A Vanderbilt University days-long seminar sponsored by the Margaret Cuninggim Women's Center in honor of "Healthy Masculinities Week" put forth the theory that men with massive biceps are subtly furthering a sexist message.

Students weren't forced to attend the seminar; it was voluntary.

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Speaker Jackson Katz, who describes himself as an "anti-sexist activist" and who was the first man to minor in women's studies at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, said sexism is very close to racism and people ought to seek to eradicate both with equal vigor, the College Fix reported.

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As proof of the rising cultural acceptance of sexism, Katz pointed to the movie screen and warned listeners not to "check your brain and moral conscience when you go to the movies," the news outlet said.

What did he mean?

"There has been a ratcheting up of what it takes to be considered menacing in the 1980s and 90s," he said, the College Fix reported.

For proof, just look at the size of G.I. Joe's biceps, and compare them to those flexed by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone, he said.

Katz made a movie to underscore this point called "Tough Guise," that looks at the difference in bicep size of leading men and manly movie heroes, starting with Humphrey Bogart. His point: Both the growth in biceps and gun sizes featured in films have really driven perceptions that manliness is based on muscle mass.

See what American education has become, in “Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians Are Using Government Schools to Destroy America’s Children.”

A former NFL player Joe Ehrmann states in a related film, "The Mask You Live In," about American concepts of masculinity that was also shown at the week-long campus event: "The three most destructive words that every man receives when he's a boy is when he's told to 'be a man,'" the College Fix reported.