It's not doomed to end in confusion at all. Discussing Coraline might end in confusion, but that's the whole reason for creating an abstract hypothetical to talk about in the first place.

The point of creating such a hypothetical is to imagine what sort of discussion we would be having if the subject is not Coraline. So, it doesn't matter if Coraline is a man or is a woman or a transgender woman or a transgender man or a unisexual space alien from the other side of the galaxy. We can reason about how "a man" would be treated without getting stuck on ambiguities about Coraline.

Now, what could be confusing about the hypothetical is if we're not in agreement about what "a man" means. So let me be more explicit: I'm using the default understanding of what that means, which in the tedious language of modernity means a cisgender male. For simplicity, let's assume it's a white, heteronormative male, even though I don't think the reaction would be different for non-white not-hetero cisgender males.