One Toxic Man: Sen. Josh Hawley Attacks “Toxic Masculinity”

From critical race theory to toxic masculinity, Hawley leads the right wing to hijack the idea of toxic masculinity. Exploiting the term’s weakness, we now have a new, unwanted debate. It is a smokescreen to stop the change we need.

Here’s the video showing the beginning: https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2021/11/01/josh-hawley-toxic-masculinity-mh-orig.cnn

The right wing has a new bogeyman: toxic masculinity. They are doing to it what they did to critical race theory. Rather than engage these ideas on their own terms, they redefine the term as something easy to hate. What was a theory for asking deeper questions and raising more awareness, they change into a symbol for something related but ineffable. Then, they raise it up as an indicator of a program or movement that is easy to deplore and which raises outrage. “Men and boys are not toxic!” they say, as if that’s what was meant in the first place.

It’s not what was meant — at all.

Although “toxic masculinity” is susceptible to being misunderstood this way, it was never meant to indicate that boys and men are toxic. The term refers to toxic behaviors by men…