No, I have no such confusion.
I mention my karma as shorthand for "I appear to have done the best job for figuring out how to participate as a woman here and can't turn it into adequate income though it's an explicit goal of mine."
I'm well aware you have to seek to use it that way and karma score does not directly correlate with success in using it that way. I've sought to use it that way. It has not gotten satisfactory results. I have good reason to believe my gender is a factor in that failure to achieve what I would like to achieve.
This is solely your depiction and doesn't make it a truth (and I don't think it's anywhere close to being true). I also think if you keep thinking that, you are unlikely to achieve satisfactory results (and subsequently shift the blame to your gender instead of your strategy).
Some issues:
1. If men will only take me seriously if they think I'm a man, what happens if they arrange to meet me in person and find out I'm a woman?
2. How do I arrange to accept payment online for work while continuing to hide my gender? My name is not gender neutral.
3. Business is done on a basis of trust. How do I convince people to trust me when they find out I have been actively deceiving them wrt my identity and gender?
There are other complications specific to me as an individual, but women generally will face the above issues if they try to take advice to simply hide their gender as a supposed "solution" to such problems.
I've heard that kind of thing a lot -- "On the internet, no one knows you're a dog if you don't tell them" -- and it ignores a lot of critical details. You can potentially be anonymous online for purposes of engaging in discussion in a forum but if you wish to actually make money, it gets vastly more challenging to be anonymous and hide your gender.
But it's no longer a barrier to YOUR success, and you just might, if it's what you want, have the comfort and audience in your success to spread this message more effectively.
But if you feel gas-lit, and like you're yelling into the wind, finish your breath and change tactic.
I did run into some sexism, but not enough to make me want to make my own account.
Genuinely: Do you want to do business with the sexists etc, anyway?
HN makes you money only if you use HN to make money. At the end of the day, Hacker News is a public forum. Some people use it to launch their startup, or get hired. Some people use it to find news. Some people do not read the articles and instead read the comments.
It's up to you to use HN as you see fit as long as you are within the site guidelines. I think your confusion is stemming from the fact that HN Karma and the amount of dollars you make from HN are correlated. They are not.