Eisenstein & the Toxic Ten

On my episode Tonic Masculinity Goes Viral!, there were many comments that helped to clarify the issue and nuances. I’ll be taking the advice of Heather B and others, and writing an entirely positive post on Tonic Masculinity and what it means to me. In the meantime, I wanted to go a little deeper into the conflict through these comments.

I’ve been trying to puzzle out why this isn’t about credit but about honor, trustworthiness and belief, the credere that credit derives from. What Charles Eisenstein did was steal from someone who was poorer than him—not in ideas but in audience and recognition. To acknowledge me as the author would have cost him two words, “This is something [Tereza Coraggio] calls tonic masculinity.”

If I had been famous, he certainly would have done that because his audience would have noticed otherwise, and it would have made them doubt his credibility to claim it as his own. But since I am a nobody, he knew no one would catch it. It could add to his reputation as a writer and mentor of men at no expense, either in imagination or credit.

Had he added those two words, it may have changed my life. By him taking me seriously as an author worthy of mention, listeners would have wondered, “Who is this person?” The gain to my audience could have launched me into a whole new level of being part of the conversation about spirituality, a new economic model, and the broken relationship between men and women—three topics that Charles and I share.

For all his talk of the gift economy, Charles judged me not worth acknowledgment because naming me wouldn’t have added to his reputation. What he took away from me was any reputation I might have built with the phrase, which has now been associated with him. “Oh, you mean Eisenstein’s tonic masculinity?” He actively took possession with “This is something I like to call tonic masculinity.” I can’t even write about it now without giving him credit or seeming petty by telling the story of the theft.

Charles’ book, Sacred Economics, is in the same intersection as my book, How to Dismantle an Empire. When I interviewed Charles, soon after it came out, I asked him about some holes in his economic model, and told him my ideas for how we could solve those problems. He wasn’t interested. As my ex once said, not unkindly, who’s going to listen to a housewife on how to change world economics?

The only way my ideas will likely ever be heard is if someone famous took them seriously. So it’s not what he stole from me in those two words, because I’m no worse off than before, as someone with a very small (and beloved) audience. It’s more the entitlement, that taking from those with less than you is okay, when giving back two words could change a life, and perhaps even change a world.

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tonic masculinity goes wildfiral!

MarcusBierce wrote:

Great! We have to find another word for “viral” though. Maybe “wildfiral”

I told him to slap a hashtag on that pronto before someone else does. I’m all for changing the metaphors in our turns of phrase, that I think have been intentionally made violent and sadistic. Instead of ‘killing two birds with one stone,’ I use ‘lighting two flames with one match.’ And rather than ‘holding someone’s feet to the fire,’ a torture analogy that’s been used in ads by Amnesty Int’l, I now say ‘throwing a wrench into a front loading washer.’

Gabriel of Libre Solutions Network posted:

It is frustrating to hear that you've been robbed of credit!

My immediate thought went to wonder if this "left-washing" is a deliberate attempt to "pre-bunk" your non-prejorative concept of masculinity among particular people. It seems like that was part of the problem with others warping the meaning.

If the goal is to continue to keep people bitter and hateful of each other, it would make sense why such a concept would need to be "removed from play".

Hopefully I'm wrong about that and that this is just a messy misunderstanding that will work itself out as people who know the true origin " correct the record". Or even that the new (to many) phrase ends up leading people to dig deeper.

The best case scenario in my mind is that it can be a rallying cry for others to consider what tonic masculinity can be like, inspiring a constellation of creative works to share, express, and promote the idea!

In response to Gabe, I wrote:

It's pretty hilarious, when you think about it. When the BroFest Boys stole my term, they made it anti-gay, anti-trans, anti-feminist, anti-feminine men and anti-women, except for their select few. So they focused on masculine as opposed to feminine rather than tonic as opposed to toxic, which they didn't believe existed anyway.

Then it got stolen from them by the gender equity woke police. Ha!

And Eisenstein steals it from me, and just when the candidate he's campaign manager for steps down and throws his support to Trump, the Kamala/ Walz campaign steals it to defeat Trump, potentially losing any political favors he would have gained. So now my term is being used by both sides of a Presidential campaign.

How about #poetickarma?

What I didn’t say in my comment is that I would absolutely LOVE to see Gabe write what tonic masculinity is for him. Wouldn’t that be the best? The person who told me about the Brohaha was Gavin Mounsey, to whom I’d said that he was a great representation of tonic masculinity, and asked him to write about it.

I think he had too much humility but, as I’ll be writing, I see it as a process not a product, a verb not a noun, an aspiration not a status, a tool not a trophy. I would very much like to see the thoughts of the other male Stackers here, whose tonic masculinity I’d like to celebrate. This depth of conversation could never happen without respect for women as equals, and that’s just the start of the qualities I could (and will) name.

I’ve been honored to get to know some of the women and, through them, the husbands, partners, brothers, sons and even exes they hold in tender regard. What makes them tonic? Oh, I would love to hear those stories.

And most tender of all, today was the memorial for Margaret Anna Alice’s husband, Michael. It’s been such a pleasure getting to know Michael through her writing:

I’ve Lost Half of Me: Pitched Past Pitch of Grief

The Michael Project #1

I wonder what the lens of tonic masculinity would bring out in her kaleidoscope?

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diverging from dichotomies

Jack Sirius, a longtime reader of Third Paradigm, expressed his concern:

I’m not a fan of dichotomies, most of which are false. (The current most obvious false dichotomy being the continued use of left and right regarding political leanings.)

The problem with tonic/toxic is that they are on a continuum. Every medicine is also a poison, depending only on the dose, and one person’s tonic is another’s poison (as some other original, unknown, unremembered word cobbler said).

I answered:

You and I agree about dichotomies. If you look at the 'address' for my Substack emails, it's 'between the false dichotomies.'

How I define toxic is superiority, something that's not medicinal or healing in any quantity, imo. The Brofest Boys define tonic masculinity as superiority—being more intelligent, principled, stronger and capable than women. I think you read many of these at the time, but the last couple will refresh your memory if you think my gripe is merely using my term. They used it as a whitewash of toxic masculinity, rebranding it. If you have another word for that superiority (if you agree that's what it is) I recommend that you translate into a term with less baggage for you than toxic. It's why the definition of what someone means by their language is so important, so we can keep the concepts but translate the words.

My definition of tonic masculinity is an entirely different paradigm of society, restructured with raising children as the priority, the reason we exist. It sees women as fundamentally different than men only in their capacity to be mothers—which is NOT analogous to a father, again imo. So Tonic Masculinity, by my definition, is supportive to women in their role of caring for children. It's not the absence of superiority to women, it's an active decision that women are, by their biology, irrevocably closer to the function of our lives and purpose of our societies. All our philosophies, religions, politics and culture exist to obscure this self-evident point.

That was the revolutionary thing that CFE had said in his piece on I Like to Fight. I now recognize it was bullshit in terms of his purpose. But his talent is using truth and turning it into ephemeral platitudes. I created the term to express this concept, so we could talk about it.

Mark Alexander of the cleverly named Ministry of Truthiness wrote:

This quote from Jay (from your earlier article) seems to sum up what's going on here:

"Competition between men is basic to masculinity, Tereza. Competition with men, as a woman, on the other hand, makes you Little Miss Bossypants."

One could interpret this as sarcasm, but he seems to be serious.

As indeed he was! Mark posited that Jay’s view was that topics like ethics and philosophy were competitive games. Men were competitive but women were not. Therefore, women shouldn’t play those games. I answered:

I think you're giving Jay too much credit, Mark, but you're onto an important clue.

Competition is inherently about establishing superiority, which is how I define toxic masculinity. My motto is love the person—seeing everyone as your equal—and challenge the ideas. Because of the lens of competition, my challenge to the idea of superiority was seen as me trying to make myself superior, aka Little Miss Bossypants. But the Bro Code is that men don't challenge their friends' ideas, which is why there was complete solidarity in ganging up on me when I stopped flattering them.

Teresa L., who goes by An Observer, made the astute observation:

I don't understand even the lack of basic good manners: sure, "steal" the phrase (as so many of them admitted to doing) but what's so difficult about giving attribution to the person who originally came up with the phrase? There's such a lack of honesty and integrity afoot today, even among those you would expect to be more "decent". But, no. Ironic, too, since these phrase thieves go on and on about supposedly good attributes of masculinity.

Such scoundrels.

(I'm not one for profanity, but I kept laughing every time I stumbled on your new middle name for Eisenstein—who turned me off long ago with his New Agey woowoo gobbledygook. Ay, there's the rub. So un-masculine right there.)

And Teresa is right, and I say that as someone who’s been dubbed The Woo-Woo Woman and who hopes to live up to that moniker. As I explained in my episode, Terry Wolfe Spits on Spirit, religion as a forum for asking the Big Questions has been intentionally lumped together with gobbledygook to disempower it. And CFE has been a big part of that. How many other terms has he stolen and negated their power?

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the last one standing

And the comment thread went downhill from there with the only guy who’d used the term in the way that I meant it. William Hunter Duncan wrote:

So, I'm not quite sure how I went from you posting approvingly of my post Sacred Masculine, to my supposed reinterpretation of Tonic Masculinity as toxic and poison?

I wrote back:

Yes I thought when I listed the group as a whole that you were the exception but figured I could make that point with my episode on you later in the thread. In the accompanying video I also state that yours was the one that fit my definition and that I still quote "Real men have skills.' Also, you did a referral in yours back to my post on Tonic Masculinity & Feminine Wiles, acknowledging my use of the phrase.

My ending statement that talks about turning it to poison mentions The Tonic 7, of which you weren't a part. So I did include you for brevity in 'turning the phrase into that which I considered toxic', for which I apologize, but I didn't in the statement on poison.

William answered:

As I was also included in the first "toxic" part of the tonic 7, one might infer when you called their work "poison" one might think I would be included. Just saying. As to the tonic 7, anyone who reads there work regularly might wonder how you interpret their work as toxic and poison. If we are to take your description of tonic masculine as children at the center, women in a circle around them and then men in a circle around the women and kids, that supposes you are placing men in the position of protection. Which if you really mean that, then in a world of violence, I imagine those men should be capable of great violence. In which case I imagine such women would want to cultivate such men to face the violence outward and not inward, so I'm not sure how that fits with calling the work of the tonic 7 toxic and poison, particularly as they have a growing influence.

I replied:

I'm not sure of your point, William. You're objecting that I grouped you in with those who used my phrase to promote ideas I define as toxic. Yet you want me to know that you're proud to be identified with them, whose ideas you agree with, and that my phrase has given them a growing influence so I should be happy they stole it.

I think that superiority sells, whether it's in religion or politics or gender. It's easy to get people to agree on their shared superiority. It's exponentially harder to get people to agree on ideas.

If ALL children are at the center and ALL women are surrounding them (figuratively speaking), who are the men protecting them from? Mine isn't a tribal model, it's an economic system where instead of the labor of women also serving investor profits, as 'feminism' did, the labor of men can also serve the family and community.

William:

I'm saying I admire all those guys, they are some of the most creative thinkers on Substack and rejecting them as toxic and poisonous says more about you then them. You don't own the concept of tonic masculine. Anyone is free to define it. Those guys don't own it either, and if Charles is acting like he does, pity the fool.

In a world where we have millions of fighting aged males crossing the border unchecked but treated like some mercenary force defending the Feds by proxy, when you have writers openly discussing invading America, when the dollar could collapse and much of civilization with it, it is a bit mystifying to me, to talk like protective male violence was only necessary in some distant tribal arrangement.

Me:

Your guys are not creative enough to write their own brand. With all of their creativity, they couldn't come up with a catchy enough phrase to describe themselves or their philosophy. They had to steal their most important and popular term from someone else, and hide that they hadn't come up with it.

The only person who apologized, when she found out it had come from me, was Shirlene, a woman. On the last two episodes, where things get ugly and Daniel does a parody apology ridiculing me and insults are being thrown, you're notably absent. Is that tonic masculinity to you?

The BroCode is never contradict your friends and gang up on anyone who does. And then brag about how we men have the courage to say the things that need to be said, even if it's not popular, or whatever Doctor Yammer threw out.

I'm sick of coddling men's egos. I did two episodes on you, William, and I've always said respectful things about you, even when I disagree with your ideas. Have you ever reciprocated? That's what women are for, right? They're the ones who need to make nice and be polite. The BroPack loved me when I was writing flattering articles about them, they invited me to join their chat group. And then they turned, like the wolf pack they fancy themselves.

You're splitting hairs over whether 'the Tonic 7' could imply that it includes you promoting a view I consider poison. Oh dear, an insult. And then you tell me that your guys are waaaay more creative than me and rejecting their ideas just shows who I am. Why in the world would I say that this is toxic masculinity hiding under my plagiarized phrase?

William:

I'm not familiar with their mockery of you. If they did, I am sorry to hear it. Nor did I imply they are more creative than you in the way you describe, I compared them to Substack writ large. Nor do I need you to coddle my ego, nor did I take your discussion of my work as such. Have I reciprocated? I am sure I have linked your work a time or two, which is about as much as I do for any other writer here. I'm not asking you to be nice or polite, I simply stepped in because I felt like I got lumped in with toxic and poison and I still don't even know why, after all this.

Me:

I appreciate you coming back into the discussion and not reacting, William. I had been thinking during the lull, as I told my daughter today, that we don't know how to come to agreement because women don't like conflict and men think insults are the same as disagreeing on ideas—in both directions, as taking disagreement as an insult and giving insults instead of disagreeing.

To say that my disagreement with the guys (I'm willing for you to come up with a name for them that isn't insulting but isn't plagiarized from me) 'says more about me' seems like an insult. What exactly does it say about me?

Using my rules for argument, let me define the question using one example: Does John Carter's writing exhibit toxic masculinity? Second, define what I mean by the terms: toxic masculinity is superiority to women. Third, why does it matter? If John Carter's writing exhibits toxic masculinity AND he's calling it tonic masculinity, he's destroying the meaning of the term. Rather than adding to the idea by sharing it, his use is destructive of the idea behind it.

I had just glanced at John's stack with

Digital Purdah as a Solution to Female Internet Brain

We certainly agree that the phrase 'female internet brain' is insulting, yes? If I said you had a 'male internet brain,' you would be rightly offended.

But John goes on. His subtitle reads: "Women have been driven insane by social media. Could the answer be as simple as banning selfies?" So John is declaring women insane and is suggesting that men should take control and ban selfies. As you know, this is a pretty common theme of his.

If a woman were to talk about the impact of social media and selfies on women, that would be talking about ideas. When John does, he's speaking from a position of superiority to women. He's calling them insane. He says their brains are different than men's. That's what I define as toxic and insulting, rather than talking about ideas. Do you disagree?

William:

I think he is talking about some women. Some women have in fact been driven insane by modernity and the internet, the number of anti-depressants used, as example. That and the increasing Dark Mother energy of our suffocating public and private institutions. DEI as a cultural force is largely female driven, leading to the collapse of complex systems. Instagram is another example of making young girls crazy.

There is increasingly a push in the west to effectively criminalize criticizing feminism and women, literally calling it extremism, treating it like terrorism.

We’re All Terrorists Now

That is authoritarianism writ large, and quite insane. No man I am familiar with has ever suggested women should be treated like terrorists for criticizing men .

At the same time, I have listened to most of the tonic seven podcasts, and sometimes I am at a loss, what does this have to do with tonic masculine? They call themselves that but do not really speak to it, directly. Which is a pity.

Me:

You've seen my episode on Fiamengo, yes? https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/michael-tsarion-myth-of-the-terrible

I think our purpose is to push back on the systems trying to control us, and that trying to control others is contradictory to that. Once you give yourself the right to judge others and tell them they're the problem, you've tacitly accepted their right to tell you YOU are the problem. Superiority has to be renounced in all forms and John Carter and the Toxic 7 embrace their superiority to women.

And women who are seeking the approval of men, like Fiamengo and the interviewer on the Bro Pill, are the most vicious to other women of all.

William:

And this is where I think you are collapsing into a feminist, post-modern, progressive, deconstructive, southern California framework of female empowerment, while acting like anyone who questions that is a misogynist.

Me:

Apology retracted for having lumped you into those presenting toxic masculinity and calling it tonic! Rather than responding to my arguments, which didn't attack you but presented a logical discourse on blaming systems instead of each other, you came back with six labels for me. It's like you wanted to provide a textbook perfect example of men perceiving disagreement with their ideas as insulting them, and insulting their challenger as a clever rebuttal of their ideas.

I keep giving you the benefit of the doubt, William, but character attacks are not the same as logical arguments, and logical arguments against your points are not character attacks. Resorting to name-calling is juvenile, just like the religious fundamentalist I argued with.

And why change what I'm claiming as toxic masculinity, defined as superiority to women, into misogyny? Is it because you realized what John and the Toxic 7 have said is superiority, so you can't argue against that, and instead want to argue that I'm saying they hate all women? That's not what I said when I defined the question or the terms in it. It's introducing a straw man, arguing back against something I never said.

William:

Calling Fiamengo the most vicious to women at all was the point I lost interest. You have an absolutist streak. You seem to want to make enemies of a lot of people on Substack who should be your allies.

Me:

I'll quote from my episode on Fiamengo:

"Janice calls herself a ‘retired English professor’ when she realized in her 40’s that her life purpose was to love and look after a man. They encourage ‘women of average intelligence’ to skip the academics and career, and go straight to looking for a husband. Yet they don’t stake their own self-worth and reputation on this. To their podcast audience, their credentials lie in their former status in the masculine worlds of academia and medicine. And make sure you know it."

If someone told you, William, that (unlike them) you were of average intelligence and should skip academics, because they would be wasted on you, would you call that vicious? I quote Janice:

"feminism will not be defeated until women join with men to throw it into the garbage bin of history, and although I agree that women too are harmed by feminism, I’m not sure what avenues to explore with them."

So women need to join with men against women, because men know better than women what women need. And:

"the central role of women in any viable society is to care for their menfolk and to raise the next generation, and to cultivate self-control, faithfulness, truth-telling, modesty, gentleness, and loving kindness. … Whether this can be done in the absence of a religious tradition, I am not sure."

So, to Janice, it's women's jobs to take care of men rather than the job of men to help them care for the children. And she points back to the religious tradition that says it's all Eve's fault for wanting knowledge and women should submit to their husbands and cultivate the demure virtues that befit their servile status.

Once again, saying I 'have an absolutist streak' is a character attack that defines who I am rather than debating the ideas I'm presenting. And I don't even know what it means. If you or others are friends with me on the condition I don't disagree with your ideas, that would be an ally that holds us both back.

William:

There are plenty of words for what Janice is up to, but vicious again says more about you than Janice. Why is it threatening to you if some women choose a family life? Shouldn't a woman want to serve her man? I argue a man should serve his wife. I can tell you the two women I have served that way did not serve me. I think a woman arguing for family life is refreshing, because mostly what I have been hearing from women is what a shit I am because I am a white man.

Me:

Once again, you state it 'says more about me' as a character attack but you don't answer any of the points I made about the ways in which Fiamengo's quotes are demeaning to women, in a way I'd say is vicious.

I became a full-time mom when my daughters were 9, 7 and 3 and my husband, being in sales, was frequently traveling. FIAMENGO HAS NO KIDS! Her husband is the kid that she spends her life taking care of. It's what she realized was her mission in life—doting on a full grown baby in exchange for not needing to bring in a paycheck.

How many episodes have I published on my economic plan that enables the labor of both men and women to serve the family and community? Have you ever heard me glorify women serving investor profits instead of the family?

But my daughters won't have the choice that I had because mortgages have gone up to two incomes, so either the husband has to 'man-up' and get that extra shot of testosterone Fiamengo talks about, to make double the income, or women have lost the chance to stay home and raise their kids.

In my episode on John Carter's guest post, Zoomer Girl Derangement, I asked John if he was willing to support a woman to stay home and raise his kids, the way that zinnia wanted. He essentially said he'd take the kid but not the wife, that divorce was unfairly biased towards women.

So there you have it. What Janice wants is for men to be rich and support their stay-at-home wives who don't even have kids. What John and the gang believe is that women are schemers looking to take advantage of men. And that marriage is for chumps. So he's blaming the women who work and the ones 'using men' to get out of work.

Seriously, William, do you not see how insulting it is to ask why I'm 'threatened if some women choose a family life?' That word indicates that I'm having an emotional reaction when I've presented quotes and facts to back my points. You say I'm threatened as if it's fact and needs no proof, that there is some bitterness in me against stay-at-home moms because it 'threatens' my self image.

And now that you recognize that I chose a family life, and that even my book describes me as 'just a housewife', will you apologize for that accusation?

William’s last comment, to which I didn’t reply, was:

From my perspective, using words like toxic, poison and vicious about the people we are discussing is not coming from a logical or reasonable place.

So no apology. I started out this whole discussion by apologizing for including him with those who’d used my phrase of Tonic Masculinity as a cover for Toxic Masculinity. He didn’t accept my apology and went on to tell me why their use of it wasn’t toxic either.

I happened to be looking at my old episode, The Horus Gamos and saw this:

Women: don’t allow yourself or other women to be insulted, even by a friend. Superiority is the cold form of hatred. Don’t be nice and acquiesce to those who put you or others down. When they gaslight you that you’re over reacting or being emotional, call them on their bullshit.

William says, “You don’t own tonic masculinity.” But what in the world do we own other than what we create? If someone plagiarizes another’s words, can we consider them a good writer? An ethical person? A spiritual leader? A mentor on how to be a good man? Or should we be looking for the unknown word cobbler who coined Sacred Economics and perhaps developed a model to back it up that actually worked?

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The Hieros Gamos is the sacred union of the king-god and high priestess. In the Horus Gamos, Isis re-members Osiris to conceive Horus. I look at hieros vs. eros, the eek! lips!, moving into the House of Yes, flirting and the sextrovert, the white tigress and the inner king, and queen of the microrave.

In Nov 2022, I posted a comment on Charles Eisenstein making up the term Tonic Masculinity. I've since posted seven videos about the nine Substack guys who stole it and turned it around to mean its opposite. It's now appeared in WaPo to describe Tim Walz. Articles on Medium and Substack try to trace its origin. In the course of my investigation, I find another word thief—Charles Eisenstein! I state that tonic means healing, not stealing.

In this feisty video, I look at The Dragon Mother: a New Look at the Female Psyche, or Female Psycho as is Michael's view. And women who love men and trash other women, like Janice Fiamengo, self-professed man defender, and Hannah Spier who co-authors the podcasts, “What Should I Tell My Daughter?” and “Psychobabble.” I contrast my system, which releases men from soul-sucking jobs and allows their labor also to serve the family.

Looks at A Partial Explanation of Zoomer Girl Derangement by zinnia and John Carter's articles Tonic Masculinity, The Devouring Mother of the Digital Longhouse and Pixel Valhalla. I give an alternate explanation as a mother of zoomers and challenge whether men want to buy neither the cow nor the milk, and when they call women hoes are merely quibbling over the price.