Recently, one of the billionaires who own the technical empires to which we are all subject — a situation I’ve heard referred to as technofeudalism, which would make him one of our techlords — argued that corporations need more “masculine energy.” It’s easy to mock that statement. The technology companies that increasingly control our information and lives are largely male, particularly in their upper echelons, and they are replete with bro culture. There’s a reason their workers are known as techbros.

But when he used the term “masculine energy,” I don’t think he meant biological men. I think he meant that ideas like diversity and work-life balance had “neutered” (his term) corporations. They had become too focused on making the workplace welcoming and comfortable, as opposed to emphasizing “aggression” (again, his term) and competition. It’s a simplistic argument, and predictably, I want to complicate it.

As he did, I want to separate the terms “masculine” and “feminine” from actual biological men and women, and think about them as cultural categories. What would a positive idea of “masculine energy” look like? I don’t think it would look like aggression and competition, unless that competition was with oneself, to achieve a kind of personal excellence. When I think of what “masculine energy” could be, at its best, I think of exploration, discovery, innovation. I think of sailors who wanted to see what was over the horizon, physicists who wanted to understand the fundamental properties of matter. I think of a painter like Van Gogh, who created a way of seeing that had never existed before. Ansel Adams, whose photographs showed us the American West. Political leaders who created new ways of organizing society. I think of strength in the face of adversity, of perseverance. Of intellectual curiosity. It is a kind of energy that looks outward and upward, that wants to get to the moon and then perhaps to Mars. That kind of energy is something both men and women can have. Joan of Arc had plenty of “masculine energy.” So did Georgia O’Keefe.

The dark side of “masculine energy” is aggression, which is unhealthy competition — competition that seeks to break down the other rather than lifting up the self. At its unhealthiest, it’s war.

So then what would “feminine energy” look like? I think it would be a looking inward. Rather than trying to get to Mars, it would take care of the Earth. It would be an energy of care, of conservation, maybe even of restoration. It would be the energy of gardeners, of architects who create cities that are focused on the well-being of their inhabitants rather than a series of attention-grabbing skyscrapers. Of teachers, doctors and nurses, librarians. When I think about where we see this kind of “feminine energy,” I think of Mary Cassatt, but also W.B. Yeats, who tried to preserve and support Irish culture. It’s a kind of energy that does not get much credit, because it doesn’t look as spectacular as the other kind — it’s not as showy to teach a class of kindergarteners as to climb Mount Everest, but it’s arguably both harder and more necessary.

The drawback to talking about “masculine” and “feminine” energy is that those categories are based on cultural stereotypes. In a way, it might be easier to use terms that are more neutral, such as “red” and “green” energy — terms that are not so culturally loaded. But they would also not be as meaningful. They would not convey as much to a reader within this particular culture. I’m using them because I want to argue several things.

First, that these categories don’t map onto biological men and women. Virginia Woolf, creating a new kind of literature, could be seen as an example of “masculine energy.” A father taking care of his children could exemplify “feminine energy,” but so could a soldier defending his country from invasion (like a mother bear defending her cubs). Second, that a healthy person will have both kinds, the looking-outward and the looking-inward, the innovation and the preservation. So will a healthy society. Indeed, the entire profession of psychoanalysis could be seen as based on the “feminine energy” of searching deep inside oneself for answers. Freud might be upset to learn that his work has loads of “feminine energy,” but it does — as opposed to the more “masculine energy” of Plato imagining his ideal platonic forms in some hypothetical cave outside the realm of actual, situated human experience.

Finally, and this is why I wrote this whole argument: that our society (by which I mean 21st century America in particular) already overvalues “masculine energy” and undervalues “feminine energy,” which is why kindergarten teachers and librarians and firefighters and all the other professions that focus on care are underpaid (other than certain doctors, but even then, primary care physicians are paid less than surgeons). Our society rewards the disrupters and innovators. It does not reward the preservers.

We need to spend as much thought and energy on saving the Earth as on going to Mars. We need to pay as much attention to public parks as to skyscrapers. We need to focus on fiber artists and basket weavers and ceramicists as much as Pablo Picasso.

We are in a political moment when disruption is being prized — just this week, parts of the government were shut down. These were parts of the government that take care of people: children, low-income families, veterans. The goal was to disrupt the government in the name of greater efficiency, but in this process the value of care is being forgotten or ignored. There is a reason our society started to care about diversity: it came out of a realization that the institutions controlling our lives (the government, universities, corporations) were fundamentally unfair — that entire groups of people had been marginalized and excluded. And the push for work-life balance came out of a realization that people could not have a life outside of their work, an identify apart from their job descriptions. Both were problems with how our communities function — they can’t function properly when some people are left out, or when everyone is so tired they’d rather watch Netflix than spend time with their families or run for the local school board. We need more “feminine energy” in our political life as well.

I realize my categories and analysis are overly simplistic, and of course you should feel free to complicate them further, but I hope my central point makes sense. We need to take care of our environment, create parks and libraries, pay teachers and nurses, consider diversity and inclusion in our institutions, and make sure parents have time in the evening to play with their kids. That’s the kind of energy we need, whatever we call it.

(The image is Young Mother Sewing by Mary Cassatt.)