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I've been intrigued by this men vs women dynamic as of late. Someone was talking about building social networks on Steemit, and I got curious about what he was talking about, so I googled it. Well, it turns out it's about picking up women. I looked past some initial cringe because there was something deep there. And I kept watching. And watching. And watching. At this point I've easily watched at least 60 hours of videos from a group of guys called RSD or Real Social Dynamics.

Let's side track for a moment. I've had full grown men cat calling me and making me feel uncomfortable and unsafe and like a piece of meat since I was 14. When I was in high school boys used to drop their pencils on the floor and tell me to pick them up so they could look down my shirt and at my ass. I HAVE BEEN AROUND THE BLOCK WITH TOXIC MASCULINITY. In fact, I remember seeing something about pickup on reddit about nine years ago and making a big scene about it and talking to my coworkers about how disgusting it was. Cause I was sooooooooo tired of men hitting on me for alllll those years and feeling so grossed out by it. Cause it was never men who treated me like a human and showed me respect. It was men who were gross and acted like animals.

But anyway I kept watching and watching. And my God, I think Tyler is hands down the best self development teacher I've ever seen. He teaches deep deep spritual principles that are on the very leading edge of thought. And he teaches it in the context of picking up women. And I have learned so much from these videos. SO much. I don't pick up men or women, but I apply what he teaches to every area of my life.

And when I tell women that I'm watching these videos, they all cringe. And they say oh is it the red pill guys? Didn't REALLY know what they were talking about until one day when I scrolled through the comments on one of these videos and found men HATING women. I didn't know this was a thing like this. A lot of the men all said women are grown children. They can't control their emotions or provide for themselves. I found this very interesting.

And I'm watching videos like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3cH9Nm2keY and finding out that there are loads and loads of men who are EXTREMELY socially awkward and traumatized. And this fascinates me.

So what I'm getting at here is that I noticed this chasm between men and women that I didn't really see before. So much animosity between men and women. And I'm not sure it's actually present right up in our faces in our intimate relationships. I don't think it is in mine or the intimate relationships of the couples I know. But it probably is. Do women hate men and men hate women? Sort of secretly? And then as I was reading all those comments I was like God, this makes ME want to not identify with a gender. What is all this about? All these grievances we have toward the other sexes, but what does it even actually MEAN to be a man or a woman? Sigh. This is a very deep subject. It's all imaginary roles. But is it?

Why do men hate women and women hate men? Is it because of monogamy? (Says the person who has happily been with my life partner for 19 years and will always be in a monogamous relationship with him)

But anyway, what I want to say is how much I love positive masculinity. I'm really super lucky to know a good solid handful of men who embody what I guess you would call sacred masculinity. It's an amazing thing to be around. It would do us well to appreciate good solid masculinity. The kind that will stand up for you and protect you and support you and feel like all is right in the world.

See, I think that what we have is a toxic PEOPLE problem. Toxicity is coming up for healing. Does the gender that the toxicity lives in even matter? I have no idea. Is masculine and feminine just an archetype that we ascribe to that isn't even "real?" Well nothing is real and everything is real and we can't go down that rabbit hole, but good men are good. toxic masculinity is really sick and dangerous. Women should take a look at toxic femininity, too. I was honestly pretty shocked to hear it being talked about by men and I started questioning how I have immasculated men in my life. As women, I think we take on a masculine energy when we feel we need to defend ourselves or get shit done, and I think that's something we'll want to explore. How can we channel our power through our femininity? How are we immasculating the men around us? Or is a lot of this gender stuff just make believe? Something to think about! 😀