there are still people in the notes of that thread failing to grasp that this isn't a hypothetical for me. I know trans people up here who had their front door covered with 'I ❤️ JKR' and 'adult human female' stickers. there are active terf groups who harrass queer cafés and bookshops and use her name as an in-group identifier on signs and t-shirts at protests and at pride. she actually personally funded a trans exclusionary women's crisis centre in edinburgh, after her followers hounded and harrassed an inclusive service into shutting down. she is a tangible threat to trans people here.
i just don’t think “is dude gender neutral” is that productive of a conversation because a word can be gendered and still used regardless of gender. i call my male friends girlypop and my female friends man but i don’t think anybody would agree that those are somehow not gendered terms.
the real question is just “would you be willing to apologize and stop using a word if somebody told you it made them uncomfortable?” the answer to which in a surprising number of cases is no mostly because it seems like overall ppl r more upset abt getting accused of transphobia than they are abt being transphobic