But this is silly. I was born with what I was born with. Why do I have to think about it? What choice did I have in it? Religion, I can choose. Politics, I can

But this is silly. I was born with what I was born with. Why do I have to think about it? What choice did I have in it? Religion, I can choose. Politics, I can choose. Gender? That's not my choice. To the extent it's my identity, it's forced upon me. Thanks, guys. In this thread, I'm responding to timeeater's claim that it's censorship, not incivility, that results in banning. As evidence, timeeater says that criticising feminism is 'not allowed' or suppressed. But I would argue that it's not criticism of feminism that gets timeeater in trouble, but instead the tendentious supposition that discussing women at all is "political" (to quote, "But there are political topics on HN all the time (women in tech, worker unions at Amazon, and so on and so on)."). Then timeeater goes on to make some statements about special treatment and special insights. Now that's the rabbithole of wasted pixels that Paul Graham is getting at in his essay -- it's really not germane to the discussion, and it's all bound up in an identity that is indeed chosen.