"...So I’m going to list a few offensive words and phrases that should be avoided in the interest of fairness, and some common stereotypes that should not inform faculty and staff’s decision-making and interaction with students.
So let’s get started:
- “Toxic masculinity.” As Toni Airaksinen has noted, this is a common and destructive concept on campus: “On college campuses across the globe, young men are treated to lectures, workshops and extracurricular activities that teach them their masculinity — an element at the very core of their identity — is dangerous, poisonous and even toxic.”One of the goals of Title IX is to ensure that no student must endure a hostile educational environment based on sex discrimination. It’s hard to imagine a more hostile educational environment than one that characterizes the gender identity of a large number of students as poisonous. Can students comfortably learn and interact with faculty and staff at an institution that sees their gender identity as toxic?It’s hard to see how that’s possible.
- Likewise, references to “testosterone poisoning” should be avoided. This variant on “toxic masculinity” identifies a particular hormone (stereotypically identified with men, though in fact women produce testosterone too, and suffer problems if it’s too low) as poisonous. Again, this is simply a statement of naked gender prejudice whose expression is likely to make students who identify as male feel uncomfortable, unappreciated, and stigmatized...
Read on!
