I do have some memories of not particularly trans positive comments in the comments section on earlier blogposts about their opengl/vulkan drivers, and also references to kiwi farms. I don't see such things commonly on most hacker news articles, but you'll usually see something like that anytime the article even incidentally has something to do with trans people.
The comment is not something someone would say to a person they intend to treat as a peer. I personally wouldn't post a comment like that unless I thought the person I was talking about was a danger to other people, regardless of how I felt.
Also, if I was Marcan or Lina^, then I would probably be the type of person who would like to read and participate in Hacker News, but would likely not because of that type of comment. (I suspect I could have found more toxic ones if I searched harder. This was in the first result) Since they have in effect been excluded from Hacker News, it feels fair to me that they put up an easily bypassable barrier to inform people visiting their site that they have been excluded, and what can be done to fix that.
^ I neither know nor care if the two are the same. I haven't reviewed the evidence, and it's bad internet educate to try and dig up someone's anonymous persona, so I won't try.
People with public personas get all sorts of criticism here though. I mean look at Matt Mullenweg and this whole WordPress debacle. If you're doing something, in public, that others think is a bit off, then they're going to comment.
Marcan is of course free to redirect HN visitors to his site to a long screed about how much he despises HN, just as Matt is free to block WP Engine users from his site and/or rant about them in WordPress feeds that show up in the admin panel.
But in both cases others are free to consider this sort of reaction quite ridiculous and unhelpful, and talk about it.
I think it is annoying to have to copy past the link in order to get around the essay too. I think its fine to say so. Its the people saying that HN isn't actually like how the essay represents HN to be that my original post and previous reply are talking about.
Given the comment thread you linked. I feel like photomatt has a very strong stomach. I'm glad I'm not him.
EDIT: I see where your comment is coming from, in that I did say that I thought it was fair to redirect to the essay. My opinion is that it was both fair to redirect to the essay, and fair for HN readers to find that redirect annoying. This all seems pretty civil to me, although some sibling comments do seem to be acting more hurt about it then I would expect.
Edit: I search "asahi lina site:news.ycombinator.com" in duckduckgo, and found "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35237006" in the first result, for people who want proof.