hammer time

I've created a painting with a hammer as the focus.  There are also some other tools.. a staple gun, a screwdriver, a level.

So when I presented this painting for a critique in my painting class, the assessment overall was that I was now tackling "male aggression" or "male violence".  Why is a tool box male?  It was my own tool box that I used for the painting, so why would it automatically be male oriented?  My works involving knives, cleavers and scissors (even though they were set in a sewing room scene) were never intended to be accounts of specifically female aggression.  Is it because they were staged in the kitchen?  I know men that cook.  The sewing room?  I know men that sew.  

I never intentionally place a gender on paintings, and ironically, this hammer series ends in a way that might assume female aggression, so it seems a little silly that because it's a painting of a toolbox,  that it has to belong to a man.

Girls know how to use hammers too.