You’re asking a pretty specific question, but your title looks like trolling. I’m starting with that because people tend to respond emotionally to the first things they read, and it means you aren’t getting solid answers.

Someone else already explained that reddit policies drove that rule, and that’s as much as anyone really knows.

At least, there was a wave of changes like that one, all around the same time, and the few mods that have said anything about it off of reddit have cited that as their reason mostly.

But there are a few that decided to take it as an opportunity to blunt the edge of gendered language in general. Afaik that sub hasn’t had anyone say that, but you did ask about reddit in general as well.

Expanding beyond that, and I want to emphasize that this is not the same thing as above, it’s tangential and here only for background; there are reasons to reduce gendered language overall. While it isn’t really going to totally change English where nobody uses gendered terms at all, reducing needlessly gendered language when speaking about people rather than men or women is an option that would help those among us that don’t fit gender expectations in one way or another. So (again, this is tangential) if you’re seeing it in other places, chances are that it’s intended to meet that concept.

With that, responding solely to your title, I’m not seeing a trend of obsession with it, even among people that are proponents of degendering language. It’s a pretty niche movement, and even the more dedicated proponents know that it isn’t something that’s going to happen just by applying rules to forums.

I genuinely have absolutely no fucking clue what this post is saying or asking.

PSA: you don’t have to start every post with “I cheated on my boyfriend,” especially when it’s irrelevant to the post

If you’re dealing with relationship advice, the differences from one person to another are substantially greater than those which separate men and women. Even if we ignore transgender and same-gender relationships, or how a huge portion of western society’s gender differences are just toxic sexism.

“How can I (M) suggest $FETISH to partner (F)” is essentially the same question if you swap the genders, make them both F, or make them both M. And to the extent that they aren’t, many of the answers and clarifying questions will be.

Women can get pregnant so there is the possibility of an affair pregnancy, STDs work differently for men and women social and emotional standards are different.

Except for the social part to an extent, none of that is inherently true. Trans people obviously complicate a lot of those assumptions, but also cis people can have their personal issues that diverge from the commonassumptions. I would guess the idea is to encourage treating people as unique individuals rather than as stereotypes.

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.

Before we all started sharing our personal information on the Internet, it was common sense to, well, not share your personal information online. Specially if you’re a women, because that often just invites harassment. So gender neutral words like SO instead o boy/girlfriend help with that. You don’t have to use it

“STDs work differently for men and women” HUHHH??? Gonorrhea is gonorrhea whether you a dude, lady, or neither. No idea what this is trying to say.

Listen bro, we can’t pretend we are part of the progressive team unless we are doing something extra. Even if it’s worse. We have to find the “broken” in something so we can make “progress”