Lovers of language will often speak with equal parts fondness and frustration, at how English is made beautiful by its constantly shifting definitions. Look away, even for a moment, and the whole thing has changed. Did you know the word ‘run’ has 645 different definitions? ‘Set’ has 430. Words fall into favour, some fall out; others reinvented completely, or smashed together in new, and often contrived, formulations. One of the phrases that, like a snake, has been tremendously hard to pin down, is the contentious concept of ‘toxic masculinity’. A meandering phrase, with no agreed definition, used vaguely to blame everything, and anything, on that giant monolithic blob…. ‘Men’. Violent crime? Toxic masculinity. Homophobia? Toxic masculinity. Male suicide? Toxic masculinity. Gender norms? Toxic masculinity. Climate change? Toxic masculinity. Brexit? Toxic masculinity. Beards? Toxic masculinity. Men not recycling? Toxic masculinity. The financial crash of 2007, the election of Donald Trump, knife crime, COVID 19, meat eating; all of them, I have seen, somehow, blamed on ‘toxic masculinity’. Somehow, English for all its vibrancy and charm, is suddenly becoming a broken record. Yes it’s all ‘toxic masculinity’. The thing that is causing knife crime, is also causing men to not recycle, to crash the economy, and make films that are just too damn long! Simple. Disengage brain. Don’t ask any questions. Except, it didn’t start here; a now-useless term slung around by terminally-online brats, to virtue signal and soapbox their way to social media stardom. In fact, it was coined 30 years ago, as part of the well-intentioned and deeply interesting Mythopoetic Men’s Movement, to understand and describe a type of performative masculinity, largely associated with absent fathers. So what happened? How did a term originally used by a small number of thoughtful hippies, become the cudgel of some of the whiniest, and most annoying people you could ever meet? Does the term still hold value, or has the nuance and sentiment of its original purpose been trampled to death? What do you think? - Images Marian Blan, Artem Balashevsky, Spencer Backman

2024-08-19