It is the capacity to protect and to sacrifice. Everything else is superficial bullshit. Boys clothes? Interest in bugs? Trolling randos on the Internet? Soopah Bowl? Liking tits, even? All bullshit.
Without the drive to act and protect, to be a worthy pillar for someone to stand on, you will forever be a child, forever a little cellophane bag carried by whatever wind chooses to pick it up, never with its own agency. Even worse, some branch in the form of a domineering partner or ideology will pick you up and you'll just end up stuck there, with a false sense of satisfaction, but your own potential unfulfilled.
As for femininity, it's not that different. I don't think I can comment as much on it apart from saying that kindness, nurturing and their own forms of sacrifice are among the things that make a woman and I find these things equal in importance to its masculine counterpart. In fact, precisely because I
can not be those things is why I find women uniquely precious as a man. In a way, they do complete me.
It is why I find it uniquely
disgusting when people mock and deride these concepts. It may be childish, ignorant but understandable to hear it from a teen, but for a woman who is probably significantly older than me it is especially gross, because in all those years you learned
nothing. It as an act against life and humanity itself, a pathetic attempt at corrupting others with your own stagnant filth.
I measure myself against the masculine ideal and the women in my life against the feminine. I know I will never truly achieve it and in many ways, I do have a long way to go, but it is a better way to grow than to merely compare myself to a specific person, especially one that happens to grind my gear at that time. It is the quickest way to surround myself with similar minded adult children and ensure that I'll never progress and become more capable.
