ALL MASCULINITY IS TOXIC IN TEN EASY STEPS

(1) Masculinity is a set of behaviors, attitudes, language, clothing, comportment, associations, and tools that are associated with and expected of MEN. A pseudo-essence for men.

(2) Femininity is a corresponding and "complementary" set of behaviors, attitudes, language, clothing, comportment, associations, and tools that are associated with and expected of WOMEN. A pseudo-essence for women.

(3) An individual virtue, for example courage, or an individual vice, for example cowardice, is courage or cowardice whether enacted by a MAN, WOMAN, OR OTHER.

(4) Masculinity-femininity are not "simply" natural and not "simply" cultural. They are cultural codes imposed on biological men and women (which exclude and-or demonize the intersexed, LGBT, et al, because they are an abjection of the cultural code. They disrupt the symbolic universe of gendered power.

(5) Masculinity-femininity constitute a system of gender--here defined not expressively or individually, but gender as the organized and systematized domination of men-as-men over women-as-women. A system of power with an attendant division of labor (or vice-versa).

(6) Calling an action, attitude, or behavior "masculine" or "feminine" is participating in that code and reinforcing that power. It is not the action, attitude, or behavior on its own that is "gendered" male or female by the masculine-feminine code; it is the EXISTENCE of masculinity-femininity and its arbitrary divisions of labor-culture-power between men and women (and its marginalization and demonization of sexual "minorities") that has led to the association of (material) violence with "masculinilty" (the pseudo-essence for which violence and other "masculine" phenomena become probative).

(7) There is no "good" masculinity and "bad" masculinity, one benign and one toxic, but standards of common decency, which if applied fairly are applicable to anyone, regardless of sex or sexuality.

(8) The only reason, then, for promoting "non-toxic" masculinity is to preserve the masculine-feminine code.

(9) If gender (defined as above) is a system of unequal power, then the continued division of practices and attitudes into masculine-feminine--even if we are promoting "non-toxic" versions of either--is an attempt to preserve the dipole.

(10) All masculinity is toxic.