Last week in “A Song of Men and Women”, I attempted to add some rigor to the somewhat squishy term “toxic masculinity”. Starting with the elements (symptoms) attributed to this behavior (disease), I went on to discuss how almost all1 of these elements could be reproduced by taking the male archetypes from the godhead of the Faith of the Seven and allowing them to get out of control.
Just as the four material elements (fire, water, air, earth) are salutary and vital in their controlled forms (warm hearth, clear mountain stream, fresh breeze, fertile soil), so are the male archetypes critical pillars of human society—when properly tempered.
And just as the four material elements become violent and destructive if allowed to run amok (wildfire, tsunami, hurricane, landslide), so are the male archetypes enormously harmful when they grow unchecked into monstrous caricatures.
I submit to you that the same principle applies to the female archetypes. Accordingly, I propose to follow the same steps as last week, but in reverse order:
Examine what happens when each feminine archetype grows to excess,
Distill the elements of behavior from observing these excesses, and
Compare these elements to one extant definition of “toxic femininity”.
Let’s start with the three female archetypes from “A Song of Ice and Fire”2:
The Mother is the matriarch of the household. She gives birth to the family and keeps them safe. While the Father is wise, the Mother is loving; while he is just, she is merciful.
The Maiden is beautiful and innocent. She symbolizes purity and, in some ways, chastity. She also represents hope for the future and the promise of the next generation after the Warrior’s battles are over.
The Crone is elderly and wise. She is not strong physically, but her inner steel is as strong as anything the Smith can forge. She may not be clever in the ways of crafts and tools, but she offers guidance and sage advice for life.
Each pair of male/female archetypes, far from being opposed, are complementary to one another.
And each of the female archetypes can also rage out of control:
The Mother becomes overbearing. She suffocates and infantilizes her children, not letting them grow up. She may even progress into Munchausen-by-proxy, secretly harming her children to keep them weak and dependent on her so that she can continue to be their loving, doting mother. Forever.
The Maiden becomes a prude, rejecting anything that isn’t as perfectly innocent as she is. She refuses to accept the ways of the world, insisting on her impossibly idealistic worldview. She fails to launch, remaining a child forever, utterly unequipped to deal with real life and always expecting to be shielded from its consequences—because you wouldn’t let a child come to harm… would you?
The Crone becomes a fairytale witch. She uses her cunning, wisdom, and knowledge of hearts and minds to get her way at everyone else’s expense. She entraps and extorts, corrupts and misleads, manipulates and beguiles. And when confronted, she hides behind her physical frailty. “Who, me? I’m just a poor, weak woman. How could you even think such a terrible thing about me?”
From these, we can distill a few key elements:
Homophobic3
Infantilizing and overbearing (Mother)
Manipulative (Mother, Crone)
Dishonest / deceptive (Crone)
Feigning weakness to deflect blame (Crone)
Helpless/frail (Maiden)
Judgmental with impractically high standards (Maiden)
Willfully naive (Maiden)
Interestingly, scholarly works don’t use these elements. Instead, authors such as Brenda R. Weber define “toxic femininity” as follows:
… toxic femininity takes the mandate of a usually white, mostly middle-class, relentlessly heterosexual, and typically politically conservative norm of gender for girls and women and insists on the internalization of these mandates to such a degree that it immolates the self.4
Note that this definition inverts “toxic” gender norms from the masculine definition. Whereas “toxic masculinity” is the result of masculine archetypes run amok, “toxic femininity”—according to the prevailing “tradwife” stereotype—is the result of complete self-abnegation and subjugation (“immolation of the self”).
Even more interestingly, homophobia is a necessary element in this definition, too; toxic femininity is, after all, “relentlessly heterosexual”.
toxic (adjective) tox·ic ˈtäk-sik
containing or being poisonous material especially when capable of causing death or serious debilitation
exhibiting symptoms of infection or toxicosis
extremely harsh, malicious, or harmful
relating to or being an asset that has lost so much value that it cannot be sold on the market5
There is no doubt that “toxic masculinity” under either definition—the conventional one, or the archetype-based one I proposed in “A Song of Men and Women”—is toxic under definition #3 (“extremely harsh, malicious, or harmful”). This behavior can be all three, and it is certainly harmful to the individual and to those around him. Similarly, there is no doubt that, while harmful, the elements of “toxic masculinity” are, in fact, masculine traits.
It is similarly clear that “toxic femininity” as defined by Weber is also harmful, at least to the woman in question (“immolation of the self” sounds pretty harsh). It’s more debatable whether it is equally harmful to those around the woman, except insofar as it can set a negative example for other women and girls.
What is far less clear, is whether Weber’s definition has anything to do with femininity. There is nothing characteristically feminine about self-abnegation. To define such behavior as “femininity”, even “toxic femininity”, is to acknowledge that subordinating the self to others is a characteristically feminine trait—which is, I think, the opposite of what Weber intends.
Instead, it is far more appropriate to characterize Weber’s definition as “extremist religious dogma” than “toxic gender stereotypes”. After all, her definition is based on studying women in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (fLDS)6. To refer to fLDS female norms as “femininity”, even “toxic femininity”, is to accept the fLDS’ basic premise that women are inherently subordinate to men.
In order for “toxic masculinity/femininity” to be useful terms, they need accurate and relevant definitions. The commonly used definitions are inconsistent: while “toxic masculinity” is the result of male characteristics run out of control, “toxic femininity” refers to externally imposed gender norms that suppress female characteristics.
I submit the following:
A toxic gender stereotype is one in which the inherent characteristic traits and qualities of that gender are exaggerated to a harmful extent.
“Homophobia” is the only one that didn’t fit. But that’s a special case, as I will explore in next week’s post—at the same time as I ridicule the other elements used in the WebMD “definition”.
https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Faith_of_the_Seven
Actually, this one has no basis at all in the current model… just as it doesn’t for toxic masculinity. But more on this next week.
https://archive.org/details/latterdayscreens00webe/page/203/mode/1up?view=theater&q=toxic+femininity
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/toxic
Not affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS), commonly known as the “Mormons”.
Curious where this all fits when the same people that created these terms and definitions can’t define a woman.