Word.ws English Dictionary

toxic femininity

toxic femininity noun: the systemic pressure on women to conform to standards of beauty, femininity, modesty, etc., to the detriment of individual agency and well-being.

Noun

toxic femininity (uncountable)

  1. The systemic pressure on women to conform to standards of beauty, femininity, modesty, etc., to the detriment of individual agency and well-being.
    • Don’t get me wrong I know many rad Riot Grrris but for me the predominant kinderwhore uniform didn’t seem very different than the toxic femininity mass media was already pushing on me as a fat non white teen […]2014, Mason J., quoted in Amos Mac & Rocco Kayiatos, "Mr. Transman San Francisco Mason J.", Original Plumbing, Winter 2014, page 33
    • The obsequious demands of toxic femininity require placing oneself in a diminished role in relation to a more powerful partner, who uses physical, sexual, financial, emotional, or psychological actions or threats of actions to gain or maintain power over another person.2019, Brenda R. Weber, Latter-day Screens: Gender, Sexuality, and Mediated Mormonism, page 232

Questions about toxic femininity

What does toxic femininity mean?
Toxic femininity means the systemic pressure on women to conform to standards of beauty, femininity, modesty, etc., to the detriment of individual agency and well-being.
What part of speech is toxic femininity?
Toxic femininity is a noun.

Words near toxic femininity in the dictionary

  1. toxic anterior segment syndrome
  2. toxic asset
  3. toxic assets
  4. toxic debt
  5. toxic debts
  6. toxic femininity
  7. toxic hellstew
  8. toxic hellstews
  9. toxic masculinity
  10. toxic megacolon
  11. toxic megacolons

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: toxic femininity (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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