Is there anything “toxic” about femininity? The rigid femininities that keep us locked in

Abstract

In recent years there has been rising popular discourse around "toxic masculinity", and the problems of a hegemonic gender structure that facilitates male violence and misogyny. In the public debate over whether toxic masculinity is fact or fiction, "toxic femininity" is often raised by men's rights activists and others as an anti-feminist retort, to suggest that women can be "toxic" too. This paper provides a sketch of how the term has been used so far, in tandem with an overview of the limitations of the more extensively discussed idea of "toxic masculinity". This suggests that although the term "toxic femininity" has limitations, it is useful to consider what might be "toxic" about some approaches to femininity. Drawing on existing theories of femininity, including emphasized, hegemonic, normative, and patriarchal femininity, this paper offers the notion of "rigid femininities" to explain the attachments that keep us locked in a "toxic" gender system. This paper utilises toxic femininity as a starting point for theorising femininity broadly, to conceptualise the "toxic" attachments that reinforce the hegemonic patriarchal gender structure.

Affective News, Affective Labor: Chinese Female “Little Editors” of WeChat Official Accounts in Australia

“…Lenna, a CEO of a WOA, disclosed that she was the only woman in the managerial team dominated by people with “straight-man cancer” or “ zhinan ai ” in Mandarin. “Straight-man cancer,” a Chinese internet slang word, indicates “hegemonic masculinity” (McCann, 2022) with men’s power structurally institutionalized, consolidated, and bolstered by men themselves in the patriarchal system. In the context of the study, hegemonic masculinity referred to male managers’ systemic domination and designation of female little editors’ daily media practices to produce affective news and reproduce affective outcomes through providing affective labor.…”

Masculine, independent, and “not acting”: Hegemonic masculinity and femmephobia within an online community of queer men

“…Both Dylan and Liam's use of the phrase "toxic femininity" aligns with the use of this term by men's rights activists which McCann (2022) explores in her attempt to better theorize toxic femininity. McCann (2022) points out that toxic femininity rejects the view of a patriarchal gender hierarchy by understanding femininity as just as capable of subordinating other gender expressions as "toxic" masculinity is.…”

“…Interestingly, the toxicity described by Dylan and Liam is understood as working exclusively within queer communities, to benefit the position of feminine queer men. Dylan and Liam's usage contrasts the uses of the "anti-feminist" message behind the term examined by McCann (2022) which understands toxic femininity as benefiting women at the expense of men. Therefore, Dylan and Ethan's usage of toxic femininity presents a unique case that understands this toxicity as capable of benefiting any feminine person regardless of sex.…”

Femme‐toring: Leveraging critical femininities and femme theory to cultivate alternative approaches to mentoring

“…Of course, there are limitations; femininity can be “toxic” too, for example, patriarchal femininity (Hoskin, 2017b), and neoliberal femininity (Sullivan & Delaney, 2017). Toxic forms of femininity are “rigid and ‘toxic’ attachments that maintain the gendered power structure/essentialized gender binary at various intersections of gender, class, the body, sexuality, and race” (McCann, 2022, p. 19) and do not align with femme principles. Critical femininities and femme theory provide an especially opportune tool to unpack these dynamics of gender and power, but even more importantly, to resist and reject the reproduction of insidious norms in the next generation of academics of all genders via femme‐toring practices.…”

“…In the quest to dislodge masculine frameworks, many in the field of critical femininities have turned to femme theory (Hoskin, 2017b, 2019; Hoskin & Blair, 2022; Hoskin & Taylor, 2019; McCann, 2022; Schwartz, 2022; Taylor, 2018). The term femme originates from 1940s working‐class lesbian bar culture, wherein femme was used in reference to a feminine lesbian (i.e., the butch/femme; Hoskin, 2021).…”