Same reason you can reasonably refer to a male-looking acquaintance as "he" without enforcing a policy of using "they" until you have the opportunity to ask what gender they identify with.
Yes, you will get it wrong ~0.1% of the time, but the cost of slight embarrassment one one/both sides is far less than the cost of using non-standard and confusing communication the remaining 99.9% of the time.
The typing isn't hard, the hard part is keeping yourself from making assumptions about who people like to date. There's much more than a "tiny off-chance" that people are queer, at least where I'm from (and probably at Intel HQ too).
I'm not discriminating anyone when I assume the majority view on things as long as I stop doing it to an individual who tells me they are part of an minority.
Because it's a natural thing to do. It's very tiresome to watch yourself all day to make sure you're not making any assumptions. We hear "CEO has relationship with employee" and our mind immediately goes to work fabricating a mental image of that. And if there's something our mind is really good at, it's filling in the gaps, i.e. assumptions. So when we continue the conversation, we use that mental image and without even thinking use the word "she" when referring to the employee. Is this insensitive? No, it's just sticking to patterns, which is the modus operandi of our mind.
I think the parent is descriptive for many people, but that's a different issue than prescriptive. We can do much better:
> Is this insensitive? No, it's just sticking to patterns
IMHO, that's the cause of most discrimination. People aren't intentionally discriminatory, but not having experienced it themselves they suffer from the blinders of their own perspective (as humans do), are unaware of the consequences of their actions, and are doing the very human thing of downplaying the magnitude of others' problems. As Mel Brooks (IIRC) said, 'Tragedy is I stub my toe; comedy is you get eaten by a lion.'
That's why people talk about being 'woke' or becoming aware of their 'privilege'. They weren't intentionally insensitive before, but they didn't grasp what they hadn't experienced, and then one day the blinders come off.
> the modus operandi of our mind
The modus operendi of our minds can lead to all sorts of horrible things, from murder to war to theft. We can and do use reason in order to do better, including by learning the pattern of not making assumptions.
> it's a natural thing to do
It's natural to follow patterns, but the pattern isn't natural; it's just one arbitrary pattern we learn. We can learn other patterns, which is how we change and grow. Whole societies learn new patterns; democracy and universal human rights didn't exist until the 18th century (roughly speaking); for all of human history until maybe 50 years ago, women were 'naturally' though of as qualified only for raising babies and maybe some nurturing jobs. Now they fly fighter planes off aircraft carriers and are a majority of new lawyers (IT hasn't figured it out yet, apparently).
> It's very tiresome to watch yourself all day
If you think that's tiresome, imagine facing endless discrimination everywhere you go, from family, co-workers, employers, the person on the bus, the movie, the book, the Reddit thread, etc. Imagine facing the prospect of experiencing that for the rest of your life.
Anyway, we don't have to watch ourselves all day. Just learn something new, and pretty simple. I learned some new Vim techniques recently and now I don't have to watch myself all day, I just use them. I learned to say 'they' awhile ago, and it's now second nature - Vim was harder.
Because for 95% it's correct and when you are not part of those 5% and less, this topic is way below other topics and thoughts.
Doing the dishes or putting stuff away is a way bigger problem for me. I do not wanna offend anybody with this but some genderassumptions and gender topics are important but less relevant for me than the amount of discussions we have about it let us believe that it has more daily relevance.
Because writing in English requires either gender specific singular pronouns or the awkward sounding use of a gender neutral _plural_ pronoun referring to a singular person.
There is no rule in English that says a pronoun cannot be both singular and plural. Here's a simple example:
"Which of you thinks you are the smartest?"
I used "you" as both singular and plural in that sentence, and no one would blink an eye at it.
"They" is used the same way as "you", as either a singular or plural pronoun depending on the context. This was the case in English for centuries, until some prescriptivist grammarians decided they didn't like it, each for their own reasons.
BTW, do you really think that last sentence would be improved by saying "each for his or her own reasons"?
The modern resurgence of singular "they" is just returning English to what was common and correct usage before the prescriptivists hijacked the language.