FWIW I've got a female friend who was in enlisted the US Navy and she spoke of female naval officers who were addressed as "Sir" rather than "Ma'am" (though most went by "Ma'am").
So I don't know how to feel about anything anymore.
Not OP, but I don't think they were making fun of the legitimate issues. There have been plenty of instances of pronoun-related overreactions in and outside the tech sector - see the recent-ish StackOverflow mess for an example. There are obviously many issues, but there are also many overblown non-issues and I don't see much harm in making fun of those.
