“This is where the argument risks losing traction, in that it has made men across the Internet defensive. ‘Not all men’ has been a boorish rejoinder to critiques of masculinity, but an informative one. No one wants to be implicated in this violence— not all gun owners, not all bipolar patients, not all people who identify with a religion, and not all men. In each of these cases, the vast majority of the group are people who are humane and compassionate people, horrified by the violence at hand. The worst that can come of any preventive analysis is to further divide people. The danger in analyzing violence, the task before us all, then is in painting too broadly...

...masculinity is straightforward. Men are not the marginalized gender, and much of what we call masculinity is malleable, in many ways learnable and unlearnable. If anyone appears to be condemning masculinity broadly, then the discussion devolves. The idea of toxic masculinity is — critically — not a sweeping indictment of bros or gender. It’s an admission that masculinity can be toxic at times.”