HN has an honor code - it may not be as strong as the "SJW!" trope you have in your mind, but it certainly exists.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

ALl of their guidelines have the same shape as all honor codes: they ask you not to do something that you are, in a strict legalist / absolutist sense, allowed to do.

And then they shame those who violate the rules, and the group codifies that shame in the name of "common" "decency", and those activities no longer happen here in great numbers, despite being "allowed" in the larger sense (they even preface most of the guidelines with "Please" to emphasize the voluntary nature of your choice to submit to the guidelines.)

I don't think this discussion will be productive if different people have a different set of first principles they start with. In this case, I disagree that HN works extremely well. It works well, but there's still a fair amount of misogyny in my experience.