Interviewing convicted rapists

WP reports on a small research project in India to learn what rapists think (an ungated version in STimes):

In the interviews, many men made excuses or gave justifications for their actions. Many denied rape happened at all.
...
One case in particular, participant 49, sent Pandey on an unexpected journey. He expressed remorse for raping a 5-year-old girl. “He said ‘yes I feel bad, I ruined her life.’ Now she is no longer a virgin, no one would marry her. Then he said, ‘I would accept her, I will marry her when I come out of jail.’”

A thought experiment

Imagine that due to some mysterious genetic disease, all men went extinct and only women survived, reproducing through a carefully designed gene-mixing procedure. Some of these women work as mathematicians and programmers. Since all men are long gone, a certain kind of genius lore has developed, so that all exceptionally smart mathematicians and programmers are now called "men." For example, somebody might say about a particular talented girl, "She's smart as a man" and nobody would take offense.

By contrast, if somebody said the same thing within the same "math and programming" context today a lot of people would be offended. Why is that? What's the difference?