ABSTRACT

In recent years there has been rising popular discourse around ‘toxic masculinity’, and the problems of a hegemonic gender structure that facilitates male violence and misogyny. In the public debate over whether toxic masculinity is fact or fiction, ‘toxic femininity’ is often raised by men’s rights activists and others as an anti-feminist retort, to suggest that women can be ‘toxic’ too. This paper provides a sketch of how the term has been used so far, in tandem with an overview of the limitations of the more extensively discussed idea of ‘toxic masculinity’. This paper suggests that rather than deploying ‘toxic femininity’, it is more useful to consider what might be ‘toxic’ about some approaches to femininity. Drawing on existing theories of femininity, including emphasised, hegemonic, normative, patriarchal femininity, pariah femininities, and femmephobia, this paper offers the notion of ‘rigid femininities’ to explain the structures that keep us locked into a ‘toxic’ gender system. This paper utilises the term toxic femininity as a jumping-off point for theorising femininity broadly. In theorising femininity, this paper offers a conceptualisation of the ‘toxic’ attachments that reinforce the gendered power structure/essentialized gender.

摘要

近年来，围绕“有毒的男子气概”以及助长男性暴力和厌女症的霸权性别结构问题的流行话语越来越多。在关于有毒男性气质是事实还是虚构的公开辩论中，男性权利活动家和其他人经常提出“有毒女性气质”作为反女权主义者的反驳，暗示女性也可能是“有毒的”。本文概述了迄今为止该术语的使用情况，同时概述了更广泛讨论的“有毒阳刚之气”概念的局限性。本文建议，与其部署“有毒的女性气质”，不如考虑一些女性气质的方法可能是“有毒的”更有用。借鉴现有的女性气质理论，包括强调女性气质、霸权女性气质、规范女性气质、父权女性气质、贱民女性气质，和女性恐惧症，这篇论文提供了“僵化的女性气质”的概念来解释使我们陷入“有毒”性别系统的结构。本文利用有毒女性气质这一术语作为广义女性气质理论的起点。在对女性气质进行理论化时，本文提供了一种“有毒”依恋的概念化，这些依恋强化了性别化的权力结构/本质化的性别。