Does anyone else have multiple accounts while looking for new reddit alts? So far I’ve got accounts on Lemmy, kbin, and Squabbles and I’ve been lurking on Raddle, Sqwok, and Tildes from the outside.
Also, man, that sentence is just the most 2023 statement ever. “Raddle” … “Sqwok” … “Lemmy” … None of these sound like real things. What even is this timeline we’re in…
I don’t want to start a war here, and I don’t have the context of what you experienced over there. Perhaps they did go too far. But if you don’t know the gender of someone, it is indeed incorrect to assume “he” is OK. That’s inclusion 101: don’t assume things about people. There is a commonly accepted solution to this problem, used e.g. in the academic peer review world where the reviewer is anonymous, which is to default to “they”. That’s a good habit to take, costs nothing, and helps (particularly) women feel included. That’s a hill I’d happily die on.
Even then some people throw their toys out because they believe “they” assumes a person is non-binary. “They” as a singular pronoun for someone of unknown gender has existed since at least the 16th century.
Speaking about assuming things about people, don’t assume everyone is an English native. In some other languages there is no gender-neutral equivalent and instead the normal and expected way to address a stranger is by using male pronouns. Reacting aggressively instead of just politely correcting someone is the difference between making someone have a positive or a negative opinion on a given topic.