“Toxic Feminism” a Vile Weapon Vile Women feel Justified in Wielding to Suit their Predicaments
“Obviously, as an adult I realize this girl-on-girl sabotage is the third worst kind of female behavior, right behind saying ‘like’ all the time and leaving your baby in a dumpster.” — Tina Fey
Time to face the music ladies. Toxic feminism is NOT the way forward. It ain’t gonna further #MeToo-and-equivalent-causes. It’ll butcher them. Repugnant as it is socially regressive. Hate to break it the toxically intoxicated sisterhood, but, it’s true.
This pernicious brand of feminism gives intoxicated women, an ideologically-lethal justification for annihilating all men for being men. Indeed, these nasty-pasty toxic feminists revel in annihilating each other when it suits. Yes, women-on-women-bashing is a thing and it’s just as repulsive as women-on-men-bashing.
The Great irony in all of this, both genders have been rendered impotent by age-old toxic patriarchy. Women and men still haven’t got a clue on how to remedy toxic gender roles they have been subjected to for donkey's years. A hot-gendered-mess no one wants to touch with a 10-foot pole. More straightforward to bitch about change rather than apply it right?
Real gender equality lies in the transformation of toxic gender constructs. To do this, our gender struggles need to coalesce. Otherwise, we’re stuffed. Stuffed and stuck with toxic femininity and toxic masculinity continuing to badly rationalise and misrepresent global gender problems.
You can’t have gender equality unless you get the guys on board ladies! The putrid-smelling vitriol being constantly spewed on men has to stop. That same putrid-smelling vitriol being spewed on our own kind, (other women) has to end also.
Fix toxic gender disparities. Toxic patriarchy. And you partially fix the world’s problems.
Partially. But it’s a start. And we need to start somewhere.
Contrary to popular belief #1: Men AREN’T the problem IT’S toxic gender constructs:
It’s why we need to start unravelling “gender biases and gender discriminations that are damaging to us all” says Jane Gilmore. Toxic feminism, a term grossly misunderstood in today’s contemporary, is synonymous with women who represent a toxic fraction of the global female population. Notwithstanding, audaciously misrepresenting the macrocosm of feminism. Toxic feminism is a pathetic anathema for women. To vilify men for female gender problems as Gilmore rightly surmises. They have a penis and they are men and apparently deserve to be crucified and scapegoated when it suits. Think about what would happen if men resorted to this same level of toxicity? Dumped all their shit on women? Think about it…
They would be hanged, drawn and quartered.
Diverging gender opinions about men and women are necessary when we engage in “gender-debating” because they lead to durable solutions. Men feeling like they are being criminalised for having diverging opinions about feminism is wrong. Even if they are valid opinions.
What has also been neglected in the “War on Men” by way of toxic feminism, is, a reasonable understanding that traditional expectations of “manhood” (imposed on men) have been damaging as much as traditional expectations of “womanhood” have been for women Gilmore infers. Women are crucified for inciting anger and lust in men and subsequently annihilate men when their bodies are fetishised or violated repeats Gilmore.
A gendered Catch-22.
Toxic displays of “gender-labelling” pit women against each other. The “good ones” considered worthy if they are quiet, submissive, placatory and uncomplicated. The “bad ones” well, they’re asking for trouble, they have transgressed prescribed boundaries. Dared to talk. Dared to flaunt.
To digress, men are considered real men if, they keep up a “masculine-façade” of strength, aggression, virility and unemotionality. Toxic feminism and toxic masculinity are mutually contradictory and mutually destructive. Enter gender disparities. Enter entrenched gender inequalities. Self-defeating gendered categories we’ve been brainwashed and culturally conditioned to believe and accept.
If we women transgress boundaries, if we flaunt our “sexiness,” our “hotness,” we’re objectified. Potential fodder for sex and sexual violation. That is your punishment for “acting like a slut.” Men, on the other hand, are straight-jacketed in a different way, by toxic masculine labelling requiring them to be hyper-masculine at all times. Being a strong, independent, sexually confident women is a big no-no. Toxic feminism. Being an emotionally sensitive man is a big no-no. Toxic masculinity. Gender binaries that continue to bind genders across all gendered societies. Indeed, “[t]oxic gender roles are insidious and omnipresent” Gilmore rightly intuits.
Contrary to popular belief #2: Women HAVE warped gender (mis)understandings and WEAPONISE “fragility”
Under a toxic banner of feminism, women exploit their gender to obtain privileges to their “womanly” advantage as Asavari Singh puts it. “It is when noxious, indirect modes of confrontation are masked with gentleness. It is when empathy turns into ethical shortsightedness. Just like toxic masculinity, toxic femininity is the product of a deeply patriarchal society and systems” Singh further claims.
Yes, we’ve been conditioned differently. Our gendered pathologies are different. But women, due to their systematic and entrenched oppression have mastered the art of a much subtler, inherently more destructive form of “gendered warfare” argues Singh. Toxic feminism exists. And women can be just as ballsy as men. Just as exploitative. Just as aggressive especially, towards their own kind. They are experts in doing things in a more dangerously mollified way.
Bitches and bastards beware…
Singh is bang-on, women delude themselves into thinking playing on their “weaknesses,” their “sexuality,” their supposed “fragility,” and their knack for “plausible deniability” is self-empowering. That it’s feminism. Actually, honey, you’re just being an arse-wipe. Rather, these women perpetuate the toxic patriarchal order that continues to entrap them as much as it does men.
When women weaponise “fragility,” it’s about rebelling against internalised misogyny that rigidly categorises “good female traits” versus “bad female traits” confirms Katie Anthony. Notwithstanding, toxic feminism is an externalisation of a repressed form of misogyny. A rebuttal against female gender oppression, Anthony further implies.
“The problem is, women feel devalued by a patriarchal culture that’s run by castrated men and other devalued women.” — Richard Godwin
Contrary to popular belief #3: Toxic feminism IS about gender warfare NOT gender equality:
A dismantling of socially engineered vis-à-vis culturally endorsed constructions of femininity underscores the toxic plight of toxic feminists. Mainstream discourse has yet to thoroughly debate and deconstruct this antagonistic and inflammatory brand of feminism if you can call it that. Jen Siushansian articulates, “[it’s] the scope of being unnecessarily hostile, aggressive in nature and in a cooperative manner. And, in other circumstances, “females use backstabbing to get ahead of others and to maintain their positions of power within social setting[s].”
On the same side of the same “toxic coin,” it’s gender empowerment gone awry. Putting it crudely, it’s, “I want you to fuck me” versus “I don’t want you to fuck me or undress me with your eyes whatever gave you that impression?” versus “I’ll backstab my way to the top and could you carry my stuff to the car I’ve got my period” and so on… Heather E. Heying asserts there is no getting away from straight men looking at beautiful women, more precisely, if, those women are young and hot and are actively displaying their sexuality. Display invites attention. Demanding that it doesn’t is an extension of toxic feminism.
“Male-bashing” exacerbates global gender discourse, it doesn’t assist in finding durable solutions to “gender problems,” says Dannish Odongo. In the same token, “witch-hunt-mentality” towards men, doesn’t address the root causes of gender inequality, nor, fixes the culture that encourages deviant men to exploit women Odongo rather compellingly claims. Not all men are toxic or behave toxically. Toxic feminism wants us to believe all men are ideologically “bad eggs.”
“Feminism now and this is why it’s so deeply unpopular, has become primarily an ideological weapon and it’s an ideology I destest.” — Jordan Peterson
Contrary to popular belief #4: Both genders ARE complicit in their oppression:
Both genders have willingly “follow[ed] the rules of patriarchy” says Sucheta Dasgupta regardless of resentment in doing so. No doubt men are in as much of a “gender crisis” as women. No doubt “feminist assault on masculinity” as Cathy Young describes, hasn’t helped matters.
Perhaps the most pertinent point of this whole argument, is, toxic feminists have failed to understand the power of feminism in its capacity to “liberate men too from patriarchal confines” repeats Young.
We need drastic change on both gender fronts. Women are incapable of sorting this mess out solo. Women and men need to work together. Unite. If, we have any hope in dismantling toxic patriarchy that has castrated both genders in varying degrees for too bloody long!
Now is the time for substantive and sustainable equality. Now is the time to throw Molotov cocktails at laws and systems perpetuating the “anti-equal” patriarchal status quo. Men have had a gutful of being verbally bashed by women. Women have had a gutful of traditional gender-based oppression as have men. If we want gender equality, we have to fight for it, and the battle isn’t going to be easy. Toxic patriarchy is a scourge for women and men from all corners of the globe and it’s something worth fighting against.
No longer can we willing accept this kind of systemic oppression because “that’s what we’ve been taught to do from our mother’s and our father’s.” Time to put pressure on those at the highest level. Governments need to legislate and implement pro-gender-equal-and-non-gender-biased laws as well as inclusionary policies and frameworks that are geared towards equality. Inclusionary feminism (that means the guys too!) is a necessary and valuable conduit in emancipating us all from the jaws of patriarchal hell.
