I think this has less to do with respect and more to do with detracting from the original discussion e.g. source code integrity having nothing to do with human genitalia.
I see that the author of the edited comment got defensive about it and went on an irrelevant rant about singular they. Wish people like that would grow up a bit.
Eh, having others edit comments attributed to us is weird, regardless of the context, I can see why people would get defensive. At least SO shows the editing user pretty clearly, on Github it's almost invisible.
