Absolutely. I belong to a non cheating group. It’s just seems completely unfathomable that it could happen. Most of us are in 15+ year relationships and are friends with everyone. It’s not just a “the women are friends with the women, the men are friends with the men” situation. We got a blend of genders all participating in the same hobbies. There would be so much social cost to cheating it would be kind of insane.

Where I work though there’s a decent amount of drama in that regard though and I have noticed that one common factor is that the relationships are atomized. They either keep their old friends going in and there’s almost zero expectation of their partners integrating into each other’s friendships or there’s just this expectation that men and women are fundamentally different creatures. That whole men are from Mars women from Venus shtick. From the outside it seems like emotional distance where people look at each other like they aren’t targets of empathy - more like they play by a book as if they can just put the right inputs in they will get the desired outputs.

I know this is entirely anedotal and that anybody could theoretically cheat for any number of reasons… It’s just something that I noticed about the groups of cheats that I am aware of.

People are going to feel what they feel. As a trans person I recognize that this isn’t for me. It’s a call to action to get cis people to step up and perform heroics. It’s a saviour trope with all the baggage attached.

It’s not a bad message but it also isn’t flattering to be depicted as the battered rat barely standing. It’s art. Art is going to strike you differently depending on where you stand. Both takes are valid because it’s subjective but the real pernicious bit here is somebody from a group featured in that art is telling people here how that art makes them feel and the immediate reaction is to tell them they are wrong to feel that way. That isn’t kind. It’s not empathetic. It is demanding unconditional gratitude from someone you feel owes it without reservation of quality of help recieved.

Sadly it’s true right now we as a community don’t really have the luxury of picking between good and bad allyship, we need all we can get… But it’s still kinda a shitty.

Trans masc person checking in. Might be my bias or community or something but I get way less misgendering by guys under 30 than basically any other demographic. They seem to pick it up faster and be really chill about it in ways that a lot of the women in my life really don’t seem to get as comfortable with.

But there is definitely a part of my brain that sees men as being of my tribe in ways that women are not. Like not to say that I don’t have incredible women in my life whom I have incredibly close bonds with… But there’s definitely some kind of cognitive distance that has always kind of been there.

I think trans femmes might experience a similar situation with feeling accepted by women ( Or maybe not because TERFs tend to look at them as a threat) but to answer your question about if the bros are alright… Yeah, they good.

“Toxic” has a wide range of uses outside just toxic masculinity or just describing men. One of the side effects of a very therapized society is wider recognizing that some people in your life are dragging you down because their behaviour is unhealthy for all parties. Before the reaction groomed mostly into women but men to a lesser degree was to shut up, take the abuse, take the hit to the psyche, self doctor yourself using coping mechanisms that don’t address the problem directly and endure because the pressure was on being a dutiful, selfless sibling, child, partner, parent, friend etc.

Describing people as “toxic”, while like any tool can be used wrongly or hurtfully gives people a tool to shake themselves out of that cycle. When used properly it empowers people to take their own status and wellbeing seriously when they are being taken for granted, abused or bullied so that they can source the problem and engage with people in a way that wins them their agency back. When we talk about “Toxic men” isn’t effectively any different than talking about “toxic siblings” or “toxic friends” or “toxic parents” or “toxic narcissists” The only ways it differs is in the behaviour dynamics of the group in question. These people are all uniquely “toxic” but in each of those cases you probably gain a different picture of what that toxicity looks like. Those are not individuals, they are groups within our cultures the reclassification of which is systemic. What needs to be emphasized is that in all cases nobody should be forced into a relationship of any kind, friend, family or romantic. There is a society wide push for true emancipation of the individual free to establish and demolish social ties based on the merit of the tie.

In some ways this loneliness epidemic we’re experiencing may in part be due to this renegotiation of relationships in a bid to make things better overall. One could argue the development of an expectation for too perfect boundaries is maybe a contributing factor but overall the attitude across the board is “enough is enough” and that isn’t nessisarily a bad thing. If people are not forced into connections at a systemic level they can apply consent and engineer for everyone the understanding that people either must act at the very least decently if not kindly and with respect if they want deep connection.

So much of the discussion around the subject of toxic masculinity devolves into either the idea the people critiquing the behaviour are being mean towards and victimizing men but all discussions of toxic behaviours are not about victimizing the perpetrators, it’s about advocating for better conditions for the targets.