That Huffington Post writer has just demonstrated ignorance of the South and the southern upper classes.
To explain, the southern upper classes dominated their culture not by money alone, but by strength of character, coupled with a strong sense of diplomacy, interdependence and order. Their households were strictly patriarchal or matriarchal, and they did not respect or tolerate bad behavior.
Both Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and Mark Twain described this strength of character, as well as the culture and language unique to the region, though Twain is the far more accessible to the modern reader. (Rawlings works are linguistic masterpieces, however, and are an essential study for anyone who hopes to understand southern culture.)
In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, there is a scene which dominates the book, in which an upper class gentleman, Colonel Sherburn, kills an offensive and belligerent drunk, then singly faces down a lynch mob while armed with a rifle. He then derisively sneers about the ‘essential cowardice of “Southern justice” ‘ as the mob slinks away.
Harper Lee would have been very aware of such characters when writing TKAM. As such, the polite and sometimes not-so-polite disdain that Atticus Finch holds for the lower classes is obvious. He will not stand for their antics. This also gives him considerable moral authority as a defense attorney—nobody in authority is going to mess with him. Another good reason to point out that he is a deadly shot.
Those unfamiliar with the distinct class differences of the South do not grasp the cultural chasm that exists between the classes, even today, so apply their caricatures of southerners far too broadly.
A real Atticus Finch would be a person of respect, and though it is unlikely that he would gun you down under most circumstances, if you made yourself a fool in front of him, you would be well advised to get out of town.
And as far as feminization goes, if you improperly make a fool of yourself in front of an upper class southern woman, this could be considerably worse, and you just might end up being escorted out of town.
Thanks for mentioning Rawlings. Never heard of that author but I’ll look up that name.