Tonic Femininity Part 1

Understanding Female Behavior within the Framework of Competition Style

A refreshing antidote to the airless idea space which seeks to smother the spirit of masculinity has been poured into the crystal glasses of at least seven admirable Substack contributors of the gentleman variety. What are the boyz drinking? Tonic masculinity. What does it cure? Toxic masculinity.

If you are unacquainted with the Tonic Seven, I highly recommend you give each of their newsletters a firm handshake at your soonest convenience. Each is distinctively insightful and offers his own unique perspective in areas of expertise ranging from fitness to astronomy. It is my understanding that what binds them together in collaborative friendship is a shared interest in offering a descriptive alternative to the widely misunderstood and abused concept of toxic masculinity. It is a most noble endeavor. If you disagree, I hope you traverse their work with a willingness to reconsider as you keep anyone of the tougher sex you hold in the slightest esteem in mind. For your convenience, here they are listed by name:

Tonic Seven:

Daniel D, Doctor Hammer, Grant Smith, also Grant Smith, Harrison Koehli, John Carter, L.P Koch, Mark Bisone

The main idea behind tonic masculinity is that men ought to cultivate in themselves a state of strength and virtue so they may find their way to higher performance and a higher purpose. It involves embracing tension as a metric for gauging whether a man is moving towards virtue or away from it. There are many implications that follow from this basic idea. When is masculinity too hot? When is it too cold. What must be done to get the balance just right?

The tonic masculinity concept makes wondering how tonic femininity might be described feel only natural. After all, a pervasive social contagion which can be superficially understood as the consequence of the ugly union between corrupt DIE-ridden institutions and the digital longhouse has produced a cultural milieu which tips the scales in favor of toxic women. As the procreation of the human species is dependent on the harmonious interaction between men and women as compatible opposites, the effects of this contagion cannot be completely isolated as predominately harmful to one sex or the other. It is therefore beneficial to both sexes to consider how the popular consensus concerning femininity could benefit from the this refreshing tonic¹.

Just as empires experience a circulation of the elites, a similar turnover of the social elite occurs as a result of incentives which motivate self-serving behavior mirroring modern trends in the conception of admirable human conduct. Even counter-culture is a response to the status quo here. As Michael McConkey explains², the phrase circulation of the elites “can be as much prescription as description.”

But outlining the most effective prescription involves accepting that the answer does not necessarily arise from our current culture nor attempts to promote its total decimation. In the context of political change, there is a tendency to think when the blue coats are in charge, what the world needs is a switch to rulers in red coats and vice versa. In the context of race issues, there is a similarly regrettable tendency to believe that since blacks once suffered oppression under slavery, now whites who were not directly involved in such terrible misfortunes of the past must be made to answer for these injustices. Feminism advances a similar lie. As the story goes, since 1950’s men did not care about the opinions of their wives, now all men must be kept under the spotlight of suspicion and scorn. It does not take much imagination to see how attempting to solve one problem by stacking a reactionary version of the same problem on top is counter-productive.

Romanticizing the past leads to false notions that things were necessarily always better “back then,” and baseless assumptions that it is even possible to superimpose any point in history on to modern times. Marching toward a post-modern, post-human state in which it is laughable to think that terms must be defined to support proper discourse, since no one even bothers with the implications of a particular set of sex organs, is similarly problematic and falls utterly short of any meaningful understanding of human behavior. While nostalgic crowds are yowling at the past through rose-tinted windows, the progressives are asking whether the whole structure should be burned down, along with the people inside.

With respect to women, there is an ongoing ping-pong match in which one side of the net is oriented towards scoring on the other with traditionalism, while counter strikes take the form of radical progressivism. Totally redundant arguments are hurled from one side to the other ad nauseam over the right kind of dresses to wear, the right body to have, the right way to pursue education, the right kind of mindset on marriage, the right disposition towards children, or the right kind of men to align with. The match is cutthroat and lame all at once, and each side seeks to promote their own reputation while attempting to downgrade their opponents on the ever shifting social hierarchy scoreboard with every swing of the paddle. Meanwhile, men are blamed for stepping in to help so much it’s considered an insult, or so little it’s considered… an insult. Play the game this way and you will become a hopeless cog in mechanistic dichotomy with no hope of understanding the nuance inherent to discovering your own true preferences. Good luck not playing at all, though.

So, why can we women not just take the insights already laid out by the concept of tonic masculinity and apply it to ourselves?

I believe part of the answer lies in the naturally ordained rules of female competition. This soft, indirect form of pursuing resources and status consists of three main characteristics: safe, subtle, solitary.

Women are indeed often on opposite sides of a table competing for resources and security through methods we expertly disguise, and we may even be unconscious of this ourselves unless we adequately incentivized to act with honest introspection. Our competition style is much different than the direct and conspicuous methods men are more naturally accustomed to. Women are not always the friends or supporters they often pretend to be - good men, tonic men so to speak, who can provide for a family seem increasingly difficult to come by. Time is scarce and precious too, we do not have an infinite amount of it when it comes to what we can devote ourselves to pursuing in a given day, let alone when it comes to our fertile window. And so, here we are, and here we invariably remain, in competition with one another.

It is therefore imperative to ask: How can our understanding of our basic nature help us optimize cultural norms such that women motivated by virtue and self-improvement are positioned to be the winners, and that the ‘losers’ deserve their unfortunate fate?

Answering how the tonic framework can benefit women who feel antagonized by the cultural zeitgeist which, among other issues, ridicules those who value family above careers is no easy feat. We live in a time when it is difficult for many to understand let alone admit that trade offs are inherent to any decision. In this finite world, 100% of our desires can never be sated. One of the key roles I see for tonic femininity is informing women that the seat at the head of the longhouse has a steep price of admission. While you can expect to enjoy the intoxicating effects of power inherent to this position, you can’t avoid the hangover that ineluctably follows such indulgence.

There is perhaps no better example of misery enjoying company than that of women attempting to level the playing field. We are much more susceptible to sadness when we perceive ourselves to be lacking where other women are enjoying abundance, making it difficult for some of us to feel happiness over the success of other women, even those we love, unless we believe we are doing just as well as they are, or are biologically related to, and not totally estranged from them. Yet, despite having intimate familiarity with this feeling of inadequacy by trial of comparison, a woman who feels threatened by another woman will still bring her to the same state of grief if there is some perceived advantage to be gained from doing so in accordance with the soft competition style mentioned above. As we will see, this trait is not enough to constitute toxic behavior in isolation. Just as a man who makes no secret of having fashioned a stature built for physical combat is not inherently toxic, a woman who has the ability to destroy the reputation of others with the careful handling of her words and tone is not necessarily vicious.

But why does misery love company in the instance of female competition? And more to the point, why is it important in the context of defining toxic and tonic feminine behavior? As we will explore, people respond to social norms, and the more people one can persuade to follow their example of self-serving delusion, the more normative the delusion will become. But there is more to this when discussing females, and it is deeply rooted within our survival strategy.

Misery may love company, but that does not mean we need to accept her invitation. As I will explain, the obstacle that these deeply ingrained egalitarian imperatives impose on the playing field of interactions between females also illuminate the path to righteous victory for women who would rather pursue virtue.

What is a Woman

The first step in discussing what tonic femininity is lies in choosing the most appropriate understanding of the term woman. There are varying levels of analysis upon which this can be discussed. These broadly range from the spiritual abstraction of femininity down to the level of concrete female physicality. But since the existence of anything value-oriented is prohibited inside a vacuum and the focus of the present essay is to discuss tonic femininity as an alternative to toxic femininity, it is useful to hone in on stereotypical feminine behavior so that we may understand its interplay with externalities.

There is, to no one’s surprise and to everyone’s surprise, still some confusion over what a woman is. There are clear and obvious problems inherent in conceptualizing of a woman as an amalgam of her component parts. On the left, these are generally considered to be body parts for purchase, one’s sex at birth notwithstanding. On the right, these primarily consist of a set a parts designed as tools of servitude to a woman’s husband. Each approach utterly misses the mark by failing to show consideration for the core spirit of the individual. This point on its own, while helpful to articulate, does not identify the mechanisms that give rise to the incidence of such hyperrealistic³ compartmentalizations of the feminine essence, and therefore misses a key component in helping to illuminate the path for virtuous women.

One says a woman amounts to a collection of physical parts to support progressive transformation, another says she is but physical parts to support retrogressive rebirth. Yet another very astutely says these discordant notes neglect to bring the sum of all parts into focus. Each believes their position is virtuous. And each camp has advocates vocal enough to have achieved widespread recognition, thus achieving success in advancing the reputation of their respective advocates.

Whether any of these groups are able to provide a sound conceptualization of what virtue is an open question. Honestly, examining this is worthy of an independent essay devoted to exploring virtues, vices, and perhaps whether any such constructs are objective or subjective in nature. The scope of this essay will remain more narrowly focused on how these narratives support self-interest, and specifically why it is that women have a particularly strong incentive to vocalize their views in the context of establishing themselves on the social pecking order in accordance with the dominant evolved female strategy.

Understand Nature, Understand Virtue

On the level of behavior, women are complex organisms that possess fitness enhancing traits resulting from genes. These genes are the byproduct of biochemical chain reactions that have been exposed to vast selection pressures over time. “All traits that are enduring must be fitness enhancing,⁴” so it follows that the traits that correspond to the female competition style observed from toddlers to adults in human civilizations across time and space can be described by three distinct, but mutually supportive characteristics. In order to proceed to examining what makes a woman virtuous, we need to take some time to consider the occult forces of nature women are generally subjected to.

I'll do my best to describe each, but for a thorough introduction to this subject matter I highly recommend watching this interview hosted by Chris Williamson featuring Dr. Joyce Benenson, a Harvard lecturer in evolutionary biology. In part two of this essay, I will delve into how these aspects of female competition turn toxic. In part three, I will discuss a method for rising above the entanglements of reputation games in support of virtue.

Safe

Women face an immense task in childbirth and beyond when it comes to nurturing helpless infants and children who are entirely dependent on their caregivers. Human infants especially rely on their mothers who are able to provide them with breastmilk and protect them for an exceptionally long period of time as compared to other mammals. As such, it is dangerous for a human female, even those with the physical grace and strength only decades of laboring under resistance can produce, to engage in violent physical confrontation with their female competition, let alone males. Essentially, millions of years of selection pressure (or God, whatever) has provided us with a less physically risky method of competing for mates and resources that encourages much more careful action than, say, putting up dukes, taking the loss in stride as the loser, and parading around like a rooster taking credit for the sunrise upon achieving victory⁵. Our male counterparts, on the other hand, are much better positioned to get away with this. They have no obligation to gestate or lactate. As such, their role in sustaining the life of the offspring they produce is not nearly as biophysically demanding as it is for women in the context of the environment that shaped the very structure of our minds.

Subtle

The art of subtlety includes suggestive mannerisms, vocal inflection, and calculated sharing of personal information about other women when they are not present to defend themselves. All of these means of competition can be easily contradicted or denied in the face of direct challenge. Women often resort to claiming that they were taken out of context and hide behind what they say was meant rather than defending what they said. After all, what benefit could there be in admitting a failed attempt at subtle competition? When pressed sufficiently, it is all too natural for the tears to start flowing from a woman who has found herself exposed engaging in such tactics. Anyone with any kind of life experience knows that this approach stands a very good chance of disarming any perceived threat where it stands. The result is that in spite of a conspicuously failed attempt at subtle competition, woman are nevertheless likely to preserve their reputation in alignment with the overall survival/fitness goal of situating themselves satisfactorily within their social circles.

If a woman is accused of trying to reduce the status of another woman by using a dismissive or disapproving tone of voice, she can simply deny this and it will be difficult if not impossible to prove otherwise. She may even be convinced of this herself for reasons I will touch upon later. Her defensive strategy is built right into the mode of attack, unlike overt attacks men are more inclined to use, such as a bop across the face.

As I superimpose the idea of subtlety in this context over my personal experience, more than a few supportive anecdotes come to mind. They mostly involve interactions with other women insisting that the most important point at the core of some interpersonal problem they were experiencing was not what was said, but rather the way in which it was said.

Why is tone so frequently bothersome to women? Perhaps because their social radar is highly attuned to detecting the indirect signals of a social competitor.

I recall telling a story to some friends over dinner about a woman who’d said something to me I considered very catty. When I got to the punchline, only the woman in the group of friends listening to my story reacted. She gasped and said, “Oh my god, seriously?” This caused our male dates in the room to chuckle and ask for clarification as to what the problem was. We both explained to the men why we thought the woman in the story had behaved poorly. It didn’t take much for them to understand, but it was clear that they were not calibrated to detect the subtext of this type of exchange without prompting. This kind of thing alone isn’t perfect evidence that women use subtlety as part of their competition style, but Dr. Benenson’s research checks out against much of my own experience, of which the above anecdote is just one example.

My favorite example of subtle competition regularly seen in the wild is actually a nonverbal kind. It can be described as a ‘witness check’ - a silent way to check with a quick glance whether someone else saw or heard what you did. In my experience, women do this a lot in response to what is said during same-sex interactions as well as interactions with mixed company. It is a nonverbal way to confirm a shared impression over a statement or gesture that has been communicated, and it can have a real impact on reputations and social standing for better or worse.

Witness checks are a type of body language mannerism that also occur in situations in which someone is about to become violent, and this is perhaps why they can be so unsettling to others in the room. In the context of Dr. Benenson’s work, I think it is fascinating to consider this type of body language as it occurs in seemingly non-threatening, non-violent settings involving women who are calibrated to engage with subtleties more so than men, generally speaking. Woman may intuitively understand the threat posed by attacks on reputation where men might tend toward predominantly seeing those posed by physical violence.

Solitary

Women do not compete openly as men do nearly to the same degree. Solitary competition, competition that happens quietly and inconspicuously, is preferred by women for the obvious reason that it is not as physically risky, but it also has the added benefit of maintaining the appearance of an equal battlefield. It is much more difficult to compete with a woman who does not make herself noticeable as a competitor, not to mention her tactics and motives. And if a woman appears to be respecting social equality by refraining from showing off or bragging about her wins as young boys and men do, she stands a much higher chance of not only limiting the odds that other women will see her as a threat to be targeted, but also increases the odds of keeping the alliances she has formed for the long-term.

Social Egalitarianism

As Dr. Benenson puts it, “Egalitarianism sounds nice until you realize I’m not going to tolerate you being better than me.”

The amalgam of the safe, subtle, and solitary aspects of female competition coalesce into an arena hosting the sport of egalitarianism in which players must secure as many assets for themselves as possible while maintaining the appearance of not being in a position of particular advantage. Boast about how many men have shown an appetite for your affection and you will be cut down as a distasteful flirt. The angle of attack is adjusted based on the target. So, if such interest is likely attributable to beauty, the braggart would no doubt find herself smeared as a completely witless girl with nothing to offer but a pretty face. If the men make it obvious that they desire you, your best bet is to downplay their attraction to you, or your ability to keep their interest. For if you stand out amongst the rest of the female competitors, you threaten their access to resources they are also striving for in this zero sum game. All of this despite the fact that everyone knows everyone else is maneuvering to secure the best mate with whom they are compatible. All of this in the name of equality.

The same can be said for school. Girls have generally always performed better at school than boys (who typically perform better at games that simulate strategically dominating another group, forming hunting coalitions, and mission-oriented projects). Now, at both extremes of the spectrum of performance, you find mostly males. But the females fill in the immense gap between these extremes, and tend to enjoy it more too. Except, girls don’t get to enjoy the spoils of their victories as vociferously as the boys do. Boys are free to flaunt their successes, and often rub their opponents faces in their losses, whereas girls unwise enough to engage in such behavior expose themselves to widespread attempts of righteous hobbling. Better for a girl to modestly admit to her victories, attribute them to the help of others, luck, really any factors outside of her control. Meanwhile she is almost certainly working diligently, solitarily, and with that classic brand of female organization brought to you by colorful post-its and highlighters, to ensure the next victory.

The Familial Bond Exception to the General Egalitarian Rule

There are two types of societies which cause different effects in females across humans and primates.

The first consists of women who spend their lives with their kinship group. This group benefits from strong biological ties and close, long-standing friendships which are formed in in childhood and simulate deep familial bonds which in turn produce lifelong alliances. Strong coalitions organically spring from this group and provide women with supportive coalitions to help with caring for their young, etc.. In this group, you don’t need to worry who your friends are, because you have your family, and your family are your friends. The males in this group disperse at adolescence but you have your supportive alliances for life: mothers, sisters, aunts, cousins, and the girls you grew up with. This group works cooperatively to put down other competing groups using the soft competition model. This group seems more prone to positive feelings about the successes of other women, which stands to reason considering the biological imperative to ensure the propagation of one’s genes.

The second, smaller group, is the group in which women disperse at adolescence, or both men and women disperse at adolescence. In either situation, women leave their kin and normally join a phylopatric society in which the males remain for the entirety of their lives. In this group, there are other women present who are not genetically related to newcomers, women with whom you did not bond throughout childhood and beyond. These women are not your kin. In modern times, the case of a woman who spends the majority of her time in the company of her in-laws as opposed to her own family is an apt example.

Within this second group, females are much more individualistic. The typical expectation is to not interfere with other females in the group directly, but to nevertheless continue trying to gain as much advantage as possible while avoiding the appearance of such. As each female in this group requires access to the provisions acquired by the males, they demand equality from other women with whom they must share close proximity on a more permanent basis.

Love, closeness, and alliances between women who share access to a man or a group of men is still certainly possible and may develop over time, but it is a situation in which seniority trumps all. If you are a long-time resident of the group, you are much more likely to be trusted, and tolerated, compared to new initiates. In short, in this group women acquire status over time.

Female Nature By Itself is Not Toxic

I want to be careful not to insinuate that women are necessarily as consciously calculated in their moves on the playing field as my attempt at describing the nuances of their interactions with one another may make it seem. As we discussed early on, women are complex beings with specialized built-in systems which have evolved to reinforce their ability to attract mates and safeguard the offspring they produce together with these mates. This feature of our nature, our genes, does not necessarily mean the way they interplay with our environment rises to the level of conscious awareness or that it is always, or even frequently, callously calculated. In fact, it often isn’t. For all of his faults, Richard Dawkins makes this point very clearly in his classic book The Selfish Gene.

It is not innate maliciousness which urges the predominate tendency for women to have an inclination for soft competition and egalitarianism⁶. I speculate (based on reading I won’t pretend makes me an expert in the area of neuroscience or evolutionary psychology), that perceptual cognitive behavioral mechanisms (PCBM) steer women toward this behavior. It is my understanding that this is often not a deliberate strategy originating from the neocortex, but usually some other unconscious strategy emanating from deep within the hindbrain as a result of hundreds of thousands of years of selection pressure.

But unlike the attempts of some social ‘scientists’ to spread their corrupt seed in the form of self-doubt and confusion, the claim I’m making here is neither that woman are totally calculated in their choices of communication or that they are completely unable to achieve awareness of this tendency to use the safe, subtle, and solitary competition strategies to serve their interests. Indeed, the presence of this aspect of our nature is accessible, and we may develop our introspective self-awareness such that we may more readily identify the incentives which motivate us to take action. In this way, tonic women can sidestep the nightmarish hellscape of the type of female egalitarianism which rejects excellence because it is not inclusive, and find refuge in choices which support fitness that do not come at the expense of others striving for excellence. Through the example demonstrated by their success, these tonic women can hope to inspire other women to resist the toxic pull of viciousness and pursue virtue.

I discuss toxic femininity next.

Thanks for rucking with me. Please enjoy the music as you exit.

1. Harrison Koehli’s extensive explanation of why the word tonic is used to describe the antidote to toxic masculinity is a helpful resource for anyone looking to better understand what’s in the name. Grant Smith’s application of the word tonic as a modality for flipping toxic intersectionality on its head is an excellent example of the wide applicability of the term tonic as a satisfying antonym to the term toxic. This concept has widespread applicability as a framework for advancing the understanding, and hopefully adoption, of virtuous versions of a great rage of concepts.

2. I hope you will consider reading Michael McConkey: https://thecirculationofelites.substack.com/about

3. “And in this world of simulacra, we are being told to ignore objective reality and embrace hyperreality: an unreality that has no connection with that which it claims to represent.” Dr. James Lindsey on hyperreality.

4. McConkey has several good books in addition to his fantastic substack page. This particular quote comes from his book Biological Realism, page 20 (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62874718-biological-realism)

5. This analogy taken from one of the many installations in the Undying Mercenaries Series by B.V. Larson…I don’t remember which book, but I think it’s from book 18. In any case - go read this series, it’s a riot.

6. Here I say it is not innate maliciousness which motivates females toward this competition style and egalitarianism. I just want to acknowledge that there is certainly an argument to be made with respect to biological determinism which would support the idea that ultimately all behaviors are necessarily tied to some innate cause. It just goes a tad beyond the scope here to get into this. The more apt point for the current level of analysis here is that all value assessments projected on to traits are also themselves a byproduct of some innate cause, and that without this totally separate ability to attribute value to specific traits, these traits would have no value. So even if you look at this competition style from the worst possible lens, that is a projection which would not apply in a vacuum. The trait itself just is what it is - a byproduct of natural causes. This may have been totally unnecessary to include in a footnote…it’s late…bye bye.