My background is the humanities. I know all about the gender-normative terms and constructs, the 'other' etc.
All that is good to keep in mind when choosing your own words. I am glad you are sensitive to such issues,
Crash, and I'm sure your writing is better for it.
When listening to the words of another, I find it's best to focus on what they are
saying rather than whether they observe the latest trends in saying it. It's unrealistic to demand that everyone in your environment talk like you. They won't.
Most people can recognize problems and tensions in the traditional English usage. If the language had been perfect no momentum would have accrued to change it. But remember that plenty of women as well as men use the more traditional terms and feel none the worse for it. Included among these are thinkers and innovators who have plenty of ideas worth listening to. It would be a shame to miss what they say in a legalistic preoccupation with pronouns.
Do not allow your feminism to become a fundamentalist religion. No one is going to go to hell for saying the word
mankind, so why react like a Calvinist? What doth it profit a person if s/he overcometh stigmatizing some people as The Other only to stigmatize other people as The Other? Be something more.
Your feminism is based on the idea of making everyone feel included. Good. Why not stay on that high road? Don't you believe it is good to respect choices, even if they are not those you would make? Wouldn't this apply to
word choices as well?
Please go slow in labeling another person as sexist or racist--and please,
never to do it based solely on what is, or was until recently, standard English vocabulary.
In matters of love and hate, fear and acceptance, listen to the music first. The music always tells you more than the words.
Archer