It's a reply to your comment about downotes. The point of votes is to rank threads, and the point of ranking threads is to promote cogent comments and avoid irrelevance, misinformation, and malice. I do this in real life and I do it here.
On the contrary, in real life I remove myself from conversations where people have nothing worthwhile to say every day. Half my job is judging when that's the case so I can prioritize the interactions where people are ready to be cogent and concise.
I personally love it, and I thought about claiming the Chicago Handshake as a single drink, but in the end Old Style by itself is both more universal and more iconic.
There are times when it's relevant and times when it's not, and the latter is a lot more prevalent.
But on reddit, the real reason is because about three years ago reddit admit let mod teams know that misgendering anyone was a violation of site-wide rule one, and if we mods didn't crack down on it, the admin would crack down on US.
Insisting on gender-neutral language is a way to keep clear of that.
What... do you think of it as?