Specifically, I think it's reasonable for Uber executives to take exception to their company being characterized as misogynistic. I don't think taking exception, even strong exception, to these accusations is a misogynistic act in itself.
Do I believe that one can in good faith believe that current concerns about sexism are a witch hunt? (Note that "hysteria" is an unfortunate word choice here in that it was an imaginary disease used to smear women for centuries, and the name itself is rooted in the notion that having lady parts makes you crazy.) Sure, I guess. In the same sense that I think one can have a good-faith belief that anthropogenic climate change isn't real. In both cases I think some are consciously acting in bad faith. But I think the bulk just don't know enough about the topic to have a valid opinion, so they run with the one that's politically and/or personally convenient for them to have.
As a guy, I get it: the shift from thousands of years of male domination to something more equitable feels like a loss. We quite literally didn't have to think about how women would take things. Now suddenly our speech and actions are having consequences they didn't used to have. It's easy to feel that we get in trouble for saying "normal" things. But it didn't work the other way: women always had to be conscious of how men would take what they said.
The system of beliefs and behaviors that punished women for speaking up and speaking out is on the wane, but as we see with Kathy Sierra, it's still powerful. Until it's destroyed, I think everybody has an obligation to help end it, or at least stay out of the way. And when people do things that look a lot like supporting and continuing that system (as Michael did here) they should not be surprised when people do not look charitably upon that.
I'm sorry if I misunderstood. You drew an analogy to Arthur Miller and communism. I presume the reference was to Miller's famous troubles with HUAC. Not seeing anybody else nearby, I assumed was the witch-hunter in this analogy. I also assumed that you were equating anti-sexist efforts with anti-Communist hysteria, which I think is a) wrong, and b) insulting to the last 150 years of people doing anti-sexist work. But since you insist it was all in good faith, I'll assume that you meant something else entirely.
If in the future you would like people to gently provide helpful clarifications, you could perhaps start by asking reasonably neutral questions. Instead of, say, leaping into contentious threads with conclusions about what people meant and drawing dramatic analogies to the famously wronged. However good your personal intentions were, there are a host of people, especially here on Hacker News, that are less committed to good-faith discussion and are are reflexively opposed to anything that might suggest that there are gender issues in tech.