While I was hesitant to comment on the topic at all, it's worth it for men to have words for the bias, because the entire moral code of a lot of men who tend toward agreeability is based on not-upsetting the women in their lives, or anywhere for that matter, and the effect is pernicious.<p>There is a maturation stage for men that traditionally happened in late adolescence that doesn't seem as common these days. Now these men relate to women as though they expect women to supervise them, and expect other men to "behave," in a way that is acceptable to their percieved feminine supervisors, or they have some kind of hyper-conscientious responsibility to blunt themselves around women so as to seem "unthreatening" to them, because they are still fundamentally actuated by shame, even though it is just a harness our species uses to manage children.<p>The anxiety originates from this unmatured Women are Wonderful bias, which boys are taught as children so they can be managed, but with the expectation that they grow out of it or leave it behind during a rite of passage. The result of not breaking men of this childhood harness is they grow up to be "nice guys" who are really just full of anxiety and resentment from navigating the absurd bind of believing their goodness and identity as a protagonist comes from being validated by the women they have placed in their supervisory pedastal roles, and because by treating women as better, they have implicitly made the women in their lives responsible for their feelings instead of taking complete ownership of their own emotions and lives. I meet these "happy wife happy life" guys all the time, and not only do they compete to debase themselves and accumulate sacrifices nobody asked for, but they take it out as resentment of other men whose freedom from that bias casts a light on that undocked lever of shame they wear around like a collar - and then ultimately the women in their lives.<p>Women are people, and for any quality in a population, people tend to be on pretty long tailed distributions. When you refuse to see the worst examples because of some well meaning bias, it leaves the great ones unappreciated, which I think is the most harmful bias of all. Men and women can be wonderful, but nobody gets there without a lot of practice, imo.<p>The question isn't whether women are wonderful or not, as that's a dumb dichotomy - it's whether guys have matured into men by ceasing to be controlled by this internalized language of shame that was only necessary to keep them physically safe as children. Part of that is recognizing women aren't symbols, but other people, who like men are responsible for their own actions and feelings, and above all, not a single one is responsible for yours either.