Neoliberalism is very specifically a breed of political thought that came about with the likes of Margaret Thatcher and Jimmy Carter that seeks to create new markets out of previously held government bodies in the name of austerity or protectionist principles and cuts help for disadvantaged people. Think privatization of government service, liquidation of government assets under the guise of saving taxpayer money, removing restrictions/protections on the consumer market and manufacturing sector and dissolving the welfare state or services that soften the blow of being unemployed or unable to work.

Neoliberalism is often used by people on the right to describe the “Progressivish Liberal identifying party of the hour” but it is inaccurate. While Democrats flirt with Neoliberalism under the guise of courting people who like tax cuts Republicans are straight up Neoliberals. Basically old school liberalism believes in a body of rights, a reasonably unrestricted market and a democratic system of governance. Neoliberalism believes first and foremost the market will sort everything out (or is a scam so that people in government can sell it off peicemeal for personal kickbacks.)

Neoliberalism is incompatible and kind of the exact opposite of socialism which seeks to expand sectors of public protections and publicly held wealth.

Very individualized as per need. Non-binary is an umbrella term for a whole bunch of different situations so what feels right is going to be very different for someone who feels like say a mix of masculine and feminine versus someone who has dysphoric reactions to any and all gender markers. It’s going to be different for someone whose identity is more static than say someone who fluidly bounces between extremes.

If you know someone who is non-binary that’s essentially just the tip of the iceberg of a whole discussion about how they personally interact with their body or the culture of gender. A lot of people seem to treat it as a full stop third category which can actually be a disservice to a non-binary person because it oftentimes just leads to a lot of new assumptions and frames out some of the ways they could be better treated than just as automatically genderless. I’ve heard of mixes of Mom/Dad for bigender people, just Mom or Dad for trans masc/femme folk, Completely new words that do not have cultural baggage, or just “my parent”. It’s not a one size fits all situation.

I’ve heard “Mawpaw” for a bigender person before which sounds kind of delightfully southern.

It really isn’t that simple. The north didn’t have as much strict segregation but in a way it was because they didn’t have to. Economic pressure reinforced by subversive hiring practices, prejudice in housing and hostile attitudes kept black communities tight knit and localized which meant you didn’t have to have specific “Colored schools” because they were created by these forces squeezing folks together into controllable blocks of population.

In the South the fall of segregation had a number of nasty fallouts which harmed black communities as well. When they merged the systems there was a historicly significant loss of black teachers. People got up in arms over really stupid questions like “What if my menstruating daughter had a black male teacher” and that prejudice ensured that a lot of the teachers who understood the challenges of being black in America were no longer in a position to help students.

This meant that effectively in the North segregated schooling continued to be a thing in practice but not in name while in the South it wiped out infrastructure that was helping black students succeed. It was handled incredibly poorly and was not unambiguously good but it did change a lot of the legal categorizations and is considered a win.

Technically that was a calculated movement of it’s time. They wanted a black character in a role that spoke to an easy childhood concept of authority to imply that power dynamically having black people in a dominant respected role in social spaces is a normal thing one doesn’t need to get upset over. Hence the whole friendly cop thing.

They were aware through the gay black actor they had in the role that police was something minority communities had issues with but the hope at the time was that more diversity in the force would be a solve. It’s naive from a modern standpoint but they did try.

It was sad that they purposefully kept the gay part of the actor’s identity under wraps. They knew they were asking him to do something harmful by keeping his private life strictly secret but the actor agreed that he was doing something he deemed worth the sacrifice.

“Toxic” has a wide range of uses outside just toxic masculinity or just describing men. One of the side effects of a very therapized society is wider recognizing that some people in your life are dragging you down because their behaviour is unhealthy for all parties. Before the reaction groomed mostly into women but men to a lesser degree was to shut up, take the abuse, take the hit to the psyche, self doctor yourself using coping mechanisms that don’t address the problem directly and endure because the pressure was on being a dutiful, selfless sibling, child, partner, parent, friend etc.

Describing people as “toxic”, while like any tool can be used wrongly or hurtfully gives people a tool to shake themselves out of that cycle. When used properly it empowers people to take their own status and wellbeing seriously when they are being taken for granted, abused or bullied so that they can source the problem and engage with people in a way that wins them their agency back. When we talk about “Toxic men” isn’t effectively any different than talking about “toxic siblings” or “toxic friends” or “toxic parents” or “toxic narcissists” The only ways it differs is in the behaviour dynamics of the group in question. These people are all uniquely “toxic” but in each of those cases you probably gain a different picture of what that toxicity looks like. Those are not individuals, they are groups within our cultures the reclassification of which is systemic. What needs to be emphasized is that in all cases nobody should be forced into a relationship of any kind, friend, family or romantic. There is a society wide push for true emancipation of the individual free to establish and demolish social ties based on the merit of the tie.

In some ways this loneliness epidemic we’re experiencing may in part be due to this renegotiation of relationships in a bid to make things better overall. One could argue the development of an expectation for too perfect boundaries is maybe a contributing factor but overall the attitude across the board is “enough is enough” and that isn’t nessisarily a bad thing. If people are not forced into connections at a systemic level they can apply consent and engineer for everyone the understanding that people either must act at the very least decently if not kindly and with respect if they want deep connection.

So much of the discussion around the subject of toxic masculinity devolves into either the idea the people critiquing the behaviour are being mean towards and victimizing men but all discussions of toxic behaviours are not about victimizing the perpetrators, it’s about advocating for better conditions for the targets.