Blood & Ink: Real Toxic Masculinity

I hesitated to publish this. I opened a new doc and started writing something else. Perhaps that is symptomatic of the essence of this piece. So here we are, leaning in.

We’ve got toxic masculinity backward…

For the better part of a decade, the vein of the cultural conversation has painted the traits of traditional masculinity as “toxic”.

That the ‘patriarchy’ (the Principle of Paternal Structuring) is somehow destructive to society, instead of the very force that built it. I’ll save that point for another exploration.

Strength, leadership, courage, honour, competition, spartan simplicity, Stoicism (big and little S), and when the time calls for it… brutality. And indeed, there are times when the brutality of men is called for. Just wait until a malicious attacker invades your home.

As inevitably happens when a small boy is told that he is inherently bad and morally perverse, he rejects these parts of himself, and a reactionary swing to the opposite pole happens.

If you take toxic in a literal sense—something corrosive and destructive to self and society—it is obvious that real toxic masculinity is the Frankenstein that is born when men reject their nature.

Real toxic masculinity is effeminate, weak, and noncommittal men.

Cowardly, directionless, hedonistic, overly sensitive, misogynistic men are the destructive force.

Can you go ‘too far’ along the hyper-masculine side of the spectrum? Of course. You enter the ‘Brute’, ‘Mindless Soldier’, ‘Barbarian’, ‘Dictator’, and ‘Psychopath’ archetypes. Not good.

Both sides of the spectrum lack the same things.

• Commitment to a higher power.
• A moral code of conduct.
• Deep meaning and fierce compassion.

One just has the power and agency to make shit happen and is thus vilified.

But in overcompensating against the potential emergence of these fringe personalities, you wipe out the center of Good Men.

What you’re left with is a perverse hydra. A failed socio-biological experiment that is neither Good Man nor Good Woman. An ungodly creature, narcissistically self-absorbed in momentary whims.

Look around, what do you see?

• Boys who collect and trade Pokemon cards well into their 40’s.
• Overcompensating, vapid, caricatured role models like the Tate’s.
• Staggering increases in gambling, addiction, crypto casinos, and failed marriages.
• Underfucked, underloved, and underrespected women.
• Nice Guys without a spine to say no, with no strength or ability to protect their loved ones.
• Corrupt and morally bankrupt leaders who produce nothing and parasitically suck the productive vitality out of society. Selling out future prosperity for annual bonuses.
• Men of high IQ and Zero Action.
• Sexual impotency, cherry-flavoured vapes, attention spans of gnats.
• Men, who in their final and most depraved moments of self-abandonment, physically and psychologically castrate themselves.

The list goes on…

I fiercely believe in the idea that you should be free to do what you want. I would die defending that right for anyone on this Good Earth.

But at the same time, come on man! Do you not want something better?

Masculinity is not toxic. It is precisely the opposite: weak men, who have abandoned their masculinity, are toxic.

• Know who you are and know what you want.
• Have an aim in your life and pursue goals toward it.
• Get your life in proper order.
• Abide by a personal code.
• Be the protector and provider for your territory.
• Set the frame for your family.
• Take the lead.
• Accept total responsibility.
• Create a surplus that benefits others, in mind body and spirit.

Honourable masculinity (alongside and in partnership with honourable femininity), built civilization.

The masculine spirit is responsible for the structure of modern civilization. The feminine spirit for the beauty and heart of it. The perverse masculine spirit is also responsible for most of the devastation of modern and historical society.

The choice, as always, is yours.

Be a man. Then seek to be a good one.

We need you in the game and at your best. Do not reject who you are.

Love and power,
EB.