Lee and Florence expose themselves to critical academic scrutiny (outside their home departments-- of course) when they say this: "We infer pronouns from our own ideas about what gender looks like. If someone fits our own image of a woman, we say 'she' without noticing." Actually, Lee and Florence, you're dead wrong because you're talking about communications, not "the idea behind the spoken word." The gendered pronoun under attack is at most a communicated politeness, based on how the referred-to person has presented themselves in a public transaction. IF the referred-to person deliberately constructs themselves as "not he nor she" then the speaker will AVOID a gendered pronoun out of simple efficiency or politeness. E.g., "Concierge, please help Carey Smith find Carey's car in the parking lot." The fact that this primitive power-play is being supported by institutions of learning is alarming and it demeans the valid struggle for gender equity.