it seems to me many men here are missing the point.
have people here encountered the concept of tokenism before? of the history and contemporary use of the concept of "hysterics"? or of even of patriarchy itself (as opposed to plain sexism)? have people read any of the ideas of feminists about how patriarchy functions? if not, this might be a really good time to familiarize yourself. bell hooks, who was mentioned before, is one of a plethora of possibilities, and is a good starting point.
in general when dealing with oppression, it's tempting for members of the dominant group (in this case, males) to want to invent the idea of the "other" "bad males" as the problem, so they can feel pure and good in themselves, and to look only at explicit individual sexist acts, ignoring how deeply patriarchy is woven into the fabric of our society.
for the same reasons, when confronted with patriarchy in the bike shop, many men will turn the question into "how can we convince more women to work here with us" instead of "how can we change our own behaviour to be less patriarchal." i hope the distinction is clear. we don't need any more men wasting our time trying to convince us that we've got them all wrong and that they couldn't possibly be sexist because some of their best friends are women. we need more men to actually spend time working against their own patriarchy, as well as society's.
when we start looking closer at our own assumptions about what are "neutral" or "rational" ways of acting, we can uncover some surprising insights into how patriarchy works. one great example might be, say, an admonition that everyone should only ever have a "calm and positive" tone, or that we need to "deep six" dissenters to "restore order, production and prosperity."
anyway, i'm sure none of us have too much hope in this email process, so please read up and start putting feminist ideas into practice in your own lives.
macho http://bike-dump.ca