It's on the front page of HN because this community cares about civility, online interactions, open source contributions, and gender issues in technology.
--> To respond to the posts below: I think the original post is fine, I didn't make this comment there. Hearing about that is interesting and is a fine example of how easy it is for users with social capital to abuse it, a reminder we need. Seeing two threads containing blog posts of people apologizing? I'm not sure I actually care, I think my learning and interest ended after reading the original thread. Now we're firmly in noise territory.