SCALE 8x: Moving the needle

Obviously you are not all gung-ho about affirmative-action type of social engineering, which can backfire in various ways. So I really don't see where we even disagree on this topic.

"Be nice to women like Sarah Mei who are interested in technology,"

That doesn't sound like an unreasonable goal to me. I aim to be friendly to all who show up at my LUG. People generally seem to like it. Probably that fits somewhere into your definition of "treating people normally".

"That's a far cry from being welcoming to females who show up interested in technology and willing to learn about it from geeks in t-shirts and jeans..."

This is not patronizing if taken in context. Consider that the topic of this article was about attracting females who are not currently part of the community. So their first role would be that of learner. If Valerie Aurora were in town, I'd try to talk her into doing a presentation. If I asked the organic avocado farmer in my LUG to do a presentation on anything Linux-related, she'd turn me down in about 0 seconds flat.