The man-only ones are always with a very limited number, varying from 10 to 20 normally. So we get wasted and THEN we go to a party most of times, the drinking still serves a purpose.
You could consider it as a sportsteam, a bunch of guys together, only the sport we exercise is drinking in this case. I'm always amazed how much we actually drink, i can't drink as much anymore as i could while still at uni there (maybe a good thing), but we had cantusses where the average number of beers consumed per person was about 24. And no we did not throw with the beer.
Anyways, i've never been to a single cantus in Antwerpen either, i've heard it's totally different than it was in diepenbeek (hasselt), but my brother seems to enjoy it a lot. But he's still young of course.
Main difference between diepenbeek and any other uni-city is that it's really small, so at the parties and cantusses, it's more like a big family where everybody knows eachother. You can (could?) easily go to a party if you felt like it, without setting up a meeting with some friends at that hour and that exact place, and you would still know a lot of people, if not more than half of them. Can't see that happen in antwerpen or leuven or so.