Masculinity and Femininity: The Differences Are Not Arbitrary “Social Constructs”

Following is a repost from August 8, 2018. The issue today needs to be restated.

 

Masculinity and femininity are emotional styles that express our sexual self-confidence as a male or female person in relation to the opposite sex.*

They are psychological achievements that derive from our different anatomies and physiologies. Deficiencies in masculinity and femininity, that is, diminished confidence in oneself as a male or female person, are signs of an arrested development.

At birth, our minds are tabula rasa, which means our minds have no cognitive content. At birth, we begin processing the world we live in, which produces an initial cognitive content. As we grow, especially when we begin to talk, cognitive processing escalates.

Our character and personality, in other words, are self-created; genes and environment can influence us, but they do not create us (Applying Principles, pp. 315-18). How well we cognitively process the world in which we live, that is, how objective and rational are the conclusions we draw, determines how psychologically healthy we will be in adulthood.

How well we process the world depends, in large part, on how well we have been taught by our parents and teachers about psychology, especially about how to introspect our developing psychologies to catch and correct errors in the processing.

Throughout history, and especially in today’s culture, the answer to the question “How well have we been taught?” must be: “not very well, if at all.” Thus, most of us reach adulthood with mental inhibitions, that is, deficiencies in self-esteem, often expressed as anxiety and defensive habits (defense mechanisms) to cope with the anxiety, for example, depression, obsessions, compulsions, projection, rationalization, hostility, and so on.

In today’s culture, consequently, most of us reach adulthood with arrested development in many areas of our psychologies, in varying degrees, not necessarily extreme. An arrested development, nonetheless, combined with mistaken ideas in the culture, may lead us to conclude that we are controlled by genes and environment.

To be sure, environment influences us in both helpful and hurtful ways, but we remain the ones who must process the events of the environment, draw conclusions about ourselves in relation to them, then act to deal with the situations.

This applies to the development of our masculinity and femininity. Thus, depending on our upbringing and schooling, we may conclude that masculinity means to be a “macho man,” with big biceps, and that femininity means to be a “clinging vine” or a fashion model.

Behavioral manifestations can and do express our masculinity and femininity, but they do not define them.

The essence of masculinity and femininity, according to psychologist Nathaniel Branden, derives from our respective sexual roles in a heterosexual relationship, and that, in turn, derives from our respective anatomies and physiologies. Men, says Branden, in addition to the obvious sexual differences, are bigger and stronger—they have stronger upper-body muscle, while women have broader hips. Geneticists, indeed, say there are over 6500 genetic expressions that differentiate men from women, and the differences begin in the womb. “Society” has nothing to say about these differences.

In the romantic-sexual relationship (and only in the romantic-sexual relationship), Branden goes on to say that the man is more active and dominant. “He has the greater measure of control over his own pleasure and that of his partner; it is he who penetrates and the woman who is penetrated (with everything this entails, physically and psychologically” (The Psychology of Self-Esteem, p. 206).

Healthy—fearless and guiltless—self-assertiveness, strength, and self-confidence, says Branden, are desirable in both men and women. Pride in oneself and one’s achievements and admiration of one’s partner are prerequisite to a healthy romantic-sexual relationship.

The difference is that the man feels his masculinity as romantic initiator and, more generally, as protector of the woman, while the woman feels her femininity as challenger and responder.**

To put this difference in the vernacular, the man’s job is to make the woman feel “real good.” In this process, the man also feels, or should also feel, if psychologically healthy, “real good” in performing the role. The woman’s job is to feel sufficiently free and confident to accept and experience the man’s offer of total trust and security, not to mention the pleasure he is giving her (and the reciprocal pleasure she gives him).

The romantic-sexual act of intercourse between a man and a woman truly in love becomes a feeling of total integration, an experience of being one, a union. Branden describes this as “the most intense union” and highest form of pleasure available to human beings (p. 136).

Behavioral manifestations of a confident masculinity and femininity become highly desirable, for example, to “look nice” for the opposite sex, and for men to hold the door open for a woman and for the woman to look up to and admire the man by saying “thank you.”***

Size of biceps, length of hair, and whether or not a man or a woman wears a skirt or pants do not define masculinity and femininity. These are just socially arbitrary conventions.

It is not unfeminine for a woman to run a railroad (as does Dagny Taggart in Atlas Shrugged), nor is it unmasculine for a man to wear tight pants and excel as a world-class ballet dancer (as did Mikhail Baryshnikov).

Masculinity and femininity are objective, reality-based psychological achievements. An arrested development means self-doubt about our sex in relation to the opposite. A young man scared to death to talk to girls, let alone ask one for a date, is one example. A young woman who is afraid to respond to a young man’s rational advances, a man the young woman might actually admire, is another.

The objective, reality-based meaning of masculinity and femininity raises a question that will have to be deferred to another post. Is same-sex attraction and behavior psychologically healthy? [Posted September 7, 2018] I immediately hasten to add that such attraction or behavior is not in any way immoral or a sin.

But is it healthy?


* “Sexual self-confidence” is the term used by psychologist Edith Packer (Lectures on Psychology, chap. 6, section 2). Other psychologists have used the words “gender esteem,” an interesting narrowing of the broader “self-esteem.”

** Branden uses the terms “romantic dominance” and “romantic surrender,” but by using the above concepts I am trying to avoid the older, historical connotations of knights in shining armor and damsels in distress. “Initiator,” “challenger,” and “responder” are words used by Branden.

*** Tradition says a man walking on the outside of the woman, nearer to the street, originated in the days of chamber pots being emptied into the roadway. The man, as a gentleman, eagerly sought to protect his lady. Today, it is simply a pleasant gesture for the man to perform—and for the lady to accept.

The Two Senses of Self-Esteem and Pride—Moral and Psychological

Self-esteem and pride, respectively, are a moral value and virtue. Both rest on the more fundamental attributes of psychological self-esteem and pride.
 
The two kinds, moral and psychological, interact to produce the degree of self-respect or self-worth that we hold about ourselves.*
 
Self-esteem in the moral sense means holding one’s self as one’s own highest value, which means never sacrificing to others or others to oneself. The virtue of pride is the action of living up to one’s own moral values, which includes being true even to one’s non-moral, rational values, living for the sake of our own happiness.**
 
Moral values are what we seek to acquire and maintain to support our lives as a being that possesses the capacity to reason. Virtues are the acts or practice of acquiring and maintaining those values.
 
Ayn Rand describes pride as “moral ambitiousness,” always doing what one judges to be right. This means holding, and always acting on, the more fundamental moral values (and corresponding virtues) of reason, independence, honesty, integrity, courage, justice, and productiveness.
 
For this reason, Aristotle calls pride the “crown of the virtues”—the climax or point of culmination, so to speak, of morality.
 
Self-esteem and pride are required to uphold and practice a rational egoism that promotes and exhibits one’s self-interest and joy in life—without harming oneself or others.
 
However, neither self-esteem nor pride in the moral sense can be achieved or maintained without a store of psychological self-esteem and pride.
 
As I wrote in Independent Judgment and Introspection (pp. 95-96), self-esteem in the psychological sense:

is the degree of confidence or certainty we have in ourselves as a valuable person and as someone competent to correctly and rationally choose values and actions to make us happy in life. The two interacting and reinforcing components of self-esteem are worthiness and efficacy. Both are mental, that is, psychological, not existential or physical as in our high or low competence in changing a tire, though existential competencies derive from and are influenced by the mental ones.

Psychological self-esteem is our conviction of worthiness and mental competence to live life to the fullest. Pride in the psychological sense is an emotion, the emotional consequence and expression of self-esteem.
 
Pretending to or hoping to be worthy and competent, along with protestations that “I am a proud person” or “boy, I’m great,” are not genuine. They are the defensive result of psychological problems and conflicts, making the moral counterparts more difficult to achieve and practice.
 
Genuine self-esteem and pride produce a “quiet confidence,” as psychologist Edith Packer (p. 230) says, and a feeling that “I am fit for life.”
 
The development of psychological self-esteem begins in childhood and requires, for the worthiness component, an unconditional love from parents and other adults around the child. For cognitive competency, the child needs to be taught what is necessary to use his or her mind properly, which in particular means an unconditional commitment to reason and facts, along with methods of identifying the nature and causes of his or her emotions.
 
A child and, later, adult who has been given strong doses of love in childhood will conclude “I am loved and am capable of being loved by others because I am confident in and reliant on myself.” The child who feels competent concludes “I can and do use my mind well to guide me throughout life.”
 
As psychologist Nathaniel Branden (p. 130) points out, self-esteem and pride in both senses of the words often begin at the same time early in life—crawling, walking, and banging a spoon on the table, for example, can produce an emotion of the efficacy of psychological self-esteem combined with the virtue of moral pride.
 
Unfortunately, most of us were not taught much of anything about our psychologies. Thus, the psychological problems we suffer in childhood arise from errors in thinking about ourselves, other people, and the world in general—Edith Packer’s mistaken core evaluations (chap. 1). These errors not only undercut developing self-esteem in the psychological sense, but they also confound our understanding and practice of the moral concepts.
 
A weak worthiness or confidence component of self-esteem—“I’m no good and the world is out to get me”—for example, may affect the adult’s practice of integrity and courage. A weak mental competence—"I’m so stupid I can’t do anything right”—may affect the adult’s independence, sense of justice, and pursuit of a productive career.
 
Mistakes in morality due to the influence of our psychologies, it must be emphasized, do not necessarily deserve condemnation, as long as our fears and failures do not cause harm to others. This is called an error in knowledge, not a breach of morality.
 
The difference in briefest essence of the two meanings of self-esteem and pride are as follows. In the moral sense: I am good (my own highest value) and I do good (always doing what I know to be right). In the psychological sense: I have confidence in myself as good and worthy and can think and do things well to make me happy, with the resulting pleasure in accomplishment.***
 
The worthiness component of psychological self-esteem gives us confidence essentially to do whatever we choose to do and is a direct connection to moral self-esteem. The pleasure of psychological pride feeds into the desire for “moral ambitiousness.”
 
 
* It is unfortunate and sometimes confusing, though not uncommon, that the English language uses the same word for essentially different referents. That the moral and psychological interact with each other only makes clarification of the present terms more challenging. A brief discussion of the moral and psychological meanings of self-esteem and pride can be found in Branden (pp. 298-99).
 
** Non-moral, rational values are optional in the sense that they do not have to be accepted and practiced by everyone in order to have a good character. They might be universal for our physical well-being, such as the generic value of food, but if we specify vanilla ice cream, then that value is clearly not one that everyone has to accept. This optional nature of non-moral values can also apply to choice of career, romantic partner, or the means of building a bridge, though in some cases universal moral values may be relevant. See my discussion here.
 
*** Criminal personalities, on the other hand, according to Stanton Samenow (chap. 3), think of themselves as both worthless (“I am a zero, a nothing”) and evil, but “If I thought of myself as evil,” said one offender, “I couldn’t live.” Criminals, thus, are masters at rationalization to prevent themselves from being aware of their inner selves.

Masculinity and Femininity: The Differences Are Not Arbitrary “Social Constructs”

Masculinity and femininity are emotional styles that express our sexual self-confidence as a male or female person in relation to the opposite sex.*

They are psychological achievements that derive from our different anatomies and physiologies. Deficiencies in masculinity and femininity, that is, diminished confidence in oneself as a male or female person, are signs of an arrested development.

At birth, our minds are tabula rasa, which means our minds have no cognitive content. At birth, we begin processing the world we live in, which produces an initial cognitive content. As we grow, especially when we begin to talk, cognitive processing escalates.

Our character and personality, in other words, are self-created; genes and environment can influence us, but they do not create us (Applying Principles, pp. 315-18). How well we cognitively process the world in which we live, that is, how objective and rational are the conclusions we draw, determines how psychologically healthy we will be in adulthood.

How well we process the world depends, in large part, on how well we have been taught by our parents and teachers about psychology, especially about how to introspect our developing psychologies to catch and correct errors in the processing.

Throughout history, and especially in today’s culture, the answer to the question “How well have we been taught?” must be: “not very well, if at all.” Thus, most of us reach adulthood with mental inhibitions, that is, deficiencies in self-esteem, often expressed as anxiety and defensive habits (defense mechanisms) to cope with the anxiety, for example, depression, obsessions, compulsions, projection, rationalization, hostility, and so on.

In today’s culture, consequently, most of us reach adulthood with arrested development in many areas of our psychologies, in varying degrees, not necessarily extreme. An arrested development, nonetheless, combined with mistaken ideas in the culture, may lead us to conclude that we are controlled by genes and environment.

To be sure, environment influences us in both helpful and hurtful ways, but we remain the ones who must process the events of the environment, draw conclusions about ourselves in relation to them, then act to deal with the situations.

This applies to the development of our masculinity and femininity. Thus, depending on our upbringing and schooling, we may conclude that masculinity means to be a “macho man,” with big biceps, and that femininity means to be a “clinging vine” or a fashion model.

Behavioral manifestations can and do express our masculinity and femininity, but they do not define them.

The essence of masculinity and femininity, according to psychologist Nathaniel Branden, derives from our respective sexual roles in a heterosexual relationship, and that, in turn, derives from our respective anatomies and physiologies. Men, says Branden, in addition to the obvious sexual differences, are bigger and stronger—they have stronger upper-body muscle, while women have broader hips. Geneticists, indeed, say there are over 6500 genetic expressions that differentiate men from women, and the differences begin in the womb. “Society” has nothing to say about these differences.

In the romantic-sexual relationship (and only in the romantic-sexual relationship), Branden goes on to say that the man is more active and dominant. “He has the greater measure of control over his own pleasure and that of his partner; it is he who penetrates and the woman who is penetrated (with everything this entails, physically and psychologically” (The Psychology of Self-Esteem, p. 206).

Healthy—fearless and guiltless—self-assertiveness, strength, and self-confidence, says Branden, are desirable in both men and women. Pride in oneself and one’s achievements and admiration of one’s partner are prerequisite to a healthy romantic-sexual relationship.

The difference is that the man feels his masculinity as romantic initiator and, more generally, as protector of the woman, while the woman feels her femininity as challenger and responder.**

To put this difference in the vernacular, the man’s job is to make the woman feel “real good.” In this process, the man also feels, or should also feel, if psychologically healthy, “real good” in performing the role. The woman’s job is to feel sufficiently free and confident to accept and experience the man’s offer of total trust and security, not to mention the pleasure he is giving her (and the reciprocal pleasure she gives him).

The romantic-sexual act of intercourse between a man and a woman truly in love becomes a feeling of total integration, an experience of being one, a union. Branden describes this as “the most intense union” and highest form of pleasure available to human beings (p. 136).

Behavioral manifestations of a confident masculinity and femininity become highly desirable, for example, to “look nice” for the opposite sex, and for men to hold the door open for a woman and for the woman to look up to and admire the man by saying “thank you.”***

Size of biceps, length of hair, and whether or not a man or a woman wears a skirt or pants do not define masculinity and femininity. These are just socially arbitrary conventions.

It is not unfeminine for a woman to run a railroad (as does Dagny Taggart in Atlas Shrugged), nor is it unmasculine for a man to wear tight pants and excel as a world-class ballet dancer (as did Mikhail Baryshnikov).

Masculinity and femininity are objective, reality-based psychological achievements. An arrested development means self-doubt about our sex in relation to the opposite. A young man scared to death to talk to girls, let alone ask one for a date, is one example. A young woman who is afraid to respond to a young man’s rational advances, a man the young woman might actually admire, is another.

The objective, reality-based meaning of masculinity and femininity raises a question that will have to be deferred to another post. Is same-sex attraction and behavior psychologically healthy? I immediately hasten to add that such attraction or behavior is not in any way immoral or a sin.

But is it healthy?


* “Sexual self-confidence” is the term used by psychologist Edith Packer (Lectures on Psychology, chap. 6, section 2). Other psychologists have used the words “gender esteem,” an interesting narrowing of the broader “self-esteem.”

** Branden uses the terms “romantic dominance” and “romantic surrender,” but by using the above concepts I am trying to avoid the older, historical connotations of knights in shining armor and damsels in distress. “Initiator,” “challenger,” and “responder” are words used by Branden.

*** Tradition says a man walking on the outside of the woman, nearer to the street, originated in the days of chamber pots being emptied into the roadway. The man, as a gentleman, eagerly sought to protect his lady. Today, it is simply a pleasant gesture for the man to perform—and for the lady to accept.