Maybe, but how would that make a person's (of either gender) physical attractiveness (which is completely subjective, by the way) relevant to a discussion of an article about their technical accomplishments?

You're basically saying "We may, in a hypothetical future, have two wrongs", but remember that 2 * wrong != right.

People have been mentioning that sometimes there are discussions of male entrepreneurs or technical folk that comment on their appearance, but I like to think that HN is above that level of discourse.