[xxs]

>central role gender plays in our language,

You mean 'English'. (Although most[all?] Indo-European languages do have a gender concept)

There are languages that have no gender specific pronouns (or cases) and the best/funny part is that native speakers of a similar languages tend to call everything 'he' in English.

Personally I don't care what people would call me at all, if the rest of the argument/discussion is on point.

[progman32]

Yes I was a unclear. I meant "our" to imply the language being used in this very conversation. I should have used "this".

My first language is Italian. Even though almost everything is gendered in that language, gender tends to fade into a purely grammatical role. Unless it relates to humans.

> tend to call everything 'he' in English

yes I've noticed this too. Like referring to a machine... "he" will encode the frame into mp4 and pass it to the database...

Your last comment reminds me of an interesting anecdote I observed. Mom and son, the son having new long hair. Mom asked regarding the hair, "aren't you worried people will mistake you for a girl?"

She was genuinely surprised and confused when the son replied that they didn't give a toss if someone does. The landscape is changing fast.

[esyir]

I'd note that in English, the default pronoun actually is "he". The movement to remove that is relatively new and almost purely politically driven.