Manly, masculine, sexist, dominating, chauvinist, misogynist....toxic? Since the rise of the Alt Right and our grabby pussing President a new term, Toxic Masculinity, has entered our pretty little heads. Is it real? Do I have it? Is it catching? Yes, yes and yes. In a host of recent articles writers and thinkers have been trying to explain what's going on. How, in a world supposedly becoming more liberal towards issues around sexuality or race and ethnicity could gender become such a battlefield? And what exactly is the toxic form of masculinity? Is it all masculinity? Is it a modern form? Or some sort of return to a former time before those dastardly liberals got their paws on gender? Yes, yes, and yes again to the latter three. I've read a fair few pieces on man poison and often there's a conflation of many ideas. Yet at the same time, paradoxically, they are all part of the same issue. So ...
And so Herwig Czech has written a lengthy research study on Hans Asperger's work, his "personnel files, political assessments by Nazi authorities, and medical case records from various institutions, most importantly from the child “euthanasia” clinic Am Spiegelgrund and Asperger’s Heilpädagogik ward. " Hans Asperger, National Socialism, and “race hygiene” in Nazi-era Vienna He found an image contrary to that of the kindly paediatrician who selflessly saved autistic children from the evil Nazi euthanasia programme. This is the common view of Asperger, a view held by all those who have worked to make Autism a spectrum and those who write of the Neurodiversity movement. I've often wondered if any of them had actually read Asperger's paper, which is often uncomfortable reading. Czech argues: "A review of the existing literature on Asperger’s life and career shows the current fault lines in the narrative of his Nazi-era trajectory. Lorna Wing’s s...