I'm a man, a programmer, the father of a 12 year-old girl and the husband of a woman who was severely abused as a child. I can't speak for anyone's experience but my own. Most men seem civil and respectful toward women and willing to accept them as equals or, as has been the case in every IT shop I have worked in, as managers. Growing up, the kind of guys I hung out with would have left a boy who said some of the things in the post you refered to in need of medical attention. But there seems to a be a small, vocal minority of badly damaged "boys". I can't understand them, I won't defend them, but I have to accept that they will keep spilling the pus from whatever wound it is they have instead of a heart. I'm interested in hearing what we can do to deal with all of this. In my own life I make a point of countering with positive statements, standing up in a casual conversation even when it makes me look like a jerk, but we seem to need more. It seems like our culture is missing something along the lines of "Shaming." These guys want approval just like anyone else, maybe more. If they feel singled out and exposed, maybe they'll feel how inappropriate their behaviour really is. My daughter has a friend her age that ate dinner with us last night. Out of the blue she said, "I've never met my father, but he abused my mother and he abandoned me, so I would kill him if I met him." And then she looked right at me and asked why men were like that. I could barely breathe. It was the most heartbreaking thing I've ever heard. I told her, "No, _men_ aren't like that. He wasn't a man."