You coined the term "tonic masculinity," with a specific meaning behind it. That meaning has been lost in the shuffle.
You saw other people on Substack appropriate your term without crediting you for coining it. One of whom was Charles Eisenstein.
But did Charles use the term as you used it or was he one of the re-definers?
Because it's emerged that he's appropriated the language of The New Story and the Old Story from someone named Thomas Berry, without credit. And he took the term Interbeing from Thich Nhat Hanh without mentioning his source. Seems Charles thinks living in the Gift means he's entitled to lift ideas and concepts and terminology without giving due credit to his sources.
Oh that's VERY interesting about Eisenstein. That's exactly what I wondered might be going on. It's Robert Malone's trick too--he parrots back things that he's lifted from elsewhere that will resonate with his audience. In my recent episode on him, https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/malone-and-the-cull-de-sac, he gives a whole talk about surveillance capitalism, never once mentioning Shoshana Zuboff.
I noticed that Eisenstein used Interbeing without crediting TNH, who is one of my great heroes. It made me wonder if perhaps the phrase wasn't original to TNH but now I think it was just Eisenstein. I did this YT on Interdependence vs Interbeing where I do credit TNH: https://youtu.be/ofk4U-g2quc. It's filmed in my Halloween leopard spots.
What the Toxic Ten did was take the pretty packaging of my phrase and use it to wrap the turd of toxic masculinity. Charles didn't do that. He refers to the exact essay of his where I coined it in the comments, then says, "This is what I like to call tonic masculinity," which becomes the title of the interview. There's a fumbling in answering the question and telling the story, so he knows where he got it from but forgets how to tie it in. Here's my episode on him, in case you didn't see it: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/eisenstein-and-the-toxic-ten and the history: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/tonic-masculinity-goes-viral.
What he calls tonic masculinity is men leaping in front of speeding bullets to save their wives and girlfriends. Self-sacrifice is a common theme for him, with his animation of people throwing themselves into the void to bring about the 'new story.' I think this is part of the depop agenda, as I wrote about here: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/deep-fakes-eisenstein-and-rfk.
Thanks for that confirmation of my suspicions, Prokopton!
That’s just Part 1 of his four part critique of Eisenstein. Make sure to read all four parts to see the full breadth of his critique, he mentions Thomas Berry’s ideas throughout. He complains that Charles never credited Berry despite Dellinger trying to make the lineage clear for years. Charles just ignored every attempt of Berry’s admirers to get him to acknowledge his debt. To be fair, it’s not entirely clear Charles ever read Berry’s own books, the phrases and ideas might have simply been in the air and passed around in his social circles, but even so, he clearly appropriated these phrases and ideas for himself without making clear to his readership he wasn’t the originator, merely a conduit. I’d always assumed he’d invented the Old Story/New Story and Interbeing concepts himself. Not so.
I appreciate Drew's insight into Eisenstein in these posts. But his main takeaway is him supporting Trump and the danger to the Supreme Court if Kamala's not elected. Anyone looking at politics to save us has their own blind spot, imo.
And why would someone with 326 subs not enable comments? Don't get that. But the stuff on Berry is very interesting.
Spent my 20s looking around for some intoxicating masculinity but guess how much of that existed in the theatre world. 😂
I kid, I kid. I don’t know if I ever looked too deep into all this in a philosophical way. I excelled in male dominated fields because it was fun and the pay was good. Driving big vehicles and heavy machinery wasnt all that difficult (and probably a bit easier for women to drive fork lifts, for example, because our periphery is an advantage) but earned some street cred in blue collar communities. The work flowed easier because the banter was oh, so not PC, especially in construction when any name for hardware is a euphemism for something phallic. No one got canceled, it was good natured and you bet that the few times an outsider turned threatening, my colleagues bared their teeth.
This is such a contrast to something I just saw on X with a lady talking about how the execs at one of those Diddy parties averted their eyes as she was pleading for help when she was about to get raped.
I don’t know if I have an actual point. I wish we could stress less about dividing factors. In the end, I truly love what you were aging about the big war being that between those who wish to be governed and those who chose autonomy. Almost everything can be reduced to that. Even the toxic/tonic masculinity which men and women both play a role in.
Intoxicating masculinity! You can bet I'm using that.
I didn't know you had all these manly skills. You do keep blowing me away, Tonika.
You're touching on something so important. It's not about 'respectful' banter or sexy innuendoes (and isn't that word just!) It's about the abuse of power. We can make all the rules we want but they don't matter if women can't walk away from the abusive boss, abusive husband, abusive situation. Solving the power dynamic lets us get back to the important business of playing ;-)
That’s an accurate way of putting it. I did see a lot of line blurring from my fellow lady friends during that period, where I knew they engaged in that fun banter at school or in professional settings only to turn around and publicly describe those episodes under the #metoo movement. I was so puzzled. Men were sliding into me DMs trying to do some damage control, I felt so uncomfortable with how emasculating that phase was. Rearing straight white boys in this environment of apologetic behaviour for simply existing has been difficult. But perhaps the fact that my boys have my mom and me both at home to help them navigate some of the damaging feminist views while infusing them with tonic masculinity will help.
Never a dull moment around these here comments section.
I've been looking for a place to use this meme that says, "Despite all warnings, Pandora opened the comments section." Hahaha!
I remember it being a very confusing time for me personally, as a Director of Human Resources. I still cringe at some of the things I made an issue out of, that didn't involve any kind of power dynamic. And then I think of the situation that drove me out of the corporate world: the CFO, my boss, was harassing an 18 yr old who worked for me and the CEO was harassing his admin, who also came to work under me. (It should have been a hint when in my job interview, he touched a lapel pin I was wearing) For two months, I tried to figure out where to go but in the end, all those fancy lawyers who teach the harassment seminars are working for the execs.
After it all blew up, I ended up going to the Board of Directors, who offered me a job elsewhere, and to lawyers. But I heard later the CEO was still at it, coming up behind the receptionist and putting his hands in her jacket pockets. I was so disgusted by the whole scene, I dropped out--but that's another story.
The real thing is out there. I'd say that it's easy to tell the difference but it's not really. That's why I gave a lot of thought to why it's about power, not sex.
Steve Bannon of the war room is or course even worse by many degrees.
It is also notable that as far as I know the Orange Haired Monstrosity is now pitching his strategy for re-election to dis-affected adolescent hoons/yahoos, the behavior of which was/is graphically portrayed in the movie Beavis & Butthead Do America.
That is a very well written and detailed article on Vance, Jonathan. As an Appalachian, I've critiqued Vance for his class-based caricatures. This playlist includes two of my videos that refute him, Appalachian Rage and How Whites Were Trashed: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/on-whites-and-wokes.
As you may have noted from my last episode on this topic, my term Tonic Masculinity is now being used for Walz and, by extension, Kamala. I would argue that, like Hilary, Harris is a patriarch without a penis. And Walz may not be toxic masculinity but is certainly toxic nationalism. Neither questions the inherent right of the US to kill and terrorize people living in their own home countries. I'd use the trope of women and children but are fathers and brothers and sons any more legitimate to murder when they're defending their own?
For me, RFK's swing to Trump is not a betrayal because he's in agreement with this too. Ethics isn't how other people treat you, it's how you treat other people. I'm forced to participate in the most revolting and disgustingly immoral behaviors on the planet, and there's no way to vote that will make a bit of difference in that. If Toxic Masculinity is superiority to others, every single candidate assumes that as their God-given American right ... or left, no difference.
"It isn’t feminism that’s emasculated men but patriarchy"
Your logic seems a little disconcerting to me.
Patriarchy existed already in the time of Abraham and then the family unit was strong and men were not emasculated. If men assumed the role of leading (greek "arkhein") the family, it seems to me that it was inevitable, as the mother's role is by nature entirely dedicated to the children. The destruction of the family was one of the main goals of communism, therefore the attack on patriarchy, the traditional central pillar of the family, became a main theme of the "Critical theory" developped by the Marxist "philosophers" of the Frankfurt School (see Max Horkheimer, "Authoritarianism and the family"). I am not able to see anything but Marxism, and its by-product, feminism, that have emasculated men.
Henry James describes feminism in his 1886 novel The Bostonians in a way that feels very contemporary. The same intense arguments, conflicts, and debates surrounding gender roles were already in full swing in 1886. How could the Frankfurt School and cultural Marxists have caused a social movement that was already in full swing in the 19th century? James is ambivalent about the impact of the suffragettes, to say the least, but he also portrays his "patriarchal" figures in a mixed light as well: his two main characters Olive Chancellor, a militant radical feminist, and Basil Ransom, a male chauvinist traditionalist, are both very dark, complex, and disturbing figures: he doesn't make it easy for the reader to fully identify with either of them. It's a shame more people across the political divide haven't read this novel: it could have been written yesterday: James correctly saw that the battleground between feminism and patriarchal traditionalism was only going to intensify. Blaming it on Marxism, Horkheimer, Critical Theory, makes little sense, as that wasn't even a thing at the time James was writing, yet all the conflicts and disagreements concerning core values were already there in embryo. Feminism can't be a by-product of something that didn't even exist yet.
Thanks for that very interesting literary reference, Prokopton. My favorite kind of fiction is where the heroes aren't really heroes and the villains aren't really villains. It sounds like The Bostonians fits that model of nuance.
I describe our current form of feminism, the 'glass ceiling' and even the suffragettes, as Virginia Slims feminism--women too can make the rich richer! Instead of changing the system to a feminine purpose of serving family and community, it kept a system that served the rulers--who happened to be men--and co-opted the labor of women into it.
Here's a fairly recent essay that demonstrates how modern and eerily accurate James' perceptions about "the culture wars" were, even in the 19th century he could already discern where things were headed:
The foundations of Communism were laid by Freemasonry (A. Weishaupt) about one century before "The Bostonians" were written (the Illuminati were founded in 1776). If Communism only went "mainstream" with Marx's Manifesto in 1848, it doesn't mean that the subvertive actions of Freemasonry on the cultural or political levels did not exist before Freemasonry only works behind the scenes.
Ah glad you're going back to the archons and the OG/ OT patriarchy. According to primogeniture, only the oldest son inherited. Land and property weren't divided, it and all the slaves and the right to rule over family members belonged to one son.
Noah gave the right to rule the world to Shem and made the descendants of Ham and Caanan--whole races, countries and continents full of men--into their slaves. That followed for every lineage, which is why the Torah is 50% genealogy and 50% graphic violence.
Hierarchy is the inheritance order of the archons. To be part of the assembly, you needed to be male, be a free man, be a large landowner with many serfs, and be a first born son. They could work their way up the hierarchy by contributing to the military from the bushels of barley their tenant farmers produced. It was a slave system, and that's not even counting the slaves, colonized and women.
If masculinity is the ability to provide for a wife and children, 90% of men were emasculated by patriarchy (to be generous) while 10% were able to fulfill their role, as determined by nature. When you say that the mother's role by nature is entirely dedicated to the children, is that something nature confided to you personally, to say it with such authority? Are you speaking from your own authority as a woman and mother? Or are you taking authority over others, as a patriarch?
I didn't really mean to project any authority but only what I thought was logic in mentioning the role of the mother. Since the sublime role given by nature to feminity is to create life, this defines ipso facto the "patri-archal" role of the father, since the family unit is constituted on the basis of a complementary duality and it is not possible for the two poles to be "egalitarian", to use a word cherished by Marxists.
We see in the nature that during the time that the female bird has to remain on the nest, it becomes the male's responsibility to feed her. In my view, all the attributes that come with the "patriarchy" function are rooted in the "natural" role of man. If nature had endowed man with the role of giving life, then "matri-archy" would become the source of all evils and this is what Marxism would aim at destroying. I mentioned Abraham only to go back to a time, where I imagine that men were not emasculated and it was probably a mistake, as I do share your viewpoint on the Torah and all other religions named after that character. I didn't have to go so far back in time, as in my father's time the same patriarchal traditions existed. Women did not work in that time, they took care of the children at home and men's salary was sufficient to provide for the family and even put money aside to eventually later be able to buy a house. Men were not emasculated and women were not "defeminized" before the "Fall of the Berlin Wall". This is when the Globalists abandoned the instrument of Communism to switch to that of cultural Marxism.
After reading you, I am still unable to answer that question: if patriarchy were a poison for the family, why would Marxism set out to destroy it since its goal is to destroy the family?
I will also add this: you write, "men's salary was sufficient to provide for the family and even put money aside to eventually later be able to buy a house." So the labor of men doesn't support the family, it supports the patriarchy who then gives them the stored labor of money--taken from the mortgages of their parents and grandparents--so they can eventually be able to buy a family home like the one their parents and grandparents already bought with their labor.
If the patriarchs were taken out of this equation, men and women could both use their labor to support the family and community, and houses could still be exchanged. When you say 'support a family,' you mean with money that was created to force the labor of men to serve the patriarchy. I mean men supporting the family and community with their labor in a system of reciprocity backed by the housing. That's the purpose of my book: https://www.amazon.com/How-Dismantle-Empire-2020-Vision/dp/1733347607.
It's not Marxists who took away the ability of mothers to stay home and care for their children--it's bankers. We bid against each other for how much 30 yr debt we can take on for a house. A two income family can take on twice as much debt. So for one generation, women won the right to work outside the home and then they lost the right to not work outside because mortgages went up to dual incomes. That's competition and capitalism, not Marxism.
Personally, I don't believe any of us should be ruling over others. Not men over women, not oligarchs over all of us.
"money that was created to force the labor of men to serve the patriarchy"
There are here two issues that have a common denominator but however should not be merged together. First patriarchy defines the role of man in the family and by extension in the society, then money, which is not created to "serve" the patriarchy or anything in the society, but to control or enslave every aspect of society. That's why patriarchy, as a social hierarchy, was not an issue for the globalists, as it was already under the strict control of their usurocracy, this in all domains of society, political, economical, cultural etc... They needed Marxism to implement what money alone was unable to achieve: destroy the patriarchy, as a family hierarchy, because it was what ensured the internal cohesion and stability of the family, as the base unit of the nation state. The destruction of the family was already one of the priorities of Adam Weishaupt's program in the 18th century, as the dissolution of the nations states is a pre-condition for a world government.
Saying that money (or capitalism) and Marxism are the two faces of the same coin is only partially correct. The Illuminati alliance was a triple alliance between money (Rothschild), Freemasonry (Weishaupt) and religion (Frank).
There was therefore no field of human activity that could escape this very "inclusive" conspiracy.
an interesting discussion and one with good timing with something i'm exploring right now. i would, after reading your observations on tonic and toxic masculinity, that i've experienced 'toxic masculinity' from a female friend. her response to my recent request for financial help created a kind of wave of emotional responses that crescendoed with real anger at her subtle but profound condescension and smug superiority over me because of my infantile-like and having inappropriately left friendly and safe canada. hmmmm. if only i would return home from my delusional state, your friends will take care of you! omg! gag!
so what to do about the toxic masculinity being displayed by many women, although likely concentrated in the extremes of such entities as the feminazis and the language and body mutilating 'progressive' and the domains they inhabit? and is a 'devouring mother' energy a manifestation of toxic masculinity in the female?
also, as you know i am very keen on clearing from our language practices those words and usages that disempower or mis-empower us. to that end i've begun to stop using the 'w*ke' word, because its energy applies to both the so-called extremes of the progressives and conservatives. and following your argument going forward i will remove from my usage the 'p' and 'm' -archies.
this is a thoughtful and thought provoking essay.
all the best with what is changing. everything changes!
Hello, Guy. I define toxic masculinity as superiority to women so I wouldn't say that, by my definition, it applies to your female friend. Profound condescension and smug superiority seem like apt terms to describe it, though.
Psychologically, I think that anger is often the result of guilt. If your friend felt guilty for not helping you financially, she may have wanted to allay that feeling of guilt by blaming you for your own choices. I didn't see that thread so I'm only guessing at what might have led to what seems like a very hurtful and judgmental reaction on her part.
It seems like those who see a pattern in women have already coined the terms feminazis and devouring mother to describe it. Why would they need to use the term toxic masculinity? I think it would be better to define the terms feminazi (as you're the second person here to use) and devouring mother so that they name a particular set of behaviors, the way I've defined my use of toxic masculinity as superiority to women. Otherwise it feels like an exchange of insults rather than identifying what we feel is destructive to the relationships between men and women.
is it not possible for women who have been broken to have taken on the behaviour and attitudes of being superior to women? that falls within the definition you have give above. for example, the deep condescension often given by the feminazis to women empowered and content with the power and responsibility of motherhood and the home?
i'm not sure that the need to use 'toxic masculinity' is necessary per se. you have taken some intelligent effort to unite the male and female as victims of the slave system under the -archy and that separating them serves the energy of the enslavement system under indebtedness. it seems me that your definitions of 'tonic/toxic' masculinity might best expressed without being linked to male or female per se, and rather the energies they manifest and from which they are created: not m/f dependentent.
anyway, my thoughts as stimulated by your interesting dig.
(regarding my friend: that exploration isn't there to see. i'm working through it now and expect to publish for tomorrow morning.)
Should never be used to refer to men, in general. If their behavior is reprehensible, then CALL THEM OUT ON THAT, but to call them out simply for being male...that don't fly.
Hi, Elsie. I'm thinking, with Frances, that you're mistaking the question in the title as toxic masculinity. The article does use that term but defines it as superiority to women and makes the point that it ISN'T masculinity but a behavior. My article makes your exact point that it's NOT denigrating men for being male or there wouldn't need to be the qualifier of toxic.
In my series on Tonic Masculinity, I've included many quotes from the men who took the package of my two words and used it to wrap up their denigration of women--making it the opposite. I show how they exhibit superiority to women. I don't just slap labels on them.
While the term toxic masculinity refers to a behavior and the term patriarchy refers to a system, the term Feminazi refers to people. If you feel that some women are expressing ideas that are reprehensible--and I don't disagree that they are--challenge their ideas rather than call them names. It seems like you're doing what you're accusing me of.
When I look at my daughters and their partners, the economy they're living in is extremely stressful. I don't think it needs to be that way. I think we could heal our economy and return it to serving families if men also wanted that. Instead, it seems like they're resentful of women entering into the male bastions of business, and resentful of wives who don't want to work because it puts twice the pressure on them. My term Tonic Masculinity is an attempt to reverse this and show that it's not a competition between men and women. It's a choice between serving the bankers--patriarchy--or serving families and community--the feminine, which could also be called the Matrix as a network of mothers. It's intentional that term has been co-opted to mean the opposite.
Let me see if I understand correctly:
You coined the term "tonic masculinity," with a specific meaning behind it. That meaning has been lost in the shuffle.
You saw other people on Substack appropriate your term without crediting you for coining it. One of whom was Charles Eisenstein.
But did Charles use the term as you used it or was he one of the re-definers?
Because it's emerged that he's appropriated the language of The New Story and the Old Story from someone named Thomas Berry, without credit. And he took the term Interbeing from Thich Nhat Hanh without mentioning his source. Seems Charles thinks living in the Gift means he's entitled to lift ideas and concepts and terminology without giving due credit to his sources.
Oh that's VERY interesting about Eisenstein. That's exactly what I wondered might be going on. It's Robert Malone's trick too--he parrots back things that he's lifted from elsewhere that will resonate with his audience. In my recent episode on him, https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/malone-and-the-cull-de-sac, he gives a whole talk about surveillance capitalism, never once mentioning Shoshana Zuboff.
I noticed that Eisenstein used Interbeing without crediting TNH, who is one of my great heroes. It made me wonder if perhaps the phrase wasn't original to TNH but now I think it was just Eisenstein. I did this YT on Interdependence vs Interbeing where I do credit TNH: https://youtu.be/ofk4U-g2quc. It's filmed in my Halloween leopard spots.
And the idea of Old Story/ New Story was so compelling to me, I did this one when I was still believing Eisenstein: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/the-space-between-stories-charles. So you're right that living in the Gift means to him appropriating without credit.
What the Toxic Ten did was take the pretty packaging of my phrase and use it to wrap the turd of toxic masculinity. Charles didn't do that. He refers to the exact essay of his where I coined it in the comments, then says, "This is what I like to call tonic masculinity," which becomes the title of the interview. There's a fumbling in answering the question and telling the story, so he knows where he got it from but forgets how to tie it in. Here's my episode on him, in case you didn't see it: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/eisenstein-and-the-toxic-ten and the history: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/tonic-masculinity-goes-viral.
What he calls tonic masculinity is men leaping in front of speeding bullets to save their wives and girlfriends. Self-sacrifice is a common theme for him, with his animation of people throwing themselves into the void to bring about the 'new story.' I think this is part of the depop agenda, as I wrote about here: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/deep-fakes-eisenstein-and-rfk.
Thanks for that confirmation of my suspicions, Prokopton!
The revelation that Eisenstein got the Old Story/New Story from an author named Thomas Berry comes from Substack writer Drew Dellinger:
https://substack.com/@drewdellinger/p-148711747
That’s just Part 1 of his four part critique of Eisenstein. Make sure to read all four parts to see the full breadth of his critique, he mentions Thomas Berry’s ideas throughout. He complains that Charles never credited Berry despite Dellinger trying to make the lineage clear for years. Charles just ignored every attempt of Berry’s admirers to get him to acknowledge his debt. To be fair, it’s not entirely clear Charles ever read Berry’s own books, the phrases and ideas might have simply been in the air and passed around in his social circles, but even so, he clearly appropriated these phrases and ideas for himself without making clear to his readership he wasn’t the originator, merely a conduit. I’d always assumed he’d invented the Old Story/New Story and Interbeing concepts himself. Not so.
I appreciate Drew's insight into Eisenstein in these posts. But his main takeaway is him supporting Trump and the danger to the Supreme Court if Kamala's not elected. Anyone looking at politics to save us has their own blind spot, imo.
And why would someone with 326 subs not enable comments? Don't get that. But the stuff on Berry is very interesting.
Spent my 20s looking around for some intoxicating masculinity but guess how much of that existed in the theatre world. 😂
I kid, I kid. I don’t know if I ever looked too deep into all this in a philosophical way. I excelled in male dominated fields because it was fun and the pay was good. Driving big vehicles and heavy machinery wasnt all that difficult (and probably a bit easier for women to drive fork lifts, for example, because our periphery is an advantage) but earned some street cred in blue collar communities. The work flowed easier because the banter was oh, so not PC, especially in construction when any name for hardware is a euphemism for something phallic. No one got canceled, it was good natured and you bet that the few times an outsider turned threatening, my colleagues bared their teeth.
This is such a contrast to something I just saw on X with a lady talking about how the execs at one of those Diddy parties averted their eyes as she was pleading for help when she was about to get raped.
I don’t know if I have an actual point. I wish we could stress less about dividing factors. In the end, I truly love what you were aging about the big war being that between those who wish to be governed and those who chose autonomy. Almost everything can be reduced to that. Even the toxic/tonic masculinity which men and women both play a role in.
Intoxicating masculinity! You can bet I'm using that.
I didn't know you had all these manly skills. You do keep blowing me away, Tonika.
You're touching on something so important. It's not about 'respectful' banter or sexy innuendoes (and isn't that word just!) It's about the abuse of power. We can make all the rules we want but they don't matter if women can't walk away from the abusive boss, abusive husband, abusive situation. Solving the power dynamic lets us get back to the important business of playing ;-)
That’s an accurate way of putting it. I did see a lot of line blurring from my fellow lady friends during that period, where I knew they engaged in that fun banter at school or in professional settings only to turn around and publicly describe those episodes under the #metoo movement. I was so puzzled. Men were sliding into me DMs trying to do some damage control, I felt so uncomfortable with how emasculating that phase was. Rearing straight white boys in this environment of apologetic behaviour for simply existing has been difficult. But perhaps the fact that my boys have my mom and me both at home to help them navigate some of the damaging feminist views while infusing them with tonic masculinity will help.
Never a dull moment around these here comments section.
I've been looking for a place to use this meme that says, "Despite all warnings, Pandora opened the comments section." Hahaha!
I remember it being a very confusing time for me personally, as a Director of Human Resources. I still cringe at some of the things I made an issue out of, that didn't involve any kind of power dynamic. And then I think of the situation that drove me out of the corporate world: the CFO, my boss, was harassing an 18 yr old who worked for me and the CEO was harassing his admin, who also came to work under me. (It should have been a hint when in my job interview, he touched a lapel pin I was wearing) For two months, I tried to figure out where to go but in the end, all those fancy lawyers who teach the harassment seminars are working for the execs.
After it all blew up, I ended up going to the Board of Directors, who offered me a job elsewhere, and to lawyers. But I heard later the CEO was still at it, coming up behind the receptionist and putting his hands in her jacket pockets. I was so disgusted by the whole scene, I dropped out--but that's another story.
The real thing is out there. I'd say that it's easy to tell the difference but it's not really. That's why I gave a lot of thought to why it's about power, not sex.
This essay subtitled The Senator From the Unconscious gives a perceptive assessment of one of the now leading edge vectors of toxic masculinity
http://nplusonemag.com/issue-45/politics/j-d-vance-changes-the-subject-2
Steve Bannon of the war room is or course even worse by many degrees.
It is also notable that as far as I know the Orange Haired Monstrosity is now pitching his strategy for re-election to dis-affected adolescent hoons/yahoos, the behavior of which was/is graphically portrayed in the movie Beavis & Butthead Do America.
That is a very well written and detailed article on Vance, Jonathan. As an Appalachian, I've critiqued Vance for his class-based caricatures. This playlist includes two of my videos that refute him, Appalachian Rage and How Whites Were Trashed: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/on-whites-and-wokes.
As you may have noted from my last episode on this topic, my term Tonic Masculinity is now being used for Walz and, by extension, Kamala. I would argue that, like Hilary, Harris is a patriarch without a penis. And Walz may not be toxic masculinity but is certainly toxic nationalism. Neither questions the inherent right of the US to kill and terrorize people living in their own home countries. I'd use the trope of women and children but are fathers and brothers and sons any more legitimate to murder when they're defending their own?
For me, RFK's swing to Trump is not a betrayal because he's in agreement with this too. Ethics isn't how other people treat you, it's how you treat other people. I'm forced to participate in the most revolting and disgustingly immoral behaviors on the planet, and there's no way to vote that will make a bit of difference in that. If Toxic Masculinity is superiority to others, every single candidate assumes that as their God-given American right ... or left, no difference.
"It isn’t feminism that’s emasculated men but patriarchy"
Your logic seems a little disconcerting to me.
Patriarchy existed already in the time of Abraham and then the family unit was strong and men were not emasculated. If men assumed the role of leading (greek "arkhein") the family, it seems to me that it was inevitable, as the mother's role is by nature entirely dedicated to the children. The destruction of the family was one of the main goals of communism, therefore the attack on patriarchy, the traditional central pillar of the family, became a main theme of the "Critical theory" developped by the Marxist "philosophers" of the Frankfurt School (see Max Horkheimer, "Authoritarianism and the family"). I am not able to see anything but Marxism, and its by-product, feminism, that have emasculated men.
Henry James describes feminism in his 1886 novel The Bostonians in a way that feels very contemporary. The same intense arguments, conflicts, and debates surrounding gender roles were already in full swing in 1886. How could the Frankfurt School and cultural Marxists have caused a social movement that was already in full swing in the 19th century? James is ambivalent about the impact of the suffragettes, to say the least, but he also portrays his "patriarchal" figures in a mixed light as well: his two main characters Olive Chancellor, a militant radical feminist, and Basil Ransom, a male chauvinist traditionalist, are both very dark, complex, and disturbing figures: he doesn't make it easy for the reader to fully identify with either of them. It's a shame more people across the political divide haven't read this novel: it could have been written yesterday: James correctly saw that the battleground between feminism and patriarchal traditionalism was only going to intensify. Blaming it on Marxism, Horkheimer, Critical Theory, makes little sense, as that wasn't even a thing at the time James was writing, yet all the conflicts and disagreements concerning core values were already there in embryo. Feminism can't be a by-product of something that didn't even exist yet.
Thanks for that very interesting literary reference, Prokopton. My favorite kind of fiction is where the heroes aren't really heroes and the villains aren't really villains. It sounds like The Bostonians fits that model of nuance.
I describe our current form of feminism, the 'glass ceiling' and even the suffragettes, as Virginia Slims feminism--women too can make the rich richer! Instead of changing the system to a feminine purpose of serving family and community, it kept a system that served the rulers--who happened to be men--and co-opted the labor of women into it.
This episode looks at some alternatives: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/five-feminine-economies.
Here's a fairly recent essay that demonstrates how modern and eerily accurate James' perceptions about "the culture wars" were, even in the 19th century he could already discern where things were headed:
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/culture/38266/what-henry-james-can-teach-us-about-the-culture-wars
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The foundations of Communism were laid by Freemasonry (A. Weishaupt) about one century before "The Bostonians" were written (the Illuminati were founded in 1776). If Communism only went "mainstream" with Marx's Manifesto in 1848, it doesn't mean that the subvertive actions of Freemasonry on the cultural or political levels did not exist before Freemasonry only works behind the scenes.
Ah glad you're going back to the archons and the OG/ OT patriarchy. According to primogeniture, only the oldest son inherited. Land and property weren't divided, it and all the slaves and the right to rule over family members belonged to one son.
Noah gave the right to rule the world to Shem and made the descendants of Ham and Caanan--whole races, countries and continents full of men--into their slaves. That followed for every lineage, which is why the Torah is 50% genealogy and 50% graphic violence.
Hierarchy is the inheritance order of the archons. To be part of the assembly, you needed to be male, be a free man, be a large landowner with many serfs, and be a first born son. They could work their way up the hierarchy by contributing to the military from the bushels of barley their tenant farmers produced. It was a slave system, and that's not even counting the slaves, colonized and women.
If masculinity is the ability to provide for a wife and children, 90% of men were emasculated by patriarchy (to be generous) while 10% were able to fulfill their role, as determined by nature. When you say that the mother's role by nature is entirely dedicated to the children, is that something nature confided to you personally, to say it with such authority? Are you speaking from your own authority as a woman and mother? Or are you taking authority over others, as a patriarch?
I didn't really mean to project any authority but only what I thought was logic in mentioning the role of the mother. Since the sublime role given by nature to feminity is to create life, this defines ipso facto the "patri-archal" role of the father, since the family unit is constituted on the basis of a complementary duality and it is not possible for the two poles to be "egalitarian", to use a word cherished by Marxists.
We see in the nature that during the time that the female bird has to remain on the nest, it becomes the male's responsibility to feed her. In my view, all the attributes that come with the "patriarchy" function are rooted in the "natural" role of man. If nature had endowed man with the role of giving life, then "matri-archy" would become the source of all evils and this is what Marxism would aim at destroying. I mentioned Abraham only to go back to a time, where I imagine that men were not emasculated and it was probably a mistake, as I do share your viewpoint on the Torah and all other religions named after that character. I didn't have to go so far back in time, as in my father's time the same patriarchal traditions existed. Women did not work in that time, they took care of the children at home and men's salary was sufficient to provide for the family and even put money aside to eventually later be able to buy a house. Men were not emasculated and women were not "defeminized" before the "Fall of the Berlin Wall". This is when the Globalists abandoned the instrument of Communism to switch to that of cultural Marxism.
After reading you, I am still unable to answer that question: if patriarchy were a poison for the family, why would Marxism set out to destroy it since its goal is to destroy the family?
I will also add this: you write, "men's salary was sufficient to provide for the family and even put money aside to eventually later be able to buy a house." So the labor of men doesn't support the family, it supports the patriarchy who then gives them the stored labor of money--taken from the mortgages of their parents and grandparents--so they can eventually be able to buy a family home like the one their parents and grandparents already bought with their labor.
If the patriarchs were taken out of this equation, men and women could both use their labor to support the family and community, and houses could still be exchanged. When you say 'support a family,' you mean with money that was created to force the labor of men to serve the patriarchy. I mean men supporting the family and community with their labor in a system of reciprocity backed by the housing. That's the purpose of my book: https://www.amazon.com/How-Dismantle-Empire-2020-Vision/dp/1733347607.
It's not Marxists who took away the ability of mothers to stay home and care for their children--it's bankers. We bid against each other for how much 30 yr debt we can take on for a house. A two income family can take on twice as much debt. So for one generation, women won the right to work outside the home and then they lost the right to not work outside because mortgages went up to dual incomes. That's competition and capitalism, not Marxism.
Personally, I don't believe any of us should be ruling over others. Not men over women, not oligarchs over all of us.
"money that was created to force the labor of men to serve the patriarchy"
There are here two issues that have a common denominator but however should not be merged together. First patriarchy defines the role of man in the family and by extension in the society, then money, which is not created to "serve" the patriarchy or anything in the society, but to control or enslave every aspect of society. That's why patriarchy, as a social hierarchy, was not an issue for the globalists, as it was already under the strict control of their usurocracy, this in all domains of society, political, economical, cultural etc... They needed Marxism to implement what money alone was unable to achieve: destroy the patriarchy, as a family hierarchy, because it was what ensured the internal cohesion and stability of the family, as the base unit of the nation state. The destruction of the family was already one of the priorities of Adam Weishaupt's program in the 18th century, as the dissolution of the nations states is a pre-condition for a world government.
Saying that money (or capitalism) and Marxism are the two faces of the same coin is only partially correct. The Illuminati alliance was a triple alliance between money (Rothschild), Freemasonry (Weishaupt) and religion (Frank).
There was therefore no field of human activity that could escape this very "inclusive" conspiracy.
hola, tereza.
an interesting discussion and one with good timing with something i'm exploring right now. i would, after reading your observations on tonic and toxic masculinity, that i've experienced 'toxic masculinity' from a female friend. her response to my recent request for financial help created a kind of wave of emotional responses that crescendoed with real anger at her subtle but profound condescension and smug superiority over me because of my infantile-like and having inappropriately left friendly and safe canada. hmmmm. if only i would return home from my delusional state, your friends will take care of you! omg! gag!
so what to do about the toxic masculinity being displayed by many women, although likely concentrated in the extremes of such entities as the feminazis and the language and body mutilating 'progressive' and the domains they inhabit? and is a 'devouring mother' energy a manifestation of toxic masculinity in the female?
also, as you know i am very keen on clearing from our language practices those words and usages that disempower or mis-empower us. to that end i've begun to stop using the 'w*ke' word, because its energy applies to both the so-called extremes of the progressives and conservatives. and following your argument going forward i will remove from my usage the 'p' and 'm' -archies.
this is a thoughtful and thought provoking essay.
all the best with what is changing. everything changes!
Hello, Guy. I define toxic masculinity as superiority to women so I wouldn't say that, by my definition, it applies to your female friend. Profound condescension and smug superiority seem like apt terms to describe it, though.
Psychologically, I think that anger is often the result of guilt. If your friend felt guilty for not helping you financially, she may have wanted to allay that feeling of guilt by blaming you for your own choices. I didn't see that thread so I'm only guessing at what might have led to what seems like a very hurtful and judgmental reaction on her part.
It seems like those who see a pattern in women have already coined the terms feminazis and devouring mother to describe it. Why would they need to use the term toxic masculinity? I think it would be better to define the terms feminazi (as you're the second person here to use) and devouring mother so that they name a particular set of behaviors, the way I've defined my use of toxic masculinity as superiority to women. Otherwise it feels like an exchange of insults rather than identifying what we feel is destructive to the relationships between men and women.
Thanks for reading, Guy.
hmmm.
is it not possible for women who have been broken to have taken on the behaviour and attitudes of being superior to women? that falls within the definition you have give above. for example, the deep condescension often given by the feminazis to women empowered and content with the power and responsibility of motherhood and the home?
i'm not sure that the need to use 'toxic masculinity' is necessary per se. you have taken some intelligent effort to unite the male and female as victims of the slave system under the -archy and that separating them serves the energy of the enslavement system under indebtedness. it seems me that your definitions of 'tonic/toxic' masculinity might best expressed without being linked to male or female per se, and rather the energies they manifest and from which they are created: not m/f dependentent.
anyway, my thoughts as stimulated by your interesting dig.
(regarding my friend: that exploration isn't there to see. i'm working through it now and expect to publish for tomorrow morning.)
all the best with what is changing.
A phrase coined by Feminazis.
To denigrate men.
Should never be used to refer to men, in general. If their behavior is reprehensible, then CALL THEM OUT ON THAT, but to call them out simply for being male...that don't fly.
Tonic Masculinity, Elsie! Not Toxic! Listen to the video! xx
Hi, Elsie. I'm thinking, with Frances, that you're mistaking the question in the title as toxic masculinity. The article does use that term but defines it as superiority to women and makes the point that it ISN'T masculinity but a behavior. My article makes your exact point that it's NOT denigrating men for being male or there wouldn't need to be the qualifier of toxic.
In my series on Tonic Masculinity, I've included many quotes from the men who took the package of my two words and used it to wrap up their denigration of women--making it the opposite. I show how they exhibit superiority to women. I don't just slap labels on them.
While the term toxic masculinity refers to a behavior and the term patriarchy refers to a system, the term Feminazi refers to people. If you feel that some women are expressing ideas that are reprehensible--and I don't disagree that they are--challenge their ideas rather than call them names. It seems like you're doing what you're accusing me of.
When I look at my daughters and their partners, the economy they're living in is extremely stressful. I don't think it needs to be that way. I think we could heal our economy and return it to serving families if men also wanted that. Instead, it seems like they're resentful of women entering into the male bastions of business, and resentful of wives who don't want to work because it puts twice the pressure on them. My term Tonic Masculinity is an attempt to reverse this and show that it's not a competition between men and women. It's a choice between serving the bankers--patriarchy--or serving families and community--the feminine, which could also be called the Matrix as a network of mothers. It's intentional that term has been co-opted to mean the opposite.
Does that make sense?
It's no matter to me. No feminazi crap for me.