On Toxic Feminism
The Divine Feminine to Manosphere Pipeline
TLDR: The issue is not the words they use or the challenges they describe. The issue is assigning a gender to universal, fundamentally human problems, then ignoring the isms—capitalism, colonialism, chauvinism—that landed us there and perhaps distributed the problems along gendered lines.
It is sneaky. This status quo-reinforcing, gendered, hegemonic language shows up in memes and reels offering relationship advice, podcasts about healing and politics alike, and ramblings from big names ranging from Scott Galloway to Mark Zuckerberg to Joe Rogan.
It is a short jump from there to truly dangerous ideas and real-world consequences.
Not so long ago, my partner sent me a podcast about relationships. He heard an inspiring conversation about personal and relational growth; I couldn’t hear past the normative gender roles, anti-feminist, misogynistic undercurrents running through the episode.
The undercurrents were subtle.
Just like AI fingerprints, if you weren’t looking for them, you probably wouldn’t notice. But also, once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
To summarize the language I found problematic…
It was the derogatory references to “toxic feminism,” the obsessive allusion to women’s “radiance,” and the overuse of the term “the modern woman” (apparently, she is trying to “act like men”).
It was the subtle reinforcement of the idea of the “high value man,” even as they purportedly critiqued it, and it was the casual insistence that “not all men.”
It was the illusion of expertise obfuscated by imprecise statistics that came from “research” and the veneer of depth supplied by the term “somatic” to every insight.
But actually, no. It wasn’t the language. Not exactly.
Because I, too, find it interesting to explore how the double standard for women makes it challenging to balance strength and softness, empowerment and tenderness, leadership and trust. But you know what? I suspect men experience similar challenges, as do non-binary and gender queer folks. Just a guess. (Side note: Another objection I have with all this divine feminine/divine masculine, alpha male/soft woman discourse is how it erases (intentionally or not) so many people who do not identify with “traditional” gender presentations.)
I, too, love men, want to be held sometimes, and tire of holding so much on my shoulders.
I, too, worry about the crushing rates of loneliness, depression, suicide, and domestic violence, symptoms of a society coming apart at the seams.
We like the buzzwords. Of course we want to be radiant, empowered, healthy, healed, successful, connected, supported, fulfilled…
These words, which appear in so many memes, podcasts, and even political rhetoric, are not (quite) the problem. The problem is the framing, the false association of any of these values or issues with gender roles. The blaming of feminism for the “modern woman’s” malaise. The misleading promise that if we just “soften” everything will spontaneously improve.
Because no. “Softness” is not a magic bullet.
Is it a necessary ingredient for healing humanity? Yes.
Is it a radical response to a hard world that is only getting harder? Also yes.
But will it solve the pandemic of patriarchal violence? Not without an accompanying dose of equity, education, justice, empowerment, and, oh, just the casual dismantling of an entire worldview wherein “female” or “feminine” implies weakness or subordination.
It is exhausting to push back against this new wave of rhetoric, this willful misunderstanding of ancient philosophical and spiritual perspectives on energy (ie. yin/yang, shiva/shakti) and projecting them onto a Western, patriarchal, and arguably imperialist vision of binary gender roles.
The problem is not investigating why men are feeling lost today, or why women are tired; those are important questions!
The problem is, first, labeling qualities like “leadership” and “providership” as masculine, and second, blaming relationship issues on women’s “masculinity” rather than confronting the deeply rooted values that do not allow any of us to express our full humanity.
Into the Manosphere Rabbit Hole We Go
Women “acting like men” is a tired complaint recycled through the generations—from women joining the workforce, to wearing pants, to getting the vote, to riding horses astride, to eschewing domestic bliss—to shame women back into their place. These days, it is a dangerous slide from these (supposedly) innocuous comments into far darker territory on the internet:
From women wanting to tap into their sensuality (great!) to women and men denigrating anyone whose gender expression doesn’t fit the 1950s-era schema.
From men seeking to grow and realize their potential (great!) to red-pill coaches talking about “high value” people (as opposed to low value?) and getting what you “deserve” if you pay for a date.
From a teenager looking for dating advice (cute) to Andrew Tate.
From “good guys” trying to find a girlfriend (sure) to #notallmen glossing over the harm caused by rapists, traffickers, and murderers.
Think of it like a funnel. At its widest point, the funnel captures just about all of us with casual references to “the issue with men” or “the modern woman.” It is so broad, so trite, so universally relatable, that most of us can identify with something: Yes! I do feel tired! Yes! We have lost our spark! Yes! I do feel lonely! Yes! Women are doing too much, men are struggling, we’re all overwhelmed, unappreciated, confused, lost, etc etc etc.
However, thanks to the wonders of the internet and the algorithmic logic of social media (which tends toward radicalization), a casual scroller can quickly slide from “dating advice” to incel content calling for violence against women. An unsuspecting user reading about “how to connect with your sensuality” may rapidly discover a bevy of coaches confidently explaining that feminism is the real problem.
This is what I’m calling the “divine feminine to manosphere pipeline.”
However, you can love men and still acknowledge that they commit 90-95% of violent crimes. We can call out our collective exhaustion with modern dating, work culture, capitalism, or anything else without scapegoating “toxic feminism” as the source of our discontent.
Perhaps the deeper issue is that we tend to make the personal universal, and the universal personal. We want a man who pays for everything (personal preference); therefore, men paying for things is universally better or more masculine. Yet, when we bring up statistics about, for instance, domestic violence (statistically, a universal problem), that’s just bad apples. Child traffickers are monsters. A mass shooting is the parents’ fault.
It’s never you or the men you know. Yet, your loneliness must be part of an epidemic.
My journal is bursting at the margins as I draft this essay. Side notes and asterisks abound. It is too much to capture in just a few pages; I do not know where to begin when the foundations of the premise are hollow, rotten, crumbling. If I believe that gender is a construct, and a shitty one at that, with real-world harm, and you believe it is a biological reality, is there any arena for meaningful conversation?
Maybe we can just look at the results instead. Read this report on how young men are using the internet and how it is warping their perception of women.
Listen to more women, queer folks, people of color, people outside the U.S. bubble.
Listen critically when a podcaster or influencer tosses around terms like “divine feminine,” “high value man,” “toxic feminism,” “the male loneliness epidemic,” or “the modern woman.”
Don’t just ask if it “sounds right” (because if it tracks to the worldview most of us were socialized to hold, it will sound right!); ask who those words are benefiting.
Ask, does this narrative challenge the status quo, or reinforce it?
And if it’s the latter, ask, Are these the rhetorical pathways I want to deepen in my own mind?
And one last question: Do I want to contribute to a world where empathy, softness, and care—leadership, strength, and discipline—belong to only half the population? Or do I want to build one where the best of our humanness is freely available to all?