Toxic Masculinity — Biohazard symbol fused with male gender symbol above the word MASCULINITY on yellow background

Toxic Masculinity

2013catchphraseclassic

Published October 3, 2026

Toxic Masculinity is a neologism describing norms of male behavior tied to dominance, misogyny, homophobia and violence. Coined in men's movement circles in the 1980s and 1990s, the phrase broke into mainstream internet discourse around 2016 to 2018 through podcasts, YouTube video essays, op-eds and Virgin vs. Chad reaction images that turned the academic term into a culture-war meme.

toxic masculinity memes gender discourse memes culture war memes manosphere memes slang memes

Overview

Toxic Masculinity labels the parts of normative Western male behavior tied to dominance, misogyny, homophobia and violence1. Unlike most meme formats, it is a term that got memed rather than an image, which means its online life plays out mostly as argument, video essay and reaction image rather than a single template.

Online, the phrase works in two opposite registers. Progressive creators use it earnestly in video essays and op-eds that pick apart male role models in pop culture, like Jonathan McIntosh's Pop Culture Detective dissection of Biff from Back to the Future6. Critics on the right, including Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson and evolutionary psychologist Gad Saad, treat the phrase itself as the joke, arguing it pathologizes ordinary male traits4. The friction between those two readings is what keeps the term alive as meme fuel.

In image macro form, the clearest expression is the Virgin vs. Chad edit submitted to r/justneckbeardthings in February 2018, which pits a scrawny 'Virgin Toxic Masculinity' panel against a 'Chad Real Man'3. Urban Dictionary entries range from sincere definitions about forced masculinity to sarcastic ones claiming the phrase is a plot 'devised by women to get men to be simps,' showing how contested the vocabulary stayed5.

Origin & Background

Platform
Academic / Men's movement writing (origin), YouTube and Twitter (viral spread)
Creator
Unknown
Date
2013

According to The Advocate, the term toxic masculinity was likely coined by psychologist Shepherd Bliss during the Mythopoetic men's movement of the 1980s and 1990s, where it described a strain of masculinity born from repressing 'deep masculinity'1. The earliest documented appearance in academic research is Michael Kimmel and Amy Aronson's 2004 reference work Men and Masculinities: A Social, Cultural and Historical Encyclopedia1.

The phrase crossed into online feminist writing on January 4th, 2013, when an entry titled 'Toxic masculinity' went up on the Geek Feminism Wiki framing it as 'one of the ways in which Patriarchy is harmful to men'3. From there, it sat relatively quietly until podcasters and video essayists picked it up a few years later.

How It Spread

The term spent 2016 getting pulled into podcast and YouTube discourse. On June 26th, 2016, the Podcast Page YouTube channel uploaded a clip of Joe Rogan dismissing toxic masculinity on The Joe Rogan Experience7. A little over a month later, on August 1st, 2016, Pop Culture Detective's Jonathan McIntosh posted the video essay 'What Is Toxic Masculinity?' which used Biff from Back to the Future as his case study6. Those two videos set the template for how both sides would argue about the phrase online.

The real pile-on came in late 2017 and 2018. On November 12th, 2017, Urban Dictionary user SparklyNinja submitted an entry defining it as 'a social science term that describes narrow repressive type of ideas about the male gender role'5. A week later, grooming brand Harry's ran an International Men's Day Twitter ad against toxic masculinity3. On February 8th, 2018, Redditor EndlessTrashposter dropped the 'Virgin Toxic Masculinity vs. Chad Real Man' image on r/justneckbeardthings, giving the debate a native image macro3.

March and April 2018 pushed it into mainstream media. On March 7th, Tucker Carlson interviewed Jordan Peterson about the term on Fox News, and the next day Psychology Today ran Gad Saad's essay 'Is Toxic Masculinity a Valid Concept?' accusing users of 'seeking to pathologize masculinity'4. On April 27th, Polygon published an interview with God of War director Cory Barlog explaining why Kratos had to change, which drew a mocking tweet from YouTuber OneyNG the next day2. The Spectator followed on May 5th, 2018 with the op-ed 'Toxic Masculinity Is a Toxic Phrase'3.

Timeline

2004

Michael Kimmel and Amy Aronson's Men and Masculinities encyclopedia gives the term one of its earliest documented academic uses.

2013-01-04

Geek Feminism Wiki creates a 'Toxic masculinity' entry framing it as a way patriarchy harms men.

How to Use This Meme

The term typically shows up in two meme modes. The first is the earnest video essay or thread diagnosing male characters, politicians or behaviors as examples of toxic masculinity, often tying them to broader pop culture patterns like God of War's early Kratos2. The second is the ironic callback used by critics and shitposters, where any complaint about male behavior is labelled 'toxic masculinity' as a punchline, as in the sarcastic Urban Dictionary entries and the Virgin vs. Chad image5. Common conventions include pairing the phrase with a stock male archetype image, a screenshot of a 'woke' headline, or a clip of a commentator saying it with a straight face.

Frequently Asked Questions