Mark Hemingway of the Federalist turns a popular left-of-center narrative on its head.
We’ve spent several years now talking about “toxic masculinity,” though I’m not sure what exactly it means. It’s a great example of what Andrew Hofer calls “Trojan terminology” — think “white supremacy,” “settler colonialism,” “anti-racism” etc. These are all phrases where Hofer notes there’s “a larger debate we need to have about the use of neologisms to sneak in all sorts of extra baggage that people disagree about.”
In the case of toxic masculinity, the vast majority of violence has always been committed by men. We can be honest about that and take reasonable steps to address male violence and misogyny. However, the rise of internet culture, and whatever else our woke montagnards are currently banging on about, doesn’t mean a problem inherent to the human condition has suddenly become uniquely “toxic.” By any historical standard, life for women in the West is the best it’s ever been. Not that reality stopped Democrats spending a tens of millions of dollars on ads implying hoards of abusive husbands are threatening their wives if they vote for Kamala Harris.
But by successfully branding men as toxic, no one hesitates anymore before disparaging men, whereas huge swaths of Americans are loathe to criticize feminism or make generalizations about women. Even when we can say that feminism has become, very literally, toxic.
Last week saw the rise of a TikTok trend that went by the moniker of “Make Aqua Tofana Great Again.” For those of you that are not feminist history nerds, Aqua Tofana was a deadly cocktail of arsenic and belladonna that was sold and marketed to women in 17th century Italy, who used it to off hundreds of men that were allegedly abusive or otherwise problematic. …
… Obviously, a lot of people weren’t taking the election results well, but this is something altogether different.
