Tonic Femininity Part 2
Toxic Femininity Through the Lens of Female Competition
We established in part one of this essay that constructs like toxic and tonic do not exist in a vacuum, but in the context of nature. The dominant competition style of human females has a stereotypical structure as the product of complex natural processes that necessarily contributed to female survival. As such, whatever traits tend to produce this typical behavior are neither good nor bad on their own. They are simply feminine.
But since women do interact with the natural environment, and humans also depend on their innate moral sense to establish cooperative relationships with one another to encourage survival, it is helpful to understand when femininity is aligned with behavior that will support the advancement of virtue and when we can expect that it will not.
A virtuous woman asks why she is taking action, for why she takes action will directly influence how she takes action. She challenges her answers socratically, examining them carefully for motivated self-deception. As she behaves in accordance with her feminine nature, she will engage all aspects of the female competition style to foster connection rather than resort to coercion and manipulation so she may position herself in life according to her needs and preferences without seeking unfair advantage built on deceit.
Let us now apply what we know about the female competition style to entertain some examples of feminine toxicity. These examples are by no means representative of a complete list, but they are formulated within the context of the female competition style as described previously.
Toxic Safety
The acknowledgement that women are relatively weak compared to men and thus exhibit a proclivity for safety logically results in the admission that competent men generally possess superior strength. When a woman succumbs to fear and attempts to altogether extinguish a man’s tolerance for uncertainty and danger through manipulation and/or corrosion because she believes the degree to which she cherishes safety outweighs his individual autonomy, she has crossed the line between tonicity and toxicity.
When a woman neglects to prepare her children for the cruelty of the world by insulating them from adversity which will shape their character and nurture resilience, she ensures their feebleness. Her feminine desire to protect her younglings becomes pathological if she can’t overcome this instinct enough to ensure that her children’s bodies, minds, and spirits are able to be tempered by the hardship all humans must face in order to reach maturity.
When we fail to test the limits of our own capabilities in the pursuit of excellence, we risk an opportunity to simulate danger in a controlled setting and practice skills which will help us neutralize threats appropriately as they inevitably arise in daily life. Some of the dangers we attempt to prepare for may never come to pass, and the methods we use to anticipate which threats we are most likely to encounter and how to prepare for them are speculative. Additionally, as alluded to above, an ideal situation involves the presence of a man to assist with such unpleasantries. But when the men are away, having a functional reserve of strength, a meaningfully developed mode of defense, and robust situational awareness will lessen the odds we will be irreparably victimized by an attacker. Acquisition of this function can be a great deal of fun, but is sometimes uncomfortable, and, yes, there is often a risk of injury or embarrassment. But persistently putting the responsibility of your own safety into someone else’s hands because you are too intimidated to take this responsibility on yourself skims the surface of toxicity as it delivers you from diligence to carelessness.
John Carter makes a great case for putting safety last. I want to advocate for his message to any women reading this who have a present preoccupation with safety by pointing out that it is easier for women to be suckered by the toxic safety first model because safety has been such an integral part of our survival. It is within the domain of women to make safety a consideration, even a high priority. But if in the practical pursuit of freedom and virtue safety must take a ride in the passenger’s seat, so be it. Ask: what is possible for a woman who has a profound dedication to safety and an equal dedication to pursuing greatness through virtue and her practice of freedom? Even when she judges that safety considerations need to take a backseat, she will still be utterly excellent in her demonstration of it.
Toxic Subtlety
True story: A woman tells a tale of finding a lone child belonging to her next-door neighbor wandering through her house unexpectedly early on a Saturday morning. The woman recalls feeling immense concern for the safety of the little boy. She questioned him, asked why he had wandered into her house and where his mother was. The boy informed her that his mother was asleep, he had come to his neighbor’s house in search of his playmate, the woman’s youngest son. The woman describes her haste in escorting the boy back home, her curiosity about the state of the boy’s house and whether the other children who lived in the home were also in need of her assistance. “I was just so worried. His mother was asleep and didn’t know he was at my house. When I took him back, she was awake and laughed it off. She said she needed a nap because she had a headache, she said her kids know the ‘boundaries’ she has set for them - right, three and five year-olds. I get headaches all the time and I push through!” The storyteller rolls her eyes and continues, “I heard it’s not the only time this has happened.” Everyone listening gasps and shakes their heads in unison as they glare at the house of the mother in question.
When a woman communicates about another woman, she is better situated to align with virtue when she examines her motivations under the lens of perceptual cognitive behavioral mechanisms (PCBM)1 which may be motivating her behavior, pulling it like a dog on a leash into the territory of malicious gossip. A woman who first asks whether she is greedily grasping for higher social standing before sharing unflattering private information with others about women whose social standing will subsequently be lowered through this exchange will more readily recognize opportunities to practice generosity. In the above story, any concerns the woman had about the unsupervised children might have been resolved directly through a conversation with his mother without the need to spread personal details to the rest of the neighborhood. Certain contingencies in which revealing details about the sleeping mother and her roaming child to others might support virtue (akshuallys) notwithstanding, it is not difficult to see how the storyteller above might instead have chosen to seek the possibility for connection with the other woman, given the lack of imminent danger, rather than merely pursue an edge over her in the social hierarchy by marketing herself as a good Samaritan, and damaging the napper’s reputation in the process.
There is a very good reason why we womenfolk sometimes sound absolutely bonkers when we are attempting to describe why something bothers us about another person. It’s one possible source of the trope that many women hate being called the c-word - crazy. Many women are accustomed to operating with their subtle mode engaged, but communicating what they have detected when someone else is operating in this manner presents a serious challenge. This challenge is amplified by the fact that not all subtle plays are toxic. As such, a delusional woman on the receiving end of such strikes may especially struggle to articulate what is bothering her since the implication of the strike in this case will hang in stark contrast to her self-deception.
Further, some women are extremely adept at competing subtly, making it very difficult for other women to verify when someone truly has their best interests at heart. This complication in exchanges between women presents an opportunity to practice patience and empathy for beings who are often frustrated by the confusion that arises from this particular mode of communication. Awareness that this type of communication is driven by PCBMs to help women secure higher status for themselves, and that it is not necessarily a meaningfully calculated attempt to hurt another’s feelings just for fun, can take the sting out of sidelong stares at one’s choice of outfit, backhanded complements such as, ‘you’re pretty now, but you used to be really pretty,” and the realization that one has been excluded from a guest list. In short, this awareness can help a virtuous woman avoid the downward plunge toward anger and resentment.
When a woman judges it is necessary to consider subtly competing with another, she is doing herself and others a service to ask why. Is it because the woman whose reputation and access to a supportive female coalition will suffer is behaving like a toxic and incurable wretch who has shown no trend of improvement after being offered constructive feedback explaining the subcultural expectations of the group? Or is it because you are jealous of her, and the memory of how your boyfriend greeted her so enthusiastically makes you ill? Or is it that she is different, does not conform to groups so easily and you do not understand why? Or is it because you despise some immutable characteristic that is beyond her ability to reasonably modify, such as general intelligence or a tragic past or her age?
And are you certain you are willing to hold yourself to the same standards you place on her?
I would be remiss if I did not mention my suspicion that the toxic expression of female subtlety may also orient us to a possible ramification for the accusations of toxicity frequently hurled at men in the modern West.
To some men, it is confusing why women are not more direct in discussing their needs and desires. To some women, it is groundbreaking to realize that a man could truly mean only the thing he says without an ulterior motive or carefully hidden message somewhere in his tone, his eyes, or deep in the unknowable reaches of his soul. In the case of the latter, the toxic woman sees an opportunity to help men find the hidden messaging they’re guilty of, sometimes, unfortunately, by wrongfully explaining biases he is unaware of, and how they make him toxic.
What better way for a self-deluded status-seeking woman to convince herself her vicious behavior is warranted than to convince the men she competes with that they are the problem? For an example of this, look no further than the drama currently unfolding over at Tereza Coraggio’s page. This woman is positively stewed because she believes she was not given due credit for coining the term tonic. Adding more simmer to her pot, she believes the term tonic has also been hijacked because it gained popularity when the tonic seven found a cooler use for it. Her response to this has been to play a round of reputation destruction against the the tonic seven. Now that the term has been appropriated and turned from nothing into something, it suits her to attempt to take the credit for the traction it has gained by throwing the tonic seven under the bus, to hell with whether they actually deserve it or how this might impact the idea itself. The next part in this essay will offer an alternative to this lamentable behavior for all to consider.
Women do not need to pretend to be on each other’s side as they so often do. But when we choose to verbalize that we are on another woman’s side and call her our friend, it is incumbent upon us to strive to uphold this connection we have signaled to her in the name of candor and integrity.
It is very important to take information at face value, so to speak, to keep paranoid tendencies at bay and to maintain a charitable mindset. But it is also handy to know that women operate with greater subtly and more passively than men. Without this awareness it is easier to miss social cues and opportunities to behave gracefully in a range of situations.
Toxic Solitude
It is often the way we behave when no one is watching, when there is no perceived prize besides our own private reassurance that we are behaving in accordance with our principles, which reveals our progress toward virtue.
People do lots of… interesting things when they’re alone. In two words, they get weird. I lament the trend of projecting pathology on to every little weird thing we humans do, but that statement cuts at a slightly different conversation. What is more relevant to our discussion now is whether or not a woman would feel shame if her backdoor methods of gaining advantages were discovered.
As you work to expand your knowledge and/or pursue a career, are you advancing toward these objectives out of lust for recognition or the lust for the power to supplant others who are better suited for the job? Wouldn’t it be grand if you could have some confidence that your efforts directed towards achieving your purpose did not depend on baselessly undermining the success of other women simply trying to do the same?
When you are alone with your thoughts and are attempting to make yourself more attractive to a man whom you desire, are you plotting to seduce his lowest instincts for the fleeting thrill of fickle affection, or do you hope to appeal to his highest potential as a provider and possible husband and father?
Are you certain he is not married?
There is nothing wrong with working diligently in private to make progress toward your goals. But there is something wrong with keeping your methods a secret because they violate your sense of integrity. Ask: Do you intend to promise one thing in person while delivering another in private?
Toxic Egalitarianism
Life unfairly imbues some women with a higher concentration of widely admired attributes such as beauty and intelligence than others. Life is further unconcerned with how it distributes tragedies amongst even those who nourish personal resilience with intense fervor despite suffering2. But what separates women and men from animals is our potential to experience meaning in all circumstances. When women allow their base affinity for egalitarianism to encourage attempts to flatten the playing field to a low level of functioning, they regrettably miss the opportunity to live up to their true potential.
Is it any surprise that the women who irrationally believe life has gypped them in some department or anther complain the loudest over how unfair their lot is? Is it really any surprise that they are trying to advance themselves through the coercive destruction of others?
Life does not owe women anything. The earth is not a grid in which each of us is is entitled to a safe and equally distributed section on which to do it all without having to contend with the fact that there are always tradeoffs. But, as we are capable of rationality, we may choose to keep tension between ourselves and resentment of women whom we perceive as blessed with better looks, more social graces, smarts, or having the advantage of a supportive network of other women built right into the setting of a functional family. Similarly, we may keep tension between ourselves and the self-loathing we, much more so than men3, are susceptible to experiencing when we believe we have failed to achieve equal success to our female peers.
But no matter how sad any of us feels, playing the victim is a vice. Projecting victimhood onto others under the guise of formulating a favorable reputation for yourself is an extension of this.
When a woman has the no fair mindset - Not safe, no fair! More than me, no fair! - it is tempting for her to promote selfless behavior - so long as the expectation of selflessness she advocates for is placed on other people. This is the lie of effective altruism which appeals to so many women who cannot see the furthest reaches of their own self-deluded motivations to promote themselves as caring people who want nothing in exchange for something. All the while, they add their own unique, self-interested twist to the supposed benefit they are peddling, and write-off second and third order consequences of their interventions as things that couldn’t be helped.
One possible antidote to the effective altruism model which lies to its followers by claiming that it is possible to act completely divorced from your own self-interests is to embrace what I like to playfully call effective narcissism. Orient yourself to truth, virtue, and epistemic humility. Be utterly obsessed with how not narcissistic this makes you. See what I did there?
The woman who practices self-esteem in response to comparisons she makes between herself and other women is dooming herself to a painful inner world. When you set your gauge for physical, mental, and spiritual health to measure according to someone else’s outcomes instead of your own, you are contaminating your self-awareness. There are countless narratives from which to choose in order to make sense of our natural environment. Some of these are more elegant than others. But any narratives which characterize subjective value statements as objective truths present a sufficient reason to pause and reflect inwardly before accepting whether or not they apply to you. This will help the virtuous woman avoid the trap of self-rating and careless narrative formulation which will make her more susceptible to feelings of inadequacy and sadness as she moves through life. Practicing total self-acceptance is not about falsely believing that you have accomplished everything you have set out to do. It is about developing a backbone and not allowing yourself to be pigeon-holed. It’s about safeguarding a sense of unconditional self-worth and emotional security from which you can begin asking yourself the big questions: Who are you? And what do you want4?
We cannot all be the same. But we can leverage our differences in support of virtue.
I discuss tonic femininity next.
Thanks for rucking with me. Please enjoy the music as you exit.
I really like Katheryn Hansen’s work on binge eating and the rational mind as another great context for describing the disconnect between what she calls the ‘high’ and ‘low’ brain. You can learn more about this here. https://brainoverbinge.com/
Look no further than Viktor Frankl as an example of this. If you have not read Man’s Search for Meaning, I cannot recommend it highly enough: https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/3389674-man-s-search-for-meaning
According to Dr. Benenson’s work, the research is very clear that women experience sadness when they perceive they are not equally as successful in some metric as their same-sex peers. They are relatively unique to men in this sense. This is perhaps a component of female evopsych worthy of its own article as it plays a large hand in influencing women’s feelings about themselves and others, though I may expand upon it in the next part of this essay.
Don’t give into self-doubt. Be the person Uncle Iroh sees!
This was a very thorough, carefully thought through, and insightful piece. Excellent stuff.
One of the constant frustrations for me throughout high school, and frankly also after to a degree, was the way that male competitive behaviors were strictly policed and even pathologies, whereas female competition was simply ignored by authority figures. Mean girls starting rumors to character assassinate? I sleep. Wrestling with your friends in the hallway? Detention! (Okay usually we'd just get yelled at). Not that I wanted the girls to be punished for competing like girls, I honestly didn't much care what they did ... I just wanted us boys to be left alone.
Another factor is in the legal system, regarding the definition of abuse. Physical abuse is, rightly, illegal and punished. Emotional abuse, however, is perfectly legal, and generally ignored. A great many men suffer as a result.
Of course, the challenge is that subtle competition is very difficult, if not impossible, to regulate directly, unlike overt competition which is amenable to direct dissuasion. Instead, it must be discouraged, or rather channelled, subtlety. A wise society recognizes both modes, however, and enacts measures to ameliorate the worst excesses of both.
"Orient yourself to truth, virtue, and epistemic humility. Be utterly obsessed with how not narcissistic this makes you. See what I did there?" Heh heh! Excellent!