Friendships between men and women cannot cross a certain line

Someone wrote this in response to "Bromance" at Dr. Helen's blog:

I really do not believe that females are capable of bonding in the way males are. I do believe that a male and female can bond together in a way that males, and females, cannot. But that is another phenomenon, because it is primarily sexual. It's also more glorious because it brings forth new life.

I really don't have many true friends. But the very few men whom I do consider true friends have my unconditional love, as I do theirs. In a time of need or crisis, there is no sacrifice I would not make for any of them, because I know each of them would do the same for me.

I would not extend the same courtesy to any woman I know or have met, because it goes without saying she wouldn't do the same for me.

Perhaps there is some bitterness at work here. I think he may be going too far to say that women don't have close friendships with other women--there are probably some women I know who would dispute this using their own lives as an example. And I think that the last line is true, not because all women hate men or just use them, but because they reserve that sort of intimacy with someone of the other sex for their husband. In general men and women cannot be that close, and last week I was thinking of the friendship between St. Francis de Sales and St. Jane de Chantal. (Which I had used before as an example of a friendship that can exist between a man and a woman.) Would it be accurate to say that their friendship was not a peer-friendship? But the friendship that exists between a spiritual director and his charge, or between a spiritual father and his spiritual child?