I wish I could figure out what factor divided people into these two language groups. For one there is toxic masculinity and there is non-toxic (or just ordinary) masculinity. For another, uttering “toxic masculinity” directly means “all masculinity is toxic”. I do not know how they came apart.
To be clear, my original post referred to more than just “toxic masculinity”.
On that particular subject, the divergence in meaning is that some people identified a motte-and-bailey where people would say “toxic masculinity”, defend the term by saying it’s referring to a particular subset of masculinity that is problematic, but would then go on to use the phrase to refer to parts of masculinity which are not clearly problematic.
That isn’t a linguistic divergence, but some people recognizing a subtext that the original group would deny their words containing
but would then go on to use the phrase to refer to parts of masculinity which are not clearly problematic
I think this is usually is a disagreement about which parts of masculinity are problematic. Their position might be really ignorant and hateful, but I think it’s sincere.
It’s funny, “toxic” is one of the most toxic words these days
I wish I could figure out what factor divided people into these two language groups. For one there is toxic masculinity and there is non-toxic (or just ordinary) masculinity. For another, uttering “toxic masculinity” directly means “all masculinity is toxic”. I do not know how they came apart.
To be clear, my original post referred to more than just “toxic masculinity”.
On that particular subject, the divergence in meaning is that some people identified a motte-and-bailey where people would say “toxic masculinity”, defend the term by saying it’s referring to a particular subset of masculinity that is problematic, but would then go on to use the phrase to refer to parts of masculinity which are not clearly problematic.
That isn’t a linguistic divergence, but some people recognizing a subtext that the original group would deny their words containing
I think this is usually is a disagreement about which parts of masculinity are problematic. Their position might be really ignorant and hateful, but I think it’s sincere.