alt Hacker News> But if the social default is "girls don't code and queers should hide"
Queers should hide definitely isn't any social default unless the code is exclusively developed in Gaza. "Do what you like but please stick to technical considerations" isn't "you need to hide".
You seem to have read that as literally "hide if you are queer". What I meant to encompass was also "hide that you're queer". And that's absolutely a norm that exists, and that can perfectly well hide behind "stick to technical considerations". If you say "I prefer to be referred to by these pronouns" then the reply "please stick to technical considerations" is not neutral. If someone would point out @acronym_XYZ is actually a woman when someone referred to her as he, nobody would reply with "please stick to technical considerations". "Please stick to technical considerations" as a response to any behavior that is outside some societal default is not enforcing a technical concern, it's enforcing the societal default, including when there are no technical reasons to do so.
That doesn't mean that "Please stick to technical considerations" or quite simply "that's off-topic" are never valid. They very much are. It simply means that they don't provide some clean clear demarcation line around which to organize a technical community.