No, frankly, this is a much older story, not something from the recent decades. Strains of European humanism rejected "macho" attitudes as far back as 1900-1950, I know it from reading authors like Stefan Zweig (E.g. The World Of Yesterday) or Erich Fromm (The Anatomy Of Human Destructiveness). The issue is, largely, that back then the problems to ponder were not the relatively peaceful ones pondered today, but major war and genocide was attributed to a rather bull-headed gung-ho spirit - and I actually think it was correctly attributed so. The European attitudes were basically so in this period that the world around you is full of spilled gas and you do NOT want any sparks to go into it. So it seemed there is so much aggression trying to break out, in major conflicts killing millions that all the sparks better be extuingished - so it is better for everybody to be a bit of a "limp dick" rather than to risk that. And this influenced European literature and intellectualism a lot.

The story was different in America where simply these attitudes were not so dangerous, however, the latest in the 1960's this strain of European literature also hit America and influenced "hippie" attitudes - Vietnam played an important role in this, the desire for pacifism generate a desire to do away with traditionally masculine attitudes.

Meanwhile, from the 1970's - 80's on, there is the opposite trend. During the late Cold War it was understood that traditional war is not much on the table but either pressing the launch buttons or not, and probably nobody will be stupid enough to press those just to play macho. Thus, the world started to seem less dangerous and these attitudes were allowed to come back. Hippie music gave way to punk and Metallica, road movies to action movies, and so on.

However, intellectuals still resist it, because all they see is what Fromm saw - that it is hardly more than a celebration of destructiveness. So there is this apparent rule that to create is good and moral and anything tending towards destructiveness even a bit is wrong and immoral, we are supposed to make but not to unmake. So competition is bad, cooperation is good etc. etc.

This is sort of complicated to explain and understand but probably it is not simply not wanting others to become stronger.

I think overly "limp" intellectualism is connected with nerdiness. The issue seems to be that boys from kindergarten on engage each other in increasingly scarier and scarier challenges and competitions. As long as you keep up, it is sort of fun enough. If you take time out to read books, because you have intellectual interests, you fall back in this kind of thing and then it becomes something not exciting and challenging but rather scary. Then the bullying starts.

So overally it is the process I described about nerds, but I think the aversion to "real men" attitudes is largely the aversion to becoming like the bullies (who were often stupid and anti-intellectual) or an aversion to the fact that indeed there is something not properly developed in one's own self.

Nevertheless, I think what needs to be done here is to try to formulate the view clearly that not everything that tends towards the destructive, the unmaking, is necessarily wrong. That a world intellectuals often dream about - where everybody is only creative and productive, and never destructive - is the social equivalent of cancer, runaway growth without keeping creating and destroying in balance. But this is not exactly easy to formulate in a generally acceptable way. Purely economically, it can be explained, perhaps, if people think endless economic growth endangers the planet, yet you don't want to deny people the right to make things, then someone should unmake things, break windows, so to speak, and any group of people assigned that kind of role will obviously have, how to put it, rather "barbarous" morals.

It's a hypothesis. If there are any hormones or other biological pathways that are better predictors for being a "hero", like, courage, confidence, emotional strength, fierceness in situations appropriate, then I am happy to use them.