I think one take might be that the cause might be based out of a fear of being perceived as being gay. I mean you have generations of men who faced everything from hanging, to chemical castration to prison sentences for being gay. Policing expression of things like any sign of physical signs of affection or “womanly” displays of emotional connection put men in physical danger. That generational trauma of emotional amputation for preservation of life doesn’t go away in a day.

Internally a lot of guys still have their guards up because that was the model of behaviour their fathers and male community members have because their Dads were like that so even if the underlying cause isn’t known the behaviour seems more “normal”. It’s what the people you saw as grown ups did and what they trained you to emulate to be like them. Under those circumstances everything else becomes the deviation because it feels counter to what you were taught or are mirroring. Fighting that feeling of oddness requires an act of conscious will. A lot of people still look at being gay or femme is a failure state. A weakness of moral character… because it is a rejection of internalized homophobia and misogyny and rejecting the notion that these things are deviant is seen as an endorsement. Compulsory straightness was and is a pretty facist system and all facist systems require a “failure state” to demonize. You don’t want to be the target of violence so you enact the violence asked of you to prove you aren’t one of the failures.

These systems self perpetuate by default.