'Traditional masculinity' labeled 'harmful' by the American Psychological Assc

“(masculinity)...marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression—is, on the whole, harmful.”

As a 20 year practitioner of the primal dominance game of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu I’d like to address dominance and how it is completely mid-understood.

Dominance is not the act of dominating other people. It is people allowing themselves to be dominated. A key characteristic of alphas is that they are indomitable.

Since people perceive dominance instead of indominance they view it as a scarce zero-sum resource.

If I dominate you it’s because I either accidentally transgressed your boundary or we have boundaries that conflict and we haven’t negotiated new boundaries. Just going about my business people grant me dominance but this is not something I actively do, it is on them.

When people label dominance as bad, this tells me that they have poor boundary establishment and enforcement skills.

What are your values as an individual. From that, what are your boundaries? Are you willing to unflinchingly communicate those boundaries?

Are you willing to attempt to defend those boundaries from transgression? Can you incrementally develop indomitability and eventually read as dominant?

Some who believe they have zero ability to defend boundaries will retreat to the surrender of the boundary-less feminine. This might work, but I think it is more productive to metaphorically die defending boundaries than not have them in the first place.

The unique magic of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is that even if you are powerful with clear boundary establishment, for years and years you will utterly fail to defend those boundaries.

Knowing you may fail to defend boundaries but trying anyway is a key to next level masculinity.

One of my precious jobs as a coach is to show men that they can die well. When I think they’re ready, usually after 1-2 years of training I will show them that they are almost completely powerless. From the outside it looks like I’m torturing these men because I never fully checkmate them so that they can quit by tapping out. I encourage them to keep moving, keep trying, try to keep a clear head and act well despite the fact that it’s utterly hopeless.

This human condition is hopeless, but act well in accordance with your values anyway.

This quote by Rickson Gracie sums up the process:

“Where there's discomfort, there's fear," he said. "In these very tough positions, you're in a little piece of hell. And through this daily suffering, you learn to survive in these situations. You have to find comfort in uncomfortable situations. You have to be able to live in your worst nightmare. Jiu-jitsu puts you completely in the moment where you must have complete focus on finding a solution to the problem. This trains the mind to build that focus, to increase your awareness, your capacity to solve problems. Sometimes, you don't have to win. You cannot win. But that has nothing to do with losing."

No idea, I didn't study that but I'm sure they are very transparent when referencing external sources or when generating new knowledge. Speaking about history, already when browsing a source like Wikipedia it becomes quickly apparent which things actually happened e.g. like when the UN was founded and things which are difficult to see like for instance what happened with JFK.

Also it seems mysterious to me how to apply statistics in this, especially speaking about definition of probability and applying it to seems that actually happened or not - in contrast to future events or thought experiments.

Traditional masculinity:

"Conforming to the norms of the “masculinity ideology” can result in suppressing emotions and masking distress in young boys as well more risk-taking and aggressive behavior and a lack of willingness to seek out help."

"traditional masculinity — marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression — is, on the whole, harmful."

"Despite its warnings, the APA also encouraged men to embrace the positive aspects of traditional masculinity, like leadership and courage."

"Men in the United States also commit an estimated 90% more homicides than women and are also much more likely to be arrested for domestic violence."

Testosterone:

"Most studies support a link between adult criminality and testosterone"

"Most studies have also found testosterone to be associated with behaviors or personality traits linked with criminality such as antisocial behavior and alcoholism."

"Studies have also found administered testosterone to increase verbal aggression and anger in some participants."

"Testosterone is significantly correlated with aggression and competitive behaviour and is directly facilitated by the latter."

"The rise in testosterone levels during competition predicted aggression in males but not in females."

I can't help but notice that many of the attributes that fall under the umbrella of "toxic masculinity" are behaviors that appear to be correlated with response to testosterone. Although we can a identify biological basis for these behaviors, why do we insist they are a social "constellation of standards"?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testosterone

Asked for a gender neutral way to label gender roles.