[magnostherobot]

> All that striving for greatness is indivisible from the selfish need to inflict cruelty on your dominated foe. Take away the latter and there is no sports. It’s just exercise.

I cannot empathise with someone that has this mindset.

It seems like the author thinks that all masculinity is toxic - or, at least, that it's called "toxic" by progressives or whatever - and I would strongly disagree with this. When people use the phrase "toxic masculinity", they don't mean "masculinity (which is toxic, by the way)": they mean " the parts of masculinity that are toxic".

There's also a whole paragraph dedicated to saying that women aren't at the peak of sports excellence, and shouldn't be covered by Nike's clothing range. I don't think the author has watched any women's sports games before writing this piece.

I have plenty more issues with this writing, but I'm gonna stop here because I feel like I might be falling for a rage-bait article.

[xibalba]

> ...saying that women aren't at the peak of sports excellence...I don't think the author has watched any women's sports games before writing this piece.

Women are not at the peak of sports excellent in literally any sport in which both men and women compete. This is a statement of fact and does not denigrate the value of women, generally, or women athletes.

I am baffled when people make claims like yours. Have you played sports or followed sports closely? This is not a rhetorical question. I ask because I've had conversations with friends and the common denominator among those who believe that some women's sports are "peak excellence" never played sports and certainly don't follow sports. The on-the-ground reality is that men have massive biologically driven physical advantages over women. A middling men's pro tennis player would destroy the top women's pro tennis player. The US Women's National Soccer Team was defeated by an under-15 boys team. Compare the world records of men's and women's track and field events–they're not even close. Etc.

> ... shouldn't be covered by Nike's clothing range

The author makes no such claim. Rather, the author points out that Nike's pursuit of what it believes to be a huge untapped market ("women") has led it to disavow and even antagonize the masculine culture which pervades high-level sports and which Nike rode to market dominance.

> rage-bait article

To me, this article read as a fairly innocuous and mostly factual take on Nike's marketing. Is it possible you supplied the rage?

[taylodl]

I disagree with your claim that women are not at the peak of sports excellence. Many times women's sports are more fun to watch because women place a greater emphasis on strategy over physical dominance. Even when men and women are playing the same sport, such as basketball, they're employing two very different approaches to game play. It's subjective as to which style of game play you prefer to watch, I like both, for different reasons. Just don't watch a women's game and expect it to be just like the men's game but with female players.

[xibalba]

You're blurring terminology.

Yes, "more fun to watch" is entirely subjective. "Peak excellence" is much less so. It is indisputable, if one is being honest, that for almost all sports, the top woman/women's team would not be even close to competitive were they to compete against men. Thus, it seems incorrect to claim that any woman/women's team is performing at "peak excellence" without the qualifier "amongst women".

Again, none of this means women or women athletes do not deserve to be treated with respect. Nor does it invalidate one's personal preferences on which sports they like to watch.

However, I do think that for most people who regularly watch sports, peak excellence is an important factor for which sports are more fun to watch. This, in turn, explains why patronage of men's professional sports is so much greater than for women's.

[lugged]

"the parts of masculinity that are toxic".

Which parts are those?

The Wikipedia article is pretty disturbingly biased but let's go with it for lack of anything else:

> Traits traditionally viewed as masculine in Western society include strength, courage, independence, leadership, and assertiveness.

What of those do you consider toxic? Personally I view them as all relatively useful for many situations and contexts. I don't view any of them as toxic, though I would posit some extreme assertiveness in places it's not wanted would be "toxic". But I think thats more likely a toxic individual than masculinity being "toxic".

I view feminine traits in much the same way, mostly being advantageous when leveraged appropriately and unhelpful when employed at the wrong time.

But I'm not about to start suggesting parts of feminity are toxic.

Further more if you want to say masculinity has toxic parts, say that instead of saying toxic masculinity, because we all know what you really mean when you say it that way.

[hn8788]

It's supposed to mean stuff like not asking for help when you need it, or being overly aggressive in social situations so you don't appear weak. FWIW I hate the term because it's become a catch-all for "things men do that I personally don't like".

[lugged]

Not asking for help sounds like stubbornness and inability to admit a failure or lack of knowledge.That's more a cultural thing from my experience. Common in Asian cultures but also prevelant in older western generations.

Being overly aggressive sounds like a character flaw, psychological problem or poor social conditioning.

I guess if you really want you can label them masculinity and then you'd be right but personally I struggle to draw the connection and find the idea of tying the word toxic to a gender dangerous. Nothing wrong with being masculine. Nothing wrong with being feminine. Nothing wrong with being overly either whichever your gender.

People who want to label me toxic for having a penis is going to struggle working with me, and it isn't my masculinity that's the problem.

(I'm aware you're just trying to explain here, not aiming any of this towards yourself)

[pjc50]

> Which parts are those?

>> You could get bullied out of nowhere. What are you wearing? Did your mom pick that out? A buddy who worked for a team told me that Shaquille O'Neal had a tendency to get naked, tackle the team trainer and mock hump the poor guy.

>> Michael Jordan was a hypercompetitive alpha male asshole who viciously humiliated not just his opponents, but his teammates as well

From the article.

[lugged]

What's masculine about being a bully?

[andor]

"What of those do you consider toxic?"

None of these traits are toxic in general, but due to group dynamics they often lead to toxic behavior. When guys want to show how masculine they are (and I think most are not conscious of this), they start doing stupid things. Bullying and disrespectful behavior, dangerous driving, not letting others contribute, not admitting errors, etc. That's why a culture that rewards "masculine" behavior is bad for collaboration.

[kthejoker2]

90+% of rapes and almost as much a share of violent crime are committed by men ...

Seems like a good place to start your personal investigation to discover that which is toxic in masculinity.

[taylodl]

I hate the term because it's misandry. We shouldn't tolerate misandry any more than we should tolerate misogyny. Both are toxic behaviors.

[robertlagrant]

> When people use the phrase "toxic masculinity", they don't mean "masculinity (which is toxic, by the way)": they mean " the parts of masculinity that are toxic".

This is technically defensible, just as "the patriarchy" is technically an abstract term.

But keep saying "masculinity" always prepended with "toxic" and "toxic" swiftly becomes an adjective, not a subcategory, just as the patriarchy becomes an active global conspiracy it's okay to get people fired for in the fight against it.

[magnostherobot]

Interestingly I would use the use of "the patriarchy" as a term as evidence against the belief of the transformation of the meaning of the phrase "toxic masculinity". The patriarchy doesn't have a qualifier: that a patriarchy exists is considered bad innately, and so the term doesn't need its own "toxic" prepended. Masculinity, on the other hand, is not considered innately bad, and so requires the "toxic" qualifier to narrow the target to the portions of masculinity which are... well, toxic. If the "toxic" was superfluous (due to masculinity being seen as inherently evil, for example), surely people would have dropped it ages ago.

This is, of course, based on my personal experience with these phrases. When my friends and I use "toxic masculinity", we can see the difference between it and "masculinity", and when I see the phrase used by strangers online, I assume that they're using it as "the part of masculinity that is toxic". I can't remember any situation where that assumption has misled me, although maybe I wouldn't remember something like that.

You're certainly right about some people using the "toxic" as an adjective, insofar as I believe this author has done exactly that in this article. If I was feeling cynical, I might argue that the author may have deliberately conflated all of masculinity with its elements that get called "toxic", in an attempt to make the two seem inseparable. I think the good faith interpretation is simply that this is how the author has seen the phrase used before, and that, somewhere between my circles and his circles, the phrase's meaning has been changed or accidentally misinterpreted.

[pjc50]

> I feel like I might be falling for a rage-bait article

It does feel like the only bit that is really relevant to HN might be "generic culture war" rather than anything technical or quirky.

[chrismcb]

What does women being it not being at the peak of sports have to do with selling clothes?