It doesn’t have to be persecution to be sexist and therefore hypocritical in a culture that claims to be opposed to sexism. I’m personally fine with a joke like this, I just also happen to think that if the characters in this one were reversed there would be all sorts of outrage and accusations of toxic masculinity.
That context matters, though. We live in a world where women are historically predated on by men, which would make the gender-swapped version insensitive. Absent that context, I think this works he fine in either gender position, but because of that context, showing it this way isn’t as bad as showing it with the genders reversed. With that in mind the difference isn’t hypocritical.
That’s a roundabout way of saying that all men should be okay with it because some men have historically done the same thing to women, which is what I meant by the word “payback”. I disagree with the premise that one is acceptable but not both. Either both are or both aren’t, that’s the only position that actually describes equality.
This image illustrates why pure “equality” isn’t the right goal pretty well I think. I’m not saying all men or any men need to be OK with anything. It’s not payback, it’s that each has a different impact based on context of the reality that we live in.
