he idolizes women -- in which case he scrutinizes them as harshly as he does himself -- while using them as substitutes for what he thinks he's lacking in his performance of masculinity.

his fling with the blonde bigshot lawyer was the first time the idea of participating in lesbianism & abandoning gender roles altogether was ever presented to him, joke or not. it was the first time he felt actual bliss, & it stemmed from the fact that he was "the woman", even if he recoiled from the idea once it was actually spoken.

the four women in his mindscape -- hester (the source), lillith (the ego), diane (the superego), & nanette (the id)-- were the ones he held above all others because they represented the kinds of women he wanted to be at different times in his life.

lillith & his mom are the ones he always goes back to bc they are his primary source of gender envy; they're hard, tough, fiercely intellectual, and do not ascribe to dainty femininty whatsoever. they're not girlish -- they're Womanly; unabashedly so, and they never compromise. they are also the ones who were most influential to his growth & change as a person.

this also speaks to the tension he has with roz sometimes & why she's so often the butt of his hypocritical slutshaming jokes, considering how everything frasier does stems from his insecurity.

instead of admitting to feeling like a failure of a man/a son he resorts to childish attempts to gain marty's approval while simultaneously lashing out at him over little things.

the fact that he placed patricia clarkson's character on a pedestal, someone who shares all of his interests & therefore speaks to the desire for his woman to be a mirror rather than a complex human being, speaks volumes. its also his way of trying to replicate what he had with diane, i.e. the non-threatening comfort of the mirror.

the other major blonde in his life is his piano teacher. I believe she's instrumental to the distance aspect of his attraction to blondes -- on one hand he can seek comfort in women who don't challenge him to think outside the box, but more importantly he can mirror a relationship that Was fundamentally wrong & ended poorly so that the predictability of failure/need for sabotage is always there.

he does Not like himself as much as he lets on & i think this relationship was crucial to the crippling of his self-esteem, which leads back to the realization that he prefers to self-sabotage rather than see a potentially happy relationship through. he was raped when he was 16 & subsequently gaslit into believing He was the problematic element in the relationship, & so this carries on to every romance thereafter.