But it probably got people listen to the song who otherwise wouldn't. Though it wasn't a patch on Luke Kelly, I grant you that.

I don't think there's anything exclusively male in the attitudes involved. "Male longing and illusion and arrogance" aren't necessarily that different from female longing and illusion and arrogance. Obviously its sung from the point of view of the rejected poet, and the singers got to be standing in those shoes, but if you changed the "hers" to "hims" and so forth, it could just as well have been a rejected woman poet telling the story, and it wouldn't be that different. (Well, even without changing the hers to hims for that matter...)