This is to be expected though. Removing gender associations is going to be seen as an attack on existing peoples' upbringings. Anything that falls into that category is going to be a painful fight.
When you give rights to one group, you have to remove them from another (important: even if the second group had rights that were not rightfully theirs).
Men previously and incorrectly had exclusive access to jobs (and votes, and so forth). By giving women fair chance to those rights, you have to subtract the unjust portion of men's rights. I don't know why some (most? unlikely) of us can accept the truth, that those rights were never only ours, but as for the rest they experience anger. Just another way that equality is a hard fight: we're fighting a documented psychological effect.
Where did you get that from? I was merely attempting a theory (not excusing) on why these people act they do toward equality.
Why is it unjust? Why do you have to bring your personal interests and preferences into the workplace? Why not make a neutral workplace where different kinds of people can integrate and feel comfortable?
Let me put it another way: do you want to spend all day hearing about my toddler? If not--well that's how I feel about everything you're interested in. So let's just all do our work and leave our personal lives at home.
Because that's not how human beings bond. We don't bond over a single facet of our lives; we bond as a community. The modern world, in which we live different places, believe different things and pursue different jobs, is poison for any sense of community.
So where do you draw the line? It's clearly not OK, even in the name of "cohesion", to encourage a culture that excludes people of different income levels or ethnicities.
There's a point at which can safely say that this kind of studiously groomed, exclusionary "cohesion" is doing more harm than good. I mean, there's obviously that point: if you refused to hire someone because they were a woman, you'd get sued; if you refused to hire someone because they didn't drink, you'd (rightfully) be ostracized in the community.
You might argue that workplaces shouldn't endorse one particular subculture over another: that's fine. But unless you take stern measures to ban fraternization, you're going to get coworkers forming friendships based on shared interests, and we're lying to ourselves if we think that interests of software people tend not to cluster around what we think of as "geek" culture.
In reality, the injustice is that a small group of very powerful men oppress all women and nearly all men.