Toxic Soft Competition: The Modern Gordian Knot

Compromise the longhouse from within to score points

A comment John Carter left on a previous article of mine gave me the idea to write this essay.

When I first heard Dr. Joyce Benenson’s explanation for how the female competition style distinguishes itself from that of the male competition style, I knew I had some thinking to do.

I took a stab at applying her work to the ever worthwhile concept of tonic human nature, by writing an essay series on my take on tonic femininity through the lens of the soft competition model. When I finished my last essay, I realized that there is much fertile ground left on this terrain. I will likely write more about tonic femininity in the weeks to come in an effort to do it proper justice, but I believe the widespread understanding of the female competition style can also help the modern West better understand the toxic Longhouse for what it is, and how tonic femininity might be used to disarm it. This is the idea I explore now.

The evolved female competition style has three distinctive features. It is safe, it is subtle, and it is solitary. These features are mutually supportive and help women achieve a protective reputation status within their group. This style is inherently indirect, but it nevertheless constitutes competition; and it can be ugly.

Women compete inconspicuously and are highly adept at detecting threats to their safety, even those that present as subtle gestures. On the other hand, men compete with a much more direct approach. Where a woman might say, “If you want something from me, I’ll safeguard it in ways you won’t even realize,” a man would much more likely say, “If you want something from me, come and take it if you can.” Without a developed sense for the fact that this masculine type of communication is not automatically threatening, women can easily conflate masculine assertiveness with dangerous aggressiveness. It simply doesn’t take much direct confrontation from men communicating pointedly and without frills for the hindbrains of women to begin screaming in response that there is an imminent threat to their safety.

In essence, if the subtle tactics of a female competitor are likely to spawn a stress response in other females, it seems reasonable to assume that direct challenges would be perceived as very threatening. This reasoning is echoed in modern culture, where men competing as men do is often mislabeled as toxic, though their own competition style is not inherently toxic either; it’s just inherently masculine. This effect has given rise to the Longhouse, an authoritarian nanny-state ruled by powerfully influential mother-hens whose principle decree is that threats to its safety from detected competitors must be squelched at any price.

The Longhouse fears men. And, in effect, it is animated by this fear to attempt to become the thing it fears. It began its rise to prominence by directly targeting men using indirect tactics under the guise of promoting equality. Very clever, that. For equality itself, to the degree to which it can be achieved notionally, is atmospherically preferred by most women. Eventually, the Longhouse gained tremendous power and influence, and it has recruited many intuitively aggressive male mother-hens into its ranks. With this development, the degree of subtlety employed for the task of disenfranchising men has lessened substantially. Now these attempts have become more overt and their presence is felt everywhere. Of course, there is no aspect of the Longhouse which perfectly models the inherent strengths of masculinity; even its male attendants barely manage to become a funhouse mirror version of maleness. Nevertheless, an unfortunate collision of untamed nature and deliberate cultural undoing at the behest of bad actors who have much to gain materially through the weakening of men and women alike has metastasized across a multitude of societal and institutional organs.

The Longhouse is fundamentally a cultural pathogen which, in the fashion of big-pharma, tries to make itself indispensable by first making people sick, then selling them their monopolized remedies. ‘Don’t want to be labeled a toxic man? The solution is simple, participate in this training. Does myocarditis have you feeling down? Take our patented new drug.’ The Longhouse mother enfeebles her children, thus ensuring their dependence on her; this we know.

But how does the toxically feminine Longhouse respond to direct challenge?

The front-facing defense strategy of the Longhouse against the existential danger masculine men present is to promote the narrative that these men are toxic threats to the safety of society; and to subtly advance the falsehood that it is therefore imperative to extract the spirit of direct competition out of them, by force if necessary. Sometimes this looks like punishing little boys for being rambunctious - providing them with adequate access to exercise and other males who can provide mentorship which will help them hone the skillsets they need to integrate into society above the level of brutish neanderthal is not a strategy that comes easily to longhouse den-mothers. Sometimes it looks like overt attempts to feminize young men completely and turn them into functional girls. And sometimes this sadly looks like damaging the reputations of women who provide loving support to the men in their lives who sharpen their masculine natures to favor virtue and to provide for a family. In any case, the Longhouse’s defensive strategy against direct challenge markets itself with characteristically feminine and indirect oratory. But subtly hidden within this strategy is a twist enabled by the Longhouse's capture of institutions, public-private partnerships, and, most pertinently, the government, to cause harm by very direct means.

To begin addressing the question of how tonic men and women can compete with the Longhouse by leveraging knowledge of the soft competition model against its entanglement with institutions, let’s zoom in on the ultimate indirect move the Longhouse is making: it is hiding behind subtle indirect rhetoric to gain access to deployable lethal force against its perceived threats.

Government defines itself as the one institution that backs up its rules with force or the threat thereof. In the way back when time of kings, this threat was not so implicit as it is today. Institutions, along with their rhetoric, were not so feminized as they are now. Insulting a King in the wrong timeline was liable to get you beaten or killed, and this was communicated blatantly. Now the threat of force is much more subtle. It might not seem like declining to pay your taxes is backed with the threat of physical violence that may result in your death, but just go ahead and try it. And ignore the letters that the IRS sends you notifying you of this transgression, and see what happens if you try to defend yourself during an eventual arrest.

The Longhouse has an obvious fixation on safety. But the idea that it wants us to be safe is an illusion. It is subtly crafted rhetoric disguising a real violent threat. The Longhouse wants itself to be safe, and it scrambles for advantage through virtue signaling and through ads for urgently needed interventions that it claims will keep everyone else safe. It capitalizes on the natural inclination for safety that women possess and, through persistent messaging, it turns them into neurotic dependents of den-mothers who will one day inherit a seat at the head of the table. The Longhouse wants to destroy all perceived threats to its safety. And very slowly, over a long period of time, it has influenced policy, and the way we communicate about policy. Today, the Longhouse doesn’t say aloud that it wants unimpeded access to the government's monopoly on force to kill dissidents, it says it wants laws that censor dangerous misinformation. But we all know what the ultimate implication of this is.

This situation is desperate for a challenge. Men can, and many do, challenge it directly. A better understanding of the soft competition model will make them more effective at recognizing the tactics of the Longhouse as the indirect forms of competition that they are and, through forging collaborative bonds with other men, they will strategize together in that specialized way men do to find ever more refined ways to say to the Longhouse, “not today.”

But I am not a man with all the lived experience that gives rise to a nuanced understanding of how to leverage masculine traits for such endeavors. I am therefore more preoccupied with attempting to apply my firsthand understanding of how women work to speculate on whether there is a viable way for tonic women to leverage their evolved competition style in order to help bring the Longhouse down from the inside. Attack the left from the left, the right from the right, and the Longhouse from within the Longhouse, so to speak.

The most obvious approach for this task begins with the critical first step of ensuring that women understand what the government ultimately is. We can and should freely debate the particulars on when, how, or why the government should be used to enforce laws. But when the sun goes down, the government is not merely an abstraction through which our society orders itself. It is force. It’s something that comes out of the barrel of a gun. Understanding that is essential for all women who hope to counteract the abhorrent methods the Longhouse uses to bend the government’s self-sanctioned ability to use force to its toxic will.

Remember: the Longhouse corrupts, it enfeebles. Just as it smothers the spirits of young men, it shames young mothers who nurture autonomy and strength in their young. It encircles the necks of all of its children and twists itself into a knot as it sweetly hums self-serving lies emerging from its own delusional belief that this is for their own good. It soothes, “Don’t fuss with the knot, dear. It’s keeping your head attached to your shoulders.”

The Longhouse wants itself to be safe. By extension of this and its corrupt nature, it wants everything else to be unsafe. Therein lies the helpful revelation for women hoping to counter the toxic influence of the Longhouse from within its walls: In order to keep our children meaningfully safe, tonic women must expose the violent threat that the Longhouse inherently poses to society. They can leverage their ability to engage in reputation destruction in this endeavor. Take for example the growing number of mothers removing their children from the public education system who go on to describe their reasons for doing so to neighbors and relatives, dropping the names of school board members and teachers in the process. For another example, take the many content creators and bloggers, myself humbly among them, who also work in a more solitary fashion to expose this violent threat to children.

For my part, I want the children of today to flourish; to grow up strong, resilient, independent, capable, and free. That is to say, I want them to grow up to be as safe as possible. Exposing the rhetorically obfuscated violent nature of the Longhouse to mothers who instinctively want to keep their kids safe from harm is one way to turn the mothering aspect of the Longhouse against itself.

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