This comment was on the post “When Is It OK for a Man to Be Aggressive?“
I would change the discussion from aggression to assertion. Being assertive means you stand your ground, but you recognize and respect the boundaries of others. We naturally operate on a continuum of yang (assertiveness) and yin (receptivity). Hopefully, the two are balanced and we display the capacity to both stand our ground and open ourselves to caring inputs from others. Aggression is the lack of receptivity and is a sign of woundedness and imbalance. If one is in balance, he/she needs no checklist, but intuitively knows when to stand up or back down depending on the circumstances of the moment. Aggression is anchored in the past, not the present, and is always inappropriate except in a therapeutic setting.