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Deconstructing the notions of centrality and marginality against the background of masculinities embosses the suspicion that what is at the centre often hides a repression. Toxic Masculinity as a concept finds its origins in the objective of cultivating a tolerance of variance in masculinities. However, its integration into modern feminist discourse has been preceded by an operation of binaries being put into place. The popular usage of Toxic Masculinity as an explanation carries the presupposition of an explainable society and an explaining subject. Locating social ills in the performance of Toxic Masculinity places an unquestionably good man against the ‘toxic’ man. The material sedimentation of this boundary can be found in the social media responses to the Me Too movement in India. The determinations of the “toxicity” of masculinity are changeable by what lies at the centre. Instead of being symptomatic of a normalised patriarchal social setting, Toxic Masculinity, thus, acts as a reinforcer of hegemonic masculinity. In order to maintain the consistency in explanation, reactionary narratives are changed to fit popular imaginations of Toxic Masculinity. The locus of accountability is placed beyond individual actors. A repressive tolerance of different masculinities can be found at the centre that allows for Toxic Masculinity to function as a cultural explanation. Emerging from the integration into feminist discourse is a response to Feminism that allows for easy co-optation into patriarchal institutions.
This paper will explore the relations between the known and the unknown in terms of masculinities and the formulation of cultural explanations for social ills. The operationalisation of binaries by the concept of Toxic Masculinity will be put to question. The social media activity surrounding the Me Too movement in India will be studied to demonstrate how Toxic Masculinity reinstates patriarchal assumptions. The language of centrality has carved a changeable boundary between the good and toxic man.
An act that is implicit in any feminist activity is the deconstruction of the opposition between the private and the public (Spivak, 1979). The existing public structures are able to sustain themselves in the face of this social deconstruction by emphasising upon how the very act of deconstruction is a private, individuated act which is not universally applicable to all. The demands placed against an ‘alternate’ cultural explanation are of universal relevance. Such demands function on the assumption that the current cultural explanation came into existence because of mutual consent and has proved its effectiveness through its sustenance. Gramsci’s ideas of hegemony divulged the guarded forces that maintain cultural explanations. By quoting her personal experience, Spivak emphasises upon how an invitation to the ‘centre’ comes at the price of exacting the language of centrality (Spivak, 1979). To contribute to the public truth, the private experience is highlighted in its occasionality and difference. Selective entry of the inhabitants of the margin is made to happen to co-opt marginalized into the exclusionary process. These perfunctory efforts of representation are aptly recognised as Tokenism.
It’s imperative to note the forces that operate within the realm of feminist deconstruction to effectively understand how concepts that emerge as consequences of feminism become reactionary towards it.
The feminist discourse of femininity being a social construction of gender and thus being problematic in the normative expectations it carries has been widely accepted. Men’s lives, on the other hand, have not usually been seen as gendered at all. The public truth of masculinity deems it to be a container standardized by biology which fits all ‘normal’ men. ‘Maleness’ is translated into masculinity through measurable psychological traits and physical attributes. We can see and experience expected masculinity as long as one stays within this container. This natural claim has been challenged by many cultural explanations. By linking tangible ‘performances’ masculinity to intangible cultural values, masculinity has been reinterpreted as a diverse, mobile construction that is interpolated by cultural, historical and geographical locations.
The socialisation into femininity has been accepted as a cultural process, which one can, thereby, oppose. The centrality of this nominally marginal explanation withdraws attention from how similar discourse and research in terms of masculinity is lacking. Masculinity is not ‘commonsensically’ is not regarded as a social construction and thus not scrutinised as ‘problematic’. Even the cultural explanations of masculinity often are linked to natural, innate, biological make-up to explain individual behaviour in social terms. The language of centrality has to be used to convey what is consciously side-lined. The ‘man’ is reimagined as a victim/a pioneer (as one may choose to view it) of his natural forces.
The explosion of a uniform imagination of masculinity has been made inevitable owing to the sexual liberation movement. Masculinity being regarded as a ‘singular-plural’ where it is indexical of experiences of class, subculture, age and ethnicity to incorporate the variance in experience can be regarded as recent development in social history.
A term that has been the harbinger of this change is ‘Toxic Masculinity’. Popularly understood as conformity to a traditional, archetypal role of masculinity which justifies aggression, glorifies violence and is thus, narrow it its scope of emotional expression. Terry Kupers has defined Toxic Masculinity as “the constellation of socially regressive male traits that serve to foster domination, the devaluation of women, homophobia, and wanton violence” (Kupers, 2005). Toxic Masculinity being wide in cultural circulation makes it a potent agent of change. This potency, however, has been exploited in reactionary terms.
The problem with Toxic Masculinity is that it assumes that there is a masculinity that is not ‘toxic’. The presumption that all other masculinities are free from the ‘toxic’ cultural and social impact is implicit. For adequate integration of the marginalised explanation of masculinity being a construction, an operation of binaries is put to use. The previously discussed oppositions to cultural explanations of masculinity found their basis in the refusal to accept the imagined, universal masculine experience to be ‘problematic’. The anxieties thus raised are addressed by introducing a moral cleavage in the variants of masculinities.
Masculinity that is ‘toxic’ is thus occasional, but found and explained universally. What we place on the margins now is the performance of a regressive, harmful masculinity where all other forms of masculinity are placed at the centre. It gives the illusion of displacement from the recognized status quo but placed under a scrutinising eye reveals the shifting limit of this displacement. As observed, in such a discourse, masculinity still unquestionably inhabits the centre, in a unified diversity. It confirms the suspicion that often what lies at the centre is a repressive tolerance of the margins.
Hegemonic masculinity is able to attain and maintain its position as a cultural expression when hegemonic representations win ideological consent and alternative constructions are either beaten down, ridiculed or absorbed. To maintain the consistency loop of the masculine experience being the ideal universal experience, the ‘problematic’ aspects are recognized to address the criticisms but placed in another container determined by nature where aggressive tendencies are explained through biological make-up. As previously noted, a ‘natural’ justification is being offered to a cultural explanation.
Toxic Masculinity creates the dichotomy of the good and the toxic man along the lines of morality. Morals are subject to geographical locations and corresponding cultural norms yet the spread of Toxic Masculinity as a part of pop-culture in a globalized world attempts to explain the social ills caused by a regressive masculinity in a unilateral way. It is pre-emptory to note that the performance is not limited to male actors, however, popular imaginations and representations attempt to the human appeal to have a self that can control knowledge while residing a world that can be known. When concepts and words seep into popular culture from the academic realm, the nuances are forsaken for the purpose of simplification.
The globalized world reasserts its communicative abilities and global impact through social media. Th effectiveness of online information dissemination is undeniably observable in terms of the #MeToo movement. The #MeToo movement is an international model of resistance towards sexual misconduct, harassment and assault that allows survivors to use social media to do public confrontations, while maintaining their anonymity. The #MeToo movement uses the online sphere to create healing spaces, increase accountability and initiate conversations on consent. It provides a forum of alternative justice when tangible proofs are not available where the dispute is settled in a public setting. Thus, it addresses the legal loopholes which normalize sexual misconduct in dubious situations. As the rendering of legal justice is not a primary objective, the public reactions to the accusations show the moral compass of the society.
A study of the online reactions to the #MeToo movement in India is thus a potent source of information for the politics of Toxic Masculinity in the Indian context. When someone is accused of misconduct, the public belief in such allegations is a question of trust (Folmer & Baldwin, 2019). The formulation of the public truth for this private experience is dependant upon the credibility of the accuser, evaluations of the resemblance of the survivor’s narrative to our understanding of sexual misconduct. The lack of discourse around consent in India prior to this movement explains the disbelief that the first cases of the #MeToo movement in India were met with. This dissonant reaction found a resolution is the rising significance of #BelieveSurvivors.
An important observation is the semblance in the responses of the accused. The reactions to being ‘called out’ on social media can be codified into apology and denial. What is typically contrasting about the reactions of individuals accused in India is the reticent fusion of these two seemingly disparate responses.
We can use the model constructed for explaining how Toxic Masculinity has been co-opted for maintaining the centrality of the universal masculinity without it being deemed problematic on these responses. It in notable that the apology precedes the denial of accusations. While the apologies focus on the feelings of the accusers, the denial attempts the respectability of the accused. A dichotomy of the good and the toxic man is thus being reinstated. The good man cares for how the accused has ‘perceived’ the situation. However, only the ‘toxic’ man would be capable of performing the acts that would make the accused feel violated. The individual actors use their apologies to distance themselves from their alleged behaviour. The accused the language of the centre to address the occasional, marginalised occurrence of sexual misconduct.
The discussion of these responses doesn’t aim to comment upon the ‘truthfulness’ of these accusations but seeks to reveal the tacit operation of binarization. The computation of the marginalisation of the ‘toxic’ man is positivistic as it benefits masculinity as a whole. An undifferentiated explanation to sexual misconduct is provided in the form of Toxic Masculinity. The presence of toxicity to blame enables one to rid themselves of personal accountability and enables the society to limit the displacement of status quo. The moral cleavage of toxicity interacts with all other indexical factors of masculinity. Thus, a heterogenous explanation with discontinuities shall become a destabilizer of current power relations.
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