[icegreentea]

You can interpret that statement in any number of ways. That quote originated no later than 1994. The semi-conductor industry then was certainly dominated by men. In that sense, the use of the male gender is surely just a byproduct of its environment - if nearly everyone you work with and compete against is a bunch of dudes, you'd surely end up using masculine pronouns all the time.

Another interesting thing is the entanglement of male personal identity with the corporation. Because men don't actually own fabs - corporations own fabs. Economic/legal entities designed to exploit human labour and creativity own fabs. The very people muttering these statements about real men are doing so while embedding themselves into a matrix of control.

And another way to interpret this - even if a positive vision of masculinity merely includes sufficient self dependence and a capability to provide for others - ie to be free, then this statement is blatantly true. The statement is that people who are truly able to be free are those who own the methods of production - something which the vast majority of men (or people really) in our world do not.

[ghaff]

The origin (AFAIK) is actually about ten years older than that. In 1982, there was a short satirical humor book published called "Real Men Don't Eat Quiche" [1] that generated what we would now call a "meme" in that vein. I think a number of folks here are taking the fab comment in a far more serious vein than I'm sure it was intended. (A 1994 audience would mostly be quite familiar with the reference.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Men_Don%27t_Eat_Quiche