My BEM is 50(M), 31(F). At least, today it is - I have this problem where I don’t actually seem to have persistent personality traits (except low conscientiousness). My Myers-Briggs is all over the place.
I also feel like either the test is measuring something wrong or I’m misunderstanding categories here. All of the BEM femininity words amount to ’instinctively figuring out other peoples’ emotional needs and doing something about them, and also projecting that you’re the sort of person who will do that’: warm, tender, affectionate, eager to soothe hurt feelings, sensitive to needs of others…
…I care about other people in the aggregate but on a bad day (and this is one) it is damn near impossible to hold a functional model of them in my head. And I only have a comparative advantage in giving-of-emotional-support to rationalists and people who trust me personally so it’s not exactly a priority skillset.
It seems like properly performing masculinity should also require some capacity to model other people - like, people I know don’t talk about the femininity/masculinity distinction as if it’s ‘good theory-of-mind/bad theory-of-mind.’ But none of the masculinity-coded words seemed to require it: ‘willing to take a stand’, ‘defend my own beliefs’, ‘strong personality’, ‘aggressive’…. I guess maybe ‘leadership’ and ‘dominant’ imply social adeptness, but knowing what to say to get people to admire you is way easier and less draining than knowing what to say to do emotional support.
Also, none of the masculine traits seem bad at all, except ‘aggressive’. I am confused about whether toxic masculinity is just that one or whether some of the others are toxic in some way I’m not seeing.
We have the same femininity score! (Except I got 22(M), so apparently I’m inadequate at both gender roles.) I noticed the same thing when taking the test: that I ended up with a low score even though I think I fit femininity pretty well (and masculinity not at all) because I don’t do the ’instinctively figuring out other peoples’ emotional needs and doing something about them, and also projecting that you’re the sort of person who will do that’ thing.