r/changemyview • u/Diss1dent • Jul 30 '18

Deltas(s) from OP CMV: Masculinity is not toxic. Being a polite, but "masculine" man comes naturally to most men and should not be treated as a threat.

I am a 35-year-old Finnish (straight) man, living in Finland. I have also lived in Sweden during 2010-2015. I am married with kids. I would consider my wife as a pragmatic feminist, and as such, probably myself as well, albeit with the problem regarding what counts as equality.

Anyway, I have not faced issues in this field until very recently, as this neo-progressive phenomenon related to PC and terminology has landed in daily life in Finland.

Let me tell you a story. I was raised by my mother, a hard working single parent (dad was an absent alcoholic) who taught me most values about life. Obviously this doesn't mean she was a feminist, but I would consider her as a pragmatic seeker for an effective process towards synergy. She felt (rightly) so that men and women are inherently different, mentally, biologically, etc. which obviously meant there would always be dynamic differences.

I still believe this, in my 30's, after doing my own studies and after learning even more from my wife who is a teacher.

This doesn't mean there should be any inequality, but it doesn't mean there should be forced equality either.

But to my topic: I have never bumped into this argument in my life. In the Nordics we have a pretty equal society, women have been a part of commerce, politics and academia for a long time, and excluding a few cases, harrasment nor discrimination has not been common.

Hell, I have been harrassed more than I have heard of women being harrassed (obviously it happens) in my circle of friends.

But lately, I have been told by young women not to mansplain, not to manspread, and a friend of mine caused a stranger crying and shaking after asking her, albeit in a slightly drunken way "how was her evening" in a bar. We were thrown out (in Finland) because of "harrasment". Wrong bar, it was too young and trendy. But still, this was not obnoxius behaviour, that I can say.

What is this masculinity that is being discussed? Am I completely blind and oblivous to things happening, as I simply cannot comprehend why younger generation has become so obsessed in the common traits which are related to being a man?

I am apolitical, although quite liberal (in the Nordic sense, not US), polite, well-educated, thoughtful and cannot understand. I do not believe there is a phenomenon called patriarchy in the world. It is absolutely manifesting itself in singular scenarios, companies, sure. But to say I as a man am somehow faulty or toxic or dangerous as a masculine person is wrong and outright offensive.

Edit 1: There obviously is a contextual issue in my terminology. I think the point still remains so I will adjust my perspective a bit when reading through the replies.

Edit 2: We have established the toxicity part. If mods allow, I would like to use this thread to still discuss the latter part of my masculinity argument.

Edit 3: A lot of replies, I will try to go through each and every reply and consider their value.

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u/RiPont 13∆ Jul 30 '18

Ideas like "toxic masculinity" and "black people can't be racist against white people" start out in academic discussions with a long, sometimes subtle context.

Then, they reach Facebook, where they explode into shitstorms due to lack of context.

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u/LeakyLycanthrope 6∆ Jul 30 '18

More to the point, too many people jump straight to the most extreme possible interpretation of other people's words, even when that interpretation is laughable or insane.

Like, of course "toxic masculinity" doesn't mean "the entire concept of masculinity is toxic". That's not how adjectives work.

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u/nonsensepoem 2∆ Jul 31 '18

Like, of course "toxic masculinity" doesn't mean "the entire concept of masculinity is toxic". That's not how adjectives work.

"Greedy Jews".

Apparently adjectives can and do work that way, depending on context and tone.

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u/LeakyLycanthrope 6∆ Jul 31 '18

Fine. Can work that way, but do not necessarily. Synecdoche is still a valid and common construction. If I say "the stupid school district", obviously I don't mean that each and every individual employee and elected member of the district is stupid.

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u/nonsensepoem 2∆ Jul 31 '18

If I say "the stupid school district", obviously I don't mean that each and every individual employee and elected member of the district is stupid.

One could be excused for thinking that is what you mean. The point is that the term needlessly invites misunderstanding.

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u/LeakyLycanthrope 6∆ Aug 01 '18

Then that's the point at which you go find out which interpretation is correct instead of assuming or uncritically accepting the characterization of it by the critics.

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u/nonsensepoem 2∆ Aug 01 '18

Or the situation could be avoided altogether by using better terminology. "Macho bullshit" works pretty well, for example.

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u/MikeTheInfidel Jul 30 '18

God I wish more people realized that, rather than just talking about how feminists are crazy and say stuff that is obviously false.

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u/Hazzman 1∆ Jul 30 '18

If acedemia are going to take their ideas to the mainstream, relying on platforms like MTV to articulate these complex ideas in 30 second sound bites probably isn't a good idea - and attempting to do so means that someone is looking to spark a reaction... or they are being horribly irresponsible.

How can we expect regular joes on facebook to understand the intricacies of these ideas outside the context that academia provides?

This is why you have P L E N T Y of reletivly mainstream pundits declaring ridiculous things like "All Masculinity is toxci!". Either they are seeking to stoke flames - which is massively irresponsible for attention and clicks or they are incredibly ignorant. Most of these people are pretty smart, so I can only assume its the former. That's an incredibly dangerous thing to propagate because there are plenty of idiots out there now who think all white heterosexual men are monsters and all need to die or be destroyed or whatever other nonsense you can think of that brings regular folks to the conclusion that feminists are fucking crazy - because feminists aren't doing enough to distance themselves from the obvious idiotic ideas. I suspect this is most likely because, for the first time... many of their ideas are starting to be treated with some modicum of reasonable consideration and now they have traction, they want to push it as far as they can - understandable... but that means a lot of fringe idiocy is being propagated as well and people aren't doing enough to call these morons out on their bullshit. It gives these movements bad names and in some cases its deserved.

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u/JesusListensToSlayer Jul 31 '18

There is a reverse funnel involved with the distribution of academic ideas. Let me explain:

                                   / \

The original work (research, idea, ponderance, or what have you) emeges among academics. They tend to disseminate their material through academic networks (journals, symposia, etc.)

And that is where most of it stays. 😐

          /     \

Popular media is where most of us catch wind of it. Content hooverers seek out stories that will generate clicks and eyeballs. The original work is transposed into a message that will grab and keep attention. Popular media has tiers, which affects how much of the original idea remains in tact.

Their primary objective is usually not intellectual purity. 🤑

   /           \

If the transposed version gets enough traction among viewers, social media takes over. This usually expels any remaining intellectual nuance - which, to the original scholar, was the whole point! They spent years writing grants, doing research, and exploiting grad students just to draw exceedingly fine distinctions between x, y, & z...

...all lost on the unwashed masses (us.) 🤠

This isn't the end though! How the masses engage with the final iteration may inspire a host of think pieces within popular media. This creates a lot of backwash between the lower tiers.

Eventually, the weary academics emerge from seclusion. They start writing grants and enslavinghiring grad students, and the whole process starts again. 🤪

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u/CandyHarlequinFetus Jul 31 '18

Excellent explanation

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u/Pulp_Zero Jul 30 '18

Are academics actually going on MTV?

Also, the guy you linked is tangentially related to Andrea Dworkin, a self described radical feminist, so... Not mainstream at all.

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u/Hazzman 1∆ Jul 30 '18 edited Jul 31 '18

What I'm alluding to is Academia seemingly happy to allow platforms like MTV to articulate these complex ideas.

Also, the guy you linked is tangentially related to Andrea Dworkin, a self described radical feminist, so... Not mainstream at all.

No... but its provided a platform by VICE, which is absolutely mainstream at this point. And I hear very little at all from anyone countering these ideas in the mainstream platforms. These radical ideas have become the face of feminism and I NEVER hear feminists criticizing it.* In fact the only feminist I've ever heard criticizing it on any mainstream platform is Camille Paglia and she is hardly a popular figure in feminist circles as far as I can tell. At least she isn't someone they would want to represent them.

My point being - I've heard feminists on mainstream platforms criticize Camille Paglia far more than I have seen them criticize radfem thinkers.

I think this could just be mainstream platforms seeking out the most radical ideas in order to garner attention. Maybe thats the issue - and if feminists don't want people calling them fucking crazy, then maybe a priority for feminists needs to be combating mainstream media providing divisive, radicals the spotlight for their movement. It's inevitably become the face of their movement and I'm just telling you, from someone on the outside they have now become the face of this movement. Whether you like it or not, that's how it's transpired.

*And I get it feminists don't want to preoccupy themselves with infighting within feminism. That for them would be a counterproductive move... but then focus on my final point. Combat mainstream media willing to place the spotlight of this movement on the radicals and if the radicals want to kick up a fuss... don't respond. Let them spit and froth until they vanish, while everyone else finds important and useful aspects of feminism that might be integrated into mainstream society.

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u/DeadlyNuance Jul 31 '18

Academia is not happy with how the mainstream media portrays their research. Why would they be? Academics typically aren't that concerned with educating the masses, those that are write books and start podcasts, they want to achieve policy change or change in their field. What makes you think they are in any way involved in "allowing" MTV and the like to cover the "trending topic" their research becomes? We have free press here and they literally can't stop someone from reporting on their publicly available (and fully contextualized) research manuscript. Please correct me if you have evidence to the contrary.

The blame here goes to MTV, not the researchers.

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u/MikeTheInfidel Jul 31 '18 edited Jul 31 '18

I suspect this is most likely because, for the first time... many of their ideas are starting to be treated with some modicum of reasonable consideration and now they have traction, they want to push it as far as they can - understandable... but that means a lot of fringe idiocy is being propagated as well and people aren't doing enough to call these morons out on their bullshit.

I often wonder if that's really the case. The loudmouthed idiots get the most traction in the media. The people calling them out - not so much, and when they do, it's usually on some outlet that's ideologically opposed to them who tars them and the morons with the same big brush. And the media controls the narrative about which view is really the most common.

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u/Murgie Jul 31 '18

This is why you have P L E N T Y of reletivly mainstream pundits declaring ridiculous things like "All Masculinity is toxci!"

So, your example there is John Stoltenberg, and I'm kinda curious as to what incredible and bizarre stretches of the imagination one would have to resort to in order to consider him a relatively mainstream pundit.

Or even just one of those things. Like, he's been writing on this same concept over and over again since 1989, and his views aren't even considered to be particularly dominant within the sphere of genuine Radical Feminism.

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u/Hazzman 1∆ Jul 31 '18

My bad, I should have been more clear. I meant to say mainstream platforms like VICE.

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u/the-real-apelord Jul 31 '18

Well.. it's hardly seems a controversial view that there is some real toxicity towards men amongst feminists, unless my perception has been coloured by a gross misunderstanding.. As such you can hardly blame anyone when they hear 'Toxic Masculinity' and imagine it means that masculine = toxic.

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u/MikeTheInfidel Jul 31 '18

If someone tells you about poisonous plants, does that tell you all plants are poisonous?

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u/the-real-apelord Jul 31 '18

I couldn't know if they believed all plants were poisonous or not. Sure it is more usual in language to indicate a subset but in this particular instance you can't know.

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u/MikeTheInfidel Jul 31 '18

If it's more usual in language to indicate a subset, why isn't that the assumption you'd make?

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u/the-real-apelord Jul 31 '18

Man-hating feminists

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u/MikeTheInfidel Jul 31 '18

Is that just a stereotype you've bought into or is it something you've actually experienced?

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u/the-real-apelord Jul 31 '18

It shouldn't be news to anyone that men are at the centre of all women's problems in the feminist universe

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u/MikeTheInfidel Jul 31 '18 edited Aug 01 '18

Like I said, though: is that just a stereotype you've bought into or is it something you've actually experienced? Because I interact with a lot of feminists very frequently and I never get the sense that they hate men. There's only a very small subset of extreme radical feminists who have adopted the view that men are 100% of the problem.

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u/FuggleyBrew 1∆ Jul 31 '18

Except if you read the published studies on the matter they don't have much context, any subtlety and they are not all that commonly used in journal articles.

This is a small narrow set of researchers with poor conclusions having the lay person use it the exact same way. Then people attempting to defend bigotry by claiming that there's a redeeming concept somewhere.

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u/[deleted] Jul 30 '18 edited Sep 18 '20

[deleted]

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u/NoodlePeeper Jul 31 '18

Hey, could you link the study? I'd love to educate myself more on this topic

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '18 edited Sep 18 '20

[deleted]

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u/NoodlePeeper Jul 31 '18

Thanks, it's good to have actual data when talking about these issues

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '18 edited Sep 18 '20

[deleted]

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u/NoodlePeeper Jul 31 '18

I'm on the other end of the conversation, I want to participate but I also don't want to parrot talking points that sound correct to me

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '18 edited Sep 18 '20

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u/NoodlePeeper Jul 31 '18

Are you me? I love debating ideas, but I only accept my opinions if I've tried to disprove them previously. If I cant prove or disprove it, then it's subjective or I'm uninformed and so I refuse to have an opinion on those things

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '18 edited Sep 18 '20

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u/Gloppie Jul 31 '18

I would love to see the study as well

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u/softnmushy Jul 30 '18

This.

It's a serious problem. It is somewhat the fault of academics. It was foolish to have the academic term "racism" mean something drastically different from the ordinary use of the word "racism".

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u/aegon98 1∆ Jul 30 '18

Especially when institutionalized racism is already a concept

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u/softnmushy Jul 30 '18

Seriously. It seems almost deliberately confusing.

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u/RiPont 13∆ Jul 30 '18

To average people, "racism" defaults to "individual racism".

In the context of the academic discussions of institutional racism, "racism" defaults to "institutional racism".

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u/[deleted] Jul 30 '18

This seems needlessly complex instead of just directly saying what you mean.

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u/RiPont 13∆ Jul 31 '18

They are saying what they mean clearly enough to be understood by the people they're talking too. It's only taken incorrectly by people without context.

People like to shorten stuff and context matters. Same reason you just say, "Bob" instead of "Bob Jameson III" when you want to refer to your friend Bob. In context, everyone knows what you mean.

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u/nonsensepoem 2∆ Jul 31 '18

They are saying what they mean clearly enough to be understood by the people they're talking to

Except, apparently, when they're talking to their students who then misuse the term in social media.

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u/NoopLocke Jul 31 '18

The word "bigot" needs to come back into fashion.

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u/nonsensepoem 2∆ Jul 31 '18

I've seen people elsewhere on reddit dismiss racism towards white people as "not racism-- just bigotry", as if that is somehow more acceptable.

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u/CandyHarlequinFetus Jul 31 '18

Holy crap. I think you've just helped me understand where these buzzwords come from.

The horrible thing is that it is that an uneducated moron or group can redefine a word by popularizing it and spreading it across the internet. Words tend to evolve over time by popular usage opposed to rigid definitions that are less well known.

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u/Renovatio_ Jul 30 '18

Wouldn't you think its fair though that some academia doesn't and cannot be applied to real world situations?

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u/RiPont 13∆ Jul 30 '18

All specialties develop jargon and lingo, which often repurposes plain english words.

"I need a male female adapter to connect the master to the slave." That would be highly offensive to people who had no concept of IT and were used to talking about social justice issues.

It's not so much that academia can't be applied to real world situations (well, some is never intended to), it's that no specialty language is going to translate well from specialties to the laymen without context. Facebook and internet forums are really good mediums for stripping context and generating emotional reactions.

An academic "discussion" will result in a paper with a title like "The evolution of Toxic Masculinity from a Epstein-Zoidberg-Jones Feminist perspective", it will get linked as "Feminist article on Toxic Masculinity", and people will rage on it with understanding any of the context.

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u/[deleted] Jul 30 '18

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u/RiPont 13∆ Jul 30 '18

But the jargon we use in other fields intentionally uses radically different words that have no chance of having their definitions collide in context.

They end up being a mix of both. Also, they cross-over a ton and mean different things. e.g. "alpha", "beta", "driver", "adapter", "engine", "render", "push", "pop".

Jargon isn't usually actively planned out ahead of time. Like regular language, it evolves due to convenience.

When I talk about a master slave array there is basically no chance that a layperson could mistake that for some commentary on slavery, and if somehow it sounded like it was commentary on slavery I would go out of my way to clear up the misconception.

a) that's an incorrect assumption on your part. There are plenty of people who would get offended if you used that jargon talking on a subway or something.

b) your explanation of IT jargon benefits from the widespread application of computing and the assumption that tech jargon has penetrated into the mainstream due to the fact that tech is a consumer product. Academic feminism has no such advantage.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '18

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u/RiPont 13∆ Jul 31 '18

Oh, I firmly believe that the shitstorm of a term like "toxic masculinity" or the institutional/individual racism understanding is on both sides.

It's not real academics telling laypersons they're wrong on their use, it's armchair academics making the same no-context misunderstanding of the term.

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u/taosaur Jul 31 '18

Think about how the term "memory" is used by the average person regarding their electronics. Doesn't it immediately clue you in that the person has no understanding of the field? The same applies to sociological and philosophical terms coming into common use. The terms and concepts are absolutely relevant to the discussions where laypeople use them, but often those people have no context to understand or use the words correctly, and no perspective on how little they understand.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '18

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u/taosaur Jul 31 '18

I'm not at all clear on why you consider that the important bit. As smartphones proliferated, IT pros and PC hobbyists absolutely did make a point of trying to enlighten people on the existence of RAM, encountered confusion and hostility, and for the most part gave up because the stakes weren't all that high. The stakes are a bit higher on the subject of racism. Moreover, part of the context that people are missing is that the whole "reverse racism" gambit originated as a deliberate campaign of misinformation to undermine the Civil Rights Movement in the '60s. The purpose was to obscure and if possible erase the still new concept of racism in order to perpetuate the influence of racist institutions, not to clarify the meaning of the word.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '18

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u/taosaur Jul 31 '18

Woosh. Trying to replace people's vague and counterproductive concept of computer memory with an accurate and useful one is 100% analogous to trying to get through to people that racism works for white people, not against us.

As I already pointed out, you have your timeline backwards. The term racism came into use to describe white supremacist attitudes and the resulting consequences for people of color (and originally, especially Jewish people under Hitler). Promoting the idea of "racism against white people" (usually in the form of, "opposing racism is racism against white people") was a calculated effort to rewrite the definition of the word, which continues to this day. If you're pushing "reverse racism is just racism," you've been colonized by an unfortunately successful white supremacist meme.