Hey, don’t get mad at me. I’m just the messenger here, okay?
It turns out that a lot of people have pretty strong feelings about toxic femininity and the examples that they’ve seen firsthand.
So maybe if you didn’t think it existed before, maybe you’ll think toxic femininity is a real thing after you read these responses.
Here’s what AskReddit users had to say about this.
1. It’s similar…
“Similar to toxic male energy.
Not respecting boundaries of the opposite s*x, using them, disrespecting them, abusing them… adhering to rules of “all men are this!””
2. Mind your own business.
“Women who hold to the: “you aren’t a REAL woman unless you have children” idea.”
3. Fighting is bad all around.
“Picking a fight and then pulling out the v*gina card when you get hit back.
Beating up your boyfriend, then calling the cops on him when he only tries to defend himself from your onslaught, crying about how he beat up a girl so he gets taken to jail
Telling the father of your children that he can’t see them if he doesn’t pay child support.”
4. Accusations.
“Personally, I think the most toxic a woman could be is if she makes false r*pe/assault accusations.
I mean, not only is she taking a horrible crime to her advantage, but she is also ruining the lives of other people for her own gain.
Anybody who does this is f**cking trash and I hope they burn in hell. You don’t make fun of that sort of stuff.”
5. Catty.
“Just cattiness in general.
I’m a female and I pretty much had 1 or 2 friends going up. The clique like mean girls mentality is horribly toxic. Women gossip about each other and gang up on each other at workplaces too.
It’s absolutely exhausting and I can’t be around it.”
6. The wrong place.
“Using feminism in wrong places , stretching it far enough to make real issues negligible. Saying this from personal experience.
My dad does physical domestic violence on my mother. As a kid, I didn’t know what to do. Recently, out of blue I found courage to tell my dad if he raised his hand at my mom another time, I’d call police on him.
He replied “I’ve seen women like you running around with feminism boards, so shut up” . I repeated myself anyway, just so he’s clear.
What’s worse, after I had protected my mom, both my mom and elder sister scolded me , emotionally blackmailed me to apologize to my dad.
False feminism when they go outside and raise voices but fail to protect women inside their own homes.”
7. Not fair.
“The idea that men can’t be good parents.
Surely that guy at the park is a creeper, he can’t just be a great parent who took his kid to the park.”
8. Not girly enough.
“Mothers telling their daughters that their interests aren’t girly enough and then trying to ban them from them…or straight up banning them from their actual interests and signing them up for stereotypically girly activities.
…which is how I got put into ballet classes and Girl Scouts.”
9. Totally toxic.
“The absolutely toxic “mommy” culture.
If you have kids, you’re raising them wrong. If you don’t have kids, you’re “missing out on the joy of children!”. If you’re never had kids “you will never really know joy”.
Birthing a child does not make you special or better than the millions of other women who have done it for centuries, long before you used your uber-expensive doula at your birthing center to “connect” with labor so you could mommy-shame women who gave birth at a hospital or GOD FORBID had a c-section.”
10. Not everyone does it.
“Women who get judged for not shaving their legs.
I understand some people are uncomfortable by pubic hair which I think is stupid anyway, but if you judge my hairy legs and call them gross even though my hair is BLONDE.”
11. Not always about that.
“When you genuinely like another woman (not in a s*xual way, but like a “you’re pretty, smart, clever, and chill” way), and when you start to like and comment positively on her posts, she assumes you’re being creepy, shady, and obsessive.
I don’t know if that counts or if anyone else has ever experienced that, but it kind of makes me think twice when uplifting a fellow female, because I don’t want her to assume I have negative motivations or something.”
12. Thoughts on this one?
“Remember that woman that called the cops because the black guy told her she wasn’t suppose to have a dog there?
It was racism, but it wasn’t only racism that made her think she would get away with that.
She was attempting to use her privilege as a woman to weaponize the police.”
13. It’s a little overused.
“Dismissing any rational objection or input from a man as “mansplaning”.”
14. A good point.
“I feel like any women who say “all men are trash” are pretty toxic
Or if they say that men won’t know how they’re feeling because they’re men, even though they’re probably willing to listen to them and try to understand what they’re going through even if they haven’t personally dealt with it.”
15. The gossip game.
“Gossiping.
I’m not saying men don’t gossip, but women are on a whole different level when it comes to social warfare and in a lot of cases they are experts at weaponizing their words to destroy a person in a variety of different ways.”
What do you think about this?
Please talk to us in the comments and give us your opinions on toxic femininity.
Thanks in advance!
