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.
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.