Maybe they are flagged precisely because those topics don't lead to meaningful debates? Take any slightly controversial (or can be spun to be controversial) gen

Maybe they are flagged precisely because those topics don't lead to meaningful debates? Take any slightly controversial (or can be spun to be controversial) gender-and-tech issue, submit it to HN: if it gains traction, it will consist of hundreds of posts with two kinds of people who have so little common ground and set of mutual opinions/world-views that they can not do anything but shout past each other. Meaningful discussion? Hardly.