When guys have no sense of who they are, except in relation to how they compare to other men (other people), that is harmful and destructive - and it's also a key feature of our current culture of masculinity. Nothing wrong with competition, per say, but when absolutely everything about life teaches you to not only constantly compare yourself to others but to do whatever you have to in order to "emerge victorious" then yeah, that is toxic, and problematic - for society but also for men themselves.
https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/the-lethal-epidemic-megasahd/
It creates isolation and loneliness for men - something that is killing them in droves - because you can't ever truly be close to or trust anyone under those circumstances if they are always your competition. And guys like you who think that allowing men to act like full human beings is "feminizing" them are driving this dynamic. Men need to feel their emotions - not for women - but for the men themselves.
You said, "How many strong, competent, successful men engage in that kind of poor behavior? None...." That's just a joke!! Do you pay attention to the news, I mean like at all? In this culture, ruthlessness reads like leadership, and domination of others (including through sexual violence) is a part of how you position yourself to be looked up to and taken seriously. It's how you read as a "real man." It's how fucking Trump got himself elected. An American is sexually assaulted every 73 seconds, and most of them are women and children. Yes, women do some of that, but overwhelmingly it's perpetrated by men. This is a function of living in a domination-based culture.
We can absolutely agree that we need good men but the best characteristics of masculinity are not domination of others, constant comparison and competition with everyone around you, taking your sense of self from how you rank against others, extreme self-reliance to the point of isolation, never owning or interfacing with any difficult emotions other than anger - in other words the culture we have right now, a culture that is literally killing men. We need the exact opposite of that in order to have a healthy culture of masculinity.
The issue isn't men, it's the current culture of masculinity in this country (something that is not innate, because it's not universal - in some other places around the world it's quite different). And in the US that culture of masculinity is firmly seated in a dominance-based social hierarchy (which is essentially what patriarchy is and means - not just a historical power imbalance between men and women).
That culture is bad for women, bad for society, but most of all, it's bad for men.
