+Taking it as a given that English speakers are stuck with gendered third-person singular pronouns, there's still room to debate exactly what _she_ and _he_ map to in cases where a person's "gender" is ambiguous or disputed. (Which comes up more often these days than in the environment where the language evolved.)
+
+During a recent discussion of all this, I received a _fascinating_ reply that I thought was very telling about an aspect of the _Zeitgeist_ that usually remains covert. My interlocutor said (edited and paraphrased):
+
+> I can imagine a sane society using _he_ and _she_ to refer to this-person-looks-male and this-person-looks-female. But in the society that exists today, "what pronouns does this person use for trans person" on-average **conveys very relevant information about the speaker and their attitudes to trans people.** (I mean this in a this-is-just-how-the-statistics-work rather than an accusatory way; I think in your particular case we have lots of other data.)
+
+> I agree that there's going to be some confusion if you talk about someone as a "she" and the person who turns up is a.m.a.b. But I think the confusion that results from calling them "she" is a lot more consequential. Progressive communication norms absolutely reflect a concern for information efficiency! It takes a lot less time to say "she" than it does to say "he, but I also think trans people are great."
+
+(Bolding mine.)
+
+I see. So the norm is optimized to convey information _about the speaker_ rather than [what is being spoken about](http://thetranswidow.com/2021/02/21/pronouns-and-the-purpose-of-language/).
+
+Kind of like ... a loyalty test?
+
+And the less intuitive it is, the better it works _as_ a loyalty test: referring to an obviously male person as _he_ merely reflects conventional usage and reveals no information about one's motives, whereas refering to an obvious male as _she_—or using singular _they_ for a named individual whose sex is apparent—extracts a cognitive cost, however slight—a cost [allies are more willing to pay than non-allies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_theory).
+
+I'm not suggesting a conspiracy, of course; just the design signature of [cultural evolution](/2020/Jan/book-review-the-origins-of-unfairness/).
+
+In the begining, [Azathoth](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pLRogvJLPPg6Mrvg4/an-alien-god) created female and male, and the physical fact was called "sex", and the social recognition and implications thereof was called "gender"—the first day.
+
+As a very rare biological anomaly, there were extremely masculine lesbians who fit into Society
+
+Also, separately, there were
+
+
+/2019/Aug/the-social-construction-of-reality-and-the-sheer-goddamned-pointlessness-of-reason/
+/2018/Jan/dont-negotiate-with-terrorist-memeplexes/