Morale of the story: destroying all of mankind would make Earth a better place. Temporarely anyway. It'd be only a matter of time for another species to walk in our footsteps of global self-destruction.
Morale of the story: destroying all of mankind would make Earth a better place. Temporarely anyway. It'd be only a matter of time for another species to walk in our footsteps of global self-destruction.
I'll bet it'd be the goddamned porpoises. I never did trust those bastards!
Masculinity is absolutely not toxic. Being a man or being masculine does not make you a worse person, or less pleasant to be around, or more selfish, or anything like that.
Toxic personalities are not related to one's sex, nor are they related to masculinity or femininity. The entire "toxic masculinity" concept is based on an extremely narrow and highly specific stereotype of men--the stereotype that selfishness and aggression are inherently and exclusively masculine things. They are not.
The men of my family by and large have unusually high levels of testosterone, and it doesn't make them any less sweet and kind and gentle. My cousin Joshua is a burly, bearded he-man woodsman, and he's one of the sweetest people I know.
Unless we redefine masculinity so that only toxic elements are deemed masculine, this is just a sexist stereotype. The fact that the phrase shows up in academia does not make it any less of a stereotype.
Maybe......but these numbers are pretty damning to that argument. Males commit:
98.9% of forcible rape 89.5% of homicides 87.9% of robberies 85% of burglaries 83% of arsons 81.7% of vandalism 81.5% of auto-theft 79.7% of crimes against their own family/children 77.8% of aggravated assault 58.7% of fraud 57.3% of larceny 51.3% of embezzlement
Out of ALL those categories of major crimes, only a SINGLE one is even remotely close to being even between the sexes. Most of them are well over 80-20. Seems like a problem to me.
Answer: testosterone. Solution????
I don't have a solution nor am I proposing one. I'm just saying that when about 80% of all meaningful crime is committed by one sex, the idea that it would be viewed as more "toxic" doesn't seem all that far-fetched to me.
Masculinity is absolutely not toxic. Being a man or being masculine does not make you a worse person, or less pleasant to be around, or more selfish, or anything like that.
Toxic personalities are not related to one's sex, nor are they related to masculinity or femininity. The entire "toxic masculinity" concept is based on an extremely narrow and highly specific stereotype of men--the stereotype that selfishness and aggression are inherently and exclusively masculine things. They are not.
The men of my family by and large have unusually high levels of testosterone, and it doesn't make them any less sweet and kind and gentle. My cousin Joshua is a burly, bearded he-man woodsman, and he's one of the sweetest people I know.
Unless we redefine masculinity so that only toxic elements are deemed masculine, this is just a sexist stereotype. The fact that the phrase shows up in academia does not make it any less of a stereotype.
Maybe......but these numbers are pretty damning to that argument. Males commit:
98.9% of forcible rape 89.5% of homicides 87.9% of robberies 85% of burglaries 83% of arsons 81.7% of vandalism 81.5% of auto-theft 79.7% of crimes against their own family/children 77.8% of aggravated assault 58.7% of fraud 57.3% of larceny 51.3% of embezzlement
Out of ALL those categories of major crimes, only a SINGLE one is even remotely close to being even between the sexes. Most of them are well over 80-20. Seems like a problem to me.
Answer: testosterone. Solution????
I don't have a solution nor am I proposing one. I'm just saying that when about 80% of all meaningful crime is committed by one sex, the idea that it would be viewed as more "toxic" doesn't seem all that far-fetched to me.
The solution does seem far-fetched though. What is your solution to a biological drive?
Masculinity is absolutely not toxic. Being a man or being masculine does not make you a worse person, or less pleasant to be around, or more selfish, or anything like that.
Toxic personalities are not related to one's sex, nor are they related to masculinity or femininity. The entire "toxic masculinity" concept is based on an extremely narrow and highly specific stereotype of men--the stereotype that selfishness and aggression are inherently and exclusively masculine things. They are not.
The men of my family by and large have unusually high levels of testosterone, and it doesn't make them any less sweet and kind and gentle. My cousin Joshua is a burly, bearded he-man woodsman, and he's one of the sweetest people I know.
Unless we redefine masculinity so that only toxic elements are deemed masculine, this is just a sexist stereotype. The fact that the phrase shows up in academia does not make it any less of a stereotype.
Maybe......but these numbers are pretty damning to that argument. Males commit:
98.9% of forcible rape 89.5% of homicides 87.9% of robberies 85% of burglaries 83% of arsons 81.7% of vandalism 81.5% of auto-theft 79.7% of crimes against their own family/children 77.8% of aggravated assault 58.7% of fraud 57.3% of larceny 51.3% of embezzlement
Out of ALL those categories of major crimes, only a SINGLE one is even remotely close to being even between the sexes. Most of them are well over 80-20. Seems like a problem to me.
Answer: testosterone. Solution????
I don't have a solution nor am I proposing one. I'm just saying that when about 80% of all meaningful crime is committed by one sex, the idea that it would be viewed as more "toxic" doesn't seem all that far-fetched to me.
The solution does seem far-fetched though. What is your solution to a biological drive?
The synonyms for the word "toxic" are poisonous, virulent, noxious, deadly, dangerous, harmful, injurious, and pernicious. If we are going to concede that testosterone, which is produced by orders of magnitude more in men than women, is the central cause of aggressive and even criminal behavior, aren't we then admitting that in in fact males ARE more toxic than females by default??
The solution does seem far-fetched though. What is your solution to a biological drive?
Gene manipulation, artificial wombs and anything else biopunk might just do the trick. The technology of creating bimaternal babies is already there after all.
Masculinity is absolutely not toxic. Being a man or being masculine does not make you a worse person, or less pleasant to be around, or more selfish, or anything like that.
Toxic personalities are not related to one's sex, nor are they related to masculinity or femininity. The entire "toxic masculinity" concept is based on an extremely narrow and highly specific stereotype of men--the stereotype that selfishness and aggression are inherently and exclusively masculine things. They are not.
The men of my family by and large have unusually high levels of testosterone, and it doesn't make them any less sweet and kind and gentle. My cousin Joshua is a burly, bearded he-man woodsman, and he's one of the sweetest people I know.
Unless we redefine masculinity so that only toxic elements are deemed masculine, this is just a sexist stereotype. The fact that the phrase shows up in academia does not make it any less of a stereotype.
Maybe......but these numbers are pretty damning to that argument. Males commit:
98.9% of forcible rape 89.5% of homicides 87.9% of robberies 85% of burglaries 83% of arsons 81.7% of vandalism 81.5% of auto-theft 79.7% of crimes against their own family/children 77.8% of aggravated assault 58.7% of fraud 57.3% of larceny 51.3% of embezzlement
Out of ALL those categories of major crimes, only a SINGLE one is even remotely close to being even between the sexes. Most of them are well over 80-20. Seems like a problem to me.
Answer: testosterone. Solution????
I don't have a solution nor am I proposing one. I'm just saying that when about 80% of all meaningful crime is committed by one sex, the idea that it would be viewed as more "toxic" doesn't seem all that far-fetched to me.
The solution does seem far-fetched though. What is your solution to a biological drive?
The synonyms for the word "toxic" are poisonous, virulent, noxious, deadly, dangerous, harmful, injurious, and pernicious. If we are going to concede that testosterone, which is produced by orders of magnitude more in men than women, is the central cause of aggressive and even criminal behavior, aren't we then admitting that in in fact males ARE more toxic than females by default??
Maybe so, you still haven't presented anything resembling a solution though.
The solution does seem far-fetched though. What is your solution to a biological drive?
Gene manipulation, artificial wombs and anything else biopunk might just do the trick. The technology of creating bimaternal babies is already there after all.
Ethics? What's that? Can you eat it?
So the solution is to take males out of the equation? I'm sure nature had no intention of including a y chromosome. Big mistake on her part...
Masculinity is absolutely not toxic. Being a man or being masculine does not make you a worse person, or less pleasant to be around, or more selfish, or anything like that.
Toxic personalities are not related to one's sex, nor are they related to masculinity or femininity. The entire "toxic masculinity" concept is based on an extremely narrow and highly specific stereotype of men--the stereotype that selfishness and aggression are inherently and exclusively masculine things. They are not.
The men of my family by and large have unusually high levels of testosterone, and it doesn't make them any less sweet and kind and gentle. My cousin Joshua is a burly, bearded he-man woodsman, and he's one of the sweetest people I know.
Unless we redefine masculinity so that only toxic elements are deemed masculine, this is just a sexist stereotype. The fact that the phrase shows up in academia does not make it any less of a stereotype.
Maybe......but these numbers are pretty damning to that argument. Males commit:
98.9% of forcible rape 89.5% of homicides 87.9% of robberies 85% of burglaries 83% of arsons 81.7% of vandalism 81.5% of auto-theft 79.7% of crimes against their own family/children 77.8% of aggravated assault 58.7% of fraud 57.3% of larceny 51.3% of embezzlement
Out of ALL those categories of major crimes, only a SINGLE one is even remotely close to being even between the sexes. Most of them are well over 80-20. Seems like a problem to me.
Answer: testosterone. Solution????
I don't have a solution nor am I proposing one. I'm just saying that when about 80% of all meaningful crime is committed by one sex, the idea that it would be viewed as more "toxic" doesn't seem all that far-fetched to me.
The solution does seem far-fetched though. What is your solution to a biological drive?
The synonyms for the word "toxic" are poisonous, virulent, noxious, deadly, dangerous, harmful, injurious, and pernicious. If we are going to concede that testosterone, which is produced by orders of magnitude more in men than women, is the central cause of aggressive and even criminal behavior, aren't we then admitting that in in fact males ARE more toxic than females by default??
I think human males are more toxic by nature's design yes. Hormones are direct evidence for this. By all means let's redesign nature, just don't be fucking surprised when we go extinct. Humans have such a good track record when we meddle in nature's designs...
Masculinity is absolutely not toxic. Being a man or being masculine does not make you a worse person, or less pleasant to be around, or more selfish, or anything like that.
Toxic personalities are not related to one's sex, nor are they related to masculinity or femininity. The entire "toxic masculinity" concept is based on an extremely narrow and highly specific stereotype of men--the stereotype that selfishness and aggression are inherently and exclusively masculine things. They are not.
The men of my family by and large have unusually high levels of testosterone, and it doesn't make them any less sweet and kind and gentle. My cousin Joshua is a burly, bearded he-man woodsman, and he's one of the sweetest people I know.
Unless we redefine masculinity so that only toxic elements are deemed masculine, this is just a sexist stereotype. The fact that the phrase shows up in academia does not make it any less of a stereotype.
Maybe......but these numbers are pretty damning to that argument. Males commit:
98.9% of forcible rape 89.5% of homicides 87.9% of robberies 85% of burglaries 83% of arsons 81.7% of vandalism 81.5% of auto-theft 79.7% of crimes against their own family/children 77.8% of aggravated assault 58.7% of fraud 57.3% of larceny 51.3% of embezzlement
Out of ALL those categories of major crimes, only a SINGLE one is even remotely close to being even between the sexes. Most of them are well over 80-20. Seems like a problem to me.
Answer: testosterone. Solution????
I don't have a solution nor am I proposing one. I'm just saying that when about 80% of all meaningful crime is committed by one sex, the idea that it would be viewed as more "toxic" doesn't seem all that far-fetched to me.
The solution does seem far-fetched though. What is your solution to a biological drive?
The synonyms for the word "toxic" are poisonous, virulent, noxious, deadly, dangerous, harmful, injurious, and pernicious. If we are going to concede that testosterone, which is produced by orders of magnitude more in men than women, is the central cause of aggressive and even criminal behavior, aren't we then admitting that in in fact males ARE more toxic than females by default??
I think human males are more toxic by nature's design yes. Hormones are direct evidence for this. By all means let's redesign nature, just don't be fucking surprised when we go extinct. Humans have such a good track record when we meddle in nature's designs...
I'm just saying from a biological standpoint, the term "toxic masculinity" doesn't seem out of bounds. Certainly not if the standard is criminal behavior. I wasn't even looking to make this argument, but your comments about testosterone being the culprit led me right into it.
Masculinity is absolutely not toxic. Being a man or being masculine does not make you a worse person, or less pleasant to be around, or more selfish, or anything like that.
Toxic personalities are not related to one's sex, nor are they related to masculinity or femininity. The entire "toxic masculinity" concept is based on an extremely narrow and highly specific stereotype of men--the stereotype that selfishness and aggression are inherently and exclusively masculine things. They are not.
The men of my family by and large have unusually high levels of testosterone, and it doesn't make them any less sweet and kind and gentle. My cousin Joshua is a burly, bearded he-man woodsman, and he's one of the sweetest people I know.
Unless we redefine masculinity so that only toxic elements are deemed masculine, this is just a sexist stereotype. The fact that the phrase shows up in academia does not make it any less of a stereotype.
Maybe......but these numbers are pretty damning to that argument. Males commit:
98.9% of forcible rape 89.5% of homicides 87.9% of robberies 85% of burglaries 83% of arsons 81.7% of vandalism 81.5% of auto-theft 79.7% of crimes against their own family/children 77.8% of aggravated assault 58.7% of fraud 57.3% of larceny 51.3% of embezzlement
Out of ALL those categories of major crimes, only a SINGLE one is even remotely close to being even between the sexes. Most of them are well over 80-20. Seems like a problem to me.
Answer: testosterone. Solution????
I don't have a solution nor am I proposing one. I'm just saying that when about 80% of all meaningful crime is committed by one sex, the idea that it would be viewed as more "toxic" doesn't seem all that far-fetched to me.
The solution does seem far-fetched though. What is your solution to a biological drive?
The synonyms for the word "toxic" are poisonous, virulent, noxious, deadly, dangerous, harmful, injurious, and pernicious. If we are going to concede that testosterone, which is produced by orders of magnitude more in men than women, is the central cause of aggressive and even criminal behavior, aren't we then admitting that in in fact males ARE more toxic than females by default??
I think human males are more toxic by nature's design yes. Hormones are direct evidence for this. By all means let's redesign nature, just don't be fucking surprised when we go extinct. Humans have such a good track record when we meddle in nature's designs...
I'm just saying from a biological standpoint, the term "toxic masculinity" doesn't seem out of bounds. Certainly not if the standard is criminal behavior. I wasn't even looking to make this argument, but your comments about testosterone being the culprit led me right into it.
Still no solution though. How many times do I need to ask?
Edit: I'm not really interested in your reasoning, only your solution. That's basically the same problem I have with most of the left's positions. Lots of problems, no solutions they'd like to admit to.
That's basically the same problem I have with most of the left's positions. Lots of problems, no solutions they'd like to admit to.
Which is why left-leaning (well, what in America are called "left-leaning," which in the rest of the world means centrist) politicians lose so often: then acknowledge some problems are really difficult and may not have easy/cheap solutions. Which doesn't exactly fire up the electorate. ("I'm with her, I guess, whatever.")
Whereas "we're going to have so much winning, we're all going to puke!" fires people up, even when it comes from a total loser.
If they'd at least admit that I might have to pitch in a few bucks instead of saying that 'the rich' will somehow pay for it all, even though there aren't enough 'rich' to pay for it all, I might actually be tempted to vote for a liberal. I find them to be between delusional and deliberately deceitful myself.
For what it's worth, the American left doesn't contain Stalinists. That's not really a thing in this country. We have no Stalinists or any other kind of communist running for office. I've never heard of any liberal politicians who have ties to the Communist Party.
As I've said before, this country has ZERO chance of ever falling into communism. It stands a fair chance (possibly very soon) of going the fascist route. If people don't believe it, look into the history and beliefs of "American heroes" Charles Lindbergh and Henry Ford. This country can't even wrap it's head around the idea that everyone deserves basic healthcare, much less frickin' communism.
The American right doesn't contain fascists. It's completely silly to bash the idea of the communist left and then peddle the idea of the fascist right.
That depends on how technical you want to get. Fascism has a historical context that some believe somehow distinguishes it from other authoritarian corporate and strong man merger regimes with violent suppression of dissidents, such as Chile, Indonesia, Honduras, Spain, etc etc etc. Please do note that Trump, in word and action and ambition definitely 100% aims to be a strong man whose will is merged with the corporate world and have no regard for the rule of law and encourage violent suppression of dissidents. If you do not want to label him a fascist due to the lack of historical context and defined ideology, that is your prerogative I suppose, but you cannot deny that he aims to be a strong man the likes of for instance Erdogan and you also cannot deny that US democracy is currently tested and that it may not survive this test.
I absolutely deny that democracy is being "currently tested", doubly so that it "may not survive", this is simply rhetoric with no basis in fact. Far as I can tell, the system works no differently today than it worked yesterday or any other day and I suspect when Trump leaves office we will still be able to vote for the next candidate.
When Trump starts violently throwing you in jail for speaking out against him on here or anywhere else, i'll agree that he is violently supressing dissidents and there is indeed a threat of authoritarian facism.
No, it really is not. If you think there is a massive barrier, separating dictatorships from democracies, you are empirically proven wrong by how many of the worlds democracies turn into dictatorship - just look at Turkey. Turkey was fraught problems before Erdogan, especially considering suppression of the Kurds, but it was none the less a democrasy - in the sense that election could change who was in power - until Erdogan. And Russia kind of was, until Putin.
A tested democracy is a proto-dictatorship; when a leader / the military / whomever consistently challenge the legitimate outcome of situation X and the checks and balances persistently fail. Such as the new head of the EPA*, Rick Scotts failure to stop voter suppression, the land grabs by the Bundy brothers. Such a society is on the edge and can tip in either direction; it can go back to being a democracy, or the process of dismantling the institutes safeguarding the rule of law AS DEFINED by the will of the people continues, to a point where it becomes impossible to change anything with the peoples vote.
Trump right now is preparing law suits, challenging all election results in every instance where a democrat wins, come this election. Now, Roy Moore did the same but failed utterly, thus, the checks and balances worked in that one instance. But what if they fail now? Trump has appointed nearly 100 federal judges, two SCOTUS and Jeff Sessions is attempted punitive actions towards the judges that struck down Trumps muslim ban and some other nonsense. What is to say Trump is not succesfull in cancelling or even stalling the new winners? If that happens, well, then your democracy is on fire. And you can't do shit about it until 2020 - if the dismantling is not already complete by then. Even if you win, you might end up in a situation where your every ruling is struck down by an overreaching and utterly corrupt supreme court.
Like I said, there is not a massive barrier between democracies and dictatorships, as I sincerely hope you will NOT find out come the next couple of years.
* The corrupt judge ignoring the law does not make it right but is in fact part of the problem, as is Kavanaugh.
Masculinity is absolutely not toxic. Being a man or being masculine does not make you a worse person, or less pleasant to be around, or more selfish, or anything like that.
Toxic personalities are not related to one's sex, nor are they related to masculinity or femininity. The entire "toxic masculinity" concept is based on an extremely narrow and highly specific stereotype of men--the stereotype that selfishness and aggression are inherently and exclusively masculine things. They are not.
The men of my family by and large have unusually high levels of testosterone, and it doesn't make them any less sweet and kind and gentle. My cousin Joshua is a burly, bearded he-man woodsman, and he's one of the sweetest people I know.
Unless we redefine masculinity so that only toxic elements are deemed masculine, this is just a sexist stereotype. The fact that the phrase shows up in academia does not make it any less of a stereotype.
Maybe......but these numbers are pretty damning to that argument. Males commit:
98.9% of forcible rape 89.5% of homicides 87.9% of robberies 85% of burglaries 83% of arsons 81.7% of vandalism 81.5% of auto-theft 79.7% of crimes against their own family/children 77.8% of aggravated assault 58.7% of fraud 57.3% of larceny 51.3% of embezzlement
Out of ALL those categories of major crimes, only a SINGLE one is even remotely close to being even between the sexes. Most of them are well over 80-20. Seems like a problem to me.
Forgive me for using this counterargument, because the rest of this sentence is going to sound very ominous, but blacks commit 52.6% of murders, 29.1% of rapes, 54.5% of robberies, and 33.3% of aggravated assaults despite being a minority of the population.* Do we therefore conclude that American blacks are suffering from toxic blackness?
No. Because if we did, we'd be using a racist stereotype to generalize about massive groups of people when we should be judging people as individuals, free of racial stigma or prejudice. When we accept generalizations and stereotypes, we label massive groups of people as evil when the underlying problem is more complicated than just "men are bad" or "blacks are bad." This is one of the few times where statistics don't actually shed light on the problem or offer any solutions, and instead just enable scapegoating and prejudice.
Again, I'm sorry for even bringing this up, but it's an important parallel. I felt kind of gross just Googling "crime rates by race," simply because I know a lot of people do the same thing for very different motives. I'm well aware that there are plenty of people today who actually believe that minorities are the problem, and they use these same statistics to demonize people.
*One might object that these data are distorted by the fact that the criminal justice system discriminates against blacks, which means the apparently higher crime rates among blacks can at least partly be blamed on biases in law enforcement. That's true, but the same complaint holds about data about crime rates between men and women: men are also more likely to be arrested, charged, convicted, and given longer sentences than women for the same crimes. In either case, I don't think we should be making generalizations about men or blacks based on these numbers.
What I find especially strange is that the "toxic masculinity" concept is such a huge change from the typical feminist critique. We used to say "men are taught to do these bad things, and we should break these habits." Now we say "violence and selfishness are masculine, and that's just how men are--it's biology." Normally, modern feminist academic theory denies the importance of biology in human behavior and gender roles, but when it comes to "toxic masculinity," biology ironically becomes a cudgel for stereotyping men.
I agree that we have toxic gender roles and some absurd societal expectations for men, and I agree that many men have been taught destructive habits for no good reason. But the problem is not "masculinity," which we cannot change anyway (and honestly is just a code word for men, but saying "men are the problem" is too obviously sexist). The problem is outdated gender roles and toxic elements in our culture, which we can change.
That's basically the same problem I have with most of the left's positions. Lots of problems, no solutions they'd like to admit to.
Which is why left-leaning (well, what in America are called "left-leaning," which in the rest of the world means centrist) politicians lose so often: then acknowledge some problems are really difficult and may not have easy/cheap solutions. Which doesn't exactly fire up the electorate. ("I'm with her, I guess, whatever.")
Whereas "we're going to have so much winning, we're all going to puke!" fires people up, even when it comes from a total loser.
If they'd at least admit that I might have to pitch in a few bucks instead of saying that 'the rich' will somehow pay for it all, even though there aren't enough 'rich' to pay for it all, I might actually be tempted to vote for a liberal. I find them to be between delusional and deliberately deceitful myself.
While the rich might not be able to pay for it all, they could certainly pay a lot more at the margin. The wealthiest 1% of people own 40% of all wealth in the US and the Gini coefficient for the US is pushing 0.5 (that's a measure where 0 means everyone has the same income and 1 that only one person in the country gets all the income. The US score is very high for a developed country - the EU average is around 0.3 for instance).
I'm not particularly arguing that the rich should pay more, but to suggest that it is not possible for them to do so in the US doesn't seem a credible position to me.
As an aside, what I would like to see is a drastic simplification of taxation. That could involve: - a significant nil rate band to avoid spending time and money assessing very small amounts of taxes. - a single rate of tax above the nil rate band rather than progressive rates - all forms of income (revenue / capital gains / trust funds / share distributions etc) to be taxed at that single rate. The aim would be to avoid people structuring income to avoid tax rather than doing whatever makes the most economic sense. - get rid of all exemptions and allowances. While looked at individually there may be good arguments for trying to benefit particular industries / areas etc, nearly all allowances quickly degenerate into ways to minimize tax payments rather than achieving their original aims. If you want to provide benefits for things like the film industry or an economic development area you can still do this by using grants rather than tax breaks (and this has the advantage of being much more transparent). I don't know how that would change the distribution of taxes. I suspect that, even though the tax rate the richest people would pay would reduce considerably, they would end up paying a lot more due to not being able to take advantage of exemptions. Whether or not that would happen though, I think the country as a whole would be better off with a far simpler tax system.
Still no solution though. How many times do I need to ask?
Edit: I'm not really interested in your reasoning, only your solution. That's basically the same problem I have with most of the left's positions. Lots of problems, no solutions they'd like to admit to.
@Balrog99 Why do you feel that @jjstraka34 should provide a solution to the way you define the problem? @jjstraka34 points to statistics, open up for a problem discussion and you immediately go into a offensive-defensive mode and single out testosterone as the single cause for this and asks for a solution. It's quite irrational.
Acknowledging the effects doesn't necessarily mean there's one root cause. I pointed out some problems that could be used as background reasons, there are many more. The whole "nature vs nurture" discussion can be used, but only partly, to explain male behaviour. Why, you may ask? Well, because humans are programmable. You are most likely born with preferences, but that doesn't mean you always act on those instincts. I too have the capacity to kill, to smash someone in the face if I don't like them, but I choose never to do that. I too have the capacity for empathy, to give what I can to those that need it, and I choose to do so sometimes, but far from always. The point is, that even if men have higher testosterone than women, that is NOT the single reason why men act in a 'toxic' way. The nature of us is but a platform but the way we act is the outcome of our entire upbringing, parents, friends input, society structures, expectations on manhood, etc etc.
Also, as a side not, calling someone 'leftish' because the bring up what they perceive as a problem is not really value-adding, and to be frank, quite childish. Adding labels on someone might make it easier for you to categorize them and their viewpoints as "good" or "bad", but do yourself a service and just read/listen with an open mind instead.
Masculinity is absolutely not toxic. Being a man or being masculine does not make you a worse person, or less pleasant to be around, or more selfish, or anything like that.
Toxic personalities are not related to one's sex, nor are they related to masculinity or femininity. The entire "toxic masculinity" concept is based on an extremely narrow and highly specific stereotype of men--the stereotype that selfishness and aggression are inherently and exclusively masculine things. They are not.
The men of my family by and large have unusually high levels of testosterone, and it doesn't make them any less sweet and kind and gentle. My cousin Joshua is a burly, bearded he-man woodsman, and he's one of the sweetest people I know.
Unless we redefine masculinity so that only toxic elements are deemed masculine, this is just a sexist stereotype. The fact that the phrase shows up in academia does not make it any less of a stereotype.
Maybe......but these numbers are pretty damning to that argument. Males commit:
98.9% of forcible rape 89.5% of homicides 87.9% of robberies 85% of burglaries 83% of arsons 81.7% of vandalism 81.5% of auto-theft 79.7% of crimes against their own family/children 77.8% of aggravated assault 58.7% of fraud 57.3% of larceny 51.3% of embezzlement
Out of ALL those categories of major crimes, only a SINGLE one is even remotely close to being even between the sexes. Most of them are well over 80-20. Seems like a problem to me.
Forgive me for using this counterargument, because the rest of this sentence is going to sound very ominous, but blacks commit 52.6% of murders, 29.1% of rapes, 54.5% of robberies, and 33.3% of aggravated assaults despite being a minority of the population.* Do we therefore conclude that American blacks are suffering from toxic blackness?
No. Because if we did, we'd be using a racist stereotype to generalize about massive groups of people when we should be judging people as individuals, free of racial stigma or prejudice. When we accept generalizations and stereotypes, we label massive groups of people as evil when the underlying problem is more complicated than just "men are bad" or "blacks are bad." This is one of the few times where statistics don't actually shed light on the problem or offer any solutions, and instead just enable scapegoating and prejudice.
Again, I'm sorry for even bringing this up, but it's an important parallel. I felt kind of gross just Googling "crime rates by race," simply because I know a lot of people do the same thing for very different motives. I'm well aware that there are plenty of people today who actually believe that minorities are the problem, and they use these same statistics to demonize people.
*One might object that these data are distorted by the fact that the criminal justice system discriminates against blacks, which means the apparently higher crime rates among blacks can at least partly be blamed on biases in law enforcement. That's true, but the same complaint holds about data about crime rates between men and women: men are also more likely to be arrested, charged, convicted, and given longer sentences than women for the same crimes. In either case, I don't think we should be making generalizations about men or blacks based on these numbers.
What I find especially strange is that the "toxic masculinity" concept is such a huge change from the typical feminist critique. We used to say "men are taught to do these bad things, and we should break these habits." Now we say "violence and selfishness are masculine, and that's just how men are--it's biology." Normally, modern feminist academic theory denies the importance of biology in human behavior and gender roles, but when it comes to "toxic masculinity," biology ironically becomes a cudgel for stereotyping men.
I agree that we have toxic gender roles and some absurd societal expectations for men, and I agree that many men have been taught destructive habits for no good reason. But the problem is not "masculinity," which we cannot change anyway (and honestly is just a code word for men, but saying "men are the problem" is too obviously sexist). The problem is outdated gender roles and toxic elements in our culture, which we can change.
I'm gonna cut out some parts, sorry if this seems aggressive. It's just for more easy reading.
"Toxic personalities are not related to one's sex, nor are they related to masculinity or femininity. The entire "toxic masculinity" concept is based on an extremely narrow and highly specific stereotype of men--the stereotype that selfishness and aggression are inherently and exclusively masculine things. They are not."
--> I think it depends on who you speak to or what you read. I have a very different view on the concept of "toxic masculinity" based on what I've read. My view is that some people bring up the toxic masculinity as a way to visiualize the way expectations and definitions of men has a toxic impact on men themselves and also on society as a whole. This is NOT equivalent to saying men are toxic! It means that men as a whole, on a macro level, are brought up in a way that has negative impact. Part of it is nature, as I wrote a bit about in the above post, but part of it is due to society structures. There's never a discussion on individuals in the places where I've read about this, only on structures. It seems many ppl get defensive, thinking they get a label of being (potentially) toxic just because they are born a man (or rather, a boy ). That is of course not the case and I have seen very few women/feminist argue for that (and I read and follow quite a lot of blogs, instagram accounts etc). Of course these ppl exist, those who claim males are born an aggresive kind, but can you really blaim them? As pointed out with statistics, males are undoubtedly performing the undeniable majority of all crimes.
"No. Because if we did, we'd be using a racist stereotype to generalize about massive groups of people when we should be judging people as individuals, free of racial stigma or prejudice. When we accept generalizations and stereotypes, we label massive groups of people as evil when the underlying problem is more complicated than just "men are bad" or "blacks are bad." This is one of the few times where statistics don't actually shed light on the problem or offer any solutions, and instead just enable scapegoating and prejudice."
--> We shouldn't judge any individual that way. The whole rhetoric around "male/masculine toxicality" is to remove individual men from judgement and speak about the macro-level. Men, like myself, need to understand that we are also 'victims' of this ourselves, so we have just as much and probably more to gain from challenging these old and crappy views of manhood. I don't want to remain emotionally retarded just because that's the way a "real" man should be. Screw that. It took some deep reading and listening to experts in the area for me to learn enough that I opened my eyes and finally saw it for myself. And I used to be a pretty big douche-bag, a very classic wannabe-alpha male.
I just wanna end with saying that I agree to many things you write and I hope this comes out as a constructive input and not an aggressive one where I debate you fiercely. I think you have good, solid and grounded views but that you perhaps could try to put less emphasis on the stereotyping of men since that's pretty much unavoidable when you speak about 'structures'. When generalizing, you have to generalize.
An interjection if I may; no offense, but I do believe most of the commentators here missed that the "toxic" part is a prefix. If the implication was that all masculinity inevitably end up toxic, then the prefix would not be necessary.
(Stereotypical) manliness is a lot of things, some negative and some good. Camaraderie, for instance. You never feel as... hmmm... relevant, perhaps, as when put into a team of other men with compatible personality working for a common goal. You don't even need to be a team, just you and a buddy will do. Yeah, you are dicks to each others, but always as a practical joke sort of way, never with like hurtful intentions. Look for instance at the guys who carpet-bombed an online funeral (just google it). Despite doing something wicked by the way communicated with each others, you can tell they had the time of their life, not because they were indeed doing something wicked, but because a sense of belonging. The same sense of belonging can be replicated into most settings, whether ethically questionable or not; playing football, playing Warhammer, hunting antelopes with spears etc. When a team of boys 'click', you do not see the dysfunctional behavior that is the toxic masculinity.
To the contrary, as far as I can tell, when women get together they just talk smack about anyone not in the room. I mean, yeah, there are also wonderful things about feminine camaraderie, like college girls pajama sleep over parties evolving into pillow fights* but in general, women can be quite hostile and cruel towards each other. In fact, women, as far as I can tell, do not have as strong self-restriction barrier (non-toxic) men have, that prevent us from doing and saying the worst impulses that pop into our minds, while women just go full crazy without any regard of the consequences.
Thus, masculinity can and often is channeled into something positive. Toxic masculinity is when at all goes awry. Likewise, femininity have many wonderful qualities but can also go awry.
* Which I know for a fact that all hot college girls participate in, and nothing you say can convince me otherwise.
As an aside, what I would like to see is a drastic simplification of taxation. That could involve: - a significant nil rate band to avoid spending time and money assessing very small amounts of taxes. - a single rate of tax above the nil rate band rather than progressive rates - all forms of income (revenue / capital gains / trust funds / share distributions etc) to be taxed at that single rate. The aim would be to avoid people structuring income to avoid tax rather than doing whatever makes the most economic sense. - get rid of all exemptions and allowances. While looked at individually there may be good arguments for trying to benefit particular industries / areas etc, nearly all allowances quickly degenerate into ways to minimize tax payments rather than achieving their original aims. If you want to provide benefits for things like the film industry or an economic development area you can still do this by using grants rather than tax breaks (and this has the advantage of being much more transparent). I don't know how that would change the distribution of taxes. I suspect that, even though the tax rate the richest people would pay would reduce considerably, they would end up paying a lot more due to not being able to take advantage of exemptions. Whether or not that would happen though, I think the country as a whole would be better off with a far simpler tax system.
We have #1. It's the standard deduction+personal exemption. It used to be $6350+4050. Now they've axed personal exemptions, and dependent deductions (and a lot of other exemptions), and ~doubled the standard to $12,000 or something.
#2 is a non-starter. If anything, we need MORE tax rates going much, much, MUCH higher. Why should someone with $300,000 taxable income be taxed the same rate as someone with $30 million? Or $3 BILLION? And you're saying they should be taxed at the same rate as someone making $30,000?
I agree with #3, see below.
They cut a crapton of exemptions and deductions in #4 in the "tax cuts and jobs act", to the tune of ~$3.5 trillion over ten years.
Most deductions and exemptions have phaseouts so the rich can't get most of them for being too rich. The rich care about the RATES on their vast incomes, and how they are applied.
For example, two days ago in my accounting research class we briefly looked at Mitt Romney's 2011 tax return (Also Trump's published 2005 return. Both for the purpose of looking at the AMT). In a nutshell, Romney had $13.7 million in income, $4.7 million in deductions (3.75M was state income tax and charity), giving a taxable income of $9 million. His tax rate was effectively 14.89% ($1.34M, but see next paragraph). Several million dollars of his income were qualified dividends which are taxed at very low rates, starting at 0% for the first $69,000, then at 15% for the rest. Additionally, the marginal rates on ordinary income+dividends would bring him down a bit, I'm not going to look up what the rates were, but it was a 2011 return when the top rate was just 35%.
Things like the AMT are designed to catch people taking too much advantage of the tax system. His AMT above standard tax was $675k above his $1.34M, for a tad over $2 million dollars tax, which was reduced a little to about $1.9M that was his ACTUAL tax paid. Thanks to the "tax cut" act, those itemized deductions he took are DOA (like $1.3 million in state taxes that were exempted).
Trumpy on the other hand, had $48.6M in income, $17M in deductions, for $31.6M taxable income, and a tax of $5.3M (16.8%). But HIS AMT above standard tax was $31.6M. Along with self-employment tax, he wound up at $38.4M tax. And he was short paying the IRS $2.3M. Romney had actually overpaid his tax by $1.5M and told the IRS to keep it for next year's tax.
To reiterate, Romney had $13.7M income, but just $0.675M AMT. Trump had little more than double that at $31.6M, but his AMT was $31.6M.
At this point I feel like we should rename this thread to something like "Totally Random Shit". Somehow in eight pages we've gone from the topic of the thread to talking in-depth about the taxes of Presidential candidates. This is almost indistinguishable from the politics thread at this point, they are just running concurrently.
Comments
I don't have a solution nor am I proposing one. I'm just saying that when about 80% of all meaningful crime is committed by one sex, the idea that it would be viewed as more "toxic" doesn't seem all that far-fetched to me.
The synonyms for the word "toxic" are poisonous, virulent, noxious, deadly, dangerous, harmful, injurious, and pernicious. If we are going to concede that testosterone, which is produced by orders of magnitude more in men than women, is the central cause of aggressive and even criminal behavior, aren't we then admitting that in in fact males ARE more toxic than females by default??
Ethics? What's that? Can you eat it?
Edit: I'm not really interested in your reasoning, only your solution. That's basically the same problem I have with most of the left's positions. Lots of problems, no solutions they'd like to admit to.
A tested democracy is a proto-dictatorship; when a leader / the military / whomever consistently challenge the legitimate outcome of situation X and the checks and balances persistently fail. Such as the new head of the EPA*, Rick Scotts failure to stop voter suppression, the land grabs by the Bundy brothers. Such a society is on the edge and can tip in either direction; it can go back to being a democracy, or the process of dismantling the institutes safeguarding the rule of law AS DEFINED by the will of the people continues, to a point where it becomes impossible to change anything with the peoples vote.
Trump right now is preparing law suits, challenging all election results in every instance where a democrat wins, come this election. Now, Roy Moore did the same but failed utterly, thus, the checks and balances worked in that one instance. But what if they fail now? Trump has appointed nearly 100 federal judges, two SCOTUS and Jeff Sessions is attempted punitive actions towards the judges that struck down Trumps muslim ban and some other nonsense. What is to say Trump is not succesfull in cancelling or even stalling the new winners? If that happens, well, then your democracy is on fire. And you can't do shit about it until 2020 - if the dismantling is not already complete by then. Even if you win, you might end up in a situation where your every ruling is struck down by an overreaching and utterly corrupt supreme court.
Like I said, there is not a massive barrier between democracies and dictatorships, as I sincerely hope you will NOT find out come the next couple of years.
* The corrupt judge ignoring the law does not make it right but is in fact part of the problem, as is Kavanaugh.
No. Because if we did, we'd be using a racist stereotype to generalize about massive groups of people when we should be judging people as individuals, free of racial stigma or prejudice. When we accept generalizations and stereotypes, we label massive groups of people as evil when the underlying problem is more complicated than just "men are bad" or "blacks are bad." This is one of the few times where statistics don't actually shed light on the problem or offer any solutions, and instead just enable scapegoating and prejudice.
Again, I'm sorry for even bringing this up, but it's an important parallel. I felt kind of gross just Googling "crime rates by race," simply because I know a lot of people do the same thing for very different motives. I'm well aware that there are plenty of people today who actually believe that minorities are the problem, and they use these same statistics to demonize people.
*One might object that these data are distorted by the fact that the criminal justice system discriminates against blacks, which means the apparently higher crime rates among blacks can at least partly be blamed on biases in law enforcement. That's true, but the same complaint holds about data about crime rates between men and women: men are also more likely to be arrested, charged, convicted, and given longer sentences than women for the same crimes. In either case, I don't think we should be making generalizations about men or blacks based on these numbers.
What I find especially strange is that the "toxic masculinity" concept is such a huge change from the typical feminist critique. We used to say "men are taught to do these bad things, and we should break these habits." Now we say "violence and selfishness are masculine, and that's just how men are--it's biology." Normally, modern feminist academic theory denies the importance of biology in human behavior and gender roles, but when it comes to "toxic masculinity," biology ironically becomes a cudgel for stereotyping men.
I agree that we have toxic gender roles and some absurd societal expectations for men, and I agree that many men have been taught destructive habits for no good reason. But the problem is not "masculinity," which we cannot change anyway (and honestly is just a code word for men, but saying "men are the problem" is too obviously sexist). The problem is outdated gender roles and toxic elements in our culture, which we can change.
I'm not particularly arguing that the rich should pay more, but to suggest that it is not possible for them to do so in the US doesn't seem a credible position to me.
As an aside, what I would like to see is a drastic simplification of taxation. That could involve:
- a significant nil rate band to avoid spending time and money assessing very small amounts of taxes.
- a single rate of tax above the nil rate band rather than progressive rates
- all forms of income (revenue / capital gains / trust funds / share distributions etc) to be taxed at that single rate. The aim would be to avoid people structuring income to avoid tax rather than doing whatever makes the most economic sense.
- get rid of all exemptions and allowances. While looked at individually there may be good arguments for trying to benefit particular industries / areas etc, nearly all allowances quickly degenerate into ways to minimize tax payments rather than achieving their original aims. If you want to provide benefits for things like the film industry or an economic development area you can still do this by using grants rather than tax breaks (and this has the advantage of being much more transparent).
I don't know how that would change the distribution of taxes. I suspect that, even though the tax rate the richest people would pay would reduce considerably, they would end up paying a lot more due to not being able to take advantage of exemptions. Whether or not that would happen though, I think the country as a whole would be better off with a far simpler tax system.
Acknowledging the effects doesn't necessarily mean there's one root cause. I pointed out some problems that could be used as background reasons, there are many more. The whole "nature vs nurture" discussion can be used, but only partly, to explain male behaviour. Why, you may ask? Well, because humans are programmable. You are most likely born with preferences, but that doesn't mean you always act on those instincts. I too have the capacity to kill, to smash someone in the face if I don't like them, but I choose never to do that. I too have the capacity for empathy, to give what I can to those that need it, and I choose to do so sometimes, but far from always. The point is, that even if men have higher testosterone than women, that is NOT the single reason why men act in a 'toxic' way. The nature of us is but a platform but the way we act is the outcome of our entire upbringing, parents, friends input, society structures, expectations on manhood, etc etc.
Also, as a side not, calling someone 'leftish' because the bring up what they perceive as a problem is not really value-adding, and to be frank, quite childish. Adding labels on someone might make it easier for you to categorize them and their viewpoints as "good" or "bad", but do yourself a service and just read/listen with an open mind instead.
I'll put the quotes in spoilers, but this is a reply to @semiticgod.
I'm gonna cut out some parts, sorry if this seems aggressive. It's just for more easy reading.
"Toxic personalities are not related to one's sex, nor are they related to masculinity or femininity. The entire "toxic masculinity" concept is based on an extremely narrow and highly specific stereotype of men--the stereotype that selfishness and aggression are inherently and exclusively masculine things. They are not."
--> I think it depends on who you speak to or what you read. I have a very different view on the concept of "toxic masculinity" based on what I've read. My view is that some people bring up the toxic masculinity as a way to visiualize the way expectations and definitions of men has a toxic impact on men themselves and also on society as a whole. This is NOT equivalent to saying men are toxic! It means that men as a whole, on a macro level, are brought up in a way that has negative impact. Part of it is nature, as I wrote a bit about in the above post, but part of it is due to society structures. There's never a discussion on individuals in the places where I've read about this, only on structures. It seems many ppl get defensive, thinking they get a label of being (potentially) toxic just because they are born a man (or rather, a boy
"No. Because if we did, we'd be using a racist stereotype to generalize about massive groups of people when we should be judging people as individuals, free of racial stigma or prejudice. When we accept generalizations and stereotypes, we label massive groups of people as evil when the underlying problem is more complicated than just "men are bad" or "blacks are bad." This is one of the few times where statistics don't actually shed light on the problem or offer any solutions, and instead just enable scapegoating and prejudice."
--> We shouldn't judge any individual that way. The whole rhetoric around "male/masculine toxicality" is to remove individual men from judgement and speak about the macro-level. Men, like myself, need to understand that we are also 'victims' of this ourselves, so we have just as much and probably more to gain from challenging these old and crappy views of manhood. I don't want to remain emotionally retarded just because that's the way a "real" man should be. Screw that. It took some deep reading and listening to experts in the area for me to learn enough that I opened my eyes and finally saw it for myself. And I used to be a pretty big douche-bag, a very classic wannabe-alpha male.
I just wanna end with saying that I agree to many things you write and I hope this comes out as a constructive input and not an aggressive one where I debate you fiercely. I think you have good, solid and grounded views but that you perhaps could try to put less emphasis on the stereotyping of men since that's pretty much unavoidable when you speak about 'structures'. When generalizing, you have to generalize.
(Stereotypical) manliness is a lot of things, some negative and some good. Camaraderie, for instance. You never feel as... hmmm... relevant, perhaps, as when put into a team of other men with compatible personality working for a common goal. You don't even need to be a team, just you and a buddy will do. Yeah, you are dicks to each others, but always as a practical joke sort of way, never with like hurtful intentions. Look for instance at the guys who carpet-bombed an online funeral (just google it). Despite doing something wicked by the way communicated with each others, you can tell they had the time of their life, not because they were indeed doing something wicked, but because a sense of belonging. The same sense of belonging can be replicated into most settings, whether ethically questionable or not; playing football, playing Warhammer, hunting antelopes with spears etc. When a team of boys 'click', you do not see the dysfunctional behavior that is the toxic masculinity.
To the contrary, as far as I can tell, when women get together they just talk smack about anyone not in the room. I mean, yeah, there are also wonderful things about feminine camaraderie, like college girls pajama sleep over parties evolving into pillow fights* but in general, women can be quite hostile and cruel towards each other. In fact, women, as far as I can tell, do not have as strong self-restriction barrier (non-toxic) men have, that prevent us from doing and saying the worst impulses that pop into our minds, while women just go full crazy without any regard of the consequences.
Thus, masculinity can and often is channeled into something positive. Toxic masculinity is when at all goes awry. Likewise, femininity have many wonderful qualities but can also go awry.
* Which I know for a fact that all hot college girls participate in, and nothing you say can convince me otherwise.
#2 is a non-starter. If anything, we need MORE tax rates going much, much, MUCH higher. Why should someone with $300,000 taxable income be taxed the same rate as someone with $30 million? Or $3 BILLION? And you're saying they should be taxed at the same rate as someone making $30,000?
I agree with #3, see below.
They cut a crapton of exemptions and deductions in #4 in the "tax cuts and jobs act", to the tune of ~$3.5 trillion over ten years.
Most deductions and exemptions have phaseouts so the rich can't get most of them for being too rich. The rich care about the RATES on their vast incomes, and how they are applied.
For example, two days ago in my accounting research class we briefly looked at Mitt Romney's 2011 tax return (Also Trump's published 2005 return. Both for the purpose of looking at the AMT). In a nutshell, Romney had $13.7 million in income, $4.7 million in deductions (3.75M was state income tax and charity), giving a taxable income of $9 million. His tax rate was effectively 14.89% ($1.34M, but see next paragraph). Several million dollars of his income were qualified dividends which are taxed at very low rates, starting at 0% for the first $69,000, then at 15% for the rest. Additionally, the marginal rates on ordinary income+dividends would bring him down a bit, I'm not going to look up what the rates were, but it was a 2011 return when the top rate was just 35%.
Things like the AMT are designed to catch people taking too much advantage of the tax system. His AMT above standard tax was $675k above his $1.34M, for a tad over $2 million dollars tax, which was reduced a little to about $1.9M that was his ACTUAL tax paid. Thanks to the "tax cut" act, those itemized deductions he took are DOA (like $1.3 million in state taxes that were exempted).
Trumpy on the other hand, had $48.6M in income, $17M in deductions, for $31.6M taxable income, and a tax of $5.3M (16.8%). But HIS AMT above standard tax was $31.6M. Along with self-employment tax, he wound up at $38.4M tax. And he was short paying the IRS $2.3M. Romney had actually overpaid his tax by $1.5M and told the IRS to keep it for next year's tax.
To reiterate, Romney had $13.7M income, but just $0.675M AMT. Trump had little more than double that at $31.6M, but his AMT was $31.6M.