> Hmm, isn't that what I said? They can treat people with a characteristic more favourably, but they can't exclude people without that characteristic from the start.

How would one even begin to prove the difference? This seems like some sort of mental gymnastic to explain away well meaning discrimination. If I had a thing against men, I'd take their applications, maybe give a few of them interviews for the sake of plausible deniability without a plan to actually hire them. And fortunately for me, society is callously indifferent to men in general unless they are part of a protected class.