Comment by tammer
8 years ago
There is a missing piece of complexity here and other comments regarding "asshole" behavior.
The story recounted here is a concise demonstration of some aspects of leadership — decisiveness, fairness of discussion, and as mentioned the confidence to steer a large company.
But in these stories the means by which those aspects are demonstrated are colored by toxic masculinity. The rage with which Steve is attributed, the combative or abusive belittling he was known for & demonstrated here is the the very same toxic interpersonal dominance normalized by mass culture as essential male behavior.
There are emotionally supportive ways of doing exactly what Steve did. Perhaps his success could have been even greater had he executed what seems to have been an innate wellspring of leadership ability with a supportive disposition.
To be honest, all of that is considerably less frustrating than the kind of passive aggressive bullshit I generally see it’s place. I’d rather have someone be honest and yell at me than engage in passive aggressive nagging and slithering around behind my back whining about things. It doesn’t seem realistic that the default fallback in the absence of “toxic masculinity” is “emotionally supportive”.
lol this is the first time I've heard toxic masculinity used seriously
It is stupid phrase. Men dont have exclusivity on toxicity. I’ve known plenty toxic people of all sexes. There is danger to accepting these kinds of terms that are associated with malformed world views.
It's neither stupid, nor indicative of a "malformed world view". It denotes the aspects of masculinity which are toxic. You can't even pretend to tell me that's the empty set.
You're absolutely right there's toxicity everywhere. To infer from the presence of toxicity in a given domain — say, "masculinity" — that the phrase "toxic masculinity" somehow means "all masculinity is toxic" is, I submit, more reflective of your worldview than it is of the term's legitimate users' views.
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Not the OP, but "male toxicity" does not imply that men have an exclusivity on toxicity.
If anything, it implicitly suggests the opposite. Otherwise the "male" adjective wouldn't be necessary.
An interesting aspect of the phrase is that there's no oft-used counterpart. "Toxic femininity"?
Some terms are needlessly specific.
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