I'm going to use an exaggerated stereotype to illustrate my point - but if I was a male at a makeup or fashion event and the MC said "How are we feeling ladies?" I would not be offended in the slightest, nor would I demand representation. because I would understand the statement was not made to injure or offend.
(Ignoring gender stereotypes included), if someone politely informed said MC that there were males present as well and they felt (whether intentionally or not) excluded, can that MC still claim they're "not trying to offend" when the request is ignored?
I get called "girl", "she" and "queen" by my gay friends and at no point has it ever hurt my feelings.
I've also done some consulting work for a charity organization that focuses on outreach for women. Since it is woman focused the staff is very much a majority of women. At the ground breaking ceremony they ended it with an enthusiastic hype speech that ended with "let's go get em ladies!".
Also didn't care.
Well, to start, your claiming not to care is not indicative of everyone. If
someone does (as many women/non-binary people attest to in this thread,) then doesn't it make sense to respect that and go through the
extremely minimal effort of changing a word in your vocabulary?
Also, there's the fact that my analogy was not even perfect. It doesn't take into account the
entire history of the genders, and how women were systematically denied personhood over and over and over again. There's a lot of baggage there. So it is actually a lot worse when someone excludes women in group pronouns than when a man is excluded; men do not have a history of being marginalized.
So, yes, I admit to some weakness in my analogy, but I was just using it as an easy thought experiment for guys to use who may not have thought of it that way; they may have only thought about
their intent and not the impact it had on
others.
So maybe a more perfect example is to
also imagine your gender had the same history of being minimized as women and non-binary people do. But now it's getting a little
too complex. So I'll just stop. :P
Edit:
See this is the part I find the hardest, I've realized I simply cannot directly empathize with the concerns of less represented people like the OP. As a male, society has always respected my expression as a male, and as such I've internalized confidence in this identity to a high degree. A misgendering here or there wouldn't bother because I've never been in a position where I felt I needed to defend my identity.
This is problematic because I usually decide if I should dismiss someone's concerns by imagining myself in their position. In a similar situation to the OP, if I was in a group and people said "Let's go girls!" or "Girl you are KILLING it!" I literally would not care. So I straight up can't really feel their struggle because it's simply too foreign to me. What's so problematic for people like me is that if I hear complaints I can't understand, then they initially come off as kind of annoying? I know it's wrong and it's one of many things I would like to address in myself.
The situation needs to be viewed in the context of your privilege. Gender identity is one of those issues I don't think people like us will ever be able to connect with. So in my view it's not my place to say what's right and what's wrong. I will say, however, that it's not that hard to be inclusive, so I'll try my best to be inclusive. (I'll be using "guys" until the day I die though, it's too ingrained sorry)
A perfect example of what I was trying to say at the end of this post. :D