Toxic Femininity vs. Toxic Masculinity

Malcolm and Simone have a thought-provoking discussion contrasting toxic masculinity and toxic femininity. Malcolm argues that toxic femininity is actually more dangerous, as feminine mindsets optimize for safety over truth. He explains how female dominance in bureaucracies and power structures leads to collectivist thinking that coerces adherence to cultural norms over facts. They also touch on the pros and cons of masculine vs feminine psychologies, gender differences in locus of control, and whether empowering women or stagnant institutions drive the feminization of society.

Malcolm: [00:00:00] Women, historically speaking and, and weak men, they were rewarded for relating to truth. Where the things that are true are the things that are least likely to get me killed for believing. Mm-hmm. , the things that I believe are true are the most normative things within our culture and the things that will upset the minimum number of other people.

Malcolm: This is because women are physically much weaker than men and, and there is a, a set of men who just adopt a mindset like this as well, and that segment is growing due to exogenous chemicals like

Malcolm: such as endocrine disruptors which are making many males think more like females.

Simone: I mean, it could be argued that the feminization of society is a product of female empowerment.

Simone: Do you think it's that, or do you think it's that the organizations are the pathways

Malcolm: to power now? If we didn't have the women's rights movement, society would become more feminine as it developed these large [00:01:00] bureaucracies.

Would you like to know more?

Simone: Hello, Malcolm.

Malcolm: Hello, Simone. My beautiful wife.

Simone: So today let's talk about toxic masculinity and femininity because it is something that comes up, especially I hear people talk more about toxic masculinity than femininity, but I think we should talk about both.

Simone: What is your understanding? Of toxic masculinity, what does it mean to you? Cause what it means to me is, is like when people talk about toxic masculinity, it's really more that they're just shitting on masculinity. Like they're not

Malcolm: You're right. I think culturally, when people talk about toxic masculinity today, they're just like, Oh, this is a masculine thing.

Malcolm: I don't like it.

Simone: Yeah or it's, it's, it's terrible that like men don't cry enough, that they don't feel safe crying and that's toxic. Men

Malcolm: shouldn't feel safe crying. They're not being a safe provider to most of the parents. They're not giving them most of what they, they promised to give them,

Simone: yeah. So I think that's, that's one picture of it. Well, what else is [00:02:00] toxic masculinity that men need to be dominant, that men are, that men should be allowed to be aggressive. And I think that what's really interesting is I, I see personally toxic masculinity the same way that I see mental health problems or like a mental health disorder which is a perspective actually that you gave me when you were writing one of.

Simone: One of the books that, that we've collectively wrote really that you wrote, that I edited. But you, you explained to me and our readers that really the DSM, which is the primary body establishing what is a mental disorder is more a reflection of societal norms. Then a reflection of what is actually healthy or unhealthy.

Simone: This

Malcolm: is really important to know. So if you look at the DSM, which is a standard diagnostic manual, if you were to look at it in the seventies being gay would be considered a psychological illness, right? And if you look at it today, one of the debates they're having is. It's actually removing, sadism as a psychological illness because they're like, Oh, this is like a BDSM thing, [00:03:00] right?

Simone: But in the past, wasn't being gay on the DSM?

Malcolm: Yeah, it was.

Malcolm: As I said, in the 70s, it was on the DSM. It was considered a psychological illness. So, as things get normalized in the society, we change them. And a lot of when we're talking about mental health, there is... I think an average male psychology and there is an average female psychology and there is gender dimorphism there and society adapts to that.

Malcolm: However, not all males fall perfectly into the average male social set. And I think that Or the ever female. So I think what's toxic is when you create an environment in which status is based on one's normative behavior patterns tied to their gender of birth, so that they achieve status within a community by masturbating a.

Malcolm: specific set of practices that they associate with being masculine or feminine. However, just acting on your own behavior, I don't think it's toxic in either context, although it's more toxic on the feminine side and it's more [00:04:00] toxic on the feminine side because a group that is all acting according to feminine biology, but it's also intelligent can move much more towards internal locus of control in a way that that really.

Malcolm: Damages them.

Simone: So let me expand on that and and clarify what you're saying here. So so what you're saying is Yes, people on average are going to behave probably in accordance with like their you know both genetic and hormonal profile and men and women have average on average Different genetic and hormonal profiles that men are going to behave a certain way that women are going to behave a certain way in our current society, often those dimorphic sexually dimorphic behaviors are seen as toxic and still what you're saying.

Simone: Furthermore, is it toxic? Toxic masculinity is actually less dangerous than toxic femininity because toxic femininity is more likely to elevate and accept and condone an internal locus of control and to give [00:05:00] people a color on why we think that is so dangerous. An internal locus of control. Oh, sorry, an external locus of control.

Simone: Women with a feminine profile is more likely to have an external locus of control. So as a recap, a locus of control being internal means when something happens in life, whether it's your fault or not, you're like, It's my fault. It's my responsibility. I need to fix it. So if there's a mess, you clean it up.

Simone: If something bad happens, well, what are you going to do about it? If you have an external locus of control, nothing is your fault. That happened because so and so was a jerk. That happened because I was, given terrible circumstances. It's not fair.

Malcolm: Racism or sexism or,

Simone: it's fault. that, that view, regardless of gender.

Simone: Is inherently very bad for a population. Why? Because it basically discourages you from fixing problems when they arise. Because just it's not my problem. It was someone else's problem. It's mentally very

Malcolm: damaging. There's been a lot of research on this. It causes more mental health issues, which again, you see much more in progressive communities and right leaning communities.

Malcolm: It causes people to be less happy, less [00:06:00] successful. It's just all around a terrible thing. Even when things aren't your fault, you should never internalize them as not your fault. But we've talked about that in other videos.

Simone: Yeah. Well, so I think what, what makes toxic. Gender dimorphism, you could say. So toxic masculinity or femininity.

Simone: Interesting, especially today. Is that now, really, like I was saying, I only really hear about toxic masculinity and that is a sign again, with, with this idea of toxicity really being more a sign of, of social norms and what's actually toxic that we have entered into a, a at least like in terms of mainstream culture, a feminized culture, at least in most of the 12th

Malcolm: gynocracy.

Malcolm: Our society is incredibly feminized right now.

Simone: And that's interesting. I mean, both because it shows some very scary signs, including a more pervasive condoned external locus of control. But also that just, just sexually dimorphic dimorphic behavior, like being masculine is now seen as kids who are [00:07:00] energetic and who, act, act out are now being medicated, put on tons of Ritalin and other things or, or just punished for it.

Simone: And then it's just being beat out of them. It's, it's no surprise that we're seeing like crises of gender identity, mental health success in life, all sorts of things.

Malcolm: Yeah, well, I mean, the biggest risk associated with all this, and I'm like, why is this so bad? It has to do with how individuals at a biological and instinctual level relate to truth.

Malcolm: Women, historically speaking and, and weak men, they were rewarded for relating to truth. Where the things that are true are the things that are least likely to get me killed for believing. Mm-hmm. , the things that I believe are true are the most normative things within our culture and the things that will upset the minimum number of other people.

Malcolm: This is because women are physically much weaker than men and, and [00:08:00] there is a, a set of men who just adopt a mindset like this as well, and that segment is growing due to exogenous chemicals like

Malcolm: such as endocrine disruptors which are making many males think more like females.

Malcolm: And I'm not going to go into the study again, cause we talk about it so much here, but, but just trust me, this is biologically happening in the world today. And so women in, in a, in a tribal, like ancestral context, this more female mindset was not optimized for finding truth in reality. It was for finding.

Malcolm: The belief that was least likely to get you killed. Whereas for masculine men, the leaders of the community historically that core correlated very strongly was what was true for the leaders of these historic communities that were much more hierarchical than our existing society. They actually needed to optimize for whatever was true when they got that truth [00:09:00] wrong.

Malcolm: The, the followers in the community, the women and the weaker men, they were better off learning to believe the wrong truth than disagreeing with the guys who could kill them. And there's some great anthropological studies of the Ache, which is this tribe, I think in the Amazon of, of what that means for a community, because we see in this community, the, the, the dominant men regularly killing members of the community who disagree with them or who annoy them.

Malcolm: So I think that people today might. We, we have this noble savage archetype when the reality is that in many of these tribal communities, the dominant males regularly kill other members of the community if they annoy them. So this was, this was something that was really strongly selected for an ancestral context.

Malcolm: But this creates

Malcolm: which we call justicalism in our book, which is a worldview that believes what is true would be the thing where the world would be the most just if it was true, which is a strong way of also saying the thing that is [00:10:00] going to piss the fewest number of other groups off at you for believing.

Malcolm: But the problem is, is that now this has led to a society that's wide because we have so many. Dominant groups that have this sort of incredibly feminine perspective on things. And keep in mind, both women and men can take the masculine perspective. Just as I've said, many men end up taking a very feminine perspective.

Malcolm: Many women, like my wife, I think have a very masculine perspective on reality. You do.

Simone: On average. Yeah. Yeah, your view is still way more masculine than mine. Let's say.

Malcolm: That is true. But, but I think you think more like a guy than most. I

Simone: think less like a woman than probably 90% of women. We'll say that.

Simone: Yeah,

Malcolm: yeah, yeah. So it leads to, many of these organizations collectively because they begin to taking the mindset that is, is, is best within their bureaucracies and the female mindset actually allows individuals to outcompete others was in bureaucracies [00:11:00] and that's really

important

Simone: as well.

Simone: Yes. So, so in a world that is run by, by bureaucracies, especially like ossified large bureaucracies. the, the feminine mindset and what we would call toxic femininity is the way you get ahead. And because we live in an age of large ossified bureaucracies both governmental, but also private because trust busting has become so weak, maybe it's soon to change.

Simone: We, we just have, maybe that's contributed right to the feminization of society. Actually I was, I am curious people have said, for example, that female empowerment is going to be the downfall of civilization. I mean, it could be argued that the feminization of society is a product of female empowerment.

Simone: Do you think it's that, or do you think it's that the organizations are the pathways

Malcolm: to power now? If we didn't have the women's rights movement, society would become more feminine as it developed these large bureaucracies. And this is, this is why we are, we call ourselves Bull Moose [00:12:00] Republicans instead of Libertarians, which is we believe in trust busting just as much as, as, as we believe in small government, which is any large bureaucracy becomes evil over time because it compounds human evil, whether it's Google, Facebook, or the government itself.

Malcolm: I think it's sort of the, the. The highest virtues of humanity can only be achieved through group action within small competing organizations, not large stagnant organizations. But as society feminizes both biologically and with women outcompeting men within these larger organizations, or a feminine mindset outcompeting a masculine mindset within these larger organizations, which impact our, our world culture more we, yeah, we're beginning to see the world and governments reward large coagulations of power over over non coagulated power groups.

Malcolm: And I think that this is the core [00:13:00] divide you have between the globalists and the nationalists , do you think that the world is better if it's coagulated into this giant bureaucracy, and I'd say that we largely think, no, it's not. It's actually much worse. And evil becomes almost an inevitability as bureaucracies reach a

Simone: certain size.

Simone: Yeah. I think another thing that's interesting about the relative danger of toxic femininity versus toxic masculinity is that. Of course, for most of human history that we've recorded, at least, it has been a male dominated world for the most part, right? That's, just clear. Most large civilizations were, were patriarchies.

Simone: And I think, interestingly, during that time, there was not really a concept of toxic femininity.

Malcolm: I think you're wrong here. So if you look at like Egyptian history, they had a number of collapses for a second, third, period. These were almost always prefaced by female Pharaohs.

Malcolm: [00:14:00] And that correlated really strongly was a society that was about to collapse. You just, it. And again, this isn't fair. It's not fair that this is the truth, right? But reality isn't based on what's fair and what's not fair. I like a world in which my daughters are able to be empowered and my wife is able to be empowered.

Malcolm: But I think there are ways we can realistically do that, that take our biologies into account. And, and the sociological differences between males and females into account, and the differences between different females into account without just saying we need to pretend like there's no differences between males and females, which thank God, with the rise of the trans movement, this is the thing I love about the trans movement, and they force progressives to admit that men and women are different.

Malcolm: Because you might forget this, but before the trans movement, the mainstream progressive ideology, and this is what the TERFs don't believe because they're on the last code of rules that the progressives had is that men and women are exactly the same and [00:15:00] we're only different because we're socialized to be different.

Malcolm: Hmm. Hmm. You disagree?

Simone: I don't know. I agree with you. Yeah.

Simone: What would you say to men in positions in society where like they really do feel like they're being subject to toxic masculinity? For example, there have been times where people have been sent to these really, all male boarding schools where they just get beat up again and again, like it really sucks, sometimes being a male really sucks because mask it just seems that kind of the way that.

Simone: The two sexes have evolved. Is it like men are high risk, high reward, right? It's not that they're disposable, but they're utilized by evolution in a way where they can propagate software updates very quickly and effectively, where like when one male significantly outcompetes, he's able to just have a ton of kids with all the women and like quickly, quickly push his software update [00:16:00] to a large portion of the population.

Simone: Whereas women are more like the stable, just like updating machines that, that sort of play a role in the process. So they're not high risk, high reward. They need to conform to the norm. But that doesn't change the fact that being male therefore sucks because a very small proportion of male outliers is designed to like inherit the future and win and do all this stuff.

Simone: But then what about the rest? It really sucks. And I'm not saying that historically, men died at higher proportions because they went to war because actually someone pointed out in a podcast and it's like blew my mind that based on some stats, women and men died in similar proportions.

Simone: It's just that when women died in those proportions in childbirth and men died in those proportions and like dangerous

Malcolm: also keep in mind that if you look historically during the transition to the agricultural period, we can look at DNA evidence. And I think it was, yeah, one. Man would breed for every 14 women that would breed.

Malcolm: So So that means on average, every man had 14 wives. Every surviving sort of DNA strand. I mean, keep in [00:17:00] mind that felt like compounded by them being more successful and stuff like that.

Simone: But But that means that for most, most of history and still today, like It sucks being a man. And I could understand if you had a higher selective pressures on you.

Simone: Yes. Well, and I mean, a lot of people don't want to play games on a hard mode. They want to play games on easy mode and, and like being, being a woman is more of the bunny slopes. Being a man is more of the black diamond slopes and not everyone likes black diamond. So would you say that they're like to, to, to men who aren't the winners?

Simone: In the evolutionary game of life, would masculinity not to them be toxic? I mean,

Malcolm: well, I guess you're right. Yeah. I mean, my, I mean, look, our, my form of masculinity in my world perspective is an incredibly ruthless one. I, I think it's an honest one. I think it's one that's correlated with reality very strongly, but it's one to quickly say, Oh, that person doesn't matter.

Malcolm: And the people who I'm most likely to say don't matter are often, lower value males, right? Yeah, [00:18:00] that's just the reality of the situation. So you

Simone: would say that's, that's not toxic masculinity. That's life, right? Like you're just. Sorry. Yeah. Maybe

Malcolm: toxic masculinity is an unfiltered view of reality.

Malcolm: Maybe that's the most toxic thing about it. It's just, it sucks. It sucks. But I think, if you're looking to create a fair society, but that is still optimal, what you need to do is. Have women adapt a as they did historically. And even today, when they entered leadership roles, they adapt more masculine perspectives.

Malcolm: And you see this historic, like women who have more masculine perspectives, interleadership roles at a higher rate. And when they're in a leadership role, they adapt more masculine perspectives. But we need to accelerate this behavior pattern. Hmm. Yeah, I think that when you realize that both femininity and masculinity are to an extent mindsets and some men have a feminine mindset and some women [00:19:00] have a masculine mindset, I think we can create a.

Malcolm: FARA is society that keeps our gender dimorphism in mind in terms of how it's structured. I do think it's stupid to pretend like there isn't gender dimorphism in how we structure society. Yeah. Or to force, like the California law that's like women need to be on boards at exactly the same rate as men.

Malcolm: And yet we know, like this is something that's been studied. , boards with equal gender representation perform less well economically than boards without it.

This is what I remember the consensus being the last time I looked into this issue, but when I was going over the studies again, while, I could find a few studies, like the one referenced here that showed that women hurt board performance. It seemed like the majority opinion was that they had no effect.

Malcolm: Yeah.

Simone: Ouch. So yeah. I think California now has a law that, that boards have to have a certain proportion of female members.

Simone: So they're like shooting themselves in the foot, which is funny.

Malcolm: [00:20:00] Well, because you can't say that. You can't say, and this is fundamentally one of our biggest disagreements with the progressive movement. Is they claim to care about diversity, yet they fail to acknowledge that the value and diversity comes from the fact that we are different, the value and diversity in men and women comes from the fact that we are different and that we're better at different things on average.

Malcolm: And that allows for different specializations and degrees of doing societies. And whether you're talking about cultural groups or men and women, the value of diversity is our differences, not our similarities.

Simone: Yeah. Yeah. Well, okay. So I think a viewer or listener of this podcast episode is going to assume, which also even if they know other things about us, like we only want to give male names to our daughters, for example, but

Malcolm: that are masculine mindset is better.

Malcolm: And I think that women was a masculine mindset outperformed one was that one, because that's what the data says.

Simone: So they're going to assume [00:21:00] that we're going to raise. Our kids in a hyper masculine household, but is that accurate? Are you going to encourage our girls to not have any feminine aspects?

Simone: Because I

Malcolm: think in a world, in the world that we're going into in the world of the future, the feminine optimization is less and less relevant and I am okay with culturally coming up with a new. of psychologically being feminine. And I think that that's possible. And that's what we are working on. But I

Simone: think that you have to admit, and this is important, that there's a reason why men and women behave in different ways,

Malcolm: like historically, when you're dealing with hunter gatherer tribe,

Simone: but no, that hormonally and genetically men and women are.

Simone: And then, there are anecdotes that I've read in books where parents have attempted to raise their children with no gender. No, no, no.

Malcolm: I'm not trying to force my daughters to be masculine. Okay. I'm trying to allow them to become like you. I think that the [00:22:00] iteration of femininity.

Malcolm: That you embody and are a paragon of is an iteration of femininity that both works very well with my iteration of masculinity, right? But that is also really, really great for our current I think economy, environment, technology. I think you represent. Sustainable femininity and I represent sustainable

Simone: masculinity.

Simone: So hold on this, this brings us, I think, to a final point in this podcast that I think is, is worth talking about, which is non toxic or beneficial femininity and masculinity. So for example I think like you say, and you, I I can completely endorse this, that your form of masculinity is, is.

Simone: quite benevolent, not toxic. So I can contrast this with one hyper masculine. And I would say like genuinely not like toxic. I'm not saying like culturally it's toxic, but like dysfunctional masculine [00:23:00] household that I grew around. Like they were family friends. And I remember like both the man and the son were super macho.

Simone: And I remember the son at one point being like, my mom's. It's just like that kind of masculinity. That feels abusive, like woman giving me my beer kind of thing. And I think that that's an example of dysfunctional masculinity, like masculinity, that's just not being done. And this dovetails with the podcast episode we did on like, Why, why bother being a gentleman?

Simone: Like the real masculinity isn't in being a dick to people. Real masculinity is having the grace to condescend to those weaker than you and to help them and to show them grace. So I think what I love about what you are already teaching our boys is that it's always fine to punch up, that they're encouraged to be defiant, to question, to be adventurous, but that they are never, ever, ever.

Simone: Okay, to punch down, to hurt someone smaller than them, to be cruel. So

Malcolm: I'm okay with teaching my kids to do that, but I do worry about society [00:24:00] that are trying to set up the value. Because I think society can always recontextualize which groups have more power and which groups have less power.

Simone: I mean, for example, if you

Malcolm: look at our society right now, where they pretend like LGBT people are like disempowered, yet they're literally having giant parades that are supported by both the government and businesses through the center of literally every center of power in our society today.

Malcolm: That is not a disenfranchised group. That's

Simone: we're similarly like anti Semitism seeing a bump because people are like, Oh, well, did the Jews

Malcolm: have enough power? Well, and that's what the Nazis did. When the Nazis were anti Semitic, when the anti Semitism, they were saying it's because the Jews control everything and they're using that to hurt us.

Malcolm: Yeah. Whenever a group tries to hurt another group, they always pretend like they're in positions of power to pull one over on the dumb people who are like, I want to hurt. Okay. So, so

Simone: acknowledged that there are limitations to that, but what, what are other logically try

Malcolm: to pray my kids because this value set, but hold on, what I actually want to say is what I think non toxin femininity is, which I think [00:25:00] is very important, which is something that you embody, which I think non toxic femininity and, and really the beneficial type of femininity that I admire so much in you is I guess what I would call like workhorse femininity which is to say.

Malcolm: It's femininity where, yes, it is submissive, but the type of submissive it is Is productive, aggressive, and indomitable. That it is just going to a juggernaut plow through every obstacle in its path to reach its end state. And that is what glorifies it. That is what gives it value. So it is very masculine in that it is aggressive towards the problems in its lifestyle.

Malcolm: But it's, it's, it's very feminine in that it is undertaking. The responsibilities for the family. And that's what I feel you do for us. You are always there to carry all of our burdens. And you are always [00:26:00] asking me every day, what, what is the thing that you like dread most this day? And how can I take that from you?

Malcolm: And I think that this is where toxic or non toxic masculinity and femininity pair, it's like a yin and yang where this non toxic femininity is. How can I take from you the things that are bothering you? And with masculinity, it's how can I protect you from the things that are bothering you? So it's

Simone: nurturing and protecting.

Malcolm: Well, it's, it's, it's carrying the cart versus... Thinking ahead and removing the, the blocks in the road. But

Simone: yeah, interesting. Any other elements of benevolent masculinity that you would like to cultivate in our kids?

Malcolm: Well, no, I mean, I think the biggest thing is to remember that confidence in masculinity, the antithesis of them is feeling the need to constantly show your dominance over others.[00:27:00]

Simone: That dominance is something that you show, don't tell. You,

Malcolm: you show through your competence and success in the real world and initiative, the things you need from other people, like validation and stuff like that. But if you're constantly out there signaling your need for validation, signaling your need for other people to see you as dominant and above them, then one, you are not dominant.

Malcolm: And two, you are the very weakest, most pathetic and most disposable kind of male.

Simone: So long story short. Benevolent dominance or benevolent masculinity is, is confidence initiative and problem solving and benevolent actionable success, actionable success. And, and well, I guess benevolent femininity is, is, is actual utility.

Simone: Actual yeah. Utility

Malcolm: utility. Yeah, those are what the two things are interesting, a woman who is great at being a woman was in this [00:28:00] traditional context that I think you really embody is a woman who is useful to her family, a man who is good at being a man is a man who is successful and brings his family resources and protection and people look at this and they say, well, you can't say that because not every man can live up to that and not every

Simone: woman, I think, yeah, that's, that's really interesting, right?

Simone: That when people talk about masculinity on online, they're really just talking about it. The whole rainbow of performative signals and they're not just like. Oh, actually just be successful because that's really hard. Just there's all these diets online of like how to lose weight, but like actually just stop eating so much.

Simone: Yeah. You

Malcolm: stop eating so much. You disgusting turd .

Simone: Just be successful. But yeah, but you sound like your mom, like just make more money. Just make more money. Duh, Malcolm,

Malcolm: you've been successful. I love you, Sanon, and I have loved this video. This was so fun because you are my ideal feminine.

Malcolm: You, to me, are what I aspire that [00:29:00] all of my daughters are like. There's this country song I think Liz said something, Grow Up To Be A Lady or whatever, and it's about a guy hoping that his daughter, learns the perfect patience of his wife and everything like that, and, and that's the way I feel about you.

Malcolm: I, I really hope that all of our kids... Especially our daughters learn what it is to be feminine from you because you are such an inspiration to me. And, and while my position vis a vis my gender has put me in a position of dominance over you, I respect that. I think that your level of perfection as to who you are is much higher than my level of perfection and it humbles me and it gives me a higher state to aspire to, to be worthy of having a wife

Simone: like you.

Simone: Well, I very much believe that. People become the person that their partners create. And you're the kind of person who instills dedication and, and [00:30:00] hard work because you're worth it because you're that inspiring. And I'm so glad to have met you. You're. This like fictional hero that I didn't even have the creativity to imagine would exist.

Simone: It somehow did. And somehow you chose to choose and live your life with me. So thanks for that. I'm glad things are working out. Please don't die. And I love you very

Malcolm: much. I love you too.

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