Men make friends in different ways? Just like, you know, almost all human things vary.

Sounds like a great counter argument to "nope".

To put it perhaps more clearly, there are some of us men for which it definitely is true. Source: self.

My favorite way of responding to obvious oversimplification is quick dismissal. Shows exactly as much effort and thought.

Then I will put some more effort into it.

For many men, this type of comment is frequently made without any malice. (The original archetype several levels up was "Run Forrest, run!")

This seems like it fits into the general tone of a large fraction of interactions I've had with other men. Either I missed a lot of intended aggression, or this large volume of interactions wasn't actually intended to be aggressive. Of course, it's possible for a short verbal communication to be understood differently than it was intended. But in this post, we are getting the recipient's interpretation of the intent. It appears to me, (also a biased source) that this recipient is very sensitive to perceived aggression and insults. There's some analysis and speculation based on their perceptions, that seems to take it as given that intents were correctly understood. From my reading, this is very much in question. I didn't have the benefit of hearing tone of voice and understanding full context. But in their written form most of the lines categorized here as aggressive would have been categorized differently by some other unicycle rider. Specifically, I'm thinking of me. Full disclosure, I don't know how to unicycle.

The article was written by a man who interpreted those remarks as a man. And he was there to hear the tone of voice.

Right. I'm glad we're on the same page about that. We're starting from common ground.

What I'm proposing, as a man, is that he mis-interpreted them.