You might have missed it, but last month Charlie Kirk, an American, right wing, Trump loving political pundit decided it would be a good idea to publicly debate groups of students from Oxford and Cambridge on his most controversial hot takes, and then publish the footage on the internet.
Kirk is the founder of Turning Point USA, a nonprofit advocacy group that promotes Christian conservatism in high schools and universities. He advocates for a return to the heterosexual nuclear family, called George Floyd a “scumbag,” and once said that birth control is making “young ladies” “angry and bitter.” You know the type.
I’m not a fan, but Turning Point USA has over 250,000 members and is growing. Kirk has made a name for himself publicly debating American university students on various issues, which is why he thought it would be a good idea to try this in the UK as well.
In my humble opinion, this decision spectacularly backfired, and Kirk got sweetly roasted like the Thanksgiving turkey he is. I learned two things after watching the debate: firstly, Oxbridge students are much, much smarter than I am, and two, ultra conservative mouthpieces such as Kirk, like to try and discredit the concept of “toxic masculinity” by shouting about “toxic femininity” in the hope of pointing out a double standard at work.
I taught gender theory to university students for close to 15 years, so it’s not the first time I’ve heard the phrase, but it did get me thinking, if Maga influencers like Charlie Kirk are now talking about “toxic femininity” just what the hell does it actually mean today? Does it even exist?
As with most things to do with gender politics, the modern meaning shifts depending on whom you are talking to. For example, for someone like Kirk, toxic femininity seems to mean any woman he doesn’t like, which, from where I am sat, seems to be any woman who doesn’t forgo her own career to bear children and read the bible. He also talks about the “hyper-feminist West” which he defines as “speech police, feelings first, emotions over reason, over individualism.”
Kirk uses his definition of toxic, or “hyper femininity” as a bizarre “gotcha moment” in the Oxford debate when he claims that “only one sex gets criticised and called toxic”. I fear Mr Kirk has been letting his feelings get the better of him there because hyper-femininity is not only well documented in the literature but has been studied since the early 1990s. It has a very clear definition and it is every bit as damaging as its brother, toxic masculinity.
I should probably say here that I am not a huge fan of either term for the very simple reason that the existence of toxic masculinity/femininity suggests that there is a “good” counterpart to each. Personally, I find the idea of a “right” or “correct” version of femininity quite uncomfortable. A better preface to both would be “traditional” or “hyper”, and indeed these are the preferred terms used in psychology studies. However, and putting semantics aside, understanding how extreme expressions of traditional gender roles creates a toxic environment for everyone is very important.
In 1984, psychologists Donald L. Mosher and Mark Sirkin developed The Hypermasculinity Inventory to try and measure the machismo personality. They based it on three variables: a callous sexual attitude towards women, the belief that violence is manly, and the belief that danger is exciting. If you want to know how you measure up, you can test yourself here.
Over the years, theorists built on this work, considering other elements such as emotions being perceived as weak. Eventually, this led to the term “toxic masculinity”, but all that really means is traditionally masculine traits being performed to extremes that they cause harm. The crisis in men’s mental health? Toxic masculinity. Three women a week being murdered by a partner or former partner? Toxic masculinity. The rejection of anything perceived as feminine? Toxic masculinity. It isn’t attacking men but rather the limiting set of behaviours that have come to define what being a “real man” is and their social consequences.
The hyper-femininity inventory was developed in 1991 by Sarah K. Murnen and Donn Byrne. They define hyper-femininity, not as “emotions over reason”, but as an “exaggerated adherence to a stereotypic feminine gender role”. In other words, anyone inhabiting and perpetuating behaviours, characteristics, and beliefs that support a patriarchal system by playing the role of the submissive woman. Think Stepford Wife and you’re along the right lines. There are other names for this, such as internalised misogyny or being “male centred”.
The hyper-femininity inventory is also based around three variables: that “relationships with men are of primary importance, physical attractiveness and/or sexuality can be ‘used’ to help secure or preserve a romantic relationship, and preference for traditional patterns of sexual behaviour in men.” So rather than toxic femininity being the widespread adoption of traditionally “feminine” qualities as Mr Kirk assumed, it actually means women who fall in line with the outdated concept of male superiority and do so by turning up the dial on stereotypically feminine qualities.
A virginal woman running away from the monster in a movie, stumbles helplessly, and must be rescued by a big, strong man? Toxic femininity. The mad grandmother who keeps telling you that “no man wants a career woman” and that “all women want babies?” Toxic femininity. The woman who ditches her friends once a man shows her the merest sniff of interest? Toxic femininity.
It’s actually pretty easy to find and identify the blatant examples of toxic femininity. The “trad wife” movement is a good example, pretty much anything the Carrie character from Sex in the City does is another. But, identifying it and guarding against it within yourself is a different thing entirely.
The term toxic masculinity is used far more often than its feminine counterpart, and this may be because the harm it causes is more immediately obvious: male violence, homophobia, Donald Trump are just a few examples.
But women have a great deal to unpick within themselves when it comes to challenging the patriarchy and their role within it. We are all still subject to powerful cultural conditioning that reinforces the traditional gender roles, albeit in subtler ways. Women are still taught that beauty is their greatest attribute. Women are still bombarded with messages that finding a man and having his babies is the most important thing they can do. We are still groomed to be selfless, “feminine” care givers, providing support for everyone but ourselves.
Women continue to struggle with centring their own needs and desires, all of which stems from a culture where women are conditioned to put the wants of others above their own. Toxic femininity can really sneak up on you if you’re not careful and it takes a lot of work to challenge it within yourself.
I used to make understanding and identifying toxic femininity a discussion point when I taught university students, and it always made for a very interesting session. Someone would usually suggest the “Karen” trope of an angry middle aged, white woman was an example of toxic femininity, others would point to examples of sexualised popstars. Both of which I would say are toxic femininity adjacent, but not really examples where someone is drawing on traditional markers of femininity to uphold the patriarchy.
Eventually, we would get into some really insightful discussions where students started to recognise it within themselves: sexual jealousy between friends, slut shaming other women, mocking men for not being “manly” enough, etc.
So, the next time you hear anyone try to make the argument that no one ever talks about “toxic femininity”, you can smugly tell them that this is a well-documented phenomenon and has been studied for the last 30 years. Although I would caution you against having any kind of conversation with someone who says things like that because they are most likely the kind of person who demands you know why there isn’t an International Men’s Day every International Women’s Day. There is, by the way, it’s 19 November.
It’s always worth remembering that discussion around either toxic masculinity or femininity is not about criticising the respective genders, but rather the behaviours we associate with them when performed to an extreme.
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