I always thought it was an over the top parody of conservative fears. (Like, Escape from LA clearly was -- I figured that twenty years earlier, EFNY came off as much sillier)
A lot of 80s movies have the problem that they were aimed at adults and starred over the top satires of toxic masculine behavior, but then became popular with (and targeted at) kids who didn't get the joke, whose interpretation dominated the cultural memory. (Like: Star Wars was supposed to be an allegory for the Vietnam war from the perspective of the Viet Cong -- did intelligent adult viewers at the time pick up on this? A lot of the time, the adults don't catch on to particular interpretations either, or don't "get the point" for 20 years -- we all basically accept that The Matrix is partly about the trans experience, but imagine trying to convince someone of that in 2005.)