It did in this case. Nobody would have batted an eyelash if they had gone with, say, US Presidents, a list which excludes women.
This tweaks on that notion. Somebody got angry about it. That person got downvoted. We all learned a tiny lesson about the ways that women get excluded regularly, and how that would make you feel.
If one particular HN poster learned a lesson that not everybody supports them on "I won't complain about lists that exclude women but I will complain about lists that exclude men, and pretend it's about equality", then that's another tiny bonus. Not a big one, but this is the kind of thing that happens in tiny increments.
