Toxic Masculinity and the Antidote of Emptiness. Writings, March 2025

Every day there is news of fresh horrors carried out by men: war, torture, rape, exploitation, objectification and a profound lack of care for the other. So many men seek to coerce, control and dominate others due to being intoxicated by a sense of  entitlement, self-absorption and egoic inflation which  mask their anxiety and fear of inferiority. In particular, women and girls are taken to be objects for use and abuse. This monologic will to power insists on its own validity and is contemptuous of the dialogue that would put its own triumphant positioning into question. This leads into contempt for law since unaccountability and getting away with it are taken to be integral to having power over others. “Who are you to judge me? You are inferior, weak and are worthy only of my contempt.” This self-sealing sense of superiority acts as a shell to disguise and protect the intrinsically vulnerable ego. “I need nothing from you but your compliance and service.”

Each and every day huge harm arises from the intoxication of consuming the toxic brew of superiority and entitlement. This blind madness generates violence free of pity, guilt or regret. “All power and wealth and ease and pleasure belong to me. All misery, loss and irrelevance belongs to the other and is no concern of mine.”

If we are to antidote this toxicity we need to see that offering kindness to those drunk on power is likely to fuel further abuse of the tender loving heart. What is required is the clarity of emptiness which reveals the hollowness of all claims to power. Duality arises with reification. When self and other are believed to be real existents then they can be shaped by those who choose power over the fact of the co-emergence of illusory forms.

All forms, all manifestations, however they are defined,  are inseparable from emptiness. Like a dream, an echo, a rainbow, there is appearance without underlying substance. In the Buddhist tradition the power of emptiness is identified with the feminine while manifestation is identified with the masculine. This symbolism points to the inseparability of the wisdom of emptiness and the kindness of manifestation. When manifestation becomes the sole focus emptiness is ignored. This is the source of toxic masculinity. Seeing the illusory nature of all abusers, exploiters and dominators, allows the lie of their intrinsic superiority to be revealed. Then we can have compassion for these fearful, anxious egos which are unable to dissolve the falsity of their own seeming existence, autonomy and entitlement.

Our book Love your Mother set this out in detail and I recommend that you read it and apply the balm of emptiness to the wound of egoic entitlement.

Written by James Low, March 2025.

Download the .pdf file here.