I think a big problem is that people are always debating this topic from the extremes. As if you can’t have one without the other. For a man to be masculine, the female must be subjugated. Or if the female is strong, than the man must be weak.

My wife earns more than me, she’s completely independent, has a much higher social standing, but she still wants/needs/respects my role as a masculine figure in our household, and in the larger community.

You can have your cake and eat it too.

Toxic people are toxic

Some are XY

Some are XX

They do harm

They hide behind labels

Humans sex-differentiated because it improved our survival. Women became experts in child rearing, home-making and social relationship building while men optimized for defense, hard labor, high risk activities, and mechanical work. A team of (1 woman, 1 man, N children) ends up surviving better than a team of (2 androgenous humans, N children) because specialization is more effective than everybody trying to be a jack-of-all-trades where compromises need to be made.

Individual variation is still high. Some women are beasts, some experts in mechanical work, etc, and some men are effeminate. But those are exceptions. Statistically speaking, more often than not the roles are trad. The exceptions are interesting, because their lineages survived in competition with traditional families, these exceptions didn't get selected out, so there is something interesting to study as to why they exist.

Even in the trad case, women are not "subjugated" or weak. Almost all women are very strong, capable and independent. Evolution selected all of us to be as survivable as possible. Women are only relatively a bit weaker as a compromise so they can be better with children. We can see this in sports competitions. I don't think anybody should hold up "weakness" as a trait women ought to have. That's quite wrong. Everybody should glorify strength even in women. The same goes the other way: being caring and nurturing is a good trait in a man, so long as he is not so caring that he can't stand up against a real threat, or he can't kill meat ;-).

I agree that masculinity is not toxic.

But I disagree that weak little men are the woman abusers. Any man can be a woman abuser. And women have to cope with the fact that they benefit from a stronger man, but also that puts them at risk. In some species, the males kill the offspring of the previous males. This makes the female fully available to care for *their* young instead of that other male's young. This isn't a thing among humans, but there are similar instincts that make some men dangerous to women. Women have to be judicious to ensure they chose a mate that loves them and wants to protect them, and not one that is too selfish and uncaring and might turn on her or on the children.

You can define "real masculinity" as men who don't abuse women and children, but if you do you lose the original definition so I don't think we should be redefining things.