#I’m informed that I’m being sued for damages inflicted by ideological whiplash by readers of this post

[bondruid]

I’m putting this in its own post because the tags of the last one weren’t the appropriate place, and I know the spirit of what I’m saying would get misunderstood and misconstrued

But it’s my earnest belief that ALL women need to genuinely cultivate masculine attributes

And when I say ‘masculine attributes,’ I mean a sense of ‘masculine’ that is detached from sex; I do NOT mean ‘masculine’ as in ‘related to men,’ ‘man-like,’ ‘male-like,’ or ‘aesthetically man-like’

I mean masculine as: the collection of abstract and fundamentally, by-nature unsexed attributes associated with proactivity, self-sufficiency, assertiveness. boldness, self-actualization, pursuit; masculinity as the burgeoning side of humanity that exerts its own will and which exists in every human, irrespective of sex

Masculinity—again, in this sexless sense—puts you in a position of pure independence because you equip yourself with the capacity to seek and obtain by your own will; the thoughts, feelings, and opinions of others are not necessarily dismissed, but they hold no power OVER you in the sense that they no longer exert direct sway over your self-image, your self-worth, your self-conceptualization, or even your course of action

In effect: ‘your opinions have been noted, and summarily disregarded,’ which is sometimes a good thing.

Being in this position protects you more so from being in a situation where you are vulnerable, dependent, or beholden to someone else's will, either because you are too concerned about their opinions, or because you doubt too much the validity of your own, or because you place greater value on the thoughts of others, or simply do not trust yourself to be capable of both making and recovering from mistakes

And, if the use of ‘masculine’ for these attributes is bothersome or disagreeable (as it was for me, until I mentally eliminated its fundamental tie to men*), you can easily just replace it with the phrase self-actualization, or whatever other synonym you prefer — I just think that doing so tends to feed into the same false dichotomy and fuels the presumption that MEN are masculine, WOMEN are feminine, and these are fundamental truths that can ONLY be subverted, rather than erroneous insistences that limit the true reality (and power) of the human individual, which possesses by right the intrinsic qualities of both.

(*according to society, as masculinity is not emblemic of men and men are not sole-possessors of masculinity, they are simply unhealthy extremes of it, just as women are unhealthy extremes of femininity)