“Get these men out of here and let’s take all the money for ourselves!” The story of Toxic Femininity inside PUSH Buffalo’s toxic work culture! 

Toxic Femininity – The Backbone of PUSH Buffalo’s Toxic Work Environment & Lies

“My own definition of a feminist is a man or a woman who says, yes, there’s a problem with gender as it is today and we must fix it, we must do better. All of us, women and men, must do better.” ― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“Our current cultural examination of toxic gender roles is too focused on blaming men and masculinity for a variety of ills that are actually caused by the gender binary and our strict adherence to it. Focusing only on the harm done by men—and the insecurities harbored by men—ignores the broader, systematic nature of the beast. The problem was never just masculinity. It was, and is, inflexible gender roles for men and women alike.” ― Devon Price, Toxic Femininity Holds All of Us Back

PUSH Buffalo has many problems, and one of them is toxic femininity.

Toxic femininity is the flip side of toxic masculinity — it involves people perpetuating rigid gender norms and stereotypes about men being brutish, stupid, aggressive, and dominating, whether or not it’s true. At PUSH Buffalo, this behavior has resulted in men getting punished, dismissed, fired, shamed, and not taken seriously because of their gender alone, not their actions or contributions. 

It is true that women have had a historically difficult time in the workplace (and the world), so it is important for all people to recognize how that happens and do better. And yes, PUSH Buffalo culture has plenty of toxic masculinity to go around (we live within systems of patriarchy, after all), which we will discuss in a future post. But that is not what we are talking about here – because PUSH Buffalo is a place where toxic femininity dehumanizes, shames, and traumatizes men.

We’ve witnessed PUSH Buffalo female leadership saying inappropriate and horrible things to and about male staff and members, which they believed to be ok (or even necessary) because “it’s time for men to feel some of the gender-based pain that all of the women have been experiencing their entire lives.” This abusive way of thinking has hurt many men who have tried to contribute their gifts, ideas, and leadership to PUSH Buffalo. The Buffalo community and social justice “movement” also suffer because we are still not appreciating or using our diverse gifts to fight for liberation – we are picking each other apart and destroying one another based on stereotypes instead.

For example, one PUSH Buffalo organizer is traumatized to this day from the way that many women at the organization repeatedly gave him the message that his Latino/machismo mannerisms and way of speaking passionately is evil patriarchy that must be punished.  This organizer was constantly berated and eventually driven out of the organization for being himself. One day, he returned from canvassing to find his desk trashed with the sticky notes saying things like “patriarchal” and “toxic man” mixed with toilet paper — this was done by his female co-workers as a “joke”, and one of them went on to become his supervisor.

Another way toxic femininity shows up at PUSH Buffalo is that when a woman joins the staff (bright-eyed and naive about her future with what she thought was a workplace that empowered all sexes), women leadership will “show them the ropes” while slipping in half-truths and vague lies about their male co-workers, which sews distrust and dislike between the genders from the start:

“Watch out for him, he said this terrible thing about women on Facebook last year.”

“We have been having some trouble with him over the years because he doesn’t listen to or respect women.”

“He has a lot of interesting ideas and is good at talking to people about them, but he can’t bring anything down to the ground and make it a reality.”

“We have had trouble with him harassing women on bus trips, so watch out for him.”

“He assumes that women are going to do all of the administrative work while he gets the public glory, so stay on him and make sure he does his fair share.”

“If you do tasks for him that he was supposed to do but didn’t because of poor time management, you’re just enabling him and being a subordinate female – don’t do it, let him take the fall.”

As you can see, PUSH Buffalo claims to do better with gender at the workplace, but they do not. Instead, they have re-created the forms of dehumanization, shame, lies, gaslighting, and abuse that women have traditionally suffered from in all corners of society, and use them on the men who work for them. Maybe PUSH Buffalo leadership sees their actions as gender justice, but we see it as abuse and a roadblock to our collective liberation.