had emotionally absent fathers.
The prescription of engaged fatherhood as an antidote to toxic masculinity harmonized with 21st century
recommendations for heteronormative family life in an era of neoliberal globalization. Toxic
masculinity provided a discourse for diagnosing men’s problems in the face of the gendered fall-out
from deindustrialization, during which well-paid jobs in “masculine” occupational sectors disappeared
while feminized service sector occupations expanded. Influential organizations, such as the OECD,
recommended increasing household incomes in such conditions by drawing mothers into paid work,
while promoting shared parenting (OECD 2007). There were calls for welfare systems to include fathers
when offering family services. An Irish family policy report argued for engaging men with fatherhood
so that “their wildness is tamed to the extent that they can adjust to the discipline of domestic routines
and remain with their children and partners and in their families (as opposed to prison, for instance)”
(Ferguson & Hogan, 2004, p.8). Similarly, Jennifer Randles’ (2013, p.869) research on the U.S.
“Thriving Families” programme for low-income, mostly minority, parents found it promoted
heterosexual marriage and engaged fatherhood as, in the words of the programme’s executive director,
“a civilizing influence on men.”
The label toxic masculinity tended to be applied to marginalized men. Terry Kupers’ research on men
in prisons argued “toxic masculinity involves the need to aggressively compete and dominate others
and encompasses the most problematic proclivities in men. ... Toxic masculinity also includes a strong
measure of the male proclivities that lead to resistance in psychotherapy” (Kupers 2005, p.713-714).
Similarly, Deevia Bhana’s (2005, p.206) study of Black South African schoolboys linked their violence
5
with both toxic masculinity and poverty, describing them as valuing “an oppositional street masculinity
… associated with a flashily dressed black male street thug frequently a member of a gang and armed
with a knife or weapon.”
Used in the above ways, toxic masculinity provided a framework that essentialized marginalized men
as aggressive and criminal, discursively packaged in a way that it was presented as concern for men’s
wellbeing. The idea of toxic masculinity harmonized with conservative political agendas concerned
with the social control of low-income, under-employed men and with patriarchal family values.
Reliance on toxic masculinity, thus, did not reject the gender hierarchy or a binary gender order as anti-
feminists often assume. Instead, therapeutic discourses on toxic masculinity typically invoked notions
of “natural” male dispositions.
Nevertheless, critics of those like Eberly who, for example, linked school shootings to toxic masculinity
imagined the label as part of a feminist project motivated by misandry. Christina Hoff Sommers (2003),
complained that “gender equality experts” in government wanted to socialize boys away from “toxic
masculinity” out of misguided rejection of differences in the character, interests, and abilities of men
and women. Likewise, an article on family therapy argued that the phrase had become “part and parcel
of the scholarly and popular clinical literature” that represented a “deficit perspective” toward men
(Dollahite, Marks, & Olsonm, 2002, p. 262). From this perspective, talk of toxic masculinity indicates
a feminist anti-male bias even though proponents of the term were often conservatives seeking to
“reform” marginalized men and stabilise patriarchal heterosexual family norms.
Feminism and toxic masculinity
Feminists have adopted toxic masculinity as shorthand for characterizing homophobic and misogynist
speech and violence by men. Since 2016, a notable number of media stories used “toxic masculinity”
in discussions of U.S. President Trump and the #MeToo movement to describe the poor behaviour of
powerful white elite men in contrast to its earlier applications to marginalized men. Indeed, feminist
scholars have adopted toxic masculinity as a useful frame for responding to resurgent masculinist right-
wing politics. For instance, anti-feminism’s long history has been reinvigorated within what media
6
studies scholars label “networked misogyny,” defined as “an especially virulent strain of violence and
hostility towards women in online environments” sometimes linked with off-line violence; toxic
masculinity sums-up this strain (Banet-Weiser and Miltner, 2016, p. 171).
According to my count, feminist scholars’ use of toxic masculinity increased as the term became more
publicly popular. Academic databases show that, since 2016, scholars across disciplines have used the
term. Surprisingly, more than half of the top sixty returns provide no definition: the term is used
descriptively, without theorization or operationalization. Many linked toxic masculinity with other
disparaging labels. An analysis of the TV show Game of Thrones (Askey 2018, p.50), for example,
notes in its abstract that the show reflects “western misogyny, hetero- and cissexism, and toxic
masculinity.” Those who provided a definition most often mentioned violence, domination, aggression,
misogyny, and homophobia.
Few scholars discuss how to conceptualize toxic masculinity in relation to feminist theories of
masculinity. Bryant Sculos (2017) describes Kupers’ (2005) article as providing one “of the most
prominent scholarly usages of the concept.” My survey of feminist articles published since 2016
confirmed the popularity of Kupers’ (2005) use as a subset (Parent et al. 2019) of hegemonic
masculinity surfacing in specific contexts, such as prisons or imagined national threats. Thus, the
toxic/healthy therapeutic understanding of masculinity carried into feminist scholarship via citation.
As an alternative, I suggest analysing condemnations of certain forms of masculinity for their political
effects. James Messerschmidt (2010) and Betül Ekşi (2017) have both shown how male elites can
bolster their power by condemning toxically masculine men. Messerschmidt shows how Presidents
Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. depicted themselves as “masculine heroes” rescuing “feminized victims” from
the “toxically masculine villain,” Saadam Hussein. Ekşi (2017) shows how branches of the Turkish
National Police disparaged other branches as toxically masculine, situating their own violence as
“restrained.” However, neither of the Bushes nor the Turkish Police use the term “toxic masculinity”;
rather, Messerschmidt and Ekşi apply it as shorthand. Nevertheless, their approach of analysing what
condemnation of other men’s masculinities achieves politically seems promising.
7
Thus, we might analyse the politics behind condemnations of toxic masculinity. Recent theorizations
of inclusive masculinities suggest shifts away from homophobia and misogyny especially among white,
masculine elites. While Eric Anderson (2009) hails such shifts as indicating a weakening of gender
hierarchies, others have argued that normative masculine disavowal of homophobia and sexism can
disguise ongoing gender inequalities (Bridges & Pascoe, 2014). By distancing themselves from such
“toxic” elements of masculinity, men may represent heterosexual masculine privilege as a thing of the
past even as it continues to structure institutions.
Conclusion
Following Raewyn Connell’s (1995) discussion of masculine hegemony as a field of discursive
positions and practices, we can see how disavowal of toxic masculinity can serve the interests of already
privileged men. Feminist applications of the term to the likes of Trump and Weinstein depart from a
conservative focus on marginalized men’s “toxic masculinity.” However, such condemnation still
individualises the problem to the character traits of specific men. Condemnation of toxic masculinity
allows men to position themselves as against misogyny, homophobia and violence, while
simultaneously acknowledging masculinity as implicated in such problems. Sexual violence and
harassment can then be discussed as features of “backward” and “mentally unwell” men. Thus, the
institutional and structural privileges men accrue (what Connell terms the “patriarchal dividend”) are
systematically obscured. Toxic masculinity carries inflections of postfeminist relegation of patriarchy
to the past and individualizes sexism as a question of personal attitudes. Feminist scholars should thus
be wary of using toxic masculinity as an analytic category.
Toxic masculinity continues to appear in media and scholarship. I’ve caught myself using it as a
shorthand: I understand that its appeal lies in its ability to summon a recognisable character type.
However, I take care not to use the term as a scholarly concept. In 2019, for the first time, the term
appeared in some of my students’ essays, although I do not use it in my teaching. I noticed that students
who didn’t use it gave fuller analyses of masculinity and different forms of violence. Possibly, the term
has spread into feminist scholarship to an extent that it should be addressed in the classroom. Indeed,
8
explaining why it is not a useful concept could highlight the value of less individualised approaches to
gender and power.
References.
Anderson, E. (2009). Inclusive Masculinity: The Changing Nature of Masculinities. London, UK:
Routledge.
Askey, B. (2018). “I’d Rather Have No Brains and Two Balls”: Eunuchs, Masculinity, and Power in
Game of Thrones. The Journal of Popular Culture, 51(1), 50–67.
Banet-Weiser, S., & Portwood-Stacer, L. (2017). The traffic in feminism: An introduction to the
commentary and criticism on popular feminism. Feminist Media Studies, 17(5), 884–888.
Bhana, D. (2005). Violence and the Gendered Negotiation of Masculinity Among Young Black
School Boys in South Africa. In L. Ouzgane & R. Morrell (Eds.), African Masculinities: Men
in Africa from the Late Nineteenth Century to the Present (pp. 205–220). London, UK:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Biddulph, S. (1997). Raising Boys: Why Boys are Different-- and how to Help Them Become Happy
and Well-balanced Men. Sydney, NSW: Finch Publishing.
Blair, Z. S. K. (2016). The Pulse Nightclub Shooting: Connecting Militarism, Neoliberalism, and
Multiculturalism to Understand Violence. North American Dialogue, 19(2), 102–116.
Bridges, T., & Pascoe, C. J. (2014). Hybrid Masculinities: New Directions in the Sociology of Men
and Masculinities. Sociology Compass, 8(3), 246–258.
Connell, R. W. (1995). Masculinities. LA: University of California Press.
Dollahite, D. C., Marks, L. D., & Olsonm, M. M. (2002). Fathering, Faith, and Family Therapy.
Journal of Family Psychotherapy, 13(3–4), 259–289.
Eberly, D. (1999a). The Collapse and Recovery of Fatherhood. In D. Eberly (Ed.), The Faith Factor
in Fatherhood: Renewing the Sacred Vocation of Fathering (pp. 3–20). Maryland: Lexington
Books.
Eberly, D. (1999b, May 13). Prepared Testimony by Don Eberly Founder, Chairman and Ceo,
National Fatherhood Initiative Director, the Civil Society Project Before the House Judiciary
9
Committee Subject—Youth Culture and Violence Thursday, May 13, 1999. Federal News
Service - Congressional Hearing Prepared Testimonies; Washington,
http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/judiciary/hju62441.000/hju62441_0f.htm
Ekşi, B. (2017). The myth of the tough men’s burden: Reproducing a hegemonic masculinity at the
Turkish National Police. NORMA, 12(1), 5–22.
Ferguson, H., & Hogan, F. (2004). Strengthening families through fathers: Developing policy and
practice in relation to vulnerable fathers and their families [Report or Working Paper].
Retrieved from The Centre for Social and Family Research, Department of Applied Arts,
Waterford Institute of Technology for the Department of Social and Family Affairs website:
http://www.welfare.ie/en/Pages/Families-Research-programme.aspx
Gill, R. (2016). Post-postfeminism?: New feminist visibilities in postfeminist times. Feminist Media
Studies, 16(4), 610–630.
Gross, D. (1990, April 16). The Gender Rap. The New Republic; Washington, 202(16), 11.
Kupers, T. A. (2005). Toxic masculinity as a barrier to mental health treatment in prison. Journal of
Clinical Psychology, 61(6), 713–724.
McGinley, A. C. (2018). The Masculinity Motivation. Stanford Law Review Online, 71, 49–59.
Messerschmidt, J. W. (2010). Hegemonic Masculinities and Camouflaged Politics: Unmasking the
Bush Dynasty and Its War Against Iraq. Oxon: Routledge.
Mobilio, A. (1999). Angry White Knuckleheads. Fortune, 140 (10), 86–86.
OECD. (2007). Babies and Bosses-Reconciling Work and Family Life: A Synthesis of Findings for
OECD Countries-OECD. Retrieved from https://www.oecd.org/els/family/babiesandbosses-
reconcilingworkandfamilylifeasynthesisoffindingsforoecdcountries.htm
Parent, Mike, Gobble, Teresa, Rochlen, Aaron (2019). Social media behaviour, toxic masculinity and
depression. Psychology of Men and Masculinities 20 (3), 277-287.
Pettyjohn, M., Muzzey, F., Maas, M., & McCauley, H. (2019). #HowIWillChange: Engaging men and
boys in the #MeToo movement - ProQuest. Psychology of Men & Masculinities, 20 (4), 612–
622.
10
Pittman, F. S. (1993). Man Enough: Fathers, Sons, and the Search for Masculinity. New York:
Putnam.
Randles, J. M. (2013). Repackaging the “Package Deal”: Promoting Marriage for Low-Income
Families by Targeting Paternal Identity and Reframing Marital Masculinity. Gender &
Society, 27 (6), 864–888
Salter, A., & Blodgett, B. (2017). Toxic Geek Masculinity in Media: Sexism, Trolling, and Identity
Policing. Springer.
Sculos, B. (2017). Who’s Afraid of ‘Toxic Masculinity’? Class, Race and Corporate Power, 5(3).
Sommers, C. H. (2003, September). Men-It’s in Their Nature. The American Enterprise; Washington,
14 (6), 4–5.
Valenti, J. (2014). Beyoncé’s ‘Flawless’ feminist act at the VMAs leads the way for other women.
The Guardian. August 25
Waling, A. (2019). Problematising ‘Toxic’ and ‘Healthy’ Masculinity for Addressing Gender
Inequalities. Australian Feminist Studies, 34(101), 362–375.
Young, C. (2000, March). The man question. Reason, 31(10), 64–67.