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Toxic Femininity vs. Toxic Masculinity
Malcolm and Simone have a thought-provoking discussion contrasting toxic masculinity and toxic femininity. Malcolm argues that toxic femininity is actually more dangerous, as feminine mindsets optimize for safety over truth. He explains how female dominance in bureaucracies and power structures leads to collectivist thinking that coerces adherence to cultural norms over facts. They also touch on the pros and cons of masculine vs feminine psychologies, gender differences in locus of control, and whether empowering women or stagnant institutions drive the feminization of society.
Malcolm: [00:00:00] Women, historically speaking and, and weak men, they were rewarded for relating to truth. Where the things that are true are the things that are least likely to get me killed for believing. Mm-hmm. , the things that I believe are true are the most normative things within our culture and the things that will upset the minimum number of other people.
Malcolm: This is because women are physically much weaker than men and, and there is a, a set of men who just adopt a mindset like this as well, and that segment is growing due to exogenous chemicals like
Malcolm: such as endocrine disruptors which are making many males think more like females.
Simone: I mean, it could be argued that the feminization of society is a product of female empowerment.
Simone: Do you think it's that, or do you think it's that the organizations are the pathways
Malcolm: to power now? If we didn't have the women's rights movement, society would become more feminine as it developed these large [00:01:00] bureaucracies.
Would you like to know more?
Simone: Hello, Malcolm.
Malcolm: Hello, Simone. My beautiful wife.
Simone: So today let's talk about toxic masculinity and femininity because it is something that comes up, especially I hear people talk more about toxic masculinity than femininity, but I think we should talk about both.
Simone: What is your understanding? Of toxic masculinity, what does it mean to you? Cause what it means to me is, is like when people talk about toxic masculinity, it's really more that they're just shitting on masculinity. Like they're not
Malcolm: You're right. I think culturally, when people talk about toxic masculinity today, they're just like, Oh, this is a masculine thing.
Malcolm: I don't like it.
Simone: Yeah or it's, it's, it's terrible that like men don't cry enough, that they don't feel safe crying and that's toxic. Men
Malcolm: shouldn't feel safe crying. They're not being a safe provider to most of the parents. They're not giving them most of what they, they promised to give them,
Simone: yeah. So I think that's, that's one picture of it. Well, what else is [00:02:00] toxic masculinity that men need to be dominant, that men are, that men should be allowed to be aggressive. And I think that what's really interesting is I, I see personally toxic masculinity the same way that I see mental health problems or like a mental health disorder which is a perspective actually that you gave me when you were writing one of.
Simone: One of the books that, that we've collectively wrote really that you wrote, that I edited. But you, you explained to me and our readers that really the DSM, which is the primary body establishing what is a mental disorder is more a reflection of societal norms. Then a reflection of what is actually healthy or unhealthy.
Simone: This
Malcolm: is really important to know. So if you look at the DSM, which is a standard diagnostic manual, if you were to look at it in the seventies being gay wou
Published on 2 years, 3 months ago