honestly gircel and halimede are like the only twitter accounts im sad to not be able to read.
ID: A screenshot of a twitter post, by faith (@girlcel_)
woke Batman: that's the difference between you and me, kid; I have a code - i NEVER misgender my enemies, that'd make me as bad as them. it ain't right
Transfem Nightwing: you called me bro 2 hours ago
woke Batman:[yelling] bro is Gender Neutral dude, you fucking Words Fascist
i have a few non-overlapping friend groups with a lot of trans fems, one of which says bro to each other constantly and is definitely not representative of my other friends or anyone else.
I think it's largely a cultural thing. Growing up and still today, girls (and guys) in my area will call guys and girls "dude", "bro", "bitch", the n word, "girl", "hoe", etc. If someone told me to not call them dude or bro, I'd stop because I don't want to make people uncomfortable. But to me most of the words I mentioned are gender neutral terms.
There is some masculine default sneaking in there some of the time in how we got here, but it's also distinct from languages where you gender-conjugate even if there's only one man in a group of mostly women because you'll hear "hey guys" etc addressing zero men.
Oh yeah no doubt the reason some of those terms are “gender neutral” is because it’s originally for males. Similarly to how male marketed clothing is acceptable for females to wear - like almost nobody bats an eye - thus it becomes largely “gender neutral.” But then the opposite makes reactionaries foam at the mouth.