Well, men and women operate within somewhat different social systems with somewhat different social rules on average. There are gendered cultural patterns that can be observed.

But I really do not want to support any categorical ideas about how men think versus how women think. I especially don’t want to support assumptions of dichotomous biological difference. I’m aware of how male friend dynamics work at least partly because men have not excluded me based on my gender.

However, perhaps differences in means of distributions for personality characteristics is what predicts these systemic differences. But a woman who enters into a male social system will generally operate according to the male social rules. She is thinking like a human who observes a culture and acclimates to that culture. A given woman might actually be more comfortable with a male social system than a female social system. I have had both male and female friends so I’m aware of different ways men and women can interact with each other.

Guys used to a social culture where they poke their friends to the point of anger could be expected to treat women in this same way without it meaning there is any underlying sexism. But a guy who has mostly female friends and is hyper-aware of rules governing female friendships may not. Then again, sometimes you have female friends operating more like male friends. I definitely have had at least one female friend who would mess with me. But in general, female friendships take more sensitivity.

These gendered social system differences create some confusion in interpreting meanings of behaviors. I would even suspect that knowledge of how females operate, on average, could cause men to take shit given by women as more genuinely critical than if given by a man, from whom this behavior would be expected. Some men may react worse to a woman laughing at their anger for this reason, which might explain a perceived double standard in some cases.

I think it is best to give people of all genders the benefit of the doubt and consider all possible explanations for behavior.