I took this test with some trepidation. I got that I am
9.38% less toxically masculine than the average person.
My highest toxic traits are
Deceitfulness-Arrogance (34%) and
Anger (38%).
- Deceitfulness-Arrogance is the opposite of the HEXACO trait Honesty-Humility: I always score in the middle range of this trait because I don't like to manipulate people but (one aspect of Honesty-Humility) and I like to follow in general the rules but I do enjoy luxury goods (not an aspect of Honesty-Humility) and I noticed that there were a lot of questions that would track this subtrait.
- Anger here measures a dispositional tendency towards anger that is accompanied by related negative emotions such as envy, resentment, hate and disgust -- in other words Neuroticism (and yeah, I'm very neurotic). My only quibble here is that I'm also very introverted and dislike open conflict, which adds up to my preferring passive aggression to aggressive aggression: if I'm angry most people wouldn't know because I prefer to avoid people that I'm angry at and not talk to them or just be curt but polite.
But beside whatever can be said about these traits, the mistake here is conceptual:
it's an error to frame toxic masculinity as a personality trait. Toxic masculinity is a social role that men are socialized and pressured to play. There are sexist men who may enjoy being toxically masculine but
toxic masculinity can have real world consequences even when it's just men who feel pressured to conform to this platonic ideal (this video is incredibly funny).
In an anti-misogynistic society, where, for example, there are no gestational restrictions on abortion or men and women earn the same money for doing the same kind of work, or where there are no ridiculously high standards of proof to expel students from colleges who commit sexual assaults -- the personal sexist beliefs of some men wouldn't matter as much because the rules of society would pressure them to adjust their behavior not to discriminate against women or favor men.
If one is not born, but becomes a woman, perhaps we could say that one is not born, but becomes a (toxic in this case) man. When you make toxic masculinity into a personality trait of individual men, first of all you are forced to pass an ethical judgment on that personality trait (it's wrong to do that, but the negative consequences of toxic masculinity inevitably force one to say that it is a negative phenomenon); the solution becomes a psychological and moral reformation of toxically masculine men; it's asking something very hard to do which is changing personality; and it's rhetorically inadequate because being called toxically masculine feels like an insult (as we can see in the posts above) and alienates men who maybe could become allies for gender equality if framed as a question of unfair treatment.
Instead, we could be talking about how better to socialize boys and girls, about having laws that don't favor one group over another and about correcting historical inequities. About how to reorganize family life, mating life, education, economic life, the criminal justice system, the healthcare system, etc.
An excellent book:
Down Girl -- The Logic of Misogyny by Kate Manne.