I have a dream, that one day it will be rare to hold sexist perspectives like the one you just described. In my dream world, the importance of people feeling welcome is independent of that person's gender or that person's sex. I don't know what you meant to say, but what you said is that gender is among the things that you consider most important about participants, when deciding if their feelings matter.

The type of bigotry you just exhibited is way, way down the list of priorities. But most of the higher priorities are complicated and nuanced[0][1], but the thing you said is just straight-up wrong.

[0] E.g. affirmative action is complicated and nuanced.

[1] E.g. assuming a randomly-selected conventional-looking women at a tech convention is not a developer is... totally horrible, but also rational, given the distribution.

...or I was responding appropriately to an obvious troll.

But don't let me deny you your savory helping of sanctimony there.

Yeah, well, my analysis, then and now, is that you were replying inappropriately to a semi-trollish comment by someone who's probably redeemable.

And actually, if counter-trolling is how you frame your comment, then I have to say, you're doing it wrong. The correct response to trolls is to silently downvote. This is called "don't feed the trolls", and it's the right strategy because genuine trolls are encouraged by counter-trolling, and this would result in more noise and less signal. Alternately you can try to say something that will be useful to other people, while still downvoting and ignoring the troll.

> The correct response to trolls is to silently downvote.

Then what is it you've been up to here while responding to me?

Your troll strategy is tiring lectures, while I opt for a slightly more economical approach. Potato, potato.

I had you filed under "well-meaning, but mistaken", not "troll". And I prefer to call them "earnest" lectures. Potato, potato.