If you haven’t heard, femininity is toxic. Masculinity is too. So are feminism, individualism, and positivity. Spirituality is toxic, as is your family, and many other things that end on y. Diet culture, the friend zone, even digital design — life is one giant nest of snakes.
Your boyfriend is probably toxic. Or girlfriend. Your friends surely are. And your boss? Definitely. Even your UX manager might be toxic. Didn’t see that coming, did ya? Your coworkers, on the other hand…that’s obvious.
Your habits are toxic, and so is your ego. Throw in your personality for good measure. Don’t get me started on your parenting. That is the worst. How you review code is toxic. So is your interrupting, and literally everything you do in relationships. You’re basically oozing venom! Maybe you should start a chemical business.
In truth, the only thing that’s toxic is calling things toxic left, right, and center — especially when the “things” you talk about are actually human beings. “Toxic” is a terrible word, and, plainly, not an adjective you should ever use to describe anyone.
While I am proud to only have used the word “toxic” twice in headlines in seven years of writing (and thank god they both flopped), I too had to learn this lesson the hard way. Just in April, I tweeted this: “The only thing that’s worse than cutting out a toxic person too late is giving up on a good one too soon.” Thankfully, David Majister pointed out I was wrong: “There’s no such thing as a toxic person,” he said. “That idea demeans alls our humanity.”
Initially, I thought his comment was the result of Twitter’s low-context environment. “I didn’t mean toxic in general, of course. Just that certain people are bad for you at certain times.” Or so I thought. After two months of gestation and a line from a friend, however, I realize David was right: “Some people hurt us, don’t jive well with us, whatever. That doesn’t mean they’re toxic, poisonous, or anything like that. They’re a person, just like you.”
The word “toxic” goes back to ancient Greek: “Toxon” means “bow” — and archers often used poisoned arrows. Why such a roundabout definition? Simple: The usual word for venom was already taken in English. It’s “ion,” and, well, we use that one for tiny particles.
Let’s keep spinning this yarn for a second: Were it not for this rounding error of history, instead of shooting poisoned arrows at people, today, you and I might be calling them “ionic” — particular. That’s all humans are, isn’t it? Beings made of particles, each with a unique allocation, their own set of particulars: Desires and fears, habits and beliefs, opinions and ideas.
Humanity is a giant, mixed bag of mixed bags. The goal is for everyone to get along despite — or even because of — their differences rather than to exacerbate them and then use finger-pointing to shove ourselves and others into various camps, ready to fight.
You know who loved the word “toxic?” Hitler. Yeah, I said it. The nazis strategically branded jews as “the parasites of the world.” They compared them to poisonous snakes. They called them “Brunnenvergifter,” “well poisoner,” a term used in medieval times to mark people as evil. Of course, the real well poisoners were the nazis, skewing public perception against a minority with loaded descriptions only so they could later justify persecuting said minority. It may have started with words, but genocide is where it ended.
Now, I’m not saying throwing around the word “toxic” is the same as being a nazi, but I do think a world in which “toxic” is crowned word of the year is a lot more likely to produce the kind of thinking that leads to extreme ideologies — like nazism — being popular, even worshipped, than one in which it is reserved for warning signs and chemical containers.
Therapists know simple words can have lasting second-order effects, and that’s why they don’t use the word “toxic.” Kathleen Smith says she ignores all adjectives with her clients because “adjectives aren’t facts.” How we describe our lives and the people in them varies wildly with our mood of the day, which makes it easy to label someone as toxic simply because you are anxious. Unfortunately, you’ve now concocted a permanent solution to a temporary problem, and “instead of responding to reality, you’re responding to your worst fears about that person.” That’s neither fair nor helpful.
When you focus on why people do what they do, you try to label them. When you focus on the what, when, and how of the situation, you stay grounded in reality, Smith says. You start to see that others are only doing what they think they need to do in order to calm themselves down — just like you. You might not condone how they’re trying to get there, but now, at least you’re not assuming they’re evil incarnate.
The fallacy at the heart of all this is called the “fundamental attribution error.” In essence, we tend to ascribe other people’s behavior to their personality and our own to the situation we’re in. Just observe your mind when you get cut off in traffic. Inevitably, you’ll think, “This person is [rude/selfish/a jerk.]” If it was you jumping the queue, you’d justify it with your reason of the day. “I have a deadline to meet/an important meeting/my son to pick up.”
In reality, all human behavior is contextual, and the context usually makes up most of the reason behind why we do anything. Most people don’t actively try to be rude, and they don’t believe they have an inherent right to go first either. But if they’re desperate to get out of the gas station fast because they’re late, they’ll do what you, and I, and most of the people we know have done at least once: they’ll jump at the opportunity to get ahead.
When you label people “toxic” when they do things you don’t understand, you don’t just condemn someone while excusing yourself from the same crime, you might also miss meeting the love of your life. At the very least, you’ll make the world a little less of a place in which we all get along. So whenever you can — and you won’t always because we all have bad days — don’t.
Don’t judge. Don’t listen to people pitching others as poison. They’re the real snakes, selling you quick fixes for complex problems — nowadays often literally because your clicks pay their bills.
There’s an apocryphal story floating around the internet, and it goes like this:
If you put 100 red ants in a jar with 100 black ants, nothing will happen. But if you take the jar and shake it, the ants will start killing each other. Red thinks black is the enemy. Black thinks red is the enemy. Meanwhile, the real enemy is the person who shook the jar.
When I hear terms like “toxic masculinity” and “toxic femininity,” I can’t help but think about those ants. All it takes is one word. One word to pit men against women, left against right, rich against poor, and faith against science.
Meanwhile, the real enemy sits behind a screen and profits off our arguments. Don’t ask yourself who’s toxic. Ask yourself who shook the jar.