I found this quote quite telling: I size other guys up, thinking, Yeah, I could take him. I think this helps explain Tom's experience, because that is a very

I found this quote quite telling: I size other guys up, thinking, Yeah, I could take him. I think this helps explain Tom's experience, because that is a very "hollywood" view of how the male psyche works. I'm sure a portion of men think like that, but I'd posit not as many of us as some might expect. So Tom has this fantasy of what it is like to be a strong, assertive, aggressive male. In my experience, though, such men (my second best friend is like this) often tend to be extremely sensitive and vulnerable. Whereas from my observation some of the sugar-sweet women I know can be whiplash when they need to be. Which goes to show there is a lot more to this gender lark than meets the eye. I think there is some expectation bias in Toms experience, he will notice these incidents a lot more. But I don't think this is a general observation of society, for example as a straight 23 year old male I am pretty much the go to guy in my friendship group when you feel a bit lousy and need some sympathy. I'm sure there is still some bias, held over from the past century (even the past decade), especially in the realm of computers. But I think it is decreasing rapidly over the generations.