the paragraph is too long for me.
That’s exactly the point – it’s not what the originators of the term call “deep masculinity”. It’s a twisted form of masculinity, hence “toxic”.
If you keep repeating “men are violent because of biology (Y chromosome, testosterone etc.)” and then turn around and say “men committing violent crimes has nothing to do with biology”, it’s having your cake and eating it.
Either men are biologically prone to violence, or they’re not. If they are, that makes violence an inherently masculine trait.
If men are only socially/culturally prone to violence, or if the true cause is a mix of biology and social construction, the result is still that it’s not unreasonable to consider violence a “masculine” trait, by social/cultural standards.
Regardless of why men are statistically more violent, it’s using violence for evil (rape, murder, chopping up gf into cubes…) instead of good (self-defence, smashing rocks to make tools, hunting sabre-toothed tigers…) that’s at issue here.
I think what Gain is getting at is the same kind of thing that came up in the MRT insult incident (the local guy ranting about the white guy being a worthless woman-stealer) in online comments by locals, i.e. a (possibly) surprising number of local men think the same way but don’t dare to say it openly with their faces showing. That wasn’t about chopping someone up, but it was about implied ownership of women.
If you’ve never heard such comments from anyone other than your convict acquaintance – whether along the lines of “[ethnicity] women belong to [ethnicity] men” or “women don’t deserve freedom because they’re just wombs, that’s their only purpose in life”, you either haven’t haven’t met enough people, or more likely you haven’t figured out how to get people to reveal their intimate thoughts to you. 
And the Reality Denier of the Year Award goes to… Ibis! 
Shh, they’re mostly Hindus – you’ll confuse Ibby if you keep talking like that! 
But actually, that brings us to what could be an excellent example of toxic femininity…
…except for one tiny little problem. You see, traditionally, this is supposed to have been voluntary suicide by widows who want to follow their husbands into the afterlife out of devotion and chasteness. 
And the WP article takes a very conservative view about the alternative theory, i.e. that it was basically murder with a religious justification (which was disputed by religious authorities anyway). Specific reports of involuntary “suicide” are mentioned, but the editors take the traditional line as the baseline. (“We need more sources…”)
Yet think of “honor killings”. It’s the same principle: a woman is the property of her male relatives, and once she’s tarnished (no longer a virgin or married to her first husband), she’s worthless and must be destroyed. If she’s blackmailed into suicide (the only alternative being ostracism or living the rest of her life as a nun in perpetual poverty away from her family, which is basically also ostracism), that’s not the same as outright murdering her (drugging and restraining her on the funeral pyre or throwing her into a pit and kicking her when she tries to climb out, as was also reported), but it makes the “voluntary suicide due to extreme virtue” line less credible.
And it’s not just a Hindu thing. The same type of custom has been found among Muslims, Buddhists, Jains, ancient pagans… and yes, it’s very similar to the practice of burying male slaves or servants alive with their deceased master.
Apart from other occurrences of the custom in China, there is also a Fujianese angle:
Mann, Susan (1992). “Male Anxiety and Female Chastity: A Comparative Study of Chinese Ethical Values in Ming-Ch’ing Times by T’ien Ju-k’ang”. Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies. 52 (1): 364–366. doi:10.2307/2719340.; Quote (p. 365): “This form of Fukienese widow suicide, in fact, resembles Indian sati in almost every respect”; Quote (p. 364): “Not only were women enjoined to kill or mutilate themselves when threatened with rape; in addition, the court honored widows (and even bereaved fiancees) who followed their husbands in death (hsun-fu). This practice was distinguished from suicide under duress.” [the honor was given in public ceremonies and in official gazetteers; this was not a rare practice, according to Susan Male, but “astonishingly high”; see particularly footnote 5].
You can’t blame a single religion for this one. You can’t blame a single culture either. And when it’s condoned, expected, and even demanded by society, blaming the mental illnesses of individuals is a stretch.
I would love to know what Andy makes of this, but I think he’s enjoying a break from us again, so I’ll just leave this here.
Oh come on, you are not stupid and my English is not that terrible; you know what I meant. What is twisted and stupid is to say that rape is toxic masculinity.
And you for some reason incur again in the fallacy I pointed out before: not all men are violent, even if it’s true that testosterone has that effect. If most of men were violent, or if the ideal of man was a violent person, then you could have a point. But nope.
Thanks for the background. Do you know how the reduction in the length of service came about and what the different parties propose as further reform, if any?
Violent doesn’t always mean one thing.
When you say not all men are violent, you probably mean not all men are rapists, murderers, thugs, etc. That’s a fair statement.
I believe all humans are violent if they live past infancy, i.e. they commit violent acts of some sort, they continue to have the capacity to do so even if they stop doing it habitually, and they most likely will use violence if they think it’s necessary.
If we take the word violence in the broad sense – extreme force, from Latin vis i.e. strength – then it happens far more often.
As I pointed out, violence can be used for good: self defense, destructive behavior for a constructive purpose, and hunting (leaving the animal rights debate aside – at least hunting sabre-toothed tigers in prehistoric times could be justified by the fact that they were predators 
).
This is a little bit like a term I learnt yesterday: “culture of rape”. Now it seems that our countries have a rampant “culture of rape”. This doesn’t even need rape to be common in your country. Your country has a culture of rape because… microsexism. Or something.
Maybe lefties make use of too many licenses when talking and creating labels.
Yeah, violence is something natural. And violence has a distribution which ranges very different behaviours. So if we are going to generalize and use language in a non useful way and say that everybody is violent, then I guess that there’s nothing to discuss, because that’s it: everybody is violent so it’s not a male trait.
Are males more violent than females or not?
Using the narrow definition of criminal violence, the statistics seem to say… yes.
Using the broad definition of physical strength, the statistics seem to say… yes.
Or did I miss something?
(None of this is to deny that females also commit acts of criminal violence. But it’s what men are better known for, hence the perception of violence as a “masculine” trait. It’s also not to deny that females can be extremely physically strong, but again, physical strength is perceived as a “masculine” trait. “She’s a butch, manly woman. He’s a sissy girly-boy.” And so on…)
Ps. And what happened to your famous studies of which types of toys kids like to play with? Or those studies didn’t involve toy weapons?
Where are the cries of “it’s wrong to discourage play-fighting because that’s what boys are supposed to do! Feminazis are trying to emasculate boys by banning violence!” And so on…
You missed that it’s neither a representative nor admired (in normal modern societies) male characteristic. As someone pointed out before, do you make the same generalizations when talking about Islam and terrorism? And in the case of Islam you can still track down the violence to their sacred book, which tells Muslims to go and kill infidels.
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I didn’t see any weapon, and that wasn’t the point of the study. The point was machines/things vs faces/human stuff.
Did you watch it?
And as some Jew who studies language pointed out, intention is something relevant in order to understand and differentiate terms. What is the intention behind the term “toxic masculinity”?
Are you quite sure about that?
(None of this is to make a comment on any nation’s conduct in WWII, Mr. Ali’s political or religious views, the realness or fakeness of Wrestlemania, or whether any of these things are good or bad or “toxic” or non-“toxic”. It’s just to point out that they’re glorified, celebrated, and admired by a wide range of people. Maybe not so wide for Wrestlemania, but wide for winners of competitions of strength in general.)
Hey, wait a second… wrestling is NOT fake!
I think that Ali was respected not because he was very manly but because he was not only the best boxer at his time, but also a very smart and politically active person.
The first picture, I don’t know what it is about. Remember, I’m not Canadian 
The third picture shows some wrestling event. Yeah, it’s very popular in yankeeland, and both men and women seem to attend it. And?
I know where you are coming from though. And there’s A BIT of truth to what you are saying, but not relevant enough, and you don’t seem to want to see the points we are making from the other side of the fence (I just made up this expression. Fuck you English scholars!).
Feminism is stupidly tiresome, irksome. Focuses on non important things, and forgets about more important ones. Kinda reminds me of left wing in Europe. I think they have a funny name for them in China. I wish we had social movements and politicians focusing on important matters and funding important things instead of what we have. But nah, let’s keep shaming men and funding gender studies.
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Just A BIT where you’re from, eh? 
The word macho has a long history in both Spain and Portugal as well as in Spanish and Portuguese languages. It was originally associated with the ideal societal role men were expected to play in their communities, most particularly, Iberian language-speaking societies and countries. Macho in Portuguese and Spanish is a strictly masculine term, derived from the Latin mascŭlus meaning male (today hombre or varón, c.f. Portuguese homem and now-obsolete for humans varão; macho and varão, in their most common sense, are used for males of non-human animal species). Machos in Iberian-descended cultures are expected to possess and display bravery, courage and strength as well as wisdom and leadership, and ser macho (literally, “to be a macho”) was an aspiration for all boys.
That entry is wrong. Machismo, at least nowadays, is to genders/sex what Racism is to race: to put one over another.
EDIT: and this reminds me some discussion we had about what “liberal” means. That word term also comes from Spanish. Maybe the problem of you Americans is your stupid dictionaries, that don’t get anything right.
“117,550 cases of domestic violence were reported in 2016—alarmingly high for a country with a population of 23 million. One can imagine that many times more cases go unreported in Taiwan, because little is often done to address even known cases of sexual violence, domestic abuse is carried out by men across a wide swath of social demographics and class backgrounds, and a culture of silence leads to women being afraid to speak out.”
The number of reported victims in 2016 is 95175. Men are 27002 and woman are 66884. Under 18 are 12392, and 45% are female. Over 65 are 8344, and 58% are female. Victims at age 18~65 are 74439, and 75% are female.
The number of assailants in the same year is 96610. Men are 73354 and female are 19163. Under 18 are 1357, 22% are female. Over 65 are 4591, and 20% are female. Age 18~65 are 68888, and 20% are female.
I think this statistic shows human tend to use violence against weaker targets, regardless of genders. And big part of hidden cases may be kids and elders.
I’m still not sure what is masculinity.
If violence is masculinity because men are stronger in general, violence by female is also described by the word?
I have to pick holes in this.
Simply having a Y chromosome doesn’t confer a ‘masculine’ personality. Certainly it has a biological basis - such that men tend towards a set of traits that are described as ‘masculine’. It also predisposes you to other traits that have nothing to do with masculinity - such as mental illness in general and psychopathy specifically.
Men generally find that that masculinity is something that has to be worked at to a certain extent; a lot of young men are un-masculine because they’ve been taught that masculinity in and of itself is toxic.
Conversely, women can be masculine, and again that’s often something they consciously cultivate (butch lesbians would be a stereotypical example).
If you think of ‘masculinity’ as a multidimensional personality trait that can be described with some statistical distribution (might be a Gaussian distribution, but I don’t think so) then there will be some overlap between men and women. Because we’re all human, that overlap will be quite significant.
I really think @Brianjones summed up the difference pretty succinctly:
“This guy is so far off the charts into psychopath territory and silence of the lambs, I don’t know what he has to do with us bog standard blokes except he is male.”
It would have been equally illogical to associate his psychopathy with the fact that he had dark hair or was Asian. His maleness is such a trivial part of what he is, or what made him commit this crime, it’s meaningless to point it out.
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Stop overcompensating for the loss of your empire. 
I wish people wouldnt try to politicize such a horrible case, especially while the blood is drying. This goes for the extreme left “toxic masculinity types” and those attacking the hippies or young people.
We arent criminologists and this is a complex issue. Stop using other people’s misery to forward your own agenda. We dont know the details and we dont understand the murderers motivations
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