Carl Jung was a psychologist who put forward an idea of how human minds and societies form. While there is a great deal of nuance and detail, he essentially split the human mind into three parts: the persona (who other people think I we are), the ego (who we think we are) and the shadow (the part of ourselves we wish to remove from both the persona and the ego). Most interestingly, he thought this could be scaled up to an entire society, which was structured like that of a single human mind.

A great display of this idea would be Anakin Skywalker from Star Wars (Lucas was consciously inspired by Jung). The Jedi forbid marriage and attachments, so he is forced to hide his marriage from everyone. So his persona is that of a great hero and faithful Jedi, which is what everyone else thinks he is. His ego, who he believes himself to be, is that of a good husband and future father. However his shadow is everything he’s repressed: his anger, his pride, his jealously. Eventually of course the Shadow takes over, and he becomes Darth Vader. While thee shadow CAN have negative sides, we must remember that much of it can be positive. In fact, repressing these emotions as Anakin did is what caused the problems in the first place. His son, Luke, does not repress these emotions because he’s free of the Jedi, showing his anger and frustration plenty of times, especially in his final duel with Vader, which is why he ultimately overcomes his shadow and doesn’t fall to the dark side.

So how does all this relate to gender? Jung thought that men and women both attempted to repress different parts of their personality. In his day, women would repress their more assertive and masculine sides, whereas men would their more gentle and feminine sides. He thought that it would be helpful for men and women to become “whole” by accepting both sides of their personality.

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However, in the modern day, this system has been flipped over. Men are now told their masculine sides are “toxic”, and women are supposed to be ashamed of their feminine sides. The repression is just as powerful as it always was, and just as dangerous, but its just the other way around from how Jung experienced it. The masculine aspect of men is being relegated into the Shadow for them, just as the feminine aspect of women is for them. Again, this is a society acting just like a human mind.

Now assuming this is all correct, what happens next? The future is incredibly difficult to predict but I’ll try it anyway. What’s happening is, society is attempting to supplant human nature, but since society stems from human nature this is a paradox. What will happen is, both men and women will gradually grow more miserable and angry, but they won’t know quite why. Jung claimed people who have repressed aspects of their personality will lash out and those who display these aspects. Men who have repressed their masculinity will begin to hate and turn on those people, whether men or women, who openly display masculine traits such as assertiveness and strength. Women who have repressed their femininity will begin to hate those people, men or women, who display feminine traits such empathy and compassion. People will then look for justifications (note how the phrase “nice guy” is used with contempt and derision) and create this positive feedback loop, where they empower things that cause their anger in order to stop it, making the problem worse. Of course some of this hate will inevitably cause people to turn this hate on themselves, and you’ll get people hating themselves for not being masculine/feminine enough, though not consciously.

Of course positive feedback loops cannot last forever. It’ll tire itself out and give way to whatever the next futile, petty nonsense will be. It’s just sad that it’ll cause so much misery and bitterness until it does.