Toxic Feminity Examples Mega-Thread

[Emerald]

2 hours ago, Etherial Cat said:

Thanks for this list, it's very helpful.

It makes quite a good map for potential shadow material as well.

I can recognize a lot of those patterns within my experience and on other girls/women. A few are sticking still heavily with myself but a lot of them have been significantly diminishing over the years. And that somewhat already feels good. It makes me hopeful for the other ones.

I wonder, is it reasonable to expect to free oneself totally from them overtime or is it an overshoot?

You're welcome. I know that these things can be remedied. It comes from genuinely embodying feminine power in a healthy way. Mean girls are mean because they feel like that's the way to get power. 

I had a lot of early traumas that were caused by girls/women. And I had very few boundary-breeching traumas caused by boys/men, as my dad is a very nice and warmhearted. 

And so, by age 8 or 9, I became really misogynistic. And I would go into this mindset of "boys/men are good" and "girls/women are bitches". And I was always trying to carve out my own category where I could escape from being female. I wanted to be a loophole woman that "wasn't like the other girls." And at age 10, I decided that "I only hang out with boys because girls are weak and mean." 

So, I was always trying to tear the other girls down and be the girl that was approved of by the boys. And I would behave in masculine ways to prove that I wasn't like other girls. At summer camp, I'd even have the kids scratch their nails down my arm as hard as they could until it nearly drew blood, just to show that I wouldn't flinch.

And I'd go around arm wrestling all the boys (and I could beat about half of them at the time because we weren't yet going through puberty). One time, me and this kid Calvin (who was pretty much an "alpha" kind of kid and an asshole) were playing four square or something. And he and I both jumped for the ball and ended up skidding across the floor. And we both ended up with huge bruises all over our legs. It was a bad skid directly across linoleum. And it hurt SOOO bad. 

And Calvin was crying like a baby doubled over on the floor. And I would have been too if I were being honest. But I saw it as an opportunity to prove how much more macho I was. And I jumped up onto my feet and stood over him and started calling him a little girl as he was crying. I would never let myself show weakness because I didn't want to be seen as anything like a girl, other than in appearance.

So, a lot of my work has been on working into these relationships with women and accepting that I'm a woman and thus like other women.

I really think these are symptoms of living in a masculinity-oriented culture and women feeling competition toward one another to get male approval instead of cooperation with one another. And there are like three main ways to cope with that, and being a mean girl is one of them. Being a nice girl is the other. And trying to exempt oneself from the stigma of femaleness is yet another. 

But to really heal, there has to be a genuine healing of the feminine wounds and truly stepping into feminine power. 

[Preety_India]

5 minutes ago, Karmadhi said:

Toxic femininity comes way below as an issue.

Man you missed out big time. If only you were in a relationship where a woman was being toxic to you.

You made such a huge error in assessment. 

A girl rejecting you is 1000 times better than being stuck with a toxic girlfriend. You will remember my words if you are ever in that kind of a relationship, which I hope you never do 

 

[Emerald]

23 minutes ago, Preety_India said:

So it is perfectly okay for you to say that you've experienced mean girls in school and other places and that this is common in women, 

Yet it is toxic for a woman to say that she wants to be friends with men over women because she finds a lot of women as drama. So your experience of mean girls needs to be validated but at the same time a particular woman's experience with women's propensity to drama is to be negated and considered toxic ?

Why so ? Maybe that woman experienced too much drama with women and to cut that shit out decided to be friends with more men than women. 

If she doesn't want anymore toxic experiences with women, is she wrong ?

Quite puzzling.

 

That's the pattern. Women who say, "I only want to be friends with men because women have too much drama." may very likely have experienced a lot of drama with many women. This is why it's hard to heal from because it's a pattern that makes a lot of sense if you've associated mostly or only with women fitting that pattern. But it's also a very misogynistic statement at the same time because not all women are like that... in fact, most are mostly not. And the statement is often used to say to men, "Pick me! I'm better than other women." So, there's also that added layer.

Women who experience trauma at the hands of other women, and then they put men on a pedestal and paint nearly all women with the same brush of negativity. Add in the strong desire to appeal to and be approved of by men, and you have the "I'm not like other girls" phenomenon. But it's also very self-attacking because on some level these women also experience that as internalized misogyny. 

And then, sisterhood can't be had. And sisterhood and the healing of feminine wounds is what's really needed. 

That's why I said that the toxic feminine attacks itself while the toxic masculine attacks the other. 

Toxic femininity causes a lot of tension and strife among women (and for valid reasons based in trauma). When I talk about toxic femininity, it isn't meant as a condemnation. It's an observation. It all makes perfect sense why it is the way it is and why there are mean girls.

But also, not all women are in a pattern of toxic femininity. I've been very fortunate that I have many female friends that have quite low levels of toxic femininity. The thing in common with these women is usually that they've developed their masculine side as well... though there is a pattern of using the masculine side to shield ourselves in some ways. 

[Preety_India]

1 minute ago, Emerald said:

That's the pattern. Women who say, "I only want to be friends with men because women have too much drama." may very likely have experienced a lot of drama with many women. This is why it's hard to heal from because it's a pattern that makes a lot of sense if you've associated mostly or only with women fitting that pattern. But it's also a very misogynistic statement at the same time because not all women are like that... in fact, most are mostly not. And the statement is often used to say to men, "Pick me! I'm better than other women." So, there's also that added layer.

Women who experience trauma at the hands of other women, and then they put men on a pedestal and paint nearly all women with the same brush of negativity. Add in the strong desire to appeal to and be approved of by men, and you have the "I'm not like other girls" phenomenon. But it's also very self-attacking because on some level these women also experience that as internalized misogyny. 

But you have to realise that maybe they're not necessarily trying to appeal to men. Maybe they simply don't want anymore trauma. So it could be a statement made out of frustration and agony. The pain of having dealt with toxic women in the past. So maybe that statement can also be taken as a positive criticism or it can be taken as a vehement venting of inner frustrations..although I do agree that it appears as generalizing. Yet even if it appears misogynistic and generalizing, if there is a grain of truth in it in terms of what that woman might have experienced with other women, it could be used to bring changes in women's toxic behaviours on a societal level instead of simply dismissing it as a generalization. I hope you understood what I was trying to get at 

 

[Emerald]

14 minutes ago, Preety_India said:

But you have to realise that maybe they're not necessarily trying to appeal to men. Maybe they simply don't want anymore trauma. So it could be a statement made out of frustration and agony. The pain of having dealt with toxic women in the past. So maybe that statement can also be taken as a positive criticism or it can be taken as a vehement venting of inner frustrations..although I do agree that it appears as generalizing. Yet even if it appears misogynistic and generalizing, if there is a grain of truth in it in terms of what that woman might have experienced with other women, it could be used to bring changes in women's toxic behaviours on a societal level instead of simply dismissing it as a generalization. I hope you understood what I was trying to get at 

That could be an element as well. It isn't necessarily an appeal to men. But it often is used that way. 

But even at that, it is an over-generalization. And if taken literally (as I used to and have seen many girls/women do so), this is where the toxicity comes into play.

The toxic element is the part where a woman dubs herself the only good woman and becomes misogynistic and believes that all other women are bad... either for male approval or just as a way of coping with past traumas caused by girls/women. 

And I've been there myself. It's common. But it is an element of the toxic feminine.

Now, if someone's venting and doesn't really believe that, then it's not as bad. But what I'm talking about is a genuine belief that female nature is inherently drama-filled and corrupt. That's the misogyny of it.

[lmfao]

Every over possessive mother on the planet goes here lmfao 

[ll Ontology ll]

@Emerald Gosh, it's so fascinating the modalities of consciousness and the ways in which the mind can construct information within loose to rigid dimensions, this of course being me imagining how reality is created in your mind to its nuances, panoramic view of intuition is still nonetheless useful of course. All of these being energetic of course, to me the final generality is one of energy within and among the multiplicity and simultaneity of energy. The world unfolds in front of our eyes, our eyes are our imagination, always, assertions appear as decisions, decisions appear as authority, authority appears as agency, agency appears as the will of self, the will of self people equate to some ultimate will of god. At the end of that, all the way at the end of it, not just in the middle even if it is only a horizon line, does any of this actually exist in a world where all human brains are reset and cultural norms have to be rediscovered? So when social brain A starts talking to social brain B, the wheels begin to turn and A to B finally become AB and BA to produce a long line of C to C 100 and beyond, if you agree that we don't have complete biological determinism, could you imagine a world in which the environmental conditions were such that humans were pressured to develop opposite inclinations because for the male it affirmed the dominance narrative and for females it affirmed the survival narrative? This is basic game theory that we're forced to play out, so in this scenario, to play out what is legitimately biological determinism as a matter of being constrained by other inevitable pressures, like a lion and the lion environment in general as a metaphor, what is absurd about a male choosing because its a dominant strategy to gossip and a female because its a more safe strategy to be even more covert in an alternate world like this here we could imagine? Why would this not already be happening in other demographics then where due to neuroplasticity and changing environmental pressures but the same male disposition to seek a more dominant strategy on average and a female to seek a more protective strategy on average, males are taking on the cultural stereotype of female toxicity and females male toxicity? Can we thus agree then that what we're dealing with here is the world of likely chosen quality of strategy that selects for behaviours that corresponds to that strategy as opposed to behaviours that always purely correspond to a certain underlying innate strategic albeit genetic imperative?

I like the way you think though, experientially gestalt away... Autobiography, the emotional world of photographic social images, changing our energies in reflection continuously, and reflection both creating and originating those images from the self's interface of genetically induced psychoemotional instructive hardware. This is a hardware discussion for me more than it is what is to be equated with more the malware here that I'm attempting to hack and delicately remove ever so subtly, even if only slightly. A blemish away, a new blemish to integrate.

A response to:

4 hours ago, Emerald said:

This isn't something that there are statistics on where I can give you a concrete sample size. As far as I know, scientists haven't yet studied that 'mean girl' personality type.

But I have experienced enough of life over the course of the past 32 years and enough interactions with girls and women to tell you that the traits that I mention are very common among girls and women, and not very common among boys and men. Ask any woman this. In fact, you can even ask most little girls. And they will tell you.

I had experiences with mean girls all through public school from 5-18. I experienced it in college in a totally different town. I've experienced it in casual get-togethers and workplaces. I experienced it as a teacher and substitute teacher in both female teachers and female students in EVERY single school I've taught at. I even have some family members that are like this. It is COMMON and to say it isn't or that guys do the same exact things is just reality denying.

Men have other forms of toxicity that are different... and this is the primary toxic element of society in general as there is an imbalance. But the toxic feminine still exists, it just only comes up usually in girl to girl tensions. It stays within a limited context as pettiness is one of the main qualities of it. And there are countless movies made about this dynamic. 

So, my sample size is ever single girl or woman I've ever met in my life. And the proportion of women who are like this are probably 20% of that sample size. It's a minority still, but the minority is sizable enough that every woman has a good handful of negative experiences.

But as I've said, women tend to express a lot of this only toward other women. Men as a group are usually exempted from experiencing women express many of these toxic traits... unless you're in a relationship or family situation with one of them. Women like this tend to direct their toxicity toward most women and just one guy.

Also, when a woman is going on the attack toward another woman, the men usually don't pick it up. It's like a dog whistle that only other women can hear. I remember one time that I was hanging out with my friend Joe, my (would-soon-be) boyfriend Jeff, my friend Andrew, and this girl Alicia (who I actually later became friends with when she matured a bit). 

But it was all too familiar. It was a situation I'd been in (not an exaggeration and probably an underestimate) a hundred times before. And I could sense she saw me as a threat, and she kept focusing in on me and making little remarks to criticize my looks or other things about me. She was jealous because she liked Jeff and Jeff and I were hanging out.

And my friend Joe, who had come with me, he and I stepped outside and I was trying to be chilled out and said nonchalantly, "Wow, that girl really hates me." And I just assumed that everyone would see what was going on.

But he was like, "Ugh! Why do you girls do this. She wasn't thinking anything about you." And I was so puzzled at how he couldn't see what was going on. 

 

[Emerald]

53 minutes ago, ll Ontology ll said:

@Emerald Gosh, it's so fascinating the modalities of consciousness and the ways in which the mind can construct information within loose to rigid dimensions, this of course being me imagining how reality is created in your mind to its nuances, panoramic view of intuition is still nonetheless useful of course. All of these being energetic of course, to me the final generality is one of energy within and among the multiplicity and simultaneity of energy. The world unfolds in front of our eyes, our eyes are our imagination, always, assertions appear as decisions, decisions appear as authority, authority appears as agency, agency appears as the will of self, the will of self people equate to some ultimate will of god. At the end of that, all the way at the end of it, not just in the middle even if it is only a horizon line, does any of this actually exist in a world where all human brains are reset and cultural norms have to be rediscovered? So when social brain A starts talking to social brain B, the wheels begin to turn and A to B finally become AB and BA to produce a long line of C to C 100 and beyond, if you agree that we don't have complete biological determinism, could you imagine a world in which the environmental conditions were such that humans were pressured to develop opposite inclinations because for the male it affirmed the dominance narrative and for females it affirmed the survival narrative? This is basic game theory that we're forced to play out, so in this scenario, to play out what is legitimately biological determinism as a matter of being constrained by other inevitable pressures, like a lion and the lion environment in general as a metaphor, what is absurd about a male choosing because its a dominant strategy to gossip and a female because its a more safe strategy to be even more covert in an alternate world like this here we could imagine? Why would this not already be happening in other demographics then where due to neuroplasticity and changing environmental pressures but the same male disposition to seek a more dominant strategy on average and a female to seek a more protective strategy on average, males are taking on the cultural stereotype of female toxicity and females male toxicity? Can we thus agree then that what we're dealing with here is the world of likely chosen quality of strategy that selects for behaviours that corresponds to that strategy as opposed to behaviours that always purely correspond to a certain underlying innate strategic albeit genetic imperative?

I like the way you think though, experientially gestalt away... Autobiography, the emotional world of photographic social images, changing our energies in reflection continuously, and reflection both creating and originating those images from the self's interface of genetically induced psychoemotional instructive hardware. This is a hardware discussion for me more than it is what is to be equated with more the malware here that I'm attempting to hack and delicately remove ever so subtly, even if only slightly. A blemish away, a new blemish to integrate.

A response to:

 

We can create lots of theories about why people behave the way they behave. But I don’t usually go down those wormholes with others much unless I think it has some practical efficacy to do so. I prefer to talk about observed truths over abstract ideations and theories. 

What I’ve experienced in my plant medicine journeys is that there is masculine and feminine energy. And that there are splits and wounds within that energy individually and collectively. And it was evident that this imbalance creates the lion’s share of problems on Earth.

So, given these experiences, I see strong efficacy of getting people to see that gender is not only informed by a social construct. It’s also a real energetic reality that must be integrated. And there are very real differences between men and women generally, though there are a sizable number of exceptions. 

I also see a lot of efficacy for looking at the psychological/emotional point of view to see how culture and circumstances shape our relationship to that nature. This can help people get out of toxic patterns and back into alignment with their core nature.

But I’m not super convinced that questioning these experiences from all the perspectives you’re speaking of will have much efficacy toward the goal of individual and collective alignment as it doesn’t give too much that’s actionable. It’s all very theoretical.

Also, the results could be misleading in an unhelpful way. Let’s say that the toxic behaviors of men and women were found out to be only the result of strategies differing and not an element of our natures inherently (albeit when things go wrong). If that was found to be the case, lots of people would come to the false conclusion that there’s no general energetic difference between men and women, and that masculinity and femininity is nothing more than construct. 

And thus, they would still be framing masculine as neutral and contributing to the imbalances and splits I mentioned above.

So, sometimes going in theoretical directions and postulating can get in the way of expressing/exploring what is true via observation.

[ll Ontology ll]

This is all so fucking hilarious though of course (see all the way below as well).

And just to chalk up like a late professor with squeeky chalk and an oversized bottom rubbing up against desks brought too close to the board as a consequence of an over-enrolled class (kids gonna put my buttcheeks on YT no doubt, kids these days eh):

In the context of how I've framed the above the reason for why it looks like some males are taking a more female strategy and some females are taking a more male strategy, in part (so inclusive and exclusive to the way I framed it above) is because those males and females are simply playing lower level genetic games relative to the metric you’re comparing them against. That's simply it, they're less genetically fit in that area. Clone them in the form of their opposite gender and you’ll see those game theoretic strategies play out as lensed where said inferior fitness is instead masked.

@Emerald I'll read your above comment later darl, I'm sure its a treat.

Otherwise to someone else, stop this haha! Don't be so cute like that! I know what you're doing!

[Gesundheit2]

8 hours ago, Flowerfaeiry said:

You're gonna get all paranoid if you're always on the lookout for unhealthy behavior in a woman people.

That's why the inwards path is a lot more preferable and rewarding.

[Gesundheit2]

9 hours ago, Jacob Morres said:

what is toxic feminity? How are we defining it?

This is a very important question, perhaps the most important one here.
From the meta perspective, toxicity (in general) is a concept that victims imagine in order to shift the societal power dynamics simply through talking and without putting any real efforts. It's an avoidance of stepping up and rising to the challenges of society, and a way of keeping oneself in the comfort zone.

It has nothing to do with gender, yet it takes different shapes and forms.

The main tactics are judging and demonizing instead of accepting and embracing.

Edited July 6, 2021 by Gesundheit2

[RendHeaven]

Really funny to me that male answers here generally exclusively notice how women unconsciously hurt men, while female answers generally exclusively notice how women unconsciously hurt themselves or other women.

[Preety_India]

@RendHeaven how can men know how women hurt other women?

[RendHeaven]

Just now, Preety_India said:

@RendHeaven how can men know how women hurt other women?

If only we listened.

[tsuki]

<~ This one is in relation to what guys do, but I think it's unisex.

 

Edited July 6, 2021 by tsuki

[SamC]

You dudes should really look inte anima repression/ obsession.

For the longest time I thought that the toxic femine side only existed outside of me but that's just the self deception, the defense mechanism.

My life have always been highlighted by feeling victimized, hurt and rejected by woman so I really get you guys. I understand how you feel... that the experience is that woman reject you, becuase they do.. but realize that you do the same thing to yourself.

If you can't stand your feminine energy, how the fuck will the femine energy stand you?

That's the problem and please please please don't take my word for it. Just investigate it and use it as a theory.

Your feminine side gets disowend by your masculine side which makes your feminine side reject your masculine side which creates war. The same toxic dynamic of toxic feminity is not only found outside you - it's already fucking inside you. There is a full out war between two shadows in your psyche.

@Gabith

Besides that.

Here are some other characteristics of toxic shadow feminie.

• Feeling victimized 
• Passive aggressiveness
• Manipulation ( covert ways of getting needs meet)

 

Edited July 6, 2021 by SamC

[mandyjw]

12 hours ago, lmfao said:

Every over possessive mother on the planet goes here lmfao 

No more screen time for you until your room is cleaned young man. 

[Applegarden8]

33 minutes ago, Lucas-fgm said:

In college, at the beginning of my dating life, there was a girl that would keep staring at me and flirting in my class. Even though she rejected me multiple times.

I was pretty innocent, inexperienced and weak. So I would keep going after her. But, obviously, she didn't want anything to do with me. All she wanted was to feel desired and attention.

Her behavior was pretty opportunistic. At the time I was really angry at myself for behaving like such a doormat.

Women attention whores type are pretty toxic.

I have had multiple women physically touching me and hinting at me, meanwhile I know they have a boyfriend. And I have had a few situations where I have continiously reached out for multiple reasons, not just the intimate stuff and got rejected, yes still got the hints.

[Karmadhi]

@Preety_India If a woman is toxic to me she will be deported from my life asap. I value peace in my life more than anything else, if a woman fails to do that by being an obnixious neurotic person than i have no reason to keep her in my life. I have been rejected enough at this point to be able to remove someone i may have feelings for if i see this person is not a match for me. Rejection makes you strong and able to cope with losss.

Thank you for wishing good for me though, it is nice from you

[lmfao]

14 hours ago, SamC said:

ooooooo like gravity :0 . Good aesthetic. Purple. Magical and psychic 

Good image

Edited July 7, 2021 by lmfao