Thank you Emily for such a great comment! As luck would have it, I browsed another Medium article prior to reading your comment in which the author posed the question, can we define masculinity without using femininity as a crutch? I’m paraphrasing but that article gave me quite a pause. His point was, why are we bothering with these constructs? They only seek to divide.

For example, your point and the other author’s article w.r.t. a common phrase that’s attribute to men is that they’re protective. In fact, I used that to describe my capital “M” masculinity above. The article and your comment gave me pause to think, aren’t women also protective? Why did I break the two apart and attribute one to men and the other women? I have no answer for that, except that’s what I was conditioned to do.

Ding ding ding!

I will need to ponder on this some more but I do see your argument as valid and salient. Have I inadvertently, and with flowery language, perpetuated the same patriarchy that I advocated to tear down?

Thank you for reading!