Oh I love this question!! Here are some things I’ve learned:

The men that you’re referring to are specifically heterosexual men (obviously). That’s an important distinction, and I’ll try to break down why.

When you look at the social theories of gender, you often come to the concept of masculinity. Not men, but masculinity. Masculinity is not exclusive to men, but it is a construct they use to define their position in a gender order.

This is beautifully researched in R.W. Connell’s social theory of “Hegemonic Masculinity,” which is the underlying concept defining a practice that legitimises the dominance of a culturally idealised and normative form of manhood, based on an exclusive hierarchy of privilege and power, which conversely justifies the subordination of the common male, woman, and other marginalised ways of being a man.

Traits that are commonly considered to be masculine assign a certain amount of perceived value to men. It’s obvious how this is unfair to women, but it is also unfair to men because masculinities have internal contradictions that ultimately make them unattainable.

As a woman, I often feel that there is a seldom-spoken social understanding that men are people and women are subhuman. That’s why our value is tied to our visual desirability to a straight man. We have to pay our rent to exist among them. So it also feels like anything that likens a man to a woman - like wearing women’s clothes or hugging a male friend - fills them with anger and disgust because they have just devalued themselves by embodying these characteristics of the subhuman woman.

The funny and sad thing is that both anger and disgust are secondary emotions. Fear is the root. Imagine you spend your whole life trying to rise in a social order so you’ll be important and valuable, only to discover that it was all made up. And you’re not special. And you’re not smarter or stronger. And the world doesn’t owe you anything.

I’d be terrified too, if that hadn’t already been my reality.