I suspect most of my readers are not manly, masculine “he-men,” according to this declaration by Edward K. Strong.
Men Are Becoming Less Manly, Scientist Thinks
Men today are not as roughly masculine as they used to be, according to Dr. Edward K. Strong, of Palo Alto, California, noted psychology professor at Stanford University. He set forth this conclusion in an article in the current issue of the Journal of Social Psychology.
The only he-men are engineers and farmers, he stated in an account of a survey of divisions of interest among the sexes. But if you are a minister, a lawyer, a doctor, a writer or a newspaperman, you have feminine interests, which have become stronger with each generation.
Although…how can you trust Dr Strong? He was neither an engineer or farmer, but was a psychologist, a mere academic who wrote books like The Psychology of Selling and Advertisement and The Psychology of Selling Life Insurance. He reeks of “feminine interests.”
Also, he’s dead. The article is from 1936.
Mr Strong. Dr Edward K Strong. Hmm.. Did this guy choose his own name I wonder?
I’m sure all the military people – soldiers, fighter pilots etc .. were surprised to hear their professions were all feminie-y and cooties-laden! Now how do we tell Ole Kegsbreath ..,
Also blacksmiths, stone-masons, cowboys, metal-workers, police, other proefessiosnof the village people, er .. anyhow y’know so many others stereotypically labelled masculine .. nope. Not manly enough for Dr Strong!
I vaguely recall an actor with a weird accent named Arnold Strong. Acting isn’t very manly. I wonder what became of him.
@3
I believe he passed a few years ago. I primarily remember him for his voice acting work.
For some reason now I’m starting to wonder how much Strong’s views echoed the Damore memo.
His inventory may still be in use:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_Interest_Inventory
I’d hope it has been modified and updated against any biases our Edward K Strong character above may have imported into it so long ago.
Akira MacKenzie @4
You might be thinking of costar Arnold Stang. They are easily confused.
The ancient Greeks bemoaned the lack of masculinity in their society as compared to their ancestors.
Sure is taking a long time for masculinity to fade away — 2500 years and it’s still hanging around.
Think it’d be interesting to see a list of “masculine” and “feminine” interests over the years. IIRC, the first “computers” were women doing hard math.
Oh, yeah, that reminds me: Apparently there was this one brief time when gamerbros were declaring FPS games to no longer be “hardcore.” Why? Because girls were playing them and kicking their rears.
Meanwhile Anika Nilles has become drummer for Rush for their upcoming tour.
Another brilliant academic from Stanford.
I think he was setting himself up to be the bad guy super-villain in Bond movies before there was such a thing.
He must mean train engineers. /s
@Recursive Rabbit:
And a lot of the early computer programmers were women. (E.g., Admiral Grace Hopper, who was one of the first people to really deal with compilers as a concept back in the 1950s.) Because building the machines was big manly work, as was giving the orders, but figuring out how to tell the machines to do things was secretarial work.
@ 13 (and 8)
Back in those days it took two burly men to wrangle a slide rule, but their error rate caused by arm hair clogging the slide as the slide rule was reduced in size caused their replacement by women for more accurate computation.
@6
I was, my apologies.
Numerobis, #7
I present, for the delight and instruction of the masses, the concluding speech of Just Argument in his contest with Unjust Argument from the agon of Aristophanes’ Clouds. The former is complaining that trendy modern education (as epitomised in the play by Socrates) is making young men pale, weak, immoral and unmanly:
JUST ARGUMENT: Nevertheless by such teaching as this I built up the men of Marathon. But you, you teach the children of today to bundle themselves quickly into their clothes, and I am enraged when I see them at the Panathenaea forgetting Athene while they dance, and covering their cocks with their bucklers. Hence, young man, dare to range yourself beside me, who follow justice and truth; you will then be able to shun the public place, to refrain from the baths, to blush at all that is shameful, to fire up if your virtue is mocked at, to give place to your elders, to honour your parents, in short, to avoid all that is evil. Be modesty itself, and do not run to applaud the dancing girls; if you delight in such scenes, some prostitute will cast you her apple and your reputation will be done for. Do not bandy words with your father, nor treat him as a dotard, nor reproach the old man, who has cherished you, with his age.
UNJUST ARGUMENT: If you listen to him, by Bacchus! you will be the image of the sons of Hippocrates and will be called a fool!
JUST ARGUMENT: No, but you will pass your days at the gymnasia, glowing with strength and health; you will not go to the agora to cackle and wrangle as is done nowadays; you will not live in fear that you may be dragged before the courts for some trifle exaggerated by quibbling. But you will go down to the public gardens to run beneath the sacred olives with some virtuous friend of your own age, your head encircled with the white reed, enjoying your ease and breathing the perfume of the yew and of the fresh sprouts of the poplar, rejoicing in the return of springtide and gladly listening to the gentle rustle of the plane tree and the elm. (With greater warmth from here on) If you devote yourself to practising my precepts, your chest will be stout, your colour glowing, your shoulders broad, your tongue short, your hips muscular, and your cock small. But if you follow the fashions of the day, you will be pallid in hue, have narrow shoulders, a narrow chest, a long tongue, small hips and an unsightly large penis; you will know how to spin forth long-winded arguments on law. You will be persuaded also to regard as splendid everything that is shameful and as shameful everything that is honourable; in a word, you will wallow in degeneracy.
cartomancer @ # 17 – pls tell us ol’ Ari was making fun of both of those characters and their viewpoints…
Pierce R. Butler, #18
To some extent everyone in an Aristophanes comedy is a ridiculous caricature, with the exception perhaps of the Chorus Leader when he addresses the audience directly in the Parabasis (a section, usually in the middle, where some important point of political, moral or social argument is put forward out of character. That’s not this bit). These two characters, just argument (dikos logos) and unjust argument (adikos logos), are residents of Socrates’ crazy new school – the phrontisterion (“thinkatorium”) and are themselves brought out to have an argument over who is best suited to teach the youth. This scene serves as a time-filler while one of the main characters – Phidippides – is undergoing his instruction in clever talking so he can use philosophical sophistry to talk his way out of his many debts. So it’s a silly premise to start with.
Whether the audience would find Just Argument’s arguments convincingly righteous or unsophisticatedly old-fashioned is very much up for debate. Which might well be the whole point. Aristophanes presents them in anapaestic lines, as opposed to Unjust Argument’s iambic lines, which is traditionally how a comic poet would present a stronger argument over a weaker. But, then again, of course Just Argument would sound like that! In the play the dispute is settled when they look out over the audience and conclude that everyone in Athens is a shameless homosexual with lax morals (“euryproctos” – literally “wide-anus”), and therefore Just Argument doesn’t stand a chance, so he concedes and leaves the stage.
What is interesting, though, from our perspective, is the degree to which good morals and masculine behaviour are linked in the minds of Aristophanes’ characters (and, we must assume, those of his audience in 423BC). Whether Just Argument is indeed just, Unjust Argument also frames his views in terms of masculine virtues – in his case not physical beauty and moral uprightness but cleverness and skill at speaking, which were considered vital masculine virtues right back to the Odyssey and beyond.
cartomancer @ # 19 – Thanks!
I gotta pull my old paperback Collected Plays of A off the shelf sometime when I have time/need for some good giggles.
… the dispute is settled when they look out over the audience and conclude that everyone in Athens is a shameless homosexual with lax morals (“euryproctos” – literally “wide-anus”)…
I’ve seen some US audiences who would laugh their (anatomy of your choice) off at that, but also others from which the guns would come out.
… the degree to which good morals and masculine behaviour are linked in the minds of Aristophanes’ characters (and, we must assume, those of his audience in 423BC).
An attitude which persisted at least since the Romans conflated “virility” and “virtue” through to when the English (language) no longer even noticed the overlap. Now that the MAGAts have made such concepts into antonyms, those on certain campuses (campi?) might amuse themselves by verbally tangling up their “conservative” colleagues, but those on this side of the puddle should carefully check for particular bulges in clothing – not the ones dikos logos deplored – before unwrapping such witticisms.
Pierce, re … the degree to which good morals and masculine behaviour are linked in the minds of Aristophanes’ characters (and, we must assume, those of his audience in 423BC).
Pretty sure cartomancer’s talking about men here, but presumably the same kind of moral expectations applied to women too, just in their own domain.
[huh] https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/feminine-matrix-of-sex-and-gender-in-classical-athens/sex-and-sacrifice-in-aristophanes-lysistrata/6BD6C01492056B482FE755F35E4966E5