Similarly, men often don't have the emotional support structures that women do.

Speaking anecdotally, women confide in their friends much more readily and about more serious topics - the kind of topic that men might take 4 drinks to get up the nerve to address. Men aren't "allowed" to be emotionally vulnerable around anyone except their most trusted confidantes, which often ends up being their girlfriend or wife. And if it's not something you feel like you can discuss with her, then it gets bottled up without an outlet.

> anyone except their most trusted confidantes,

With men, that's even an issue. There are many stories where their partner had a loss of attraction due to that. (Crappy partner..yes But for men, you really don't have that much choice)

This is a pretty good explanation of a large aspect of what falls under the concept dubbed "toxic masculinity."

With that definition we are saying that women have toxic masculinity if/when they culturally expect men to not worry or be anxious.

Which is not how I have seen anyone use the term. People who want to talk about harmful gender stereotyping and gender expectations tend to use the term "gender stereotyping" and "gender expectations". "toxic masculinity" in contrast get used when a person want to express a negative connotation targeting at men exclusively, usually with a hostile generalization of men as a demographic.

Which that term is used to describe someone. I'm talking about the expectations that others re-enforce on to people.

Those cultural expectations and societies reinforcement of them also fall under that term.

I think this illustrates quite clearly why "toxic masculinity", even when applied in a well-intentioned manner, is such a problematic term. Because the main part of the problem you're trying to describe (at least in your case) is in fact located _outside_ of the persons that appear to be described by the term.

I.e. is it the state of acting assertive, confident and not showing weakness, uncertainty or sorrow that is toxic masculinity? Because many do it mostly because they otherwise (legitimately) fear to be rejected or judged by others for it, often by heterosexual women. But the term sounds like it's a judgement on the man holding these traits, perhaps destructively. Not the world around them that expects or demands this behavior.

(Not to mention that it's very easy to conflate some of these traits with personality traits that most would consider to be good or at the very least empirically useful, regardless of gender. E.g. confidence, non-agreeableness, the ability to think on your feet and look after your own interests in a negotiation, physical strength and so on).

Wouldn't "destructive gendered behavior expectations" or something like that be both more accurate, useful and palatable?

Demanding men to not get offended over the term "toxic masculinity" is toxic masculinity.

"Don't be nervous and insecure" is exactly the message that tells men they aren't allowed to be anxious. What is insecurity except fear that your self will be judged and rejected? To "just be yourself" without being "nervous and insecure" means projecting confidence and hiding any anxiety that your self will be judged and rejected.

I.e., if you have any anxiety, hide it, deal with it internally, because showing it isn't acceptable behavior for a man.

Edit/P.S.: Now, I don't think you're 100% wrong; I think you just accidentally highlighted how difficult this is. There are different ways of expressing anxiety, and they aren't all equally off-putting. There can also be nuance in what kinds of feelings are appropriate to show to strangers versus friends and intimate partners. But it's a plain fact that many people judge men for hiding anxiety without honestly examining their own responses to it. Many people do exactly what you do, stigmatizing the appearance of anxiety on one hand while judging people for hiding it on the other.

> Some women like extremely assertive guys, but most don’t. [..] acting super confident isn’t a turn on.

The post you replied to didn't use the "extremely" or "super" adjectives.

You're right, I misread it. I'm reading my own experiences into it, but those aren't everyone's experiences. I had what I felt was crippling social anxiety in my teens and 20s (I'm in my 40s now), or at least an extremely limited and lonely high comfort zone surrounded by an unlimited discomfort zone. I felt like my whole life had been filled with people always telling me to "just be more confident" or "be more outgoing", but what does that even mean? That's not actionable advice. It was especially annoying because it's so ambiguous and unactionable, but always seemed obvious to whoever was giving me the advice.

One thing that helped me personally was realizing that in my case, "just be more confident" really meant not worrying about putting up a falsely confident front. Like, I always felt this pressure to appear confident and charming and however I wanted people to see me, but I never felt that way on the inside, especially around women I was attracted to or other people I wanted to impress. So if I didn't feel confident, the only thing I could do was at least attempt to appear confident. After all, that's what everyone kept telling me to do, or so I thought. Anyway, this pressure (probably rooted in a form of narcissism) that I subconsciously put on myself in the moment to be confident/charming/etc. was just overwhelming, to the point where it sometimes rendered me incapable of social interaction at all. It was like the part of my brain that was in the driver's seat during social interactions would just lock up sometimes and I wouldn't even know what to say. But even when it was working it was exhausting.

In hindsight, this was the source of much of my social anxiety. It was like an ass-backwards subconscious instinct to play the role of the person I wanted other people to see me as. That's never going to work, it's like scripting and acting in a role in real time, a role that you don't understand well enough to write in the first place. I could never begin to get any better socially until I really truly internalized the fact that I didn't need to pretend to be someone I wasn't when I presented myself to other people, and I should just try to be in the moment rather than anxiously observing my own behavior. But, that's probably pretty specific to me and may not even make sense to anyone else.

Also my brain parsed "confident and assertive" into "extremely confident". When I think of someone who's consciously assertive, I think of a display of confidence for its own sake. Maybe that's not what they meant though.

> super insecure is a turn off,

That was part of what I meant when you become socially isolated as a result of it.