Earlier this year, I was surprised to learn that the term “toxic masculinity” was originally coined by the Men’s Movement in the 1980s and 1990s. All this time, I honestly thought “toxic masculinity” was a feminist academic term to describe men who are assholes without calling them assholes.

“Toxic masculinity” refers to traditional patriarchal and societal constructs and expectations of boys and men that encourages competitiveness, domination, conquering, and zero-sum thinking, while denying boys and men the tools to develop cooperation, sensitivity, and emotional intelligence. It was a recognition by the founders of the Men’s Movements that this particular protein shake of manhood did more harm than good, led to depression, disassociation, and violence not only to other genders but to men themselves.

This is an important and necessary deconstruction and examination of the definitions of “manhood” in our societies. It has woven its way into everyday speech, and almost every adult that comes across the term understands, at least in general, what it means. I think that’s a good thing.

But I feel it doesn’t go deep enough.

I still apply the term “toxic masculinity” to assholes, and by “asshole” I mean: someone who puts themselves first, with a dedicated disregard for other persons. Hand in hand with that definition is entitlement: not only entitlement to things the asshole believe they deserve or want, but also the entitlement to reject, to say “next!” because they assume something else, something better, will always come along.

In Autumn of last year, when Germany announced a nation-wide lockdown for at least a month (that turned into 6 1/2 months), I decided to sign up to a dating app. For someone who lives alone, facing another 30 days or longer with no social interaction was a recipe for disaster, so I wanted to be proactive and at least make new friends, if not find romance and/or fall in love.

On my dating profile, I made sure that my work in self defense and training martial arts was front and center. I wanted to be transparent, because when I’ve downplayed this in the past and my dates eventually find out what I do for a living, they inevitably cancel our dates, telling me “I’m scared of you”. What they really mean is “you seem like you will hold me accountable, and I don’t want that” and they’re right. I will, so thank you for sorting yourself out of my house and saving me the work.

This time, though, was different. Not long after joining the app, I was contacted by a man who works as a physical therapist in hospitals, and is also a personal fitness trainer. We chatted online, and made a date to meet for a socially distanced, masked walk outdoors. Our first meeting was rescheduled at the last minute due some poor communication on my end, and a conflict on his: he had another date… to bake Christmas cookies with his daughter. Aw.

When we did successfully schedule a meeting, he suggested a walk by the canal that runs through one end of our neighborhood. I agreed, and we met in the late afternoon / early evening of a chilly December weekday. But winter afternoons in Berlin mean night falls early, so even though we met at around 5pm, it was already as dark as midnight.

This was my date’s part of our Kiez, so he led the way to the canal where we would walk and get to know each other. On the way, I asked him how old his daughter is. 23, he said. Dating in my 50s means it’s likely I’ll meet someone who already has children, and I’m wary about dating anyone with young kids or teenagers. I don’t have children myself, and don’t want any, so learning that my date’s daughter is already an adult was a relief.

As we headed down to the walking path along the canal, the landscape was getting grittier (it’s Berlin!) and also darker. From the street, I could see there were no lamps in the park on the canal embankment, nor along the walking path, that this man was leading me to.

While every woman (and most men) are warned against walking in dark, isolated areas with strangers at night, I did not feel that I was in danger from this man. I ran a systems check nonetheless: can I move freely, can I use anything as a weapon, is any part of my clothing restricting me if I have to get away, where does this guy carry his weight (high in his chest, or lower near his pelvis), does he have big arms? big legs? both? I was calm and able to process all that data quickly, and felt like I could afford the risk of walking into an empty park, with a man I just met, at night.

I just want to acknowledge that, for my personal safety, this was still a very dumb thing to do. I did it because I was curious about something; this is where my encounter changed from being a date to being a social experiment.

It was a calculated risk, but it was still an unnecessary risk.

While we descended the path into the park, my date chattered away, answering questions I asked about his life in Germany, his work, his family. The path along the canal was relatively short, so we continued around by some warehouses, and then along a large train station in our kiez. Our conversation was wide-ranging: we talked about racism in America vs Germany, music, travel, our pandemic experiences. Our walk brought us back onto the main boulevard where we had first met, which was well lit and fairly busy with pedestrians.

During the entire date, it never seemed to strike this guy at all that I might be feeling unsafe or uncomfortable. He just assumed that, because he knows he’s a decent enough guy, I do too. And yet, I also knew that if his adult daughter had told him, while they were baking Christmas cookies a few days before, that she had gone on a date with a guy who took for her a walk along an unlit path in an isolated park, around the back of some warehouses and then skirted some train yards all at night, he would’ve gone ballistic. He would have immediately seen the potential danger she would have been in, and probably forbade his daughter from ever seeing that jerk again.

But that didn’t apply to me. I wondered why.

Not at all surprisingly, our walk conveniently ended up in front of my date’s apartment building. He invited me up to his flat. I said no. He made one attempt to gently persuade me. I still said no. He let it drop.

We continued on to the bus stop, where I would catch a bus to take me back to my side of the neighborhood. Along the way, I told him I had enjoyed our conversation and would be open to meeting again. He replied, “we’ll see.”

And in that moment, I suddenly understood something I never had as a younger woman: that the concern this guy would have shown for his daughter in the same situation didn’t apply to me because he didn’t care about me. Not because I’m a stranger, but because he simply didn’t care about me as a human being. He wanted a female body to meet his sexual needs, and only after getting his needs met would “he see”… see if I was worth having a relationship with. If I was worth caring about. If I was worth seeing as a full human being.

A few minutes before the bus arrived we said our goodbyes. He wanted to hug, but I said no thanks, it being a pandemic and all. He said, “it’s ok, I get tested every day at work” as he moved towards me to embrace me anyway.

I replied, “But I don’t.”

I’m pretty sure that this guy didn’t think of himself as an asshole. He works in physical therapy, in a hospital, helping people get better. I’m 100% that if he’s baking cookies with his adult daughter, that his daughter loves him very much, and doesn’t think of him as an asshole either. I’m sure that all the friends and family in his life who love him think of him as a decent and sometimes even great guy.

And he probably wouldn’t have seen himself as an asshole if I called him two days later and told him I had tested positive for COVID-19; his unemployment insurance wouldn’t see him as an asshole for losing income while he goes into quarantine for 10 days; and the hospital where he works, the doctors, staff and all the patients wouldn’t see him as an asshole for having to shut down after exposing all of them to the coronavirus.

But the truth is, this guy felt so entitled to getting his needs met, and to such an extent that my personhood was disregarded so completely, that he hadn’t even seen me as human —a human who can carry a highly contagious virus.

To me, that’s what toxic masculinity really means: an inability or unwillingness to see past one’s own immediate needs or desires; that every one of our interactions is with other fully realized human beings, who carry their own layers of dimensions and dynamics; that individuals do not live in a series of isolated events; and that even a simple, self-centered act can cause a chain reaction that can ripple out to hundreds and sometimes thousands of people.

Judging by the shock and panic that registered on my date’s face, he did realize all of these things just in time. The hug was thwarted, and I got on the bus without so much as an elbow bump. Thank goodness, because I really didn’t want to hug that guy anyway.

I did, however, delete the app.