Perhaps they feel like their masculinity is that fragile; but if
everything goes wrong and they wind up standing there amidst the
debris, what gender are they then?
Eunuch, I think; the gender of being male without masculinity. And
therein lies the fear, for one does not automatically become
a woman if one fails to be a man; one becomes an emasculated
man.
One could carry that theorizing further: a male, on being
emasculated, does not become woman, because he is not female, and
thus does not have the powers that come with being female --
because, of course (and amongst other powers), all anyone female
has to do to get what she wants is bat her eyelashes suggestively
at the men in power, and they're immediately under her thumb,
right?
This, then, explains why masculinity-obsessed men fear strong
women: strong women reach for the powers of masculinity, while not
giving up their femaleness. They control the horizontal and
the vertical, and they cannot be stopped. And so they must be
undermined; they must be declared neither female nor masculine.
Or, at least, I think that's a plausible description of the matter.
I may, however, be completely off base instead.
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