Many are taking your question as "why are all men scared of all women and why did this just happen."
It is, like most other things in life one color gray changing to another color gray. But it's still gray.
Most boys are scared of asking girls out until they recognize that rejection isn't the end of the world and maybe success is actually worth rejection (at least for some). And of course girls are now more encouraged to do the asking but they still fear rejection.
So as teens, yeah, boys and girls are scared of each other. The obvious preferential treatment in school might add a little to the fear ("zero tolerance means there is no other side to the story").
But reality is that men are slightly more scared of women than they were a year ago and that was slightly more than 10 years ago etc. As women are more empowered and autonomous, male bad behaviour is more likely to go punished, and (get ready for this) devastating false accusations are also becoming more common. Consider the devastation of the Duke Lacrosse accusation.
But women have always lied (just like men), and men have always been the victims of women (and the other way around). Things have shifted a tiny bit.
The reality is that women are still far more likely to experience physical violence at the hands of a man and it is far easier to understand and fear physical violence than, say, the absolute devastation of losing your child or being innocent and held in jail for the rest of your life.
This is made worse by the fact that we REGULARLY re-enforce the idea that women should be scared of men even though men have far more to fear from other men than women do.
TL;DR: Men have ALWAYS been scared of women. The shift is actually pretty small.
