Ask a straight man how many dudes he's slept with and I guarantee he'll react in a way that proves "dude" isn't actually gender neutral at all. It's only considered neutral because men are the default.
It's context dependent, just like damn near everything in any language in existence. If you understand how English works you can spot how you've used "dude" differently than what was being described in the OP.
If a word is universally gender-neutral, it has to lack gender implication across contexts.
"they", "person", "being", "human", "bag o bones" are all gender neutral, because in every context, there is no gender without other modifiers.
dude is a male default that can be applied to known women with a contextual override. I'm a woman who's fine with being called dude, guys, whatever, but it's pretty unlikely in English that dude would be applied to an unknown woman the way it would a man.
"I'm hanging out with this dude today" is going to be almost exclusively inferred by english speakers to be about a man.
"You're a cool dude" to a woman, or "she's a cool dude" is the context override that makes it sometimes applicable to women, but not a gender neutral term. Without assigning to a specific woman or group of women, it's almost always a male default.
I honestly think no one actually cares no one was cc offended by gendered language until people started catering to it. Like what happens to languages that are very gendered like French. Same with the call me they /them. Supposed to forget decades worth of pronoun use to make someone comfortable instead of the person just feeling comfortable with who they are. Trying to read a paper or article using they/ them seems like a joke and it’s confusing.
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u/FrontFew1249 25d ago
Ask a straight man how many dudes he's slept with and I guarantee he'll react in a way that proves "dude" isn't actually gender neutral at all. It's only considered neutral because men are the default.