"Actually the original poster said this "What do they get out of insisting that men are subject to exactly the same level of discrimination and abuse as women?" thats what I answered. BOth are sexist. You cant claim one is acceptable and the other is not. unless of course you have zero interest in equality."
Neither are acceptable. Aggression and hate is unacceptable, full stop. But we none of us are an island - nobody lives in a cultural vacuum. The reality is that we live in a world where women are judged and treated more harshly and less equitably than men. It's just a reality. And there are very few men indeed who have their balls cut off, so while it's a horrible thing to say, no, it does not have equivalence with threats to rape/assertions that someone should be, because rape is extremely common. It's a genuine fear, and a soundly based one. Fear of castration is not.
Nobody is saying men should be treated unpleasantly or badly, or that aggression or abuse is ever justified. It's a totally false dichotomy to raise. What people are saying is that we live in a culture where abuse is more commonly aimed at women, that judgemental attitudes to sexual activity are almost exclusively aimed at women, where women are paid less, represented less in positions of power and authority... and that when a woman asserts herself, as Mary Beard did, the reaction is extremely punitive, and based almost entirely on her gender. And that agressive, violent attacks on women by men are more common by a large margin than those on men by women. By the same token, a huge insult aimed by men at other men is to call them by female names. That's not something you see reversed. Homophobia is equal, agreed - a pansy/faggot is happily hurled in the same way lezzie is. So yes, homophobia is an equal-op hate. But even there, the insult to a man is to imply femininity, whereas to a woman, it's to attack her attractiveness. Which is back to what women and men are valued for, and what we regard as the ultimate insult.