This made me think of the "Libertarian Girl" hoax, in which an unsuccessful male libertarian blogger got a lot of traffic by claiming to be a pretty girl.
I guess the people who hired the writer of the article aren't libertarians.
This effect definitely works on IRC. Create a female-sounding Twitter account with some pretty girl in the picture, use that nick on IRC, get instant help. (You need to make sure the name is actually girlish sounding, of course. Otherwise nobody will bother to check you out.)
On the flip side, you have guys hitting on you just because your name is feminine, or worse, they assume you don't know anything. I'm 'jane' on freenode, and it happens a LOT, and I suspect it'd be worse if I used my twitter handle which also works for my website ('janeylicious' ;) ). On a sidenote, I also get guys named Jan with last names starting with E trying to use that nick..
That's also the story behind the name of "Blondie24", the AI checkers bot. They started with some handle like Jedi123, but no one would play them online...
I guess the people who hired the writer of the article aren't libertarians.