The project was never gender exclusive. The comments could have easily used the pronouns she instead of he. Whoever wrote the comment chose he for whatever reason. Had someone else who has a different gender pronoun preference written the code being commented on, then it would have been different. It doesn't really matter because it's irrelevant to the purpose of the project.
Yes, I disagree with people wasting the committer's time with something that simply does not matter. Pronouns don't matter. He, she, it, user, dog, cat, lamp. If it's not code or comments that further clarify the code in question who cares because it simply does not matter. Knowing or not knowing the gender of the example user in the comment doesn't change anything about the code. Were we really supposed to believe that it was only going to send the nsent flag is the user is male and that we are not sending the flag if the user is female.
People should either code or not code, but they should not pretend to contribute with trivial pull requests that have been one huge net negative addition to the project due to the shitstorm kicked up. That's all the original pull request has accomplished ... one big massive net negative addition to the community. What an excellent way to make your point and endear people with your cause. I hope they are happy with the turd they left in the pool.
You know what statistic I would love to see. Lines of code contributed by those who think the change is trivial versus those that think it is not trivial. That's the only worthwhile objective measure of "important" that really matters. I bet you that the conversation on that PR is actually really really short once you eliminate everyone who has never contributed a pull request.