It's a relief for male!Tony to give it up, to be able to let go when he's expected to be strong. ...on the otherhand, female!Tony, because of her female-ness, is expected to be more submissive...
*shrugs* Since, clearly in this scenario, we have arrived at a Toni not so different from Tony despite her gender (she's still a genius, an engineer, a CEO, still Iron (Person), presumably still once designed weapons and doesn't anymore for more or less the same reasons, [still loves sex! ^_~]) and like you said the power dynamics are still in case of Toni as Tony [it's not like male!Tony would be able to help it anymore than female!Tony if things started becoming icky], I guess the implication that while its ok for a male character to let go of his tensions and relax in whatever way he wants but not for a female character (in more or less the same circumstances even. In fact, you could say that since Toni is obviously being held to higher scrutiny/ expectation by the public, she has even more reason to need to unwind in private in whatever way she chooses to) makes me much more uncomfortable than any *choice* made by that female character.
I guess, certain parts could be read a squicky *out-of-context* but then that's true for anything.
I guess, even a female dominated space like fandom isn't free from gender expectations and filling certain roles (even if those expectations are different from 'out in RL') But then, that's probably part of being human, huh? [[Bear with me, while I have been reading fanfic for a long long while, I never knew all the discussion/meta/other stuff that goes on in fandom until I was actually part of this one (my first!) and even then my fic-reading fandoms were quite different from this genre, so even if all this stuff has been discussed to death elsewhere, all these attitudes are sort of new and surprising to me! ^_^) I was just very ?_?;'d by the feedback this rather very well-written fic received.
Re: The discomfort is a power dynamics thing
*shrugs* Since, clearly in this scenario, we have arrived at a Toni not so different from Tony despite her gender (she's still a genius, an engineer, a CEO, still Iron (Person), presumably still once designed weapons and doesn't anymore for more or less the same reasons, [still loves sex! ^_~]) and like you said the power dynamics are still in case of Toni as Tony [it's not like male!Tony would be able to help it anymore than female!Tony if things started becoming icky], I guess the implication that while its ok for a male character to let go of his tensions and relax in whatever way he wants but not for a female character (in more or less the same circumstances even. In fact, you could say that since Toni is obviously being held to higher scrutiny/ expectation by the public, she has even more reason to need to unwind in private in whatever way she chooses to) makes me much more uncomfortable than any *choice* made by that female character.
I guess, certain parts could be read a squicky *out-of-context* but then that's true for anything.
I guess, even a female dominated space like fandom isn't free from gender expectations and filling certain roles (even if those expectations are different from 'out in RL') But then, that's probably part of being human, huh? [[Bear with me, while I have been reading fanfic for a long long while, I never knew all the discussion/meta/other stuff that goes on in fandom until I was actually part of this one (my first!) and even then my fic-reading fandoms were quite different from this genre, so even if all this stuff has been discussed to death elsewhere, all these attitudes are sort of new and surprising to me! ^_^) I was just very ?_?;'d by the feedback this rather very well-written fic received.