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It's probably an extreme way to describe it, but "remaining forever a child" seems to describe pretty accurately the kind of behavior that's encouraged in the type of nerdy/blue tribe/white collar culture this person likely grew up in. There's a reason why the term "adulting" was invented (or at least popularized) by and for people in such a culture, after all. A major part of the culture is trusting authority figures as experts who are able to guide you to the truth in a way that's superior and counterintuitive to the rubes who use their intuition and personal anecdotes to jump to conclusions. This, of course, makes sense as a child; you aren't yet equipped with the maturity with which to make judgment calls on most important things, and that's why most important decisions about your life are made by adults who theoretically have your best interests in mind. But children don't become mature adults with good judgment merely through time; it requires practice and training, which are highly constrained in these environments.
So when they're taught about the inaccuracies of stereotypes as a child and how all of society was sexist and misogynistic against women for entirely arbitrary reasons because men and women are same in every way that matters, many of them believe it and many of them refuse to believe their lying eyes. After all, their own judgment is inherently suspect for having been raised in this oppressive patriarchy which has forever sullied it with bias that they will never escape from even if they dedicate their entire lives to doing so, which is nonetheless the duty of any human being who wants to be a Decent Person.
Now, someone still holding onto this belief by the age of 38... this means that this person grew up in the 90s-00s at the latest, during which time this stuff wasn't nearly as extreme as it was in the 00s-10s, so this person is an extreme case. I'd wager the neurodivergence played a significant factor. I grew up in the 90s-00s in some of the more extreme areas of the country where this culture was dominant, and most people understood that there were significant sex differences in athletic ability (though it was nowhere near universal, especially among younger people!), so either this person was raised in one of the few even more extreme areas, or was particularly extreme in his way of thinking or both.
Edit: As an anecdote, one of my major hobbies is ultimate Frisbee, which is one of the bluest of blue sports due in large part to how it's primarily introduced to people in college. Right now in our local leagues, it's just taken for granted that transwomen should compete with women in single-gender leagues and as women when they want to in mixed-gender leagues (teams of 7 with either 4m-3f or 3m-4f at a time, usually). (We also don't use terms like male or female because that's offensive, but rather Defender of Men and Defender of Women and Defender of Choice for transwomen who want to choose depending on the point - the fact that this means we call men DOMs has been a source of amusement). Playing pickup, I've heard people seriously argue that a particularly good female player there, who outplays most of the males in pickup, could make it to the local elite-level men's team (has won the national championship recently and has gotten to the top 8 regularly) if she chose to try out.
I'm not sure how similar frisbee is to disc golf, but men have a massive competitive advantage in the latter: https://quillette.com/2022/09/28/is-this-the-lia-thomas-of-disc-golf/
Ultimate is a team field sport with a lot of running and jumping, so I'd guess the male advantage in ultimate is even more pronounced. In mixed leagues, person-to-person defense is almost 100% on a same-sex basis, with very few exceptions when there's a woman who's particularly tall and/or athletic (this never happens in the top levels of the sport, but at the levels that I play, it's been known to happen).
I imagine the sex differences in disc golf have primarily to do with distance in throwing, which is very easily observed in ultimate as well. Each point begins with a "pull," which is like a kickoff in American football, where one player on the defensive team throws the disc from behind their own end zone line (running start allowed, but disc must be released before they cross the line). At even medium levels, men regularly throw the full 70 yards of the field, and at top levels, they regularly throw the full 90 yards that includes the 20 yard end zone. At the top levels, it's the rare woman who's able to cover the full 70 yards of the field. This difference is present and quite noticeable in long throws during the point as well, where, at the top levels, men's games tend to be more huck-heavy, since they can score with one throw from anywhere on the field, while women's games tend to be more based around shorter throws. This isn't universal, though.
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