a long time ago in a discussion of non-toxic masculinity, a podcaster i was listening to said that he felt positively masculine when he (anecdote simplified) noticed that his friend looked hungry and made sure he had a sandwich. and that's lived in my head since because there's, like, a lot to unpack there, right?
[n.b. in the rest of the post read "traditionally designated as" before "masculine" or "feminine"]
feeding the family is certainly a masculine virtue, but only in the sense of providing money or labor that allows food to be made. noticing that people need food and providing specific food items is strongly feminine. so already we're at a place where the thing that makes the speaker feel specifically masculine is something that's most commonly a feminine trait.
and then there's the really obvious thing, which is that this is something that in no way needs to be gendered: this is an act that makes the speaker feel like a good friend. the goal is, of course, to define a positive masculinity against the posited aggressive, violent "true" masculinity of the right; but it highlights the impossibility of defining virtues as specifically masculine or feminine. if something is virtuous (watching out for a friend's well-being), then it is virtuous for everyone. the artificiality of the constructs "masculine" and "feminine" is made crystal clear by the fact that, in attempting to outline a specific masculine virtue, the speaker immediately chooses one that has historically been feminine.
