It's part of HN's tradition of gaslighting victims of demographically-targeted violence by ignoring any kind of context and pedantically claiming "it couldn't possibly have been $bad_thing". Of course, because being contrarian is more important than learning about the history of LGBT abuse.

Very much this. Do you have an ubsubstantiated conspiracy theory about the evil machinations of bigcorp? Congratulations - upvotes for your wisdom. An actual report of your lived experience of homophobia/racism/sexism/whatever? Hmm, are you sure it's not just in your imagination?

It's nice to not know it's not _actually_ just my imagination haha.

Thank you for this. I expect you'll get down voted or flagged, but my experience as a queer person on hn had absolutely been full of exactly what you describe.

It started out that way (you might have noticed this is a throwaway), but it seems this resonated with people.

Seconded.