People routinely underestimate the long-term cost of using force (forcibly keeping people out of the country or removing them) and overestimate the long-term cost of the aid that helps people stay at home. A sensible border policy is advanced by a combination of border security and foreign aid. 2/2

Would love to be included in this!

If you take it that they use "toxic masculinity" as a label for all expressions of masculinity, or just for being male, then I agree that such usage is harmful. But we disagree about whether that is how the term "toxic masculinity" is generally used.

You say your understanding of "toxic masculinity" is not a misunderstanding but fits the standard usage. But you have yet to say what you take that usage to be. You call it something coined by toxic extremists. But what is this definition they have coined, if not the one I lay out in the OP?

Where did I say masculinity is toxic? I said that a specific way of conceiving masculinity is toxic--namely, the way that celebrates treating women as things to be used and bullying boys who don't fit a cultural mold. Is it a "masandrist trope" to condemn abusiveness?

So that leads me to infer that your understanding is either a misunderstanding or a response to outlier usage I haven't personally come across. Either way, the usage you presumably deplore wouldn't be the usage I want to defend.

I can only assume you have a different understanding of how "toxic masculinity" is used than the one I unpack above. But the one above is widely endorsed by those who actually use the term, indicating it's what they actually intend.

In the name of charity, I'll assume you're not celebrating indecency and arguing that real men should treat women like things to be used and ought to abuse boys who don't conform to that. But then I'm at a loss to unpack what you mean.

But if that's what you mean, then you are celebrating indecency in the name of masculinity. And if it's not what you mean, then you are ignoring the substance of my original posts and challenging something else altogether.

Just to be clear, I call "toxic" a species of masculinity that depends on objectifying women & bullying boys who don't fit the mold. So, it follows from what you said above that you think it's unnatural for men *not* to bully and objectify, & it's toxic to oppose bullying and objectifying.

To condemn such "toxic" masculinity is not to condemn being a man, but to call for a new conception of what it is to be a man--a wider, more humane, more liberating conception.

They have in mind the view of manhood that leaves many men isolated and repressed--isolated because real intimacy and sharing of feelings is deemed unmanly; repressed because things they love and talents they have (ballet, perhaps) aren't on the approved "masculine" list.

They have in mind the view of manhood that fuels the bullying of boys who don't fit the mold, that encourages homophobic violence, and that magnifies sexual violence against women.

They have in mind a view of masculinity that makes male value depend on the sexual objectification of women: being a "real" man becomes about getting laid, scoring, etc. Women stop being people and become the field on which manhood is proved through conquest.