I get the idea about how dissent can be presented as harassment (or trumped up in some other way) in a political environment, because the line between the personal and the political, if it exists at all, is very blurry.

I don't think this is the case in a technical environment. Am I missing some especially emotionally stunted corner of open source software development where people exchange sexual favours for having their patches approved? Is there some correlation between breast/penis size and code quality that I'm unaware of? Perhaps race? Religion? Political party?

I mean right off the bat, harassing someone in a technical forum or community is way off-topic, and already calls for some sort of slap on the wrist for that reason alone. The extra shortage of consideration that allows someone to go from off-topic to harassing is totally worth waving the banhammer around for.

Or do you have an argument that's actually relevant to the context of this discussion?