First the story made me angry although I never thought about the gender dynamics. Then I thought it was really sad. Recently I was reading Fruits Basket manga and there's a story with a similar undertone about a fool who gave away everything including all his body parts to thieves and murderers and just kept saying how happy he was that he could help. For some reason I wasn't mad at all, just really sad, because of the way its told. I think perhaps this differed because of the context it was told in? The Giving Tree still makes me angry...