You see an overused or incorrectly used concept, and instead of trying to improve it, you set out to try to deconstruct it completely. Mentioning sexism and racism makes it doubly suspect: especially the link between racism and strength is really weak and occasional at best (as stereotypes went both ways), and it looks a bit like guilt-tripping, guilt-by-association tripping which combined with too much deconstructionism looks like a classic “postmodern” failure mode.
From a rational, predictionist viewpoint, strength is a useful concept for the application of energy. It is a useful term when it is more about pedalling than steering. To hit a target with an arrow, both exact aiming needed and the energy to propel it to the target, and strength is from a family of concepts that have more to do with the propelling.
A good point can be made that one should clarify different kinds of energies and strengths better. When I talk with simple rural blue-collar folks they are often like, the body-builders are just fake-strong, they could not dig ditches 10 hours a day i.e. they focus more on muscle endurance, while the lifters usually focus on 1 rep max.
Besides strength is often used metaphorically—ability, willpower etc.
This was about the rational stuff. Now for some uglier and more personal stuff—if you can go subjectivist so can I: the sexist part is largely because testosterone is real, and it seems to affect many kinds of strength—from 1RP to muscle endurance, and the more metaphorical willpower kind of stuff too. Obligatory article. besides, on a purely personal preference level, we are quickly approaching a world where women out-perform men in pretty much everything that matters. Recognizing the simple truth that men have an advantage in a not too important field helps keeping some kind of an anchor to tether male identity, masculine identity to, without that it would all too easily evaporate. While identities can be built around something else than gender, in practice it seems to me gendered identity is fairly big and important. This is why transgenderism is such a big deal these days—it would be difficult to explain to Jenner that gender does not matter much. Men today are feeling insecure about themselves, not really sure what being a man means in the 21st century when you are absolutely positively not going to be a conquistador or similar type of a heroic manly ideal. We need an ideal that embraces much of the historical aspects of masculinity to tether it all to, yet has the least amount of potential fallout / harm to women, gays etc. and this seems to be currently the solution. A bit of an obsession about one’s own body, while narcissistic, is at least something that does not really have a lot of consequences for others.
EDIT: disregard this, I did not see it is a parody.
I think this is the Fallacy of Gray. http://lesswrong.com/lw/mm/the_fallacy_of_gray/
You see an overused or incorrectly used concept, and instead of trying to improve it, you set out to try to deconstruct it completely. Mentioning sexism and racism makes it doubly suspect: especially the link between racism and strength is really weak and occasional at best (as stereotypes went both ways), and it looks a bit like guilt-tripping, guilt-by-association tripping which combined with too much deconstructionism looks like a classic “postmodern” failure mode.
From a rational, predictionist viewpoint, strength is a useful concept for the application of energy. It is a useful term when it is more about pedalling than steering. To hit a target with an arrow, both exact aiming needed and the energy to propel it to the target, and strength is from a family of concepts that have more to do with the propelling.
A good point can be made that one should clarify different kinds of energies and strengths better. When I talk with simple rural blue-collar folks they are often like, the body-builders are just fake-strong, they could not dig ditches 10 hours a day i.e. they focus more on muscle endurance, while the lifters usually focus on 1 rep max.
Besides strength is often used metaphorically—ability, willpower etc.
This was about the rational stuff. Now for some uglier and more personal stuff—if you can go subjectivist so can I: the sexist part is largely because testosterone is real, and it seems to affect many kinds of strength—from 1RP to muscle endurance, and the more metaphorical willpower kind of stuff too. Obligatory article. besides, on a purely personal preference level, we are quickly approaching a world where women out-perform men in pretty much everything that matters. Recognizing the simple truth that men have an advantage in a not too important field helps keeping some kind of an anchor to tether male identity, masculine identity to, without that it would all too easily evaporate. While identities can be built around something else than gender, in practice it seems to me gendered identity is fairly big and important. This is why transgenderism is such a big deal these days—it would be difficult to explain to Jenner that gender does not matter much. Men today are feeling insecure about themselves, not really sure what being a man means in the 21st century when you are absolutely positively not going to be a conquistador or similar type of a heroic manly ideal. We need an ideal that embraces much of the historical aspects of masculinity to tether it all to, yet has the least amount of potential fallout / harm to women, gays etc. and this seems to be currently the solution. A bit of an obsession about one’s own body, while narcissistic, is at least something that does not really have a lot of consequences for others.
EDIT: disregard this, I did not see it is a parody.