> Are you harmed so much by saying there are five lights when there are four?
Definitions and language change. I know of people who get deeply offended when "decimated" is used to not strictly mean exactly a 10% reduction, despite language not meaning quite that forever. "He" meaning "chooses to present as male and/or would really like to be referred to in ways that are associated with maleness" rather than "was born with a penis" seems OK.
Insisting on labelling someone based on your historical idea of language and what you think they should be called is not really a great way to choose to do things. I mean, you can insist on calling someone the N-word because that's "just calling a spade a spade", but...
> A mention of gender in code is probably not talking about the author's gender.
It's probably talking about a user's or a customer's gender. e.g. eventually getting in someone's face with it.
> for assuming that the same dynamics don't apply in other areas. Virtually everything that we're able to objectively measure, we find significant sex differences.
I struggle to respond to this one. I mean-- really, really seriously-- "so what?" I mean, it seems that you're upset that stereotypes might not work as well.
Basically every simple characteristic A we measure about humans is correlated with many different complex outcomes B with terrific variation.
Yes, people who present with female characteristics at birth are shorter than me on average, but not all. Most are worse at basketball than the average man, but not all. There are some differences in spatial tasks on average than men, but some outperform most men. Most show lower measures of aggression than men, but... Etc.
I mean, do you need to get gender of birth correct- or race, or natural hair color, or nation of upbringing, etc, so you can make judgments based on stereotypes better (which may be real biological correlates)? I think we should always be acting based on the actual individual ahead of us based on the actual measure in question, rather than some proxy.
And even if you really, really want stereotypes to work-- people born male who choose to present as female vary on a whole lot of measures, on average, from the overall male average. And sex hormones change a number of these measures, both immediately and with sustained usage. So, the measure is pretty broken in the first place, because of terrific individual variation and being affected by the gender transition process.