It seems their concern is just to spread their genes. MachoĪs one example, here in the Philippines, there is a mentality among some men (perhaps childish men) that if you have many children born from different mothers, you are some kind of a “real” man. Usually, these notions are very dominating and oppressive to women just as much as how it is to men. So the question here is: how should we deal and really address these ridiculous yet destructive traits? For this matter, there will be many challenges since in our current society, there are still many harmful ideas and doctrines (through the media, schools, and religion for example) circulating around as a wrong example for many to follow. It means that men are really capable of being that kind of stupid. But murders, rapes, plunder yes all these have been committed mostly by men, real evil or just ignorant submissive men among many generations in history. Don’t get me wrong, there are many bad and abusive women too. Through history, men, unfortunately, have been at war with each other for many different reasons. But now given that through our brain we have the capacity to contemplate with our feelings and conscience as we have evolved to be intelligent mentally and emotionally, on our deeds and even thoughts, how can we change this counterproductive nature? The point is, yes it’s possible that violence and aggression is an integral part of our biological functioning and evolution. It can also be cocks or spiders fighting each other or snakes killing its prey. It can also be an angry tidal wave devouring parts of the earth indiscriminately. It can also somehow be likened to entropy, or just the typhoon causing havoc, for example. Violence and aggression can also be seen in the “hunter and prey” relationship of some animals. So maybe humans and animals really compete with each other both in healthy and unhealthy ways. You can see it in other species, for example, when they play with each other such as puppies, goats, etc. Since ages, men and boys compete with each other much like other species. So for example, there is a common trait of aggression among many men and it has been the nature since history. And that common feature can sometimes also be called masculinity. It is visible and obvious that men have many things in common just like women.
Perhaps, these are the things that they really try to mean when they say toxic masculinity.
So for this, we’ll instead talk about a few specific problems that we can observe. Does it really exist? We can’t totally say yes or say no. No matter what, perhaps we cannot really come up with a concrete definition of this term. Generally, people don’t acknowledge it openly but however, we can’t deny the validity of some issues and concerns they are trying to say here. You can hear many individuals and personalities talking about it, demanding for this thing to be stopped or reformed. What is toxic masculinity? How does it sound to you? This is a vague term yet it has been around the gender political lexicon for quite a long time now.