Edwin Cole defined toughness as distinct from machismo while mocking softness as national ruin

Evidence

When Cole appeared on Pat Robertson’s 700 Club to argue that masculine leadership in the home required toughness, the female cohost balked. But Cole didn’t back down, and he couldn’t resist noting that his interlocutor seemed to be usurping properly masculine leadership on the program. He assured his readers that women were in fact begging for men to lead, and when men did lead, women loved them more. Cole took pains to distinguish “toughness” from a “macho” conception of manhood, which to him connoted a childlike immaturity, lack of character, and promiscuous sexuality, but even as Cole’s understanding of masculinity retained a place for tenderness, measured tenderness should never be confused with effeminacy. “I like a man’s man,” Cole made plain. “I don’t like the pussyfooting pipsqueaks who tippy toe through the tulips.” At one time people might have overemphasized toughness, Cole acknowledged, “but today it is the softness that is killing us.” Women, children, churches, and nations all needed masculine decision makers; America was great only when its men were great. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 295

Categorization

• DEFINE: Cole’s deliberate boundary-work distinguishing ‘toughness’ from ‘macho’ (and from ‘effeminacy’) is exactly the kind of definitional content that shows how the gendered ideal was carefully constructed.
• XREF: The rhetorical move of redefining masculinity by repudiation of its rejected others parallels the compliments/identity boundaries in other works on gender construction; also echoes the moral-panic framing seen in other chapters.