Female readers have probably experienced the GIRL reaction quite often.

Yup. In fact I recall, in the early days of the internet, pretending to be male most of the time. I found it annoying to be continually hassled by a mob of lecherous boys when I just wanted to kick back and blow of steam bogging about on the local MUD or with a few rounds of networked doom.

These days, of course, it's different. For one thing - even here there is a considerably higher proportion of women that are actually likely to be women IRL. :)