Bouncing off the Gillette Ad Thread: What is Toxic Femininity?

Sketcher said:

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Yet women who earn more than enough money for themselves still gravitate towards men that earn at least as much as they do.

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I think that that is even a genetic predisposition. Social hierarchies have existed in life since the time of the common ancestor between humans and crustaceans, and sexual selection by females is more successful by selecting males who have been able to rise higher on the social hierarchy.
We share those traits of sexual selection of traits of male dominance with lobsters. This is much deeper than an arbitrary culture genesis.
Of course, even our social interactions that define culture are genetically defined.

The nature of our sexuality is defined by having evolved male spermatozoa that have specialized in the destruction of the sperm cells of other males in uturo. The physiology includes women being more sexually aroused by the presence of males higher up in the dominance hierarchy, especially at time of maximum fertility in the reproductive cycle.
These studies are all backed by the science. Culture, in the sense of the spiritual culture of the Bible and religions is what delivers us from the hypergamy that is the natural response of female reproduction, into a system where intelligent choice and morality have been defined transcending nature to a system where fathers and mothers are expected to develop permanent bonds between their mate and their offspring.
Hypergamy nevertheless is the natural condition of the human female, much like 'spreading the seed' far and wide is the natural condition of human male sexuality.

It is only from the point of view of patriarchy that either are considered toxic. Culture saves us, even as it oppresses us from fully expressing the natural tendencies of sexual creatures that have existed since the times before humans even existed.

Sketcher said:

And part of why we do that is in response to our nature. If you're going to talk about norms, you have to examine why those norms evolved in the first place, and nature will unavoidably be a part of that.

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As long as that doesn't devolve to, "Because biology, so we can't change it."

Sketcher said:

I did edit it out, and I apologize for the profanity. I only posted it because I thought you were a big enough person to filter through the profanity and see the point that he was making. The women he brought up were high earners, but none of what he said suggested a fear that their earning potential was more fragile. And these women he mentioned mostly married high-earning men anyway. Whether you think that's sexist or not is immaterial to the point.

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Personally I'm not very bothered by profanity, but if it had been reported, you would likely have found yourself having a formal chat with one of us mods. I thought it was kinder to give you the chance to edit it first.

He said a lot of sexist stuff. I can't remember it all now. But my point is, if you're in a society where all the cultural norms and scripts around how women structure their lives still assume that the woman's earning capacity is fragile, we'll tend to follow those norms and scripts even if we're the outlier to whom they don't apply. And I think that's still very much the case.

Sketcher said:

This seems to suggest a narrow definition of "power." There are men that manipulate, too. A particularly sick subset of these men manipulate children who have zero power over them, and take advantage of them. Some of these men are in positions of power and high respect in their communities, so manipulation doesn't indicate a lack of power at all. It's exercising a certain kind of power that is very real.

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Yes, I take your point.

But - just like the woman who is physically aggressive doesn't invalidate the concept of toxic masculinity - I think the manipulative man in a position of power doesn't invalidate what I'm proposing as one dimension of toxic femininity; the tendency to manipulate others into doing what we want by indirect means. I'm proposing that that tendency developed in a time when women had little power, and all the stereotypes of women being winsome, charming and so forth to get their way developed (or, on a slightly darker level, women as temptress, the archetypal Eve, all of that stuff, too).

Paidiske said:

As long as that doesn't devolve to, "Because biology, so we can't change it."

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There comes a certain point where you hit that wall, though.

Paidiske said:

Personally I'm not very bothered by profanity, but if it had been reported, you would likely have found yourself having a formal chat with one of us mods. I thought it was kinder to give you the chance to edit it first.

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And I appreciate that, thank you.

Paidiske said:

He said a lot of sexist stuff. I can't remember it all now. But my point is, if you're in a society where all the cultural norms and scripts around how women structure their lives still assume that the woman's earning capacity is fragile, we'll tend to follow those norms and scripts even if we're the outlier to whom they don't apply. And I think that's still very much the case.

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But the outliers he mentioned were very intense women. I find it very hard to believe that women who either ignored or fought through the scripts until their 30's just decided to stop doing that and submit to the fear that their financial position was fragile. I find his explanation that they decided they didn't need to work 80 hour weeks anymore because they have husbands that bring in plenty of money to be more believable.

Paidiske said:

Yes, I take your point.

But - just like the woman who is physically aggressive doesn't invalidate the concept of toxic masculinity - I think the manipulative man in a position of power doesn't invalidate what I'm proposing as one dimension of toxic femininity; the tendency to manipulate others into doing what we want by indirect means. I'm proposing that that tendency developed in a time when women had little power, and all the stereotypes of women being winsome, charming and so forth to get their way developed (or, on a slightly darker level, women as temptress, the archetypal Eve, all of that stuff, too).

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I think the difference here is the "power" narrative. I think a discussion of toxic femininity is wrongly limited when we confine it to the narrative of relative powerlessness. The people you need to watch out for aren't going to strike unless they're confident in the chosen area of their power to strike. The female examples you brought could turn toxic, but the ones intelligent men are wary of won't be confined to that.

Sketcher said:

There comes a certain point where you hit that wall, though.

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Do you think we're anywhere near that? I don't think so. And I really, really hope not.

Sketcher said:

But the outliers he mentioned were very intense women. I find it very hard to believe that women who either ignored or fought through the scripts until their 30's just decided to stop doing that and submit to the fear that their financial position was fragile. I find his explanation that they decided they didn't need to work 80 hour weeks anymore because they have husbands that bring in plenty of money to be more believable.

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Sure; that's believable. Completely. But I thought the point you were trying to make was, even when women have great earning potential, they still "marry up." And I'm saying yes, they do, because the script they've been given for what to look for in a husband, in a million different ways since they were too young to remember, and well before they were partners of law firms or the like, is that "girls should marry up." That unconscious and unexamined belief will shape their choices even though they might be the particular girls who really, really don't need to.

So, you know, to unpick that we have to go right back to fairy tales and Cinderella and all those narratives which give us our script before we're even old enough to realise that's what they're doing. To start with!

Sketcher said:

I think the difference here is the "power" narrative. I think a discussion of toxic femininity is wrongly limited when we confine it to the narrative of relative powerlessness. The people you need to watch out for aren't going to strike unless they're confident in the chosen area of their power to strike. The female examples you brought could turn toxic, but the ones intelligent men are wary of won't be confined to that.

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Well, that toxic femininity is the toxicity of relative powerlessness mishandled is my pet thesis, and I think it makes a lot of sense. If you can find examples of toxic femininity which meet the two criteria of being damaging behaviour driven by ideals and narratives of what it is to be a woman, I'll be all ears.

Paidiske said:

Do you think we're anywhere near that? I don't think so. And I really, really hope not.

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There's still some wiggle room, I couldn't tell you how much.

Paidiske said:

Sure; that's believable. Completely. But I thought the point you were trying to make was, even when women have great earning potential, they still "marry up." And I'm saying yes, they do, because the script they've been given for what to look for in a husband, in a million different ways since they were too young to remember, and well before they were partners of law firms or the like, is that "girls should marry up." That unconscious and unexamined belief will shape their choices even though they might be the particular girls who really, really don't need to.

So, you know, to unpick that we have to go right back to fairy tales and Cinderella and all those narratives which give us our script before we're even old enough to realise that's what they're doing. To start with!

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Here's where I disagree with that: High-paying jobs are tough. You have to be a tough person to earn them and keep them. I believe that women who earn those positions have defied that script from at least their teenage years all the way until they decide to retire. In the midst of this, those that married chose their husbands. I don't believe they were confined by the very scripts they were defying when they did so. I believe the preference is much more fundamental:

When they were growing up, they were introduced to a standard of living. That is what is "normally enough" to them. Having less than that makes them uncomfortable. So they will choose a husband who can provide that for them.

Paidiske said:

Well, that toxic femininity is the toxicity of relative powerlessness mishandled is my pet thesis, and I think it makes a lot of sense. If you can find examples of toxic femininity which meet the two criteria of being damaging behaviour driven by ideals and narratives of what it is to be a woman, I'll be all ears.

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Here's one: Teenager sentenced to jail for lying about rape claims

Where this breaks the "power" narrative is she was the one choosing her partners and potential partners. She had the power of choice, and the power of an institution that was willing to take her lies at face value, and to leverage the victim card to explain away the bad decision she made at that party to someone else. Powerlessness didn't make her do that. The only power she lacked was the power to forcibly change the mind of the other guy she had an eye on, which is not power that anyone has the right to.

Sketcher said:

Here's where I disagree with that: High-paying jobs are tough. You have to be a tough person to earn them and keep them. I believe that women who earn those positions have defied that script from at least their teenage years all the way until they decide to retire. In the midst of this, those that married chose their husbands. I don't believe they were confined by the very scripts they were defying when they did so. I believe the preference is much more fundamental:

When they were growing up, they were introduced to a standard of living. That is what is "normally enough" to them. Having less than that makes them uncomfortable. So they will choose a husband who can provide that for them.

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I love to watch a good mind at work.

The script is everything. Programming begins at a young age. You take the clay and mold it for the path you have in mind. The woman who leans in isn't fortunate. She's been groomed for that place all along. Though it may look like education and experiences are the culprit. They rarely are.

Condoleeza Rice is an excellent example of that philosophy for the workplace. Alter your handling and impressions and you'll breed a socialite instead. It's wholly mental.

The standard of living may be as you stated in situations of financial comfort or deeply implied for those with less. In either case there is usually a line which directly conveys acceptable alignments (that would adhere to the standard and mindset of the individual) and transgressions that should never be made (and may earn you a one way ticket out of daddy's will).

None of this is chosen willy nilly. It's directly related to the founder's creed (or the one someone is establishing) and the individual's position within that plan. It usually boils down to wealth, power or position.

The process is a lot like going to McDonald's. You're getting the same patty. The preparation and packaging differ according to the flavors you find most appealing. But underneath it's the same patty nonetheless.

Sketcher said:

Here's where I disagree with that: High-paying jobs are tough. You have to be a tough person to earn them and keep them. I believe that women who earn those positions have defied that script from at least their teenage years all the way until they decide to retire. In the midst of this, those that married chose their husbands. I don't believe they were confined by the very scripts they were defying when they did so. I believe the preference is much more fundamental:

When they were growing up, they were introduced to a standard of living. That is what is "normally enough" to them. Having less than that makes them uncomfortable. So they will choose a husband who can provide that for them.

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Sure, you have to be tough, and you have to be able to perform in particular ways in a professional context. That doesn't mean you're not running - for want of a better word - more old-fashioned scripts in other parts of your lives.

If this weren't true (that we absorb and run these scripts unconsciously and even to our own detriment) therapists would have a heck of a lot less work to do.

And I agree, they're choosing husbands who can provide a standard of living. They're doing that despite not needing those husbands to provide that standard of living. Which is why I'm suggesting they're running off unconscious and unexamined scripts.

Sketcher said:

Here's one: Teenager sentenced to jail for lying about rape claims

Where this breaks the "power" narrative is she was the one choosing her partners and potential partners. She had the power of choice, and the power of an institution that was willing to take her lies at face value, and to leverage the victim card to explain away the bad decision she made at that party to someone else. Powerlessness didn't make her do that. The only power she lacked was the power to forcibly change the mind of the other guy she had an eye on, which is not power that anyone has the right to.

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I agree that that's toxic femininity; behaviour in which a woman lies to manipulate a man to get what she wants. I disagree with you that it doesn't fit my thesis, though. It's not that she was wrongly powerless in this situation, but that the pattern of behaviour - the narrative that says "this is what women do, we lie to get what we want from men" - was established in a situation of powerlessness, and has now been perpetuated in a situation where there's no possible ethical justification for it.

Paidiske said:

And I agree, they're choosing husbands who can provide a standard of living. They're doing that despite not needing those husbands to provide that standard of living. Which is why I'm suggesting they're running off unconscious and unexamined scripts.

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It is never unconscious. It's been deeply embedded in her psyche and is part of her identity. It isn't solely the money. That's valued for its comfort. But position matters more and its loss is grievous to those who've endured it. The selection of a partner is many layered. His resources provide insurance against reductions in wealth and loss of position too.

Picture an octopus. The script is its head. That's her identity. The tentacles are intentional decisions that reinforce the script and guarantee its continuance. That's a principle of greatness, the 1% and all the rest. It's the same scheme.

Hmm.... my experience in pastoral work would suggest that a very great deal of this is unconscious. And that's part of why it's so potent, because it's invisible and unacknowledged, but very very real.

Good conditioning always seems natural. Parents do it all the time. Some are more adept than others but it's behavior modification nonetheless.

In Australia one women is killed every week by her man.
When that stops I will discuss toxic femininity, but not a second before.

Would neoMarxist feminism be an example of toxic femininity, or toxic masculinity?

NothingIsImpossible said:

Ironically there is a remade version of the ad about women. Its really good. It starts out with the male version of the ad but switches to the female version:

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Anyone who uses Margaret Thatcher as a case against Feminism is probably does not know what they are talking about. Also the video claimed women killed more children. That would only be true if you included the abortion statistic (where women commit 100% of all child homicides) which it did not. In practice men commit 90% of murders including a small majority of child homicides. But I liked the video in that it brought out the equality of sin which in all fairness must accompany any discussion of equality of opportunity even if its examples were often the wrong ones.

RDKirk said:

I think that's anti-femininity, and I'd argue anti-femininity is a driving factor in the feminist movement, especially post-Second Wave.

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Evil is a primary factor driving modern extremist feminism. We all agree in equality of opportunity these days. But the new Feminism is something much darker. Most British women are reluctant to label themselves feminists because they do not want to be perceived as "B$£%^". (cannot use the word here)

Only 7 per cent of Britons consider themselves feminists

The genders were created complementary and their differences should work together but identity politics and extremist feminist ideologies are about differentiation and assertion. They break marriages, kill children, deny the value of shared or male traditions and assert new idols in the place of God. The claimed narrative of liberation no longer works in reality so they have narrated new mythologies of oppression involving language and sexuality which are increasingly delusional and pagan in content. But bossy women talking freedom is a sort of oxymoronic image really.

RDKirk said:

I think that's anti-femininity, and I'd argue anti-femininity is a driving factor in the feminist movement, especially post-Second Wave.

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This is something I am working through.
Going from the basic understanding of functional biological difference between men and women in procreation and raising the next generation as the scientific basis for gender expressions, there is something definitely maladaptive about destroying life that the womb itself has deemed potentially vital. (Most embryos are aborted by the womb itself after all). Destroying one's young is seen in life such as spiders, but it is not the mammalian feature that might be expected of most vital healthy female humans. Nuturance of procreated life is the fundamental basis of femininity definitely.
The toxicity here cannot be regarded in terms of the excess of femininity, but in transference of that fundamental feminine attribute of caring and nurturance to the political goal of nurturing women. That is the motivation for feminist support for abortion. It is from the point of view of women being oppressed by their embryos, and all that nuturance of embryos entails, including being bonded to fathers.
The feminism nurturance is still there, but it has been transferred from the child to the woman having the child, and protecting her from the burden of procreating Life, in the name of mercy.

This feminist war against the 'tyranny' of biology is of course nihilism, and aptly described as evil. This is all part of a war against procreation made possible by the Pill, which Jordan Peterson has described as probably the bigger nuclear weapon discovered in the twentieth century.

If masculine values grow from protection of the basic family unit of mother and child, seeking the truth to make one's action toward that in the world effective, and promoting justice to create a world where such protection is more possible, feminine values revolve around compassion and mercy and unconditional love that gives the vulnerable child the emotional capacity necessary to deal with the world as it is, in the face of the evil that the world presents us to.
Abortion is a toxicity arising out of that mercy, I think, and is therefore ultimately toxic femininity. If it is not about truth, because the truth is fetuses are fully human. It is an evolutionary dead end as well.
It about mercy for the profound suffering that 'Eve' suffers as the mother of all humanity, and it is a suffering that God the Creator knows only too well as he emphathizes with his creation too and the suffering that he brings into the world every time he and Eve bring Life into the world.

SolomonVII said:

Would neoMarxist feminism be an example of toxic femininity, or toxic masculinity?

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Neither, I think. Feminism would be antithetical to toxic femininity, but also to toxic masculinity.

Your argument about abortion is well thought through. I am reluctant to get into it too deeply because I don't really want to sidetrack the whole discussion onto abortion (which I see as a bit of a side issue to this topic).

My only comment would be that abortion is one area where questions of poverty and economic support really do need to be taken into account. I have cared for many women both before an abortion, while they were considering it (or, often, being coerced into it); and afterwards. My observation is that I have met very, very few who truly wanted an abortion; but I have met many who very honestly believed that they would be unable to support a child. Remove that fear and I suspect the abortion rate would drop sharply.

SolomonVII said:

Would neoMarxist feminism be an example of toxic femininity, or toxic masculinity?

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Marxism has its problems, but its aims are to put an end to the harms done by capitalism; so in its aims it's not really a toxic anything - quite the opposite. I suppose if you were to be as negative as possible you could say that Marxism is a poor solution to the problem, in which case it is probably as nonspecifically toxic as is capitalism.

NeoMarxism is just a slightly improved form of Marxism, so see above but a bit better.

Feminism isn't toxic at all. As Salman Rushdie said: When it comes to feminism, you have two choices.

NeoMarxist feminism is using the best Marxist means to achieve feminist aims. On balance I'd say that it is a lot less toxic than most other politico-economic theories, and probably a bit more balanced - gender wise - than any of them.

I liken to being a Marxist and a Christian, or a Marxist and a believer in women's rights, to following God and the Devil as if they were the same.

By their fruits ye shall know them. If after the twentieth century genocides of Marxism, one is still clueless of the poison of that tree, it to me is like engaging with someone from Stormfront. My stomach literally turns.
Marxism is as ruinous to economies and family values and life itself as any ideology that has sprung from the bellies of the Leviathan or flowed out from the sewers of hell.

greenguzzi said:

In Australia one women is killed every week by her man.
When that stops I will discuss toxic femininity, but not a second before.

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That is actually low number (52 women yearly) in a population of around 25 million people

One is one too many, though.