Toxic Femininity
Photo: Lukasz Dziegel, pexels.com
Throw into the 2018 file of “Things That Happen So Regularly We Hardly Even Notice”: liberal friend uses the phrase “toxic masculinity” on social media to refer to a man abusing his partner or shooting a bunch of strangers or whatever. Conservative friend responds aghast to the idea that “masculinity is toxic” and rushes to the defense of all the great, truly MANLY men she knows who embody masculine qualities. Tired liberal friend explains that the phrase “toxic masculinity” does not mean “being masculine is toxic.” Blah blah blah: at this point we all know our lines.
But my latest go-round on the Merry-Go-Round-of-Gender-Norm-Debates triggered a new thought: Is there such a thing as “toxic femininity”?
If “toxic masculinity” means not “masculine behavior is inherently toxic” but “there is a version of masculine behavior that can be expressed in toxic and damaging ways” — violence, anger, abuse, rape, etc — is there a female corollary? Are there behaviors our society marks as typically “feminine” that can also be harmful, both to the woman in question and to those around her?
If your answer to this is “no,” I can only assume you have never gone to a girls’ school, lived in a girls’ dorm, belonged to a church women’s group, or worked in a largely-female workplace.
Toxic femininity? Let me try a few words out on you.
Catty.
Manipulative.
Gossipy.
Competitive.
Backstabbing.
Bitchy (and not in the good, empowering, “I’m a bad bitch and I own it!” kinda way, but in the “Susan, that cake you brought to the shower was delicious — I never would have guessed you bought it at Costco” kind of way).
Amid all the talk of female empowerment and feminist sisterhood, we also have all these images in our head. The catty coworker with the snide remarks. The judgey girls’ clique in junior high. The church lady who looks down her nose at anyone who doesn’t dress right. The girl who’s your best friend right up until she steals your man. The woman who gets what she wants from the male boss by using her “feminine wiles” to undercut another female employee. The list goes on and on.
Yes, there’s such a thing as toxic femininity. Having lived in the world as a woman for 53 years, I’ve been on the receiving end of other women’s stereotypically feminine bad behavior, and yes, I’ve perpetrated some of it myself.
The thing is, toxic femininity has the exact same root cause as toxic masculinity:
Patriarchy.
Don’t misunderstand me here. I’m NOT saying individual women are not responsible for their own bad behavior, or that women’s bad behavior is men’s fault. I’m talking about a societal system that’s bigger than any individual man or woman: a set of expectations about male and female behavior that’s baked into our culture and into the way we raise and socialize little boys and little girls, just as surely as Susan’s cake was baked at Costco.
The same patriarchal system that tells men that they have to be physically strong and tough to be “manly,” that tells them violence is more acceptable than expressing emotions, also delivers some powerful messages to women:
Your most important value is your physical appearance
Your most important achievement is attracting a man’s attention
Other women are your competition for male attention
Exercising power directly — especially over men — is inappropriate: you must learn to be the “power behind the throne”
Teach generations of women these things, directly and indirectly, for centuries, and what do you get? Competition among women. Women using manipulative, underhanded tactics to control men and other women. Gossip. Back-stabbing. In a word, bitchiness.
Sure, part of the cure is for individual women to resist those messages and behave better (and teach our daughters and other young women to do so). Just as the cure for toxic masculinity is, in part, individual men resisting violence and aggression and teaching others to do so.
But a systemic problem can’t be entirely solved by individual solutions. The problem of toxic femininity comes down to the same thing as toxic masculinity: the patriarchy is bad for everyone.
And that’s why it needs to be dismantled.
