Ah got it. There was no need for you to mention the masculine perspective in your post, lol, I hesitated to even add it to a conversation that was about men doing the wrong thing. Just because someone is in pain doesn’t mean it’s okay for them to behave badly. But I decided the topic of “men sucking due to emotional trauma” might be relevant to a discussion of men sucking in general, so I brought it up. And yeah, obviously it’s not women’s fault, that’s yet another example of guys doing exactly the wrong thing about their feelings. [/sigh] Toxic masculinity is all about sabotaging your own opportunities for emotional connection and growth.

About the image, agreed, I don’t think there’s much room for direct parallels there. It’s reductive in both directions to say that problematic images of men and women are fundamentally the same, or even that they’re problematic in the same way. The power fantasy angle is a good take. I suppose there is a lot of wish fulfillment in superhero movies, especially for guys who grew up identifying with those superheroes. I find I usually see my flaws in male Marvel characters rather than anything I would like to be, but I suppose that’s part of the same picture. Male gaze vs female gaze might just be too difficult a concept for guys who are just starting to be able to analyze subtext. They might never have seen an example of a movie or TV show featuring the female gaze, which I think is important for understanding what it means.

All of which makes me even more disappointed, since it sounds like this was a situation in which women were coming in with useful and interesting contributions, and getting yelled at for, essentially, being right.