I think this has less to do with respect and more to do with detracting from the original discussion e.g. source code integrity having nothing to do with human genitalia.

Gender is also not about genitalia, fwiw.

I see that the author of the edited comment got defensive about it and went on an irrelevant rant about singular they. Wish people like that would grow up a bit.

Eh, having others edit comments attributed to us is weird, regardless of the context, I can see why people would get defensive. At least SO shows the editing user pretty clearly, on Github it's almost invisible.