Did you just assume his gender??
Of course not. I wouldn't do something like that. He told me when I made him up.
This is honestly just a curious thought, but is there a debate in Francophone societies over the fact that not only do humans have a gender, but other tangible things too? They might presumably have at least the same contention over gendered personal pronouns, but what about gendered nouns?
I have no idea. Interesting question. I imagine so.
"citation needed" is kind of Wikipedia's way of saying "opinion offered as fact".
Linguists often note languages changing informally rather than through empirical study, especially English. Other languages have official guardians. Dictionaries update definitions without citing empirical studies as far as I know. I don't need to be a linguist to see that "good" is replacing "well" as an adverb. As in, she swims good.