My take on tone policing is it is a mechanism (whether conscious or unconscious) to tell people they shouldn't be as passionate and concerned about something as they are.
As such, it's relative to the tone of the forum (be it HN, tumblr, irl, wherever). If it's acceptable for me to say "goddamn NSA fucking ruining the internet" then it's acceptable for me to say "goddamn cis people who fucking ruin the internet" [1]
There are plenty of people on HN who speak passionately about many things, and who do so with expletives and curses, blunt and punchy statements. Personally I hope they can continue, but either way I hope it is explicitly allowed or discouraged in the guidelines.
Speaking to over-generalisations; it's a hard one. There is undoubtedly a need to talk about the commulative effect of oppressive groups, and there is definitely a need to talk a about subsections of oppressive groups who are actively doing opressive things (again, whether consciously or unconsciously, knowingly or unknowingly).
Unfortunately we haven't yet figured out/settled on the language to use that differentiates between the two that doesn't involve a whole bunch of clauses and caveats. And given a forum where people are permitted to express their passion, extra clauses and caveats weakens the impact. When you are trying to communicate how fucked up a situation is to someone, it's exhausting and derailing to have to continually validate them and say "of course I don't mean everyone here, implicitly from the context I mean everyone who is engaging in this behaviour".
[1] I had to think a bit then for the phrasing where I could most easily argue "of course I don't mean every cis person" without also weakening the statement with extra clauses.
As such, it's relative to the tone of the forum (be it HN, tumblr, irl, wherever). If it's acceptable for me to say "goddamn NSA fucking ruining the internet" then it's acceptable for me to say "goddamn cis people who fucking ruin the internet" [1]
There are plenty of people on HN who speak passionately about many things, and who do so with expletives and curses, blunt and punchy statements. Personally I hope they can continue, but either way I hope it is explicitly allowed or discouraged in the guidelines.
Speaking to over-generalisations; it's a hard one. There is undoubtedly a need to talk about the commulative effect of oppressive groups, and there is definitely a need to talk a about subsections of oppressive groups who are actively doing opressive things (again, whether consciously or unconsciously, knowingly or unknowingly).
Unfortunately we haven't yet figured out/settled on the language to use that differentiates between the two that doesn't involve a whole bunch of clauses and caveats. And given a forum where people are permitted to express their passion, extra clauses and caveats weakens the impact. When you are trying to communicate how fucked up a situation is to someone, it's exhausting and derailing to have to continually validate them and say "of course I don't mean everyone here, implicitly from the context I mean everyone who is engaging in this behaviour".
[1] I had to think a bit then for the phrasing where I could most easily argue "of course I don't mean every cis person" without also weakening the statement with extra clauses.