I have no argument. I just think it's kind of ridiculous how huge of a reaction there was to what is probably the mildest example of sexism i've ever seen. There's only one actual reference which could be interpreted as sexist (because apparently a stereotype about the mongul empire immediately defers to rape?) in the whole post and the rest of it is just tacky/creepy look-here-are-some-pictures-of-me-with-women.

Just as some people need to be told to reign in the sexualization of their posts, some people need to reign in the outrage.

Also I was really annoyed by the pointless use of the word 'hacker'. Seriously, people, just stop using the damn word. It's meaningless.

To speculate a bit, it seems like many people in the tech industry feel like women have been historically alienated in the industry, feel that this is unjust, and as a result are willing to err on the side of being oversensitive in this issue (perfection of course being impossible in this sort of fuzzy cultural area).

A similar thing applies to talking about women on the site. You can see the difference between referring to an example woman reading hacker news as a fellow hacker vs "someone's girlfriend or wife or little sister might be in the kitchen reading her iPad", right? The latter reinforces sexist stereotypes of women only being related to technology through men in their life rather than engaging with it themselves (plus, if someone's on hacker news, it's fair shorthand to assume that they're a hacker rather than a relation of one, whatever you want "hacker" to mean).

(Also you obviously do have an argument. The discussion is better when you state it outright rather than lashing out with vague sarcasm.)

I don't have an argument. I have a complaint, and I lodge it with sarcasm and parody because I don't think it's worth discussing. If somebody had something meaningful to say other than "I am disgusted by these pictures and a vague reference to a guy ravaging his girlfriend like a 14th century asian warrior!" maybe we would have something to talk about.