In the wake of a recent unfruitful discussion I feel it is necessary for the community to come to an agreement on what kind of language we want to use here. In particular, on whether we want to discourage people from using gendered language to refer to other people whose gender is unknown.
Perhaps it is a cultural issue, but to me it is pretty obvious we should always use gender neutral language to refer to other people, unless we know for a fact what gender they identify with. We should never try and guess based on their behaviour. Yet, there is at least one user (with whom I had the aforementioned discussion) who insists on using gendered language despite being told that some people find that offensive; despite being told that it is a dangerous attitude.
Thus, my question: do we, as a community, want to discourage gendered language? Or should we just leave it to the discretion of users what kind of language to use?