This is really well written, I'm really glad you wrote this. Yes, I know it's not all men, but I have definitely encountered a number of men who clearly have this thinking going on. I especially like the concept "WOMAN" not as an actual person but this thing men are afraid of. My ex-husband often spoke of feminine power, and always seemed afraid or intimidated by it. Truth be told though, there were no women doing anything bad to him, he just had this concept in his mind of female power and that it was going to destroy him. It often caused him to look at me not as a person, but some sort of powerful monster. He thought it was a good thing because he saw me as some sort of amazing creature. In truth, it felt very dehumanizing because I wasn't a person anymore, I was some sort of gilded statue of strength capable of destroying the world. His idea of femininity weren't connected to anything real, and lead to him mansplaining my own gender to me, as if his idea of women were what defined what women actually are. All in all, I hated that my personhood was taken away in his view of me. I hated that boundary he put between me and him simply from the WOMAN thing he had lumped me into. I hated that when I talked about sexism and the patriarchy it was met with denial because he assumed my power as a woman left me somehow in control over the universe as some super-goddess. Why can't women just be people who relate to men and boys as human beings? Why does loving women have to equate with fear, idolization, loathing, disgust, and validation? It can lead men into assuming that we are all powerful, incapable of being harmed, which can lead to abuse as they try to reclaim whatever power they feel we have 'taken' from them, but was really an illusion projected onto us.
Atwood was right, that men fear women laughing at them, while women fear being killed by men. And you are correct, there is no comparison here, being murdered is way worse than being laughed at. But patriarchy somehow tells men there is nothing worse than being laughed at by a woman and uses female laughter to shame and degrade men. This is horrible.
Yet another example of how patriarchy is bad for men. It puts way to much pressure on them, judges them illogically, denies them their loving natures, and squashes their non-anger emotions, then tells them the only way to regain their respect is over-powering others, like women, with strength and power and anger. This is why men have more suicides than women, and more accepted violence from men. I say we get rid of patriarchal ideas, they are bad for women, men, and other genders, pretty much everyone. Thanks for spelling out and talking about the WOMAN idea that some men carry. I've seen it for years and I'm glad I'm not crazy.
