How not to disagree

Someone said about women in scientific labs:

Three things happen when they are in the lab: You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticize them they cry.

people got offended and the meme #distractinglysexy was born. I can think of multiple reasonable responses to this quote:

•  It's a lie. Female scientists don't cry, not more than their male colleagues anyway. (evidence goes here)

Having met multiple females in my lifetime, I seriously doubt this is true, but if it was, it would be a pretty solid reply. Someone says something untrue - you point it out and explain why it is not so. This is how rational people argue.

• Maybe women do cry a bit more than men but it is such a rare occurrence either way that it doesn't have any noticeable effect in the workplace. The unhealthy atmosphere created by talking about it is far more damaging to the lab morale than this one-in-a-thousand female scientist who gets emotional once in a blue moon. So, correct or not, please don't talk about it! 

I don't think turning your back on facts is ever a good policy, but some discussions would definitely benefit from turning down the volume. For example terrorism is an unquestionably real threat but overreaction to terrorism has already done orders of magnitude more damage than terrorists ever could. Calls for silence on the subject may be a reasonable response. Notice that this is the opposite of what actually happened.

• Yes, we cry sometimes, but only because we are conditioned to do so by the society. Instead of complaining about women, change your own attitudes and expectations and the problem will solve itself.

I don't think that's the whole story, but at least it makes sense.

• Yes, we cry sometimes and there is nothing wrong with that. In fact - you should try it, it helps to reduce stress. Why should anyone apologize for a natural human reaction that doesn't hurt anyone else? Some women cry, some men cry, some people crack their joints and some get sneezy in the spring. Get over it.

I would personally go with this one.

There may be female scientists who think exactly along these lines, but this is not the message that ended up all over social media. Instead we got the utter non sequitur #distractinglysexy and public shaming of the author of the quote. This action doesn't prove or disprove anything, doesn't educate, it doesn't even try to convince anyone. All it does is show that there are things you should never say because we don't like them.

The message these women are sending is: if you say something that we construe as negative, we won't address the criticism in any meaningful way, we will get get emotional instead and try to shame you into apologizing. Which is pretty much exactly the original point.