I believe that in most cases the Male programmers have a hard time digesting the "discouragement" angle because it simply clashes so hard with their own experie

I believe that in most cases the Male programmers have a hard time digesting the "discouragement" angle because it simply clashes so hard with their own experience of getting into the IT/Programming field. A recurring theme in this debate is that women are discouraged from studying CS, or perusing a career in Computing because of various discouraging factors; maybe they were put off by the "geek" stereotype, or were convinced that programming is a "boys job", etc, etc. This adds up to a sad situation where young girls who would otherwise be excellent programmers are discouraged from ever learning to code. Now on the other hand, we have the male programmer, for whom it was all a simple matter of "I like this, so I'll do more of it", which then snowballed into a career. No blocking factors, no discouragement. So naturally the male programmer in this example doesn't really understand what it's like to be discouraged from IT/Programming and thus they are quick to dismiss and minimize those concerns.