How feminists fail to understand masculinity

I am posting a comment I made on a blog. It was made in regards to some comments about masculinity made by one of the feminists over at thegoodmenproject.com that supposedly cares about mens issues:

In another thread she called conventional masculinity ass hatery. Going into detail she mentioned things such as being competetive, stoic, dominant, aggressive and strong as toxic masculinity and ass-hatery or something like that. The problem is all those are normal traits in a person with failry high testosterone levels. I am like that to a large degree although I have other traits as well. She and most feminist completely fail to understand such traits in a reasonable way.

Aggressive drive is interperated as anger motivated or ill intent. Which it most certainly is not. I use aggressive drive when I want to achieve something and when I focus. I use it when I spar in martial arts. And when I use it like that trying to knock out a friend I am sparing with I have no ill feelings towards him I only wish him well. This aggressive drive, if you see it as immoral, gets not turned of but turned inward where it becomes depression and self loathing and anger towards oneself. It tends to reassert itself as passive aggressiveness and I belive is largely responsible for the snarkiness of feminist men. Once it does boil over and start turning itself outward again THEN it has ill intent.

Being stoic is also a positive masculine trait. Feminists think this means repressing emotions but it does not. It means being able to remain calm and composed AT THE SAME TIME as you are experiencing strong emotion. It means having a still center within a storm. It is related to the quality of an impartial observer that you develop through Buddhist meditation. It is about having equanimity. For me that is quite natural and to me it seems obvious when observing men that this is a strong tendency in most and more prevalent the more masculine they are in general. Women on the other hand (and more feminine men) tend more towards experiencing emotion in a way where they are fully outwardly embodying and expressing the emotion and sort of get caught in the emotion (being caught in the emotion is not meant by me as negative). When they look at masculine men (and more masculine women) they interperate what they see as repressing emotions because the men don`t get caught in the emotion like they do. They seem far to still and unexpressive. So something must be wrong. Because if a highly feminine person was still and unexpressive like that it would mean they held emotions in and tightened themselves up to remain composed because they are not able to do that any other way. So the misinterperation of male stoicism that feminism has and has spread to the rest of society stems from the projection of the experience of feminist women (and some feminine men) onto men.

The result of such projection of course is to try to feminize men as the logical conclusion is that these men holding back emotion must start to display evidence of processing emotion in a way these people find believable for them to be healthy. Which is precisely what feminism has done and what feminists continuosly do and what I constantly see in feminist men and it is exactly what happened to me. The result of a man that is naturally masculine trying to process emotion in a feminine way is that he becomes dysfunctional and weak. Actually becoming like a feminine person and living that successfully does not work. I tried for years and it only made me miserable.

Being competetive is not a negative trait either. It is a drive to achieve that has been responsible for much (most?) of human acomplishment. It is also fundamentally misunderstood by feminists. When men compete directly it is combined with a form of respect for the competitor and deference to whoever wins out at any given time that makes the competition also into a form of cooperation. All male groups form dominance hierarchies and these are based on respect for the skills that are deemed relevant and the personal strength (dominance) and leadership abilities of the men involved. Men constantly compete in these but they constantly form hierarchies based on the competition that leads to highly efficient cooperation. The competition drives the effort which in turn powers the effectiveness of the cooperation of the hierarchy.

Women struggle to undestand these dynamics because they themselves feel much more threatened by clear hierarchies and direct competition in their female groups. Both those lead to hostility and the break down of cooperation in all woman groups. Women dont understand how content men can be with a position that is not “equal” and they dont understand the willingess of men to seamlessly (mostly) swap position and status and to seemingly fight the other in competition without it being seen as hostile but just a “part of the game”, as men do. Female groups cooperate overtly and punish outright direct competition and challenges but are full of indirect competition and challenges and have very clear hierarchies that are covered up and not made explicit or clear. So when feminists want cooperation what they want is feminine cooperation. That in turn means more feminisng of men and more shaping society in a one sided way to suit women, hence more matriarchy. It means EXTINGUISHING maleness. It is a form of psychological castration. And when they attack male competitiveness they are doing the same thing and are in fact showing that they do in fact find what men naturally are to be inherently evil and trying to extinguish it. Once again it is all about projection. The more I see feminism for what it is the more narcicism becomes the accurate diagnosis. How self absorped do you have to be to see the world in this manner and set out to extinguish what men naturally are.

Dominance is not evil either. It basically means vying for leadership and authority and power. WHAT you do with that dominance is what makes it moral or immoral. You can combine the will to dominance with the intention of shaping that which you have dominion over for good for those close to you as well as your self, you can include the wider society or the world or you can just aim for selfish gain. The will to excert power over the world and the people in it is a necessary drive that has benefited women indirectly, and which has been encouraged by women indirectly, since the begining of time. And nothing fires up a mans energy, willpower and drive and willingness to sacrifice like when his quest for dominance is motivated by a higher purpose such as his women and children or a wider group of people or a divine power. The quest for dominance flows nicely with the competetive drive it is a brother of within the male hierarchical competetive cooperation structure.

HeaterN and most feminists probably don`t even understand how integrity and principle, higher purpose and truth are essential masculine virtues and connected to all of the other things. Has any feminist theorist of note, except Paglia of course, celebrated or pointed out ANY masculine virtues?