| TRIGGER WARNING This article or section, or pages it links to, discusses domestic violence and child abuse and may be triggering to survivors. |
Toxic femininity is a term used by Men's rights advocacy activists to construct a False equivalence between Toxic masculinity (a manifestation of Patriarchy that both harms men, and causes men to be violent and aggressive against women and occasionally other men) and patriarchal limitations on women's gender presentation and expression.
There is no such thing as toxic femininity, but Benevolent sexism is a way in which superficially positive beliefs about women harm women and sometimes make it possible for individual women to get away with bad behavior, and Sexism covers the most common ways in which expectations of conventional femininity harm women.
There is no female equivalent of the ways in which Toxic masculinity enables abuse. The concept of "toxic masculinity" exists to highlight the organized, political nature of domestic violence and other forms of violence against women. While abuse by women aimed at adult men exists, it's exceedingly rare and when it isn't actually self-defense being mischaracterized as an abuse, it happens individualistically, not as part of a patriarchal pattern of political violence. Abuse by women aimed at children is much more common, but the roots of that abuse are also in patriarchy, not femininity. Child abuse is a way in which women can actively participate in supporting patriarchal structure, and Internalized sexism means that women, as well as men, will continue to abuse children as long as patriarchy continues.
See also
Further reading
- "Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men" by Lundy Bancroft
