That whole sentence seemed downright offensive and incongruous to me. Nowhere in the article was any evidence presented that objection to her ideas was based on her gender. But still the author feels the need to project that belief by demeaning the words of men as "bearded dudes".

When we come to a point where one group of people is not allowed to critique the ideas of another group of people because it is socially acceptable to demean those critics based on their gender makes me think we're doing something wrong.

Edit: For people that downvoted me, or a lot of the other comments about this sentence, I would like to know why.