I appreciate the thoughtfulness of your comment.

However, your characterization of the pain-initiation ceremonies of Central American tribal adolescent boys is dead wrong; and so, I suspect, is your whole defense of the "realness" of "toxic masculinity."

Initiation is a vitally important step in human development. I used to think that an outward, ceremonial initiation was more important for boys, because girls' own bodies kind of jump-start initiated them into adult roles. Now I'm not so sure -- because, at least in modern times, it seems almost just as likely that a girl's support system is liable to be as faulty as a modern boy's, and she will be left in the dark about the changes happening to her and what they mean.

For boys, now and throughout human history, the transition from "me"-concerns -- the narcissism of childhood -- to "society"-concerns is the most important moment in their lives. You mention "mythopoetic" movements. But the source of myth is some kind of human need that doesn't, or can't, get expressed in another way. In this case: the ritual of pain a Central American tribal boy undergoes is symbolic death. The "boy" must "die," so the man can take his place. Its level of barbarism, violence, and outdatedness isn't connected to your interpretation of its "masculinity," toxic or otherwise -- as if the only point of the exercise were to torture him into agreeing to become a blustering, bullying man-monster from that point on. The point is to give him a sense of his own strength and hidden power; to give him a sense of how serious his life is to the health of his tribe; and to give him a visceral sense that childhood is over, and that a new "him" is coming into being. Its primitiveness and the application of pain is more or less commensurate with the instability of life in a primitive tribe: if its members fail to do their bit to support the tribe, tribal death is well within reach.

For modern, Western society, initiation rituals have either gone away altogether, or they're so obscure they don't actually result in any kind of effective "initiation" at all. But that doesn't mean initiation is now meaningless.

I agree 100% with the Original Poster that "Toxic Masculinity" is essentially snakeoil. First off, it's a debate tactic used to silence critics. It's used to skew the conversation and create zones of negativity, essentially irradiating topics that the debater has decided are bad. It's what people say when they are describing something they hate. Maybe you hate macho knuckleheads or football or various categories of male bullies. That's fine. But why specifically say that it's a whole species of, somehow or other, their poisonous maleness which is behind the things you hate? I would be more interested in an analysis that made Narcissism the culprit behind these things which you identify as "toxic." Or consciencelessness, or heartlessness, or selfishness, or prejudice, or pride ... or one of many ills of civilization and human psychology.

Yet to constantly focus on masculinity, the male ground-state itself, as potentially being "toxic" and somehow cancerous is, well, pretty horrible. It's a terrible way to behave; from it flows a never-ending stream of horribleness toward men and boys, justified by their "potential" to be infected by "toxicity." It creates an uneasiness about boys and men that can't help but flow out into the society ... until we have classrooms, like the one that Doris Lessing visited:

<"You could see the little girls, fat with complacency and conceit while the little boys sat there crumpled, apologising for their existence, thinking this was going to be the pattern of their lives."

Lessing said the teacher tried to "catch my eye, thinking I would approve of this rubbish".>

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/aug/14/edinburghfestival2001.edinburghbookfestival2001

Dropping "mythopoetic" doesn't really inoculate your argument. Robert Bly -- our "male mythopoetic" leading figure -- is certainly a Progressive and a Feminist. It just happens that his primary interest is in how male spirituality and vulnerability has been overlooked or undermined in modern society. But I think he has a fundamental misunderstanding of what initiation is for, and is responding viscerally to the various broken men he's met or the various heavy-handed male leaders he has known, and has, perhaps, come away -- like Michael Kimmel -- with a view that their masculinity is "toxic."

It's an interpretation of a huge variety of factors. But its just being an interpretation doesn't mean it's correct or anywhere near the mark. A bullying coach or a bullying dad isn't "toxic." Or, at least, you haven't proven that his masculinity, such as it is, is what makes him bully. It's impossible to say without knowing and learning about that bully in question. "Society" certainly wants and expects children to grow up into adults. Some people are going to be blunderers or tyrants about achieving that; and some are going to be wise and attuned. And some are going to be engaged on a totally invisible private project to make everybody around them as miserable as they, secretly, are themselves. Are drunk fathers drunk because of "toxic masculinity?" Are "'roided" knuckleheads dickish because of "toxic masculinity" or because they have godawful self-esteem? Every abusive father or high school bully is messed-up in his own way. Yes, some of the behavior will come out as cruel taunts about some other kid's lack of size or muscle or macho-ness or something ... But to lay our finger on "masculinity" and say, "Yes, it's gone wrong here: it's toxic" is both utterly shaky as a piece of psychological evaluation, and incredibly harmful to society.