I wouldn’t go that far. There were a lot of young ladies very passionate about the Latin language in my university Latin classes. And who can forget Agatha Christie?
I’m glad you put the terms in quotes, though.
There’s nothing to say that women aren’t drawn to more “masculine” things though. Although, the main thing I could say that is more masculine about the EF is that the servers are all male, the choir tends to be all/mostly male, and chant is not feminine sounding compared to the average song you hear in most parishes on Sunday.
I mean go to an OF Mass. Cantor is typically female. If there’s a choir, at least 75% is female. The music is more feminine in nature compared to chant. Lectors are more often female, same goes for EMHC. The female altar server is becoming more and more common and in some cases outweighing the men.
However, it’s less about the OF and more about how it’s celebrated. When there’s a female touch in every aspect of it, of course it’s going to be more feminine. You can easily have an all male choir and Gregorian chant in the OF.
That doesn’t mean that men aren’t there, but we surely are the minority. Now, could this be more of a cultural thing vs. what actually occurs? Maybe. Or it could also be an issue of the highly devoted male lay people not going the extra distance and getting involved with their parish. We hear about women being largely involved with everything, but we know that 90% of church goers aren’t women, so are many of these committees and the like 90% women?
However, it doesn’t just stop with those things… We can talk about the “Jesus loves you” homilies which don’t challenge or make one uncomfortable at all. Do the more challenging types of homilies appeal more to men? Possibly. I think in general they at least appeal more to younger people. I personally love the theologically rich homilies, but I don’t hear them all too often. I’ve actually even heard women saying that they never feel like the homilies offer THEM anything. I remember for a while at my local parish we had a Franciscan come to do Mass once a month. The guy was fantastic in that his homilies always tended to challenge and make you feel uncomfortable. He would say “you’re going to hate me” because he knew that some people wouldn’t like what he had to say, but it’s refreshing, IMO to hear.
