I'm female and I'm courageous and an independent thinker. The question is always: what does it take to prove it, to those who think those traits mean "masculinity" and therefore I can't possibly have them.
“The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready is he to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.” - Eric Hoffer The True Believer
Claims about masculinity are often defined in opposition to ideas about femininity.
The claim that woman cannot be courageous or independent thinkers is wrong.
And as for societal ideals, specifically in response to a post showing that the concept of being a leader through aggression is also wrong.
Aggression is often a response to fear.
Aggression is a secondary emotion, typically a response to pain or fear.
I personally view aggressive behavior and the attempt to gain status through aggression as a reason to pity someone far more than it ever makes me respect them.
If aggression is your primary method of gaining status you are not courageous, you are weak and lashing out.
I pity those people because they tend to undervalued their own merits and instead of having the courage to lead by example or to be confident in their positions they have to resort to methods ranging from name calling to physical violence.
A true leader doesn't need to resort to unrestrained fear based responses to gain or maintain status.
By definition those who have to resort to aggression are weak and full of self doubt.
Actions based on fear are not the actions of confident individuals but the actions of cowards resorting to letting fear drive their lives.
Which is exactly why the original studies found 'alpha' behaviors in stressed populations.
If you read the above papers you will find that in wolves, submission for the betterment of the pack takes much more courage than aggression.
Incels tend to like the 'alpha' concept because it is justification for not stepping up and accepting that they have caused many of their own problems.
It is only viewed as 'courage' to other individuals with low self worth.
If you truly believe that aggression is courageous I sincerely suggest you work on looking at the examples of truly courageous people and not seeking the approval of low esteem individuals who make other low self esteem individuals feel better by idealizing fear based outbursts.
Bullies are pitiful creatures who have to resort victimizing others to feel better about themselves.
Typically people who yield to bullies don't respect them and those who aren't filled with self doubt simply pity them.
Aggression for personal gain is a sign of weakness and doesn't relate to the concepts you mentioned.
Users flagged it. We can only guess why users flag things. In this case I think they probably just thought your comment was flamebait—any time a comment is (a) too short to contain much information and (b) the topic is controversial, you're going to get that interpretation. I've turned off the flags now.
While I have you, would you mind reviewing the site guidelines at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html? Among other things, they ask you not to post questions like this in the threads, but rather to ask us at hn@ycombinator.com. There are a bunch of reasons for that; one is that we're only likely to see your question if you email it to us; and another is that posts like this take discussions off topic.
