Ask your female friends if it's ever happened to them. I expect a large majority of them will be able to tell you a story.
Here's the best way I've been able to come up with, to get a feel for it. Suppose you have a nice watch. When somebody says, "Nice watch!", you say, "Thanks". But when you start meeting more than one person who won't stop talking about your watch, you get a little antsy. When somebody follows up with "Give me your fucking watch!" you start to think about leaving it at home some times.
Except that when you're a woman, you can never leave that at home.
This experience really isn't just about her. It's something practically all women experience. She seems to have just assumed her audience would share that context -- perhaps a side effect of being in academia.
People who are not women have to deal with such things as well, as a sibling commenter pointed out. Short guys, fat guys, skinny guys, they would all get picked on (in a friendly way or otherwise). The difference is that society will not tolerate them whining about it. Women won't care and men will laugh at them. So they suck it up.
It's frustrating when people say "just talk to a woman", as if all women have the same perspective on this, or women are the only ones who experience it. It's itself a sexist thing to say. I know women who don't have this kind of victim mentality and they're happier for it.
Actors get their famous catchphrases thrown at them consistently as well.
That's just the way it goes.
Many years ago, I used to take this advice seriously.
The feedback I got was generally along the lines of "what are you talking about?" and implications that it's weird to ask, so I stopped.
>It's something practically all women experience.
It's strange to me how so many people believe themselves to have this insight.