People on IRC didn't care about "Who you were" because the assumption was that you came from privilege. Privilege usually translated to white, urban, heterosexual male. Those groups said some horrible things about other communities because they felt the space was "safe".
Now that this is changing and calling people "orientals" or "gay" is no longer acceptable, there is an attempt to rewrite history - as you are trying to do here.
http://bash.org/?top try ctrl-fing for "fag", "homo", "jew", etc. These insults were routinely used on the early internet _without_ anyone volunteering their gender/ethnicity/sexual preferences/whatever.
These things are not what HN is for and destroy what it is for, so we end up having to ban accounts that do them.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
Downvote me for the snark all you want, but I feel that you can't describe it, because you weren't there. Nobody gave a crap about who you were, unless you made your incidental identity the central topic of discussion in unrelated conversation, in which case you were given shit for it, regardless of your skin color, biological sex, or sexual preferences. Because, quelle surprise, there were places to do that aplenty.
But your sentiment is absolutely the core of all DEI initiatives -- everything before DEI was the dark ages, and this new effort brings forth a new era of enlightenment.