Not the OP, but given that English is historically gender biased, I find it pretty easy to unconsciously fall into the trap of using a gender biased turn of phrase. Even if one is consciously trying to avoid such things, our messy neural nets being what they are, mistakes happen.
Given the almost certainty (in my mind anyway), that the OP meant no disrespect to people who identify with genders that are not male, it would make me very happy indeed if requests for correction could be made in a respectful way. Simply asking something like "Would you mind using the alternative phrasing 'blah blah blah'" would go a long way towards helping everyone to maintain a civil tone.
Thanks for caring about gendered language. I used this term because it's used (humorously) in the Unix Koans[0]. But maybe you're reading to far into it, I certainly don't mean to imply their gender had anything to do with C's design, but for better or worse they did happen to be men and were seen by by some as a "father figure" for the language.
Given the almost certainty (in my mind anyway), that the OP meant no disrespect to people who identify with genders that are not male, it would make me very happy indeed if requests for correction could be made in a respectful way. Simply asking something like "Would you mind using the alternative phrasing 'blah blah blah'" would go a long way towards helping everyone to maintain a civil tone.