[AndyKelley]

One thing to note is that it only takes one obnoxious person to ruin it for all the other well-informed and well-behaved people in any given room/server, because good behavior, by definition, does not draw attention to itself.

[jodrellblank]

We don't know he was even an obnoxious person (see also, the Actor-Observer bias http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor%E2%80%93observer_bias ), we only have her boyfriend's third party account of the interaction.

Other options:

- What she said was stupid and noobish, and he replied bluntly - rudely but not sexistly.

- What happened was misinterpreted as sexist because the interpreter is her boyfriend and jumps to her defense easily.

- The man in the comic book store interpreted her as being mocking and hostile and retorted in a similar fashion, when she didn't mean it that way.

- The man in the comic book store intended his comment to be a mocking imitation of a sexist, thinking he was being witty, but was taken as being literal.

- The shop manager agreed with the complaining customer because he was complaining and not because he was right.

- The man in comic store is normally nice and was temporarily more sexist than he usually is for some dull and specific reason, like he saw a very-near-miss in the carpark by a female driver.

[AndyKelley]

I think your comment is much stronger if you take out the last one.