But tone matters, and after a while, tone has an effect on people's attitudes. If you are writing about a scientist's breakthrough technology, just write about that. There isn't a need to write about the scientist being female any more than it is to write about them being male. This way, both sexes are treated more similarly. The article about their personal passions, disadvantages, and so on can be another story altogether, but not the one pretending to be about the discovery.
If you'd give a little background about a straight, white male, it might list some interesting things about the person. Surely the most interesting thing about being female isn't being female. Same for sexual orientation. I know these are true for me. I'm female and bisexual, but these don't tell you anything about me, really. I'm vastly more interesting if folks write about me being an immigrant, that I met my spouse online, or that I'm an artist.
The outcome is that the tone is that x person did y, and treats being female (or whatever) as just a thing that is, a completely normal thing. It rubs off on readers.
Sometimes not bringing something up is powerful. If you achieved something, would you really want people talking about your relationship status in your bio?
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
(Incidentally, no one likes anyone who challenges their personal orthodoxy, and we all have one.)
That I had the audacity to directly call out that behavior instead of coaching attacks in vague language is the only difference here.
By your own, cited guidelines
> Please don't use Hacker News primarily for political or ideological battle. This destroys intellectual curiosity, so we ban accounts that do it.
This whole conversation is off-base. Consistency in the application of rule would be great. This seems like the exact kind of situation that calls for a detach / remove.
A simple example are the various studies that show that "white" resumes get more attention that minority resumes: https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/minorities-who-whiten-job-resumes...
The comment you replied to had nothing to do with whether or not inequality exists, only that articles that unnecessarily bring up race, gender, etc. are pandering to the identity-politics crowd.