The term toxic masculinity gets bandied around a lot these days — and for good reason. From fuckboys who mansplain our thoughts to us, to men who manspread their thighs so wide apart in public, they violate our personal space. Toxic masculinity is real and many women have had bad experiences with it.

In its least negative form, we’re just being talked over by a man. In its worst, we’re being raped. Toxic masculinity is an intrinsic threat to women everywhere, and not just in our public lives but private lives, too.

Even if we consent to go to bed with a guy, we too soon find he cares nothing about our pleasure. Or worse, he pretends he does, but he’s so arrogant he thinks our fake orgasms are real. If he finds out they’re fake, it’s our fault. Our vaginas are somehow broken.

But if toxic masculinity is real, does it have a counterpart? Is there also such a thing as toxic femininity?

What is toxic femininity?

Toxic femininity can be defined as the way women use the performance of femininity to manipulate situations in their favor. Say, a woman abuses the fact society views females as docile victims by “falsely accus[ing] a man of physical abuse in order to gain custody of a child,” writes Ailun Shi in her essay: Just Like Toxic Masculinity, Toxic Femininity Is a Threat to Gender Equality.

Shi goes on to list other ways toxic femininity might manifest itself: a woman attempting to “sabotage others by using traditionally feminine qualities.” Take by gossiping.

Asavari Singh gives more examples of toxic femininity in her essay Toxic Femininity Is Real, and It’s Time to Talk About It: “…the manager who verbally abuses teammates and then blames pre-menstrual syndrome,” or “the lover who withholds sex until she gets her way about a vacation,” or “the counselor who empathizes so deeply with a client that she tells her to file a false rape case.”

In short, if toxic masculinity is a problem in our society, then women can also abuse the assumptions of femininity in toxic ways.

Toxic femininity in the sex industry.

I became interested in the idea of toxic femininity because I believe there is a lot of it in the sex industry. As a former sex worker, I have personal experience with my colleagues acting in toxic manners.

Sex workers of all stripes commonly utilize their sex appeal as a tool of power. Sure, I’ve written a lot about the positives of this. However, I think some women do sex work because they hate men.

Of course, the misogynist male client exists. Sometimes doing sex work just ends up making women hate men more. Day after day of dealing with men who demand to be pleasured, often not taking into consideration the boundaries of the sex worker. These men believe their money can buy a woman’s body to use however they please.

And yes, sometimes clients do become violent with providers. But there’s another side to the story. I spent years working as a dominatrix, which basically encapsulates toxic femininity.

Sure, the experienced domme doesn’t engage in play with anyone without first getting their expressed consent. Still, the whole ethos of the professional female dominant hinges on treating men like they exist just to give her money.

In the world of the pro-domme, men exist to be used. This is not to say there aren’t plenty of male submissives who are more than happy to play out this role with women. They beg to have their bank accounts drained. They pay to be verbally degraded and physically tortured by women.

But by abusing men so flagrantly, often using men as little more than cash machines to be wiggled open at their whim, some sex workers embody the myth of the vengeful gold digger, proving its validity.

Some say toxic femininity can’t exist.

That said, there are those who believe toxic femininity doesn’t exist. In an inherently sexist world, it can’t.

Under the toxic femininity tab on the Geek Feminism Wiki is an article that describes toxic femininity as but a term used by men’s rights advocacy groups “to construct a false equivalence between toxic masculinity…and patriarchal limitations on women’s gender presentation and expression.”

In short, because of sexism, “…superficially positive beliefs about women…sometimes make it possible for individual women to get away with bad behavior.”

Still, “there is no female equivalent of the ways in which toxic masculinity enables abuse” such as the “organized, political nature of domestic violence and other forms of violence against women.”

To an extent, I agree. Even if a woman may act in toxic ways by abusing the stereotypes of her gender, because she has less power in society as a whole, she can only do so much damage.

Men control the economy as well as the political system. Men also typically have more physical strength than women.

In this regard, to suppose that women are actually a real threat to men is quite laughable.

How to end toxic gendered behavior.

And yet, for those who do agree that toxic femininity does exist, one asks what we can do to fix this problem? If toxic masculinity is an issue that needs to be remedied in our society, how can we do the same with toxic femininity?

I would say we should first focus on creating a less sexist world. If women have a more equal footing in society, they might be less likely to abuse the positive assumptions of their gender. They would also be less able to get away with it.

I also like how Habin Hwang recommends in her article Toxic Femininity: The Under-Addressed Gender Calamity that men and women work together to combat all forms of human toxicity. Hwang envisions a world where women would include “issues for male equality into the feminist battle, such as encouragement of men to engage in healthy emotional expression or fair judicial representation in family courts.”

Hwang feels that only through collaboration can we correct both toxic masculine and feminine traits because “only when we can say that we have fought for both genders can we truly argue the point of gender equality.”

I believe there is a middle ground. I don’t advocate that women not stand up to toxic men. But I don’t think men should have to put up with toxic women either.

With more understanding between the genders, we can hopefully put an end not only to the issue of toxic masculinity but to that of toxic femininity as well.