So, this is controversial, but when I hear “toxic masculinity” I understand that it means that not all masculinity is toxic, but masculinity can have toxic forms. In the interest of using precise language, I do believe that, in the realm of all possibilities, there can conceivably be toxic forms of empathy.
Now, I don’t think that left/progressive ideals are toxic in general, and certainly aren’t toxic when they’re based in empathy and compassion. And I realize that the “side” that coined the phrase “toxic empathy” is also the side that thinks “toxic masculinity” is an absolute phrase. So it would make sense that right/conservative people would think “oh we’ll call ideals we don’t like toxic, like the libs do with masculinity” without any deeper understanding.
Just want to be pedantic to try to keep the capital-D Discourse on the nature of empathy from becoming black-and-white polarized.
Some people use the terms empathy and sympathy as two levels of understanding. Sympathy as the ability to understand how someone feels and empathy as the ability to feel the way someone else feels. In that context, empathy can be crippling and a negative trait to possess.
There’s a form of empathy I, and I think some of my friends, experience by being raised by selfish parents. We’re hyper-aware of others’ feelings, dread upsetting anyone, and take personal responsibility for other peoples’ unhappiness (all of it, even if we didn’t have any influence).
There’s another form, that’s kind of like a complement to retribution and revenge. A person goes overboard trying to soothe their own empathy-inspired unhappiness that they to go absurd ends to address the source of unhappiness. Maybe like PETA, or people experiencing moral panic.
Another form that comes to mind is the mother from Requiem for a Dream - enablers. She knows her son is an addict, she knows that he’s constantly stealing her TV to sell for drug money, but she dutifully buys her TV back from the pawn shop every time, because she can’t say no to her son.
I suppose, taking drastic action to soothe one’s own empathy, and not addressing the real source of unhappiness, can be pretty toxic, especially when used to manipulate, coerce and sway others.
I think you have a misguided sense of what empathy entails. Empathy is the ability to recognize another person’s feelings and to understand how their life circumstances and experiences influence those feelings. Acting out of empathy is selfless, is motivated by a desire to help someone else. Empathy is not self-preservation or self-soothing, though there is nothing inherently wrong with preservation or soothing as motivations.
Your first example is an anxious response rooted in past trauma; you are hyperaware of the other person’s feelings, yes, but you aren’t taking their perspective into account. You’re still in your own shoes (albeit children’s shoes) and exhibiting a trained response to other’s emotions designed to de-escalate a situation you read as dangerous. That is an act of self-preservation and is motivated by a desire to redirect and defuse emotions you feel threatened by, to ensure your own safety.I don’t fault nor judge you or anyone for acting this way but those actions do not stem from empathy.
I’m not entirely sure how to interpret ‘empathy-inspired unhappiness.’ I think I’m familiar with the concept you’re aiming for; I feel a sense of injustice and unhappiness when seeing people who have been failed by society, with homeless people and their children as the most apparent example. The action I have taken to improve the lives of those who have fallen between the cracks that I perceive as motivated by empathy has been to share food with them. I don’t have much money myself and I recognize that money (in some cases) may be used to enable behaviors that are ultimately damaging to the individual, but everyone needs to eat.
The examples you gave, however, read as reactions designed to assuage personal guilt (PETA) and fear (moral panic), not as responses driven by an understanding of others feelings and history. That leads into ‘action to [self-]soothe’ - this is a selfishly motivated reaction as well. Coercion and manipulation are inherently self-serving tactics of influencing the emotions of others as well. Empathetic actions stem from desire to improve another person’s circumstances, not from a need to feel better about yourself. The mother buying her TV back from the pawn shop is a little closer to the mark, I think. While her motivations come from a place of love, however, her actions are misguided and ultimately only serve to mitigate conflict rather than improve her son’s real circumstances. The addict’s mother, the PETA fanatic, even the person reacting to a perceived fraying of morality are not (necessarily) devoid of empathy but their actions are not motivated by empathy, either. Self-preservation is instinctual, a reaction engrained by millenia of evolution and is not an inherently bad or negative emotion. Empathy requires overcoming that instinct in order to act in a way that improves the circumstances of other people.
You are not bad for trying to de-escalate or appease those around you; those reactions were taught and reinforced by people who were utterly unconcerned with anyone’s well-being but their own. Their actions lacked consideration for their victim’s feelings or the circumstances leading their victims to those feelings. Their actions were borne entirely from a selfish desire to get ahead at the expense of those around them.
Empathy tends to require some form of self-sacrifice and always requires you to (briefly) hold someone else’s interests above your own. Empathy is acting to improve someone else’s life. I refuse to believe that actions motivated by a desire to actually help those around us, even and especially at the expense of our own comfort, is toxic. Those proclaiming the toxicity of empathy have likely never experienced actual selfless empathy and those who shout the loudest against it almost always have self-interest as their core motivation.
My experience with empathy is that empathy isn’t an act, it’s an emotion. Your descriptions track more closely with charity, heroism and justice - behaviors that are certainly closely linked with empathy. But I’m confident that the best definition of empathy explicitly does not include behaviors.
On a tangent, it’s incredibly self-destructive to take ownership of others’ feelings, especially negative ones. To support my statement, it’s predicated on empathy, but exhibits non-constructive behaviors.
With “Toxic Masculinity” it’s pretty clear how masculinity - which is not a problem in itself - can become over-applied to the point where it’s damaging both to oneself and to others.
But toxic empathy? Is it really possible to care about others too much? To try and see things from someone else’s perspective too much? I feel like it really isn’t, because there can never be enough of that in the world.
Which means “toxic empathy” is genuinely nothing more than a nonsense phrase for people who don’t wish to see or hear about any viewpoint except their own.
I’m not a believer in toxic empathy, I pretty much agree with your assessment here - just going to play devil’s advocate for a sec. If a bad actor purposefully pretended to feel a certain way to elicit empathy to influence a group, that could conceivably lead to toxic empathy.
Thinking about it, essentially what the author of the article is attempting. Projection the whole way down.
Toxic masculinity has always appeared to be a typical in group/out group thing to me.
Scammers take advantage of our empathy. If the response to the scam is empathy, that doesn’t make it toxic, it makes the attempt to take advantage of it toxic, and that isn’t empathy, but a lack of it.
Couldn’t what we typically call concern trolling be a type of toxic empathy? Of course you could make an argument that concern trolling is entirely removed from empathy, but then things like toxic positivity tends to only be positive at a very surface level view.
A hypothetical “toxic empathy” could be our evolved hunting technique. We would run down prey with endurance hunting. If we lost them, we could use empathy to put ourselves in their mindset, and so predict their movements.
Even this would be “venomous empathy”. Toxic masculinity is partially defined by the way it hurts the man doing it. It’s toxic to the host. It’s misused enough however to muddy that, considerably.
certainly aren’t toxic when they’re based in empathy and compassion
Pick a lane? I mean no offense, but I did kinda feel like I had a stroke trying to follow your argument.
The way I see it, “toxic empathy” is self contradicting, which is a regular tactic of fascist propaganda. The whole point is to interfere with the listeners’ ability to approach their argument with reason and logic, leaving them more vulnerable to emotional manipulation.
Anyway, I’ll just go ahead and say it: no, there is no such thing as “toxic empathy”. It’s a meaningless word salad to dress their appeal to emotion up to look like some kinda of reasoned argument (but only if you don’t look to close, which of course a radical will do everything to avoid).
Toxic empathy is when you try to see the good in people when there’s no conceivable good to be found. For example, the fools who think Nazis can still be brought around to reason instead of culled.
Not really making an argument, just want to speak precisely.
Empathy used to justify or enable harmful actions is toxic. Like, say, people who use at an excuse for retribution, or people who do something harmful to soothe their own empathy, or people who enable another’s toxic activities out of empathy.
Empathy and compassion aren’t very well-defined, but I have always understood empathy to be about sharing in another’s feelings, good or bad. Compassion is a little more distanced, it’s about understanding another’s feelings and simultaneously being considerate about it.
Empathy can be very powerful, and introduce feelings and emotions into someone who doesn’t know how to deal with them well.
BTW I’m not trying to make a case against empathy, not at all. But I think about empathy and compassion a lot, and while I still want to champion them as virtues, they can be just as complex and subtle as any other human experience. I think our lack of nuanced understanding of empathy and compassion is a root cause of a lot of human problems, especially recently.
So, this is controversial, but when I hear “toxic masculinity” I understand that it means that not all masculinity is toxic, but masculinity can have toxic forms. In the interest of using precise language, I do believe that, in the realm of all possibilities, there can conceivably be toxic forms of empathy.
Now, I don’t think that left/progressive ideals are toxic in general, and certainly aren’t toxic when they’re based in empathy and compassion. And I realize that the “side” that coined the phrase “toxic empathy” is also the side that thinks “toxic masculinity” is an absolute phrase. So it would make sense that right/conservative people would think “oh we’ll call ideals we don’t like toxic, like the libs do with masculinity” without any deeper understanding.
Just want to be pedantic to try to keep the capital-D Discourse on the nature of empathy from becoming black-and-white polarized.
The only toxic empathy I can think of is Stockholm syndrome.
Which situations can you conceive that would be made worse by all involved parties understanding each others feelings?
Some people use the terms empathy and sympathy as two levels of understanding. Sympathy as the ability to understand how someone feels and empathy as the ability to feel the way someone else feels. In that context, empathy can be crippling and a negative trait to possess.
There’s a form of empathy I, and I think some of my friends, experience by being raised by selfish parents. We’re hyper-aware of others’ feelings, dread upsetting anyone, and take personal responsibility for other peoples’ unhappiness (all of it, even if we didn’t have any influence).
There’s another form, that’s kind of like a complement to retribution and revenge. A person goes overboard trying to soothe their own empathy-inspired unhappiness that they to go absurd ends to address the source of unhappiness. Maybe like PETA, or people experiencing moral panic.
Another form that comes to mind is the mother from Requiem for a Dream - enablers. She knows her son is an addict, she knows that he’s constantly stealing her TV to sell for drug money, but she dutifully buys her TV back from the pawn shop every time, because she can’t say no to her son.
I suppose, taking drastic action to soothe one’s own empathy, and not addressing the real source of unhappiness, can be pretty toxic, especially when used to manipulate, coerce and sway others.
I think you have a misguided sense of what empathy entails. Empathy is the ability to recognize another person’s feelings and to understand how their life circumstances and experiences influence those feelings. Acting out of empathy is selfless, is motivated by a desire to help someone else. Empathy is not self-preservation or self-soothing, though there is nothing inherently wrong with preservation or soothing as motivations.
Your first example is an anxious response rooted in past trauma; you are hyperaware of the other person’s feelings, yes, but you aren’t taking their perspective into account. You’re still in your own shoes (albeit children’s shoes) and exhibiting a trained response to other’s emotions designed to de-escalate a situation you read as dangerous. That is an act of self-preservation and is motivated by a desire to redirect and defuse emotions you feel threatened by, to ensure your own safety.I don’t fault nor judge you or anyone for acting this way but those actions do not stem from empathy.
I’m not entirely sure how to interpret ‘empathy-inspired unhappiness.’ I think I’m familiar with the concept you’re aiming for; I feel a sense of injustice and unhappiness when seeing people who have been failed by society, with homeless people and their children as the most apparent example. The action I have taken to improve the lives of those who have fallen between the cracks that I perceive as motivated by empathy has been to share food with them. I don’t have much money myself and I recognize that money (in some cases) may be used to enable behaviors that are ultimately damaging to the individual, but everyone needs to eat.
The examples you gave, however, read as reactions designed to assuage personal guilt (PETA) and fear (moral panic), not as responses driven by an understanding of others feelings and history. That leads into ‘action to [self-]soothe’ - this is a selfishly motivated reaction as well. Coercion and manipulation are inherently self-serving tactics of influencing the emotions of others as well. Empathetic actions stem from desire to improve another person’s circumstances, not from a need to feel better about yourself. The mother buying her TV back from the pawn shop is a little closer to the mark, I think. While her motivations come from a place of love, however, her actions are misguided and ultimately only serve to mitigate conflict rather than improve her son’s real circumstances. The addict’s mother, the PETA fanatic, even the person reacting to a perceived fraying of morality are not (necessarily) devoid of empathy but their actions are not motivated by empathy, either. Self-preservation is instinctual, a reaction engrained by millenia of evolution and is not an inherently bad or negative emotion. Empathy requires overcoming that instinct in order to act in a way that improves the circumstances of other people.
You are not bad for trying to de-escalate or appease those around you; those reactions were taught and reinforced by people who were utterly unconcerned with anyone’s well-being but their own. Their actions lacked consideration for their victim’s feelings or the circumstances leading their victims to those feelings. Their actions were borne entirely from a selfish desire to get ahead at the expense of those around them.
Empathy tends to require some form of self-sacrifice and always requires you to (briefly) hold someone else’s interests above your own. Empathy is acting to improve someone else’s life. I refuse to believe that actions motivated by a desire to actually help those around us, even and especially at the expense of our own comfort, is toxic. Those proclaiming the toxicity of empathy have likely never experienced actual selfless empathy and those who shout the loudest against it almost always have self-interest as their core motivation.
My experience with empathy is that empathy isn’t an act, it’s an emotion. Your descriptions track more closely with charity, heroism and justice - behaviors that are certainly closely linked with empathy. But I’m confident that the best definition of empathy explicitly does not include behaviors.
On a tangent, it’s incredibly self-destructive to take ownership of others’ feelings, especially negative ones. To support my statement, it’s predicated on empathy, but exhibits non-constructive behaviors.
Yeah exactly, I don’t get it either.
With “Toxic Masculinity” it’s pretty clear how masculinity - which is not a problem in itself - can become over-applied to the point where it’s damaging both to oneself and to others.
But toxic empathy? Is it really possible to care about others too much? To try and see things from someone else’s perspective too much? I feel like it really isn’t, because there can never be enough of that in the world.
Which means “toxic empathy” is genuinely nothing more than a nonsense phrase for people who don’t wish to see or hear about any viewpoint except their own.
I’m not a believer in toxic empathy, I pretty much agree with your assessment here - just going to play devil’s advocate for a sec. If a bad actor purposefully pretended to feel a certain way to elicit empathy to influence a group, that could conceivably lead to toxic empathy.
Thinking about it, essentially what the author of the article is attempting. Projection the whole way down.
Toxic masculinity has always appeared to be a typical in group/out group thing to me.
Scammers take advantage of our empathy. If the response to the scam is empathy, that doesn’t make it toxic, it makes the attempt to take advantage of it toxic, and that isn’t empathy, but a lack of it.
Couldn’t what we typically call concern trolling be a type of toxic empathy? Of course you could make an argument that concern trolling is entirely removed from empathy, but then things like toxic positivity tends to only be positive at a very surface level view.
Concern trolling is trying to hijack other people’s empathy for their own goals. It may look like empathy, but it really isn’t.
Toxic positivity, on the other hand, really is positivity, but ramped up to eleven, to the point where it becomes harmful.
A hypothetical “toxic empathy” could be our evolved hunting technique. We would run down prey with endurance hunting. If we lost them, we could use empathy to put ourselves in their mindset, and so predict their movements.
Even this would be “venomous empathy”. Toxic masculinity is partially defined by the way it hurts the man doing it. It’s toxic to the host. It’s misused enough however to muddy that, considerably.
Toxic empathy is when you bite them and feel bad. Venomous empathy is when they bite you and you feel bad.
Pick a lane? I mean no offense, but I did kinda feel like I had a stroke trying to follow your argument.
The way I see it, “toxic empathy” is self contradicting, which is a regular tactic of fascist propaganda. The whole point is to interfere with the listeners’ ability to approach their argument with reason and logic, leaving them more vulnerable to emotional manipulation.
Anyway, I’ll just go ahead and say it: no, there is no such thing as “toxic empathy”. It’s a meaningless word salad to dress their appeal to emotion up to look like some kinda of reasoned argument (but only if you don’t look to close, which of course a radical will do everything to avoid).
Toxic empathy is when you try to see the good in people when there’s no conceivable good to be found. For example, the fools who think Nazis can still be brought around to reason instead of culled.
Not really making an argument, just want to speak precisely.
Empathy used to justify or enable harmful actions is toxic. Like, say, people who use at an excuse for retribution, or people who do something harmful to soothe their own empathy, or people who enable another’s toxic activities out of empathy.
Empathy and compassion aren’t very well-defined, but I have always understood empathy to be about sharing in another’s feelings, good or bad. Compassion is a little more distanced, it’s about understanding another’s feelings and simultaneously being considerate about it.
Empathy can be very powerful, and introduce feelings and emotions into someone who doesn’t know how to deal with them well.
BTW I’m not trying to make a case against empathy, not at all. But I think about empathy and compassion a lot, and while I still want to champion them as virtues, they can be just as complex and subtle as any other human experience. I think our lack of nuanced understanding of empathy and compassion is a root cause of a lot of human problems, especially recently.