As a gay trans guy who grew up in the 90’s trying to sort out the toxic masculinity/internalized misogyny while fully closeted and being unaware that other trans men exist is a trip. Like doing all that “I have no emotions and refuse anything remotely girl-coded” song and dance kind of made me into what looked from the outside like a “pick-me” for years and I was relentlessly pursued romantically by people I just wanted to hang out and drink beer with. It was isolating and fucked up even if the behaviour soothed the dysphoria.

Had to address the internalized misogyny thing first, realize that was not motivating the trans portion of the issue and then had to work on getting off the toxic sauce that felt so darkly affirming and actually spend time with cis men who had properly deconstructed their own masculinity. Now I’m generally way better off and have a bunch of folk whom I brunch with who gas each other up over cocktails.

Genocide is technically a process and a sliding scale. It exists by degrees. It may seem hyperbolic to classify some actions as genocidal particularly when they are slow or the number of deaths do not seem absolute but it is still genocide.

What defines a genocide via international Convention is any of five acts intended to diminish the population of a cultural community. None of these have to be a totality of the group it can be only in part. The important thing is victims are targeted because of their real or perceived membership of a group, not randomly. The five acts of genocide are :

• Killing members of the group

• Causing them serious bodily or mental harm

• Imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group

• Preventing births

• Forcibly transferring children out of the group

While a number of countries are full five for five in regards to trans people you only really need one to qualify. Things like the lack of reporting of Trans deaths, the removal of services needed by the group including medical care or critical mental health resources as is happening with the closure of LGBTQIA+ specific crisis support in the US, the labelling of Trans people as pedophiles or removal of children from the custody of supportive parents into state custody by labelling gender affirming attitudes as “child abuse”, the forcing of trans people to endure security risks because of laws that often get them arrested for following them such as bathroom bills… All of these are genocidal measures they just aren’t fast acting.

While it may seem like the point of the word is to be splashy and attention grabbing that need not be the point of it. The cultural expectations that genocide need only be wartime type measures of systematic elimination is a disservice to a lot of other genocides that are happening globally.

Trans person maybe, some of us are subject to our own personal problems just like anyone… But a concensus of trans people should be the marker. I don’t know how many times I have heard someone claim allyship when they are being called out by multiple trans people for something they said or did.

It’s interesting how fast some people will flip. Sometimes a well meaning cis person will suggest something as a work around for some trans engineered social convention or accommodation to try and make things easier for them without realizing how it interacts with the actual experience of being trans. When trans people try and explain exactly why it does not work based off of experience the cis person, upset their idea to solve a problem that they do not fully understand was rejected , suddenly start into the old transphobic gems - “oh you’re just trying to be difficult, play the victim, nobody will like you if you’re that sensitive”

End of day Trans allyship does involve a certain amount of trusting trans people to tell you what makes them comfortable and what they need because it really is a very different experience of gender at it’s core. Deciding what we need on our behalf or telling us how we should feel or giving us advice on how to approach transness happens a lot out in the world and it really isn’t helpful. It often just exposes how much the speaker does not understand.

Maybe? The fear of clowns is often rooted in the uncanny. The obscuring makeup of clowns makes their emotions and expressions either so overly exaggerated or difficult/impossible to read which messes with the lizard brain and makes them seem to some people, particularly ones who have issues with reading facial cues, as inhuman. It’s sort of the same principle that freaks people out about dolls and mannequins. That almost but decidedly not quite human alarm.

Drag makeup generally serves the opposite purpose. It is exaggerated but in such a way as to be easier to read the performer’s face at a distance.

Women who are like that usually change their mind after a couple of years buckled into the yoke. There’s currently a whole group of women stuck in golden handcuffs in the trad wife influencer community who are miserable in their relationships but making too much ad money to consider stopping.

Trans masc person checking in. Might be my bias or community or something but I get way less misgendering by guys under 30 than basically any other demographic. They seem to pick it up faster and be really chill about it in ways that a lot of the women in my life really don’t seem to get as comfortable with.

But there is definitely a part of my brain that sees men as being of my tribe in ways that women are not. Like not to say that I don’t have incredible women in my life whom I have incredibly close bonds with… But there’s definitely some kind of cognitive distance that has always kind of been there.

I think trans femmes might experience a similar situation with feeling accepted by women ( Or maybe not because TERFs tend to look at them as a threat) but to answer your question about if the bros are alright… Yeah, they good.

“Toxic” has a wide range of uses outside just toxic masculinity or just describing men. One of the side effects of a very therapized society is wider recognizing that some people in your life are dragging you down because their behaviour is unhealthy for all parties. Before the reaction groomed mostly into women but men to a lesser degree was to shut up, take the abuse, take the hit to the psyche, self doctor yourself using coping mechanisms that don’t address the problem directly and endure because the pressure was on being a dutiful, selfless sibling, child, partner, parent, friend etc.

Describing people as “toxic”, while like any tool can be used wrongly or hurtfully gives people a tool to shake themselves out of that cycle. When used properly it empowers people to take their own status and wellbeing seriously when they are being taken for granted, abused or bullied so that they can source the problem and engage with people in a way that wins them their agency back. When we talk about “Toxic men” isn’t effectively any different than talking about “toxic siblings” or “toxic friends” or “toxic parents” or “toxic narcissists” The only ways it differs is in the behaviour dynamics of the group in question. These people are all uniquely “toxic” but in each of those cases you probably gain a different picture of what that toxicity looks like. Those are not individuals, they are groups within our cultures the reclassification of which is systemic. What needs to be emphasized is that in all cases nobody should be forced into a relationship of any kind, friend, family or romantic. There is a society wide push for true emancipation of the individual free to establish and demolish social ties based on the merit of the tie.

In some ways this loneliness epidemic we’re experiencing may in part be due to this renegotiation of relationships in a bid to make things better overall. One could argue the development of an expectation for too perfect boundaries is maybe a contributing factor but overall the attitude across the board is “enough is enough” and that isn’t nessisarily a bad thing. If people are not forced into connections at a systemic level they can apply consent and engineer for everyone the understanding that people either must act at the very least decently if not kindly and with respect if they want deep connection.

So much of the discussion around the subject of toxic masculinity devolves into either the idea the people critiquing the behaviour are being mean towards and victimizing men but all discussions of toxic behaviours are not about victimizing the perpetrators, it’s about advocating for better conditions for the targets.