I don’t remember what I was watching or listening to that prompted me to think about this concept recently, but whatever it was, it hit something.

I think it’s easy to conceptualize a darkside of masculinity. It seems traditionally, at least in Western cultures, some stereotypical traits of a masculine man are strength, fearlessness, leadership, and aggression. It’s easy to conceptualize what those traits to the extremes would result in. We talk about it a lot actually. A physically abusive, violent, and controlling man is something that most people have seen examples of, if not in real life then, in media. This is the darkside of masculinity.

What about the darkside of feminity? What is an overly feminine woman? Would that even be dangerous?Let’s see. Stereotypical feminine traits include gentleness, supportiveness, emotional, kind, supporting, and nurturing, among others.

According to Dave Wallace, MS Psy, where a man is more likely to be “dominant, aggressive, or murderous”, women are more likely to be “neglectful, sociopathic or tortuous.”
Personally, I don’t if I would logically conclude that these are overly feminine traits. That’s not to dispute Wallace’s claim, my point is that it’s just not as obvious.

A scary thought to ponder is that although women are just prone to “evil” as men are, you can still find plenty of evidence that we have a general feeling that women are the nicer sex. We can easily recognize the potential evils of men such as murder, war, etc., and have made provisions to curtail those behaviors. I’m not so sure we have recognized and attempted to put into place those same obstacles for the evils of women.

If that is so, and women are just as likely to be evil as men, then there would be a good chance that there are many atrocities going unchecked in society.

In line with Dave Wallace’s thoughts, we might need to rely more heavily on women to identify and create protective measures against these elusive feminine transgressions.

Additional Reading

https://www.thefemininewoman.com/the-dark-side-of-femininity/
https://medium.com/@daveswallace/confronting-the-dark-side-of-femininity-f4fd66750e25