Just kidding about the color coding ofcourse :-). i sent u a short pm already, I’ll send u a longer one soon.
I tried going through the links, but the thing is that these authors start supporting their views with other ahadith, that I consider potentially unreliable. and so I run into problems.
Regarding your explanation for the gender switch, all this conversation is about the fact that the second part of the verse addresses a seperate group of people than the wives. Nobody can claim who that seperate group is, but once you admit the fact that there are masculine members in the group, attaching the previous context to it doesnt make sense (dont bedizen yourself, you’re not like normal women.. etc)
Now how do we identify the second group? We identify through the hadith I gave, in sahih Muslim. Which explicitly mentions these five people and says that this verse was recited at that point by the Prophet, and also explicitly states that the wives are NOT included in the ahl e bayt referenced verse. what can be more clear cut?
the only way forward that I see for sunnis is that you deny that this hadith is reliable.