To speculate a bit, it seems like many people in the tech industry feel like women have been historically alienated in the industry, feel that this is unjust, a

To speculate a bit, it seems like many people in the tech industry feel like women have been historically alienated in the industry, feel that this is unjust, and as a result are willing to err on the side of being oversensitive in this issue (perfection of course being impossible in this sort of fuzzy cultural area). A similar thing applies to talking about women on the site. You can see the difference between referring to an example woman reading hacker news as a fellow hacker vs "someone's girlfriend or wife or little sister might be in the kitchen reading her iPad", right? The latter reinforces sexist stereotypes of women only being related to technology through men in their life rather than engaging with it themselves (plus, if someone's on hacker news, it's fair shorthand to assume that they're a hacker rather than a relation of one, whatever you want "hacker" to mean). (Also you obviously do have an argument. The discussion is better when you state it outright rather than lashing out with vague sarcasm.)