Assuming the improbable case that you haven’t heard it already, the APA has declared masculinity a toxic and harmful condition earlier this year. Several Gillette advertisements, some bad womanwashed films and countless false rape accusations later, the feminist train keeps on rolling and it doesn’t seem to have brakes.

Here are some gems of the APA-declaration, so you don’t have to read all of this mental garbage about the “masculinity ideology”,

“a particular constellation of standards that have held sway over large segments of the population, including: anti-femininity, achievement, eschewal of the appearance of weakness, and adventure risk and violence.”

Another highlight:

“traditional masculinity—marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression—is, on the whole, harmful”

How did this happen? Let's first dive into the fundamentals of gender dynamics (Inb4, not a native speaker).

1) Evolutionary biology

Back in the days, when children were taught useful and true stuff, you wouldn’t even think twice about what I’m about to write. However, I have been called an evil misogynist before for stating obvious things like these.

What I’m about to write here is about rough generalizations and trends. When I say “women are XY”, what I mean is “on average women tend to be more XY than men, which tend to be VW”. Nobody is saying women cannot be VW, it is just so that men tend to be more VW than women, on average.

For example, most males are taller and stronger than females, but an individual female could be taller and stronger than an individual male. If you were to form a hundred pairs out of two sets of a hundred men and a hundred women, then in more than like seventy out of the one hundred resulting pairs the men would be taller than the women. Simple.

Enough of this, people have been fired or their scientific works have been removed for being more cautious with their words than me. This subreddit will get banned completely anyway or remain in eternal quarantine limbo, so here we go.

Physiological: Men are taller and stronger than women, with men having around 40% more upper body muscle mass. Men are the strong and competitive sex, and thus more expandable, women are the beautiful and empathetic sex, deserving more protection.

Psychological: Men are more aggressive, higher in assertiveness and openness to ideas (systemizing). Women are less aggressive, higher in neuroticism, agreeableness, warmth and openness to emotions (empathizing). Source.

The differences in empathy are not to be underestimated. Women show more empathy across all age groups and cultures. A woman’s primary biological role is that of a caregiver, with her traits having evolved precisely to cater the infant’s needs. On top of that, women possess far higher abilities to interpret and understand facial expressions, emotions as well as empathy.

With women being the weaker, smaller and more empathetic sex, the biological answer to sexual selection of the strongest, most dominant and assertive male was the emergence of the male dominance hierarchy. Instead of women competing with men to find out who is the most worthy to combine his genes with her, she lets the dominance hierarchy decide. Women delegate the process of sexual selection to men competing with each other. Whoever comes out on top of the hierarchy, gets a chance with the women and deserves sex as a reward.

This translates directly into the sexual division of labor. Women were the caregivers and nurturers of offspring while men were the hunters and protectors of the tribe in hunter-gatherer societies. A woman’s primary purpose was to bear children as often as possible within her fertile time window (~13-40) and to take care of them, as a result of her being more empathetic by nature. A man’s primary purpose was to hunt food, fight against rivals and protect the family, as a result of him being stronger by nature.

One could, however, argue we do not live in caverns and hunt in the woods anymore, thus people are free to do what they want and their internal biologically caused psychology doesn’t matter anymore. Except that it still does. Contrary to what would have been expected by egalitarianism and blank slatism, gender differences in personality traits are more common in egalitarian countries.

Let that sink in for a bit. According to egalitarianism and blank slatists, there are no inherent gender differences. To them, all “differences” in personality and interest seem like the result of social upbringing and environment (evil patriarchy). Thus, from an egalitarian standpoint of view, in a more egalitarian society, gender differences should vanish. However, the opposite is the case:

“The more that women have equal opportunities, the more they differ from men in their preferences”

Another thing to keep in mind is the greater male variability hypothesis. In general, traits like intelligence, the Big 5 personality traits and such are scattered around the mean in the case of females, while males are more likely to be found on the extreme ends of the spectrum (just look at the size-distribution chart above). Simplified, in the case of intelligence, there are more idiots as well as genius level males than there are females, while females are more likely to be of average intelligence.

Since, after a sexual encounter, a man can decide to stay or leave, a woman has to carry the burden of pregnancy and subsequent child care, her senses and personality is primarily adapted to understanding and interpreting a child’s needs and feelings. Her field of action is the domain of empathy. A man could, in principle, spread his seed as many times as he likes, impregnating hundreds if not thousands of women. On the other hand a woman can only bear so many children.

In short, from a biological standpoint women are more important for the survival of the species. Women are the sex that is more “precious” and necessary to be protected, as well as the sex that would suffers most from genetic variation. Biology decided for a low risk, high reward strategy (less opportunities to spread her genes, safer life). Men are the more expandable sex, not as essential after having done their sexual duties, in addition more likely to die during a hunt or in combat, or to be born with more extreme conditions (more opportunities to spread his genes, more dangerous life). For this reason, men show the most genetic variations. High risk, high reward.

2) Traditional gender roles

Traditional gender roles, diametrically opposed and eternally complementary. What was the nurturing gatherer in the hunter-gatherer society, was the caring, housekeeping stay-at-home mom when humanity decided to build cities. The protecting hunter translates well into the working and devotional father.

These gender roles were the norm up until some time in the 60’s when 2nd wave feminism decided the old model of working father and housekeeping mother was harmful and oppressive for women. No mention of men. Thus the term “feminism”.

Back in the old days, there were typically girly things to do as well as there were typically boyish things to do. Girls were expected to do and represent certain things, boys were expected to do and represent certain things, both suitable to their respective physique, psychology, preferences, ability and interests.

Below you will find a list of complementary female and male traits. Actually a no-brainer but we live in brainless times, so here we go:

Then there is the part about domains. A domain is a field of expertise, action and a form of lifestyle practiced by a gender. The rules used to be simple: If you are a man, do manly things. If you are a woman, do womanly things. However, there has always been room for the possibility of women rising within the male domains. A houseman is a weak loser who cannot stand up for himself and is married to a more dominant wife. On the contrary, female warrior queens, pirate queens, national heroes or legends about warrior women are ubiquitous and exist in all cultures.

In general, while men preferred to play and only won by playing the male games, women preferred to play in their own games but were also able to win and rise within the male hierarchies.

What was there to win for women to play within the rules of the female domain? A caring and working husband, a stable family, a large house and a long marriage. What was there to win for men to play the game of men? A loving and housekeeping wife, a stable family, a large house and a long marriage.

3) Re-definitions

Ahh, the time of reframing. Suddenly there occured a redefinition of the terms femininity and masculinity.

The new narrative is femininity is a creation of the patriarchy: men who use their dominance hierarchy (patriarchy) as a tool to oppress women.

The definition of femininity was changed and now means being subordinate, oppressed, weak and naïve, and in addition it was seen as inherently flawed to identify as a woman. Likewise, masculinity was changed to be the new standard for both genders, males and females alike. Being strong, logical, assertive and stoic was suddenly seen as what women should strive towards.

In other words, it was decided that masculine virtues should not belong or only be limited to men. Thus, most positive aspects of masculinity were associated with gender neutrality. As a matter of fact, being strong, physically or emotionally (“stoic”), being a systemizer and being assertive are and always were things females and males could use to describe themselves, as there is no reason to think women can’t possess any of these traits. They don’t “belong” to anyone. They just happen to be more common in men, while women tend to be less likely to be born with them and thus possess them.

Nowadays, former positive masculine traits are by definition gender neutral and empowering, feminine traits are by definition limited to women and oppressive. A woman in a suit is empowered and in command while a guy in a dress is weak and funny. Somehow, women behaving like men is a powerful step up while men behaving like women is a humiliating step down. Women doing womanly things is seen as not being as good as they could be. Traditional femininity is viewed as demeaning. As a result, the general view is that neither girls nor boys should do feminine things.

What remains if you strip masculinity off all its positive traits? Only the negative aspects of masculinity. The “old” or traditional masculinity is redefined as the extreme and negative perversions of typically male traits. Voilà, here is our toxic masculinity.

This whole process is Orwellian by definition: Redefine something to the point of it being barely recognizable as the original thing and use it as a weapon.

Being strong as a result of greater physical strength becomes using strength to oppress women (violence), being better at systemizing as a result of being born with lesser ability to empathize becomes being cold hearted, being assertive and competitive as a result of striving towards a goal becomes being overly egoistic and mindlessly aggressive (abusive), being stoic, meaning being emotionally self-controlled and indifferent, as a result of being lower in trait neuroticism becomes suppressing emotions.

When people nowadays talk about masculinity, what they are pointing at is not the the strong, caring family father, they are pointing in the direction of the overly violent, abusive and oppressive pricks.

But things start to get even weirder.

4) Outlook

Suddenly it was decided that wearing dresses or playing with puppets was “misguided”. Don’t get me wrong, it is ok if girls want to pursue traditionally male things like playing with car toys, or career pathways in finance, computer science or engineering. However, this behavior is not only accepted, it is actively empowered: girls are being pushed to play on the male playgrounds.

While girls are allowed to freely roam both the women’s domains (which is not encouraged and frowned upon, but still allowed) as well as the men’s domains (which is encouraged and seen as empowering), men, at the same time, are restricted to the male playgrounds. As time goes by, the male domain will transform more and more into gender neutral playgrounds, where everybody can win. What happens if everybody wins? Everyone is equal, everyone gets the cake without putting in effort. Thus, everybody loses.

Girls are pushed into the male domains. We are being dragged towards a world in which girls are encouraged to compete with boys and girls, mainly in the “boys’” (read: gender neutral) domains and to a lesser degree in what remains of the girls’ domain. Let me describe the current situation using another table:

When boys compete in the domains of things that girls value they will lose status among girls (attractiveness) as well as among boys (reputation). It is a lose-lose situation to be a girly boy, nevertheless it is sometimes encouraged. A girl with a dress is oppressed, a boy with a dress is a display of free choice.

Educational system

Male virtues are seen as a problem rather than tools to solve problems. You are highly competitive and disagreeable? Let’s not guide you to use your abilities in a moderate way so you can reap the fruits of your potential. Instead, let’s punish you for thinking outside of the box, solving problems rationally instead of emotionally, let’s make you obedient and a harmlessly following sheep.

The current schooling system highly prefers “girly behavior”. Students who are agreeable (being nice and compliant, cooperative and follow orders without wanting to risk an argument) and conscientious (orderly and industrious when it comes to following an objective) get good grades. The school system is entirely focused on discipline, dull repetition and following orders.

As you might have noticed, the average teenage boy is anything but agreeable, disciplined or conscientious. Sitting still in a slow and boring environment while listening to teachers is the opposite of what any boy wants and drives their motivation circuitry - unlike video games, porn or social media.

Male virtues are seen as harmful, the only trait that is allowed for males to express is harmlessness.

Simulations

When girls are encouraged to compete in the former domains of men, they will rise in status and are promised to be rewarded by having achieved a male career path. But is this really a win-win situation for women and men? No, since women are drawn to men of higher status, a species becoming less and less common.

When boys compete in former male domains, they will have the odds of the game rigged against them due to the prevalence of “anti-sexism” laws like female quotas. As the male domain gets more and more girl-dominated, boys retreat from the former male domains, the boys leave the playground of real-life altogether and retreat into safe spaces.

They promise success that they are missing out on. Instead of taking on responsibility, going out there and confronting their fears and pursuing competitive goals which result in long-term fulfilment, they indulge in short-term gratification. The most important examples comprise porn, the sex-simulation, video games, the achievement-simulation, and lastly social media as the social life-simulation.

The truth is, competence makes people as safe as they can truly be. Competition is an integral and inevitable part in the process of becoming a man. Only if a man trains, exercises, pushes himself to his limits, becomes more competent and competes with other males, does he rise in dominance hierarchies. As a result, he becomes respected among men and attractive to women. He wins, so does his eventual girlfriend, so does everybody else.

Rock bottom

Since women do better in school they will have higher hopes of climbing the (male) dominance hierarchies. The highly conscientious and diligent women will rise in status and search for men of equal or higher status (hypergamy). Since most men are retreating from the highly competitive, well paid job market, these women will either have to compromise and settle down with a man of lower status and educational degree, or they will stay single until late into their 30s/40s.

Being a weak man is the norm, and the Beta/Alpha-ratio will change from currently ~80/20 to 85/15 and perhaps even to 90/10. Meanwhile, the top ~10% of aggressive and dominant men who nevertheless climb the dominance hierarchies will get all the attention of women. They will impregnate plenty of them (polygamy), leaving millions of single mothers. A huge chunk of men have either lost hope and retreat or they will quickly become very angry and blame the system for being rigged, run amok and shoot up schools and bars.

Essentially, boys retreat from life, to become shut-ins, also known as Hikikomori, MGTOW, herbivores/soy boys or self-declared incels.

When men become too feminized, when harmlessness becomes the only acceptable virtue, then all of a sudden the perversion of masculine traits are becoming fascinating. There is a reason why fascist and fundamentalistic ideologies are so prevalent among incels. The old cycle continues:

“Hard times create strong men,

Strong men create good times,

Good times create weak men,

Weak men create hard times.”

Unfortunately, right now we live in the most peaceful, harmonious as well as egalitarian time in the history of human societies.

“If you think tough men are dangerous, wait until you see what weak men are capable of.”

-Jordan B. Peterson

TL;DR:

Be a traditional man. Lift.