I see that Gillette has come out with a male-bashing ad that blames all men for the sins of a few very bad men. I thought it might be a good idea for me to write something to women to help them to avoid being the victim of toxic masculinity. My post will have two parts: 1) choosing good men and 2) policies that produce good men.
Preparing to evaluate a man
If you don’t want toxic masculinity, then you have to choose a man who is not toxic. Men must be evaluated, and the toxic ones must be rejected – even if they are attractive and produce feelings of desire and excitement. How do you learn how to evaluate men? Well, you have to know how to talk to them about the things that are relevant to their roles as husbands and fathers. It’s not enough to ask a man “how did your day go?” Shallow questions don’t protect you from toxic masculinity. You need to ask questions that actually surface the true character of the man, and whether he has done anything verifiable to prepare himself to lead a family. The only way to evaluate HIM is to have prepared YOURSELF in advance. You prepare yourself by reading serious papers and books about men and marriage and parenting. Only then will you be able to judge how much he knows, and how good he is at doing what a man does in a committed relationship. It’s just like a job interview.
For example, men should be pro-life, because they should care about protecting the weak from the strong. If you – as a woman – do not understand how to make a case for the right to life of unborn children YOURSELF, then how will you be able to evaluate men to determine whether THEY take seriously the obligation to protect the weak from the strong? If you don’t know anything about pro-life legislation and Supreme Court cases, then how will you evaluate a man’s knowledge of those areas? You have to do YOUR homework first, so that you are able to evaluate the character of a man.
Which policies create men who are toxic?
Fatherlessness creates toxic masculinity.
If a man is growing up without a father, then he will never see a man treating a woman well, even after she has lost her youth and beauty. The first thing that children notice about their fathers is that he lives at home. But they also know that he gets up early each day to go to work for the family. And they know that if there is anything scary, like a spider or a noise, then father is the one who protects the mother. Father is the one who teaches a child that authority (and punishment) is not done out of anger, but out of love. Father is the one who sets moral boundaries, lives out moral rules, and reads the Bible to the children. Fathers demonstrate how to control superior strength, because can never act towards his wife in a way that could destroy the marriage.
Boys learn the complexity of women by watching their fathers interact with their mothers. Growing up with a father and a mother is the complete opposite of pornography. In porn, boys see only the woman’s outward appearance with no context of a commitment, and no long-term plan where husband and wife are partners. Porn reduces her to an object designed only to please his needs. Marriage shows cooperation between man and woman in order to make the relationship stable and productive. Boys in father-present homes have a much broader and deeper database of interactions to draw on when dealing with women. In particular, boys learn what skills and abilities a man demonstrates to a woman in order to signal to her that he is interested in marrying her.
So, if you oppose toxic masculinity, then you have to be against fatherlessness. You have to be for marriage as the best place for children to grow up. And to be for marriage, is to be against every policy that threatens marriage. You must be against no-fault divorce. Against single-mother welfare. Against the Sexual Revolution. Against recreational premarital sex. Against delaying marriage for fun and careers. And against feminism – which teaches women that evaluating a man for traditional marriage roles is “sexist”.
People on the secular left complain the most about toxic masculinity but they are the ones doing the most to promote policies that create it. Secular leftists can’t tear down the theism that rationally grounds morality, and then complain when institutions like marriage – which are built on objective moral values and duties – are destroyed. It doesn’t matter if a secular leftist wishes for toxic masculinity to disappear. If they say nothing about women choosing hot bad boys for relationships, then they are in favor of toxic masculinity. If they say nothing about the destruction of marriage and fatherless children, then they are in favor of toxic masculinity. You can’t kill the engine that produces good men, and then complain that the bad men who are left don’t treat you well.
Conclusion
To review: to avoid toxic masculinity, you should 1) prepare yourself (by studying) so you can evaluate men for their ability to perform distinct male marriage roles, and 2) promote policies in which boys are raised in homes with a father loving their mother in a lifelong commitment. If you deny either of these things, then you’re not opposed to toxic masculinity at all. You might say you don’t like it, but you’re not doing anything to avoid choosing it, and you’re not doing anything to produce young men who avoid it.
I think that women today are complaining about “toxic masculinity” precisely because they feel entitled to choose men based on outward appearance, give them recreational premarital sex, and then expect that those men will treat them with respect and care. It doesn’t work that way. Hot bad boys don’t respond to recreational premarital sex by transforming themselves into faithful husbands with impeccable moral character. If you want good character, then evaluate men to find it and then choose it. Period.
WINTERY KNIGHT 
Disgraceful they are also attacking men!!! We despetately need strong traditional men!
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I just wrote about this as well… the whole thing is fascinating. I know more than a few women who chose poorly in this area and are now paying the price as they deal with absent/abusive fathers… You make an incredibly valid and important point in that the ones complaining the loudest are the ones creating the culture in the first place. How do they not see this?! I tell my boys all the time… choices choices choices… you have to make smart decisions because they have big consequences.
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I appreciate the post, but its time we stop using the phrase “toxic masculinity”, as no such thing exists. Masculinity is masculinity, its the people that suck and are “toxic”. So you have a masculine man that is a crappy person, fine. For every masculine man that’s a sorry excuse for a human being there’s one, or more, non-masculine men that are sorry excuses for human beings. It would be a good idea to just eliminate the term altogether.
Don’t want a toxic man, don’t get involved with a toxic man. Masculinity is a different subject all together.
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Exactly… Traditional manhood is not toxic! Individuals can be toxic people, but that doesn’t mean all men are!
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Agreed. I think it’s just women choosing bad boys and then expecting that those bad boys can be transformed into good men with premarital sex, nagging, etc. But men don’t change their character, which is why women have to value character more than looks.
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Agreed. These two separate terms should not be linked. Just as women have fought against certain gender stereotypes, men should be resisting this toxic masculinity rhetoric.
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I think there’s a lot more toxic femininity out there than some on the Left are willing to admit.
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Yes, but wouldn’t you expect men to just avoid choosing women like that? Instead of deliberately choosing them, then complaining about it to the world like babies? “Boo hoo the stripper I married was unfaithful to me! It’s toxic femininity! We need an ad to condemn all women because the one I deliberately chose was mean to me!” Give me a break.
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Yes, it’s ridiculous to slam either masculinity OR femininity as good or bad. They are neutral descriptors of men and women. What counts is behavior and attitudes, not gender.
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I like your idea of looking at it from this perspective. Rather than being on a side of Gillette is so wonderful or the devil. Get to the root of the issue. Stay away from the few bad guys like this. And really those guys in the ad won’t change by the ad, it is just a way to make Gillette look better as if they care.
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Now WK…are you even implying women have some choice and accountability in this matter? I thought all men were evil sex crazed maniacs and women are just naive flowers who are always the innocent victims.
What you have outlined is that women can also bring an end to the toxic male culture by not fornicating with toxic males and not bringing about fatherless homes either through out of wedlock births or divorce. Although it means they will have to sacrifice their feelz to do it.
And I’ve been around these so call ‘toxic males’. They don’t hide the fact it’s all sex all the time. I can’t imagine the women are dense enough to see what his mind is focused on after a certain amount of time.
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I don’t have much experience with these toxic men, because I stayed home for undergrad and grad and didn’t drink a beer until I graduated. I remember my coworkers horrified when I poured my first beer down the center of the glass and they had to show me how to pour it. All my fiends were either virgins, or married as virgins. But there is one guy who was a friend of the blog who was wild in college. And he told me that he would tell the women that sex was just sex. Some of them would still do it, then call him after and expect some sort of relationship. This is where “toxic masculinity” comes from in most cases although there are real scum like Harvey Weinstein, too.
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There’s was one guy I knew who was certainly all sex all the time. Public, private, he didn’t hide it. And it was to women and guys…including me. Now since I was a guy I just told him to knock it off or I would belittle him for the runt of a man he is…but when it came to women they were either uncomfortable or he finally got ran out when one of our employees put out a sexual harrassment complaint against him.
He would show me photos of his ex who would still text them to him (let’s just say I’d put her on the promiscous scale). And he still got married and has a kid. Hence there’s always a market of women who will go for toxic males.
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Just what is “Toxic Masculinity”?
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It’s like “assault weapons”, it’s a term to describe something that the speaker doesn’t like for purely subjective reasons.
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“Toxic masculinity” is a catch phrase used by men who lack masculinity and by women who don’t have enough sense to make intelligent choices in men.
When its a man referring to other men its typically the general stuff that guys do like fight, cuss, drink, wrestle, tell their sons to “suck it up” and, you know, be men. This feminized and weak man must justify himself by saying that masculinity is “toxic” because without doing so they have to face the fact that they are feminized but lack the desire and motivation to change. He also see’s the masculine training men give their sons as bad and “toxic” because rather than learn from them they frighten him because he is too feminized to do anything but cower. He will use examples of men abusing children and being violent jerks to point out masculinity’s flaws.
When its a woman referring to men its typically a feminist slag who has slept around with buff and masculine Chads who realize she’s not wife material so they spend enough time to bed her until she isn’t fun anymore and they split. She has to justify her bad decisions by pointing toward masculinity being “toxic” rather than face the fact that she is a whore and wants to have fun giving her body to whoever floats her boat at the moment without actually thinking about her future.
In both cases its not “masculinity” that is toxic but rather men who are masculine. Both forget the fact that people suck, whether they are masculine, feminine or, now, something in between. Why? Because people are people and people are broke and even the best of us have a crappy side.
Overall it says more about the true nature of these people rather than the true nature of masculinity.
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Thank you for putting such a strong emphasis on being pro-life, WK! If I had a nickel for every time a toxic man brought his “conquest” in to eliminate his child support “obligation” (or evidence of his crimes), …
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@WK,
I think you are missing the point and falling into their trap. They are not blaming all men for the sins of a few. They are saying that simply being masculine is bad. Once you go down the road of NAMALT, they have you where they want you.
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