Feminism becomes toxic when it stops being about equality and starts being about spite and “revenge" for the way women have been treated.
Where exactly that point is depends on the ego and emotional maturity of who you ask. But objectively, it's not difficult to spot.
It's obvious to anyone with common sense that there are situations and cultural attitudes that are harmful to women.
Feminism, at its core, is meant to help women in these situations. Denying that these situations exist is just as toxic and ignorant as denying that situations and cultural attitudes exist that harm men.
But it's important to remember that feminism attacks the issue of gender equality by focusing on women's issues. I can't tell you how many times I've been asked why feminists don't care about things like circumcision.
Uh, we do. It's a barbaric and pointless practice. But you don't get mad at the ASPCA for not doing anything about world hunger, do you?
That's the problem with egalitarianism. It's just too broad to make much of a difference. Feminism is more focused.
Alternatively, masculinism attacks the problem of gender inequality by focusing on the situations and cultural attitudes that are harmful to men (like circumcision).
But masculinism and feminism are not mutually exclusive. Most sane people are both. It's toxic when you claim that you have to be one or the other, or that one or the other isn't needed in today's society, or that someone who may not understand why one is needed is automatically a bigot or a sexist.
For example, not all men understand why catcalling is such a big deal. I had a conversation not long ago with one of these gentlemen. And he wasn't a bigot, he just had a limited perspective and didn't know.
If I had gotten hostile and been a judgemental prick, and shrugged him off and called him sexist, that would've been an example of toxic feminism.
But I explained to him what it means, what it feels like, and helped him understand it from my perspective, and at the end, he understood. There were some things he still didn't agree with (which is his right), but he understood why women take such issue with it, and agreed that it's a larger issue than he originally thought.
I'd venture to say that most men who don't like feminism are like him. They just don't understand, and instead of helping them understand, toxic people have made them feel like villains.
This is also true for women who don't understand certain things in masculinism, and men are just as guilty of getting hostile and being judgemental pricks. All it does is breed enemies. There's nothing productive or constructive about it.
Unfortunately, until we can collectively decide to stop giving toxic people power, not much progress is going to be made on either front.
