Emerald

I base my perspective on the deep Feminine from first-hand experiences of the Feminine energy in my medicine journeys... and based on what I've learned in depth psychology around the Feminine principle. So, it's not as based in culture, as cultural conceptions of man-like-ness and woman-like-ness often deviate from the deeper understandings of these two polar subtle energies. So, when I'm speaking about Masculinity and Femininity... I'm not speaking about how a particular culture understands man-like-ness and woman-like-ness. I'm speaking about archetypes and subtle energies... that supersede yet inform human gender. But a woman can appear very visibly Feminine by adorning cultural signifiers of Femininity... but she can still be very disconnected from the deep Feminine. She can even look very Feminine and be very Masculine in her coping strategies. So, appearance cannot tell you how connected or disconnected a woman is to the Feminine. Though, men may use that as a litmus test for who they're interested in sleeping with... it just doesn't have a lot of bearing on how connected a woman is to the deep Feminine. You cannot get there by wearing the costumes of cultural Femininity.... or following the rules of cultural Femininity. You can only get there by descending into the depths and being dismembered, like the Goddess Inanna. But the entire point of patriarchy is to polarize into the Masculine and to control, shame, and excise the Feminine away from society in every way that's possible... and to bury it as deeply as possible. Patriarchy is an adaptation specifically for the purpose of defeating the Feminine... as the Feminine is nature itself. So, Mother Nature comes in with her disease, her pestilence, her droughts, her floods, her hurricanes, her barrenness, etc. Then, humanity polarizes into the Masculine to invent more and more Masculine technology and Masculine survival strategies to try to balance the powerful Feminine forces of nature with the (prior to the industrial revolution) less powerful Masculine force of human innovation. So, the Feminine has been maligned because of this millennia's-long battle with Mother Nature. And the microcosmic expression of that in society is for there to be tons of shame associated with the Feminine and being a woman... and to control women to tame and strip women of the Feminine sovereign power by controlling them and their bodies. And it's to make sure that the woman only expresses soft and gentile Springtime Femininity... but never winter, floods, hurricanes, droughts, or becomes ugly like the Death Mother (Fall and Winter Femininity) is want to do. The Feminine is very powerful... and there's much to fear in it. But since the Industrial Revolution, the Masculine polarization in our society has developed great technology and we have grown in power such that it is stronger than the Feminine power of nature... with our pollution, deforestation, exploitation, etc. And it is why we have things like climate change and mass extinctions. Before, when patriarchy first arose we were like a little boy having to fight a very cruel adult woman. But then, the Industrial Revolution precipitated a puberty in the Masculine-polarized humanity. So, now our society is like a very strong adult man beating up and exploiting a woman. That is our current relationship with the Feminine. So naturally, what happens as soon as the industrial revolution takes holds is that patriarchy starts to go through a catabolic phase... and Stage Green movements like Feminism and ecological movements arise to facilitate that catabolic phase. And through Feminism, it awakens the Masculine in women first, because you need the Masculine for having effectiveness to achieve things. And now, we have women starting to re-explore their relationship to the Divine Feminine with ideas like soft-life... which is a re-exploring the Feminine, the dark and light Feminine. And while it's not yet as deep as it can go (like in my Ayahuasca journeys), it's a good start to hooking up the Feminine core to the Masculine effectiveness in women. And that's how things can rebalance themselves between human society and Mother Nature. Before, the most effective thing was the patriarchal ethos, which is "Man against nature." But with the re-integration of the Feminine in women that comes after the integration of the Masculine in women, it opens up new avenues for there to be an integration of the Feminine within society and within our social institutions. So, women in traditional cultures have to repress their Masculine almost completely and the Feminine in every way but appearance and motherhood. And that's because patriarchal culture is about trying to control the powerful Feminine forces of nature... including the Feminine forces of nature in human women. In Stage Orange "girl boss" cultures, women get to reintegrate their Masculine power... after having almost all of their power stripped from them for thousands and thousands of years, since the beginning of agriculture. Then, that sets women up to have the freedom and Masculine power to "dig the deep Feminine out from where it's been buried." Most women (including myself) look to old symbols of traditional Femininity first to try to reconnect with the repressed Feminine. But then, that is recognized as just an image... and there are deeper things. In my first few years of being on a Feminine integration journey, I tried to fit myself into the box of cultural and traditional Femininity. And it was very confining and disempowering and it brought me into connection with tons of individual and collective wounds around having potentials squelched and being disempowered. So, after the first few years, I was able to find deeper paradigms for integrating what I experienced in my first awakening to the deep Feminine when I was 20. And I found it in Jungian perspectives. That has been the journey I've been on since I was initiated into it 16 years ago. And now, my conception of the Feminine has expanded to where I see the Feminine as my source of power... instead of as a source of constraint as it is within traditional conceptions of the Feminine which seeks to male-wash it and make it bright and sunny and maidenly. And Springtime Femininity is deeply worshipped in our society. We truly are doing unconscious Goddess worship all the time... and we try to connect to the Feminine only through the Springtime Feminine image. So, we become obsessed with it. But it's the starvation for the Goddess in all its many cycles and facets... but then stripping those other facets for an archetypal image of the innocuous Feminine that doesn't get any more serious than a sunny day on a stroll through the park.

You always bring this up. But the fact is that the vast majority of women are not interested in serial killers and wouldn't touch a serial killer with a 10-foot pole. But the reason why serial killers get that small percentage of women interested in is because 1. Some women are dysfunctional and are looking for some romanticized dysfunctional dynamic, and 2. Convicted serial killers are famous, and a sizable minority of women are fame chasers. So, a small number of crazy women deliberately go seeking some famous serial killer to be in a relationship with. But like 90%+ of women would have nothing to do with a serial killer in any circumstance. And of the 10 percent that could end up in such a relationship, even 90%+ of those would only be susceptible to a serial killer's advances because of low self-esteem and being easily manipulated by them. So, maybe like one woman in a hundred would go trying to consciously and deliberately spark up a relationship with a convicted serial killer... like a band groupie would. But even those crazy women are probably like, "I can change him and show him the light... and we will be transformed into a soft and gentle man through the power of my love!" (which is very delusional) At any rate, this is not reflective of what the vast majority of women are actually looking for in a man. And even women who get with moderately aggressive stony guys tend to see him as a fixer upper that she's going to heal and show him the light. It's a rescuer kink... and wanting to the be the healing catalyst.

When I came on her 8 years ago, it was what I was looking for. And there was a bit of that in the first year or so. But what really draws me here is a much more base-level drive... to get into intellectual sparring matches. I don't see this place as a space for deeper transformation, as that requires a softer container. I see it as an intellectual debate club where I can sharpen my sword and learn to fence better.

Perhaps to your perception as a man, that's true. Men tend to have a more relational and surface-level understanding of what Femininity is that mostly just serves the purposes of sexual reproduction. Most men tend to define Femininity simply as what they find sexually attractive about women... which tends to be along the lines of what I would call Springtime Femininity. But Springtime and Summertime are Masculine seasons. And Fall and Winter are the Feminine seasons. Youth is Masculine. Age is Feminine. So, Springtime Femininity it isn't very reflective of Femininity-proper... as the Feminine is dark and cyclical. Imagine the archetype of the wise old witch... who has witnessed all the cycles of the world and who alchemizes the negative into the positive. So, Springtime is the Feminine appearance with all the darkness and cyclicality washed out of it. And men who repress their own Feminine side can tend to relate to women as a static archetype of Springtime Femininity... which all women pass through for a short time. So, the type of Femininity you speak of is Masculnity-washed Femininity, which men who polarize into the Masculine and push away their Feminine side often feel is more palatable to interact with than the deep Feminine... as the deep Feminine is the negative polarity itself. This is why women who see their relationship to the Feminine only from a desire to attract men can end up in the adornments of traditional Femininity and culturally understood Femininity... but lack the power and depth of the actual connection to the Feminine power. And so much of the Feminine is very repulsive to a lot of men... as most men are trying really hard to extricate the Feminine from themselves. And if you want to connect to it as a woman, you have to accept that it will have both an attractive and repellent effect. You will attract those who are interested in connecting deeply... and repel those who fear the Feminine. So, what you're referring to isn't what I mean by Feminine. As I said in my post, you can feel the Feminine in the night and the trees and the grass. It doesn't have much to do with culturally understood signifiers of Femininity... at least not very much. So, we can differentiate between these concepts... there's the deep Feminine and there's the culturally Feminine. And cultural Femininity can certainly act as a coping strategy and a protective shield to deal with a patriarchal culture with stricter gender roles. But it also disconnects a woman from the deep well-spring of Feminine power.... AND her Masculine side as well. Maybe a woman might feel pressured to look a certain way to fit in. Or maybe a woman might feel pressured to keep her voice small or her behaviors dainty. But that isn't the real Feminine. There are some qualities in it that belong in the Feminine principle and others that belong in the Masculine principle. And in a patriarchal society with strict gender roles, it's even harder one women. So, they are required to fully fit into the box of traditional Femininity... which is also very disconnected from the deeper Feminine. So, while women existing in a more Stage Orange society causes women to push away the Feminine and adopt the Masculine... women in a Stage Blue society who don't necessarily have that freedom, must operate fully within the narrow box that's alotted to them. This means that they must strip themselves of their Masculine side AND the majority of their Feminine side.

I've been cracking away at it pretty substantially since I was 20. Hence, why I feel a bit of resistance to coming on here... as it's me doing what I was doing at age 10 in summer camp. I would subject myself to pain, only to prove myself more stoic to my male peers. And it was before puberty, and I would challenge them all to arm wrestling and win more often than losing. Like I was always trying to be tough and macho between age 8 and 11. I think it's because I was sensing intuitively that I was about to lose cherished identities around being physically strong... as guys were about to be pretty much universally stronger than me. (I'm also like 5'2", so that didn't help me.) And then, I "rebranded" at age 11... and that suddenly wasn't important to me anymore, seemingly. But I still carried a lot of internalized misogyny and resistance to femaleness and Femininity, underneath the surface. And there was plenty of anti-Feminine messaging in pop culture to reinforce it... where very attractive women were frequently scrutinized for being "fat" when they were stick-thin AND they were also made fun of for eating disorders pretty openly. And I was super misogynistic at age 10-11, in the 5th grade before my "rebrand"... like, I was talking like a Red Pill podcast guy without the sexual resentment component. It's uncanny sometimes to listen to those guys because I hear my 10 year old self. Like, I would set myself aside in a category that was neither male nor female (like I invented a non-binary identity for myself as a child in the year 1999 just so that I could be misogynistic and hate on girls/women and feel like an exception to my own biting hatred of femaleness and Femininity). And I needed to do that... or I would become conscious of the self-loathing I felt around being female. I was even semi-aware that I was in some kind of cognitive dissonance around it... but I would just come up with all kinds of reasons why I'm an exception to my judgments. And it came from a lot of internalized misogyny... where I absorbed from both the patriarchal undercurrents of society where femaleness and Femininity is always the butt of every joke and the well-intentioned, necessary, but problematic messaging of Second Wave Feminism's, "You can do anything a boy can do." (which automatically sets up Masculinity and maleness as superior to Femininity and femaleness... as no one was telling little boys that they could do anything a girl could do. Mind you, a very necessary message in itself.) I had also had started having issues with my mom... which is probably the biggest origin of that wound. Like, I recall hyper-valuing Femininity when I was a child in order to be like my mom... and I liked women and disliked men. And I had the sense that my parents were on opposing teams, and I wanted to be on team-mom, though I still liked my dad and tried to connect with him. I just hated being subjected to his manly hobbies. But then, at age 8, my mom suddenly flipped on me and got a lot meaner. And she ceased to be the parent I was most connected to... so I started to identify more with my father, who was my safer parent... albeit more distant and more self-oriented. Now, I don't think either of these hyper-Feminine or hyper-Masculine expressions are me. They've just been ways of trying to ally myself with one or the other of my parents in the face of feeling weaknesses in the foundation of my connection to them... first with a "girls team" mentality and next with a "boys team" mentality. And it was like I started trying to prove myself more Masculine... probably to try to impress my dad with my strength, stoicism, grit, and work ethic. And the only relatable female characters that were written during that time is "the girl who's still pretty... but not like the other girls because of her Masculine preferences." And the other female characters were either Feminine pretty bitches or Feminine pretty dumb bimbos. So, it was clear which character the audience was supposed to be rooting for, who was cool and good specifically because she was different than girls and not Feminine (but also incredibly Feminine in appearance and grace). So, as a teenager (still unconsciously holding onto a lot of internalized misogyny... but believing that I like everyone and conceptualizing of myself as a chilled out person) I sought to shape myself into a physically attractive young woman with Masculine preferences... and it was easy to do with my goth style at the time. And it's not to say that nothing in all of this is me. It's just mixed in with a bunch of filters and coping strategies. And I've seen my unfiltered self before in a mushroom journey where the mushrooms forced me to face with unconscious terror and made me sit with the terror for about an hour... and I eventually "popped through the bottom" of the terror and found this equanimous state. And I was able to finally speak as myself... and from my heart. And it's honestly so frustrating that I don't get to live and express as that all the time. But I keep chipping away at these blocks. The way I expressed in that time was very soft and calm with effortlessly authoritative... and totally unaffected by fear with all filters removed. It's mostly Feminine but not without integration of the Masculine. And I was just absorbing so much more information from the environment where I was sensitized to subtle energies because nothing rattled me emotionally... as I could allow all feelings. And it took away the need for all the filtering that I do... and not just for the reasons mentioned here. There's tons of filtering for a variety of different reasons. Also... I saw a being (the same being) twice in two separate medicine journeys of a soft and graceful alien-like Goddess figure possessing immense power and with sacred geometry decorating her skin all over her body like subtle delicate jewelry... but that jewelry was also subtle and swirling and moving through her ethereal skin. And I saw her as this Feminine being with the Masculine coursing through her like currents in the water... to where it was the Masculine was her subtle adornments, which increased her power and beauty. And her arms were my arms... and I could look down at my arms and see that it was me. And it doesn't resemble anything of society's gender roles... but it's very Feminine and somewhat Masculine in it's subtle animating qualities. It seemed to me during the journeys that this being is some other-dimensional aspect of myself. And in that mushroom journey, I feel like I got to express what that represents through my terrestrial form, but that has been blocked individually and collectively by society's multi-millennia-long polarization into the Masculine and repression of the Feminine.

At first, I genuinely thought you were trying to say you're a Mennonite (Amish).

It's not really taking this forum too seriously. It's just an average niche online forum. It's just that social spaces and even online cultures bring things out in people. That's just how people operate when interacting with real people. It's like if we were all in a room interacting and you had rented out that room for us to interact in. Then, I started sharing my feelings about socially interacting with others in the room and what it bings up in me. Then, you were like, "Guys! It's just a room I rented. Don't take the room too seriously. It's better that way." Can you see that it has nothing to do with the forum idea itself... and everything to do with the culture the people who interact on it create?

Just to be perfectly clear (in case there was any confusion), I get zero sexual gratification out of the dynamic that I described. It's the opposite actually... dominating someone is a turn-off for me.

@Natasha Tori Maru and I saying that your post was sexist isn't the "attack" you imagine it to be. It just was factually sexist and we stated that it matter-of-factly. And it was sexist because you were attributing the tendency to 'argue only to be correct' to women and the wiser desire to come to consensus in conflicts to men... when there's tons of that kind of behavior in men and women both. So, your post was for the purpose of framing men as superior to women in this way... and to feel like you're in the superior group complaining about the inferior group's tendencies. It would be like if an individual black person posted a personal shortcoming and being very open and honest about that shortcoming and you were like, "You see!... black people do (fill in the blank unwise thing) and white people do (fill in the blank wise thing). And it would be correct to call that out as racist because you're attributing a single person's shortcoming that they're sharing voluntarily to the entire group they come from in order to position you and your group as superior and to feel vindicated in that superiority. And it was important to call it out as sexist because you were so clearly transferring your feelings about either female family members or past female partners onto my post. But bear in mind, I only do this kind of behavior on this forum where I get to be a ram locking horns with other rams. I avoid conflict like the plague in real life with most people. And in romantic partnerships, I only argue for the sake of reconciliation. So, I only lock horns with people who are rams. And most people are not rams. So, I am generally very tolerant and laid back... and I try my best not to upset them. Hence why I look to this place as a sparring outlet where I really don't care much if I offend someone. It's why I needed to point out the sexism because you're missing the context that I'm communicating because you're projecting other women onto me. But Natasha and I pointing out the sexism wasn't an attack. It was just labeling something as what it is.

It's possible that it's resentment... at least partially I'm quite sure that it is. But there's also this rage element, where I get to spin my wheels and go into an anger frenzy and channel it into typing about intellect-heavy topics. I think it's about my anger having a place to go in general after being the identity of the unconditionally accepting person who never gets angry about things and never actively pushes back on anything. But I can definitely see major elements of my early childhood where I felt very resentful and disappointed. So, I'm sure that those feelings are somewhat in the mix. Edit: I see, you were replying to someone else. But it could be correct for me too.

Yes... I do think part of it is that I get some sadistic joy out of intellectually dismantling guys who have misogyny (which is rooted in a superiority/inferiority complex relative to women and the Feminine). On one hand, part of them genuinely believes they're superior to women and that Femininity is weak. And they get really arrogant about what they think they know better. (This is also kind of comical to watch people be so confidently wrong.... though frustrating as well.) But on the other hand, part of them genuinely believes that they are unworthy of women even given them the time of day... and see women as Goddesses on the pedestal. And they end up feeling resentful towards women for this reason. And this pattern lets me know that I have a considerable amount of power to agitate this type of person. So, if a guy steps to me with arrogance and resentment based in sexist paradigms... I am aware of the vulnerable roots of his misogyny... and I could absolutely choose to take a more compassionate stance. Like, I could be and have been the coach of this kind of guy, and really relate to him benevolently and in a perspective that transcends my own triggers. But in this context, it's for me as angry ordinary-person Emerald. And I can simply polarize in myself and crush him and his illusions of superiority... intellectually and within the bounds of my dueling rules. In real life, it's like I really don't want to upset people. It's a huge fear of mine to hurt someone's feelings. I walk on eggshells around everyone. But I don't care as much about upsetting a bunch of guys who are going to try to antagonize me for being a woman as it activates many of my vulnerabilities. So, I can go stomping around on the 'eggshells'... no problem.

Very much so. There's a lot of emotional bypassing here. And I can certainly see that using AI could exacerbate that, as the person using it may not even be engaging very much intellectually or emotionally in what they're speaking about. And I do think it's draining for that reason. Lots of arrogant posters who are trying their best to hide their vulnerabilities from themselves through superior grand-standing. And it just gives low vibes.

Thank you

That's actually very true in this pattern that I am describing. Because society is patriarchal, it values the Masculine over the Feminine... and men are given more respect than women are. And no one wants to be disrespected or devalued. So, from a young age, girls naturally start to internalize misogyny to extricate themselves from association with "those other girls" and adopt more Masculine coping strategies and preferences to get by in the world. And so, I have always been a Feminine plant growing in patriarchal soil. And in a difficult environment to thrive in that doesn't want you to thrive, one can develop a kind of resilience and anti-fragility. And around the time I was 8 years old, I really pushed away my Feminine side. And I didn't rediscover it until I was 20 in a medicine journey, where I became aware of my repressed Femininity and that the Feminine was in the grass and trees and night. And I recognized it as my preferred energy. And I spent the greater part of my 20s diving into my Feminine wounding and unpicking my patriarchal wiring (as I only valued Masculine-principled qualities in my teens and totally devalued Feminine principled qualities... but didn't know that I was doing that because I thought that Masculinity and Femininity were mere social constructs). And doing that work has enabled me to center myself more in my authentic Feminine power of inherent worthiness, empathy, and connection to the depths and hook it up to my Masculine intellect, discipline, and the many-fold skills that I acquired in my youth. I still have more to integrate of the Feminine. And there are some areas where I don't know how my Feminine and Masculine aspects integrate together. It's still a work in progress. But I see part of my work in this life as unearthing the long collectively repressed Feminine power... which society really beats out of both boys and girls, men and women, to the detriment of all. But I know better than to show my Feminine side in spaces that aren't conducive to it... like this space. I also don't show my Feminine side to men (or women) who haven't' integrated their Feminine side or have disparaging viewpoints about the Feminine. A good litmus test for whether a guy (or woman) isn't safe to show your Feminine side to is if they complain of women being too Masculine. If that is his experience of women, it means that women don't feel safe enough to be open and vulnerable in his presence... and that he very likely afflicted by some degree of misogyny. So, for my Feminine side, I find safer containers for it. But this is certainly not the container for it... as the culture of this place if very incompatible with Femininity itself. And it's the reason why so many men on this forum struggle to find female partners. So, I don't come here to share my Feminine side... I come here to show my Masculine side and to out-dick everyone because there's some intrigue about it. It's like an old mode from childhood. So, I've learned to adapt quite well within that patriarchal context. And I think that's why I like coming here. It's SUPER male dominated and most of the men are hyper-polarized into their Masculine side. So, it's a lot of guys who are struggling under weight of the patriarchal culture. And I know that I can usually best them in intellectual sparring matches if I'm working with both polarities and they're only working with one polarity. It's like boxing with someone who has one arm tied behind their back. So, while living in hyper-Masculine society is more challenging for women to thrive in in certain ways, there's a perk that women tend to be more integrated between their Masculine and Feminine side than men are.... and less likely to make themselves fragile by polarizing into extremes. That said, PLENTY of women do repress their Feminine side because of the patriarchal conditioning. So, until a woman becomes conscious of that, she will be significantly weakened... as she will see her greatest strengths as her weaknesses. But this kind of environment, causes a sizable percentage of men hyper-polarize into Masculinity and repress their Femininity at all costs... and it stunts them horribly with relationships and emotional literacy. So, even though women are struggling to ideally thrive in the hyper-Masculine soil of the culture... men often tend to be in a worse place because men still believe that the poison is the antidote and keep re-upping on the poison and continuing to polarize themselves and repress a very large part of themselves. And it has all these shame-based side-effects.

I'm just sharing how it feels and seems to me personally to interact on this forum. And the other person I was replying to had a similar perspective. There's honestly no real heat in that particular response, as I was not arguing but agreeing and commiserating with the other poster. I go into rage-mode only when I'm arguing. But I was reflecting a shared frustration that I have with the culture here (apropos of the comments the other poster made about a lack of emotional intelligence on here)... but also why it meets a need.

If that's your intention for the culture on here, it honestly isn't working, and it wouldn't even be good if it did theoretically work. This forum is an online social community that caters to a niche audience of people who value complex intellectual topics... and/or simply believe they can fix themselves and resolve insecurities and shame by understanding those complex intellectual topics. And just like other online or in-person communities it's based on meeting social needs... in this case trying to use esteem needs to meet connection needs with a shield up that prevents those connection needs from being met. And it's a social group with an anti-social mask. So, it's a social echo chamber (like all other online forums are), dressed up as a space for 'people of superior and non-plebeian values who are working on themselves to transcend basic human needs to work to differentiate themselves from the plebeian masses.' But it's all basic social dynamics and seeking for esteem within a social hierarchy... as it's a very hierarchical space. And people come here to socialize about nerdy topics... and to feel competent and esteemed in a space that values these topics when most people don't.

True.

He gives me Stage Orange vibes with a smattering of Stage Green when I hear him speak. Anyone with a intellectual paradigm that's in resistance to death is probably operative from Tier One... even if it's dressed up a different way. To quote the timeless wisdom of the murderous cult leader woman from the movie Midsommar, "Before it can spoil. It does no good dying, lashing back at the inevitable. It corrupts the spirit."

Any forum (or social group) in general is going to have a specific culture. And it just so happens that the culture here gives space for a repressed/suppressed part of myself... and it meets a need. But I also just find the culture here draining at the same time. So, yes... it's just a forum like any other forum. But the fact of the matter is that the culture of a social group/forum will have specific effects on specific people. So, it isn't wise to simply hand-wave it off as "you guys take this place a bit too seriously"... as we're literally instinctually wired to take social spaces seriously.

Hey! Don't use me vulnerably sharing a me-specific-problem as an excuse to be sexist to women and vent about your exes or female family members. Just look around this forum and you'll find the tendency to want to compete to be "the right one" all over the place... and this is a very male-dominated space.

Yes, I think so. I've realized recently that my number one priority, at this juncture in time must be to fix my "energy leaks", where I'm wasting a bunch of energy. My cup is always running on empty because my tendency is to always be spinning my wheels and trying in some way. And going on here... or going on the internet in general (which is rife with triggers to my spinning and trying) is part of that. But in trying to block up this energetic leak, I realize the barrier to that is that this energetic leak (while draining and working in opposition to my goal of filling up my energetic cup) is meeting a need because it's a place where angry Emerald can actually exist. So, it's like this part of me is sabotaging my desires to plug these leaks, as it doesn't have any other outlet for that need. It's especially problematic because there's an exhausted part of myself that needs privacy with my anger expressions... but also needs to feel like I'm socializing.

I think interacting on the forum on and off over the past 8-9 years has given me something akin to that... though it's a mixed bag.

I totally agree with this and relate to this 100%. That's why this place is such a mixed bag for me. On one hand, I get to scrap around in intellectual dick-measuring contests where I get to duke it out (and win on my own conception of what merit is) in battles of intellect with a bunch of nerdy combative guys who I don't mind upsetting or offending because they are also trying to do the same thing to me... as they try to create a mask of intellectual superiority and grandstand in unearned ways. And I also get to try to help these guys with their insecurities and social issues by "shouting" reason into the void at them. And this gives me some repeat pattern I can engage with around... 1. Feeling helpful, 2. Sharpening my intellectual sword, and 3. Channeling my anger to defeat the opponent in an intellectual duel with that intellectual sword. It's like I get to feel effective and ineffective at the same time... and it brings up ineffective anger that spirals into rage. And I channel that rage energy through intellect. So, it give a place for my rage to exist and feel empowered in. But this place has pretty low vibes because of the way Leo has cultivated the culture here with his quippy one-liners and his tendency to grand-stand and frame himself as superior and operating above the plebeian masses... and views social isolation as an indication of maturity instead of immaturity. And because he acts as a role model and as the vibe-setter within this culture, there are lots of young guys who are attracted here and start operating in that same way... only often without the talent for understanding complex intellectual concepts that Leo genuinely possesses. And the forum, over the years, has become a magnet to guys with the same vulnerabilities as Leo and who want to create armor against those vulnerabilities in a similar way to how Leo does. And it's about creating all these intellectual masks of strength... and avoiding showing any weakness. Even for me, I find it very difficult to show vulnerability in this space, even though it's one of my main MOs in other contexts. So, it's not a culture that you can really open up to deeper transformative work within because of the inter-male dominance competition style on her. And It often feels like I'm on the forum with a bunch of guys who have the emotional and social maturity of a sheltered middle school boy... but who believe themselves to have transcended beyond the need for human connection. That's like half of the guys on here... and the things they struggle with are because of social and emotional bottlenecks leading to late-blooming and stunting. But they feel too superior about having these issues because the idea of being the loner/hermit is romanticized.

It happens often that men who are very serious are quite stunted and have a repressive relationship with their own humanity. Perhaps the expectation is to transcend one's humanity and to become the romanticized archetype of the strict stoic Zen master. But the actual results fall somewhere between socially isolated bubble guy and Ebenezer Scrooge. It's one of those divergences between how one perceives themselves, how others perceive them, and how they actually are.

That's a really nice way to summarize it. The opposite polarity attracts. And this is why men are always trying to polarize into Masculinity to be more attractive to women. But the commonality is what creates connection, which is what women really value in a relationship. And that's a major part of the attraction... being able to connect with someone of the opposite polarity. So, if a man tries to polarize into the Masculine without integrating the Feminine... he becomes unattractive because of the detachment and inability to connect.