All good points. I admit (growing up in the 70s, and being male) I happily referred to women who were mailcarriers as "the mailman" for years and years before I was informed it was problematic. Functionally it always was gender neutral to me (much like congressman, etc).

While I have been (and remain) open to adjusting my vocabulary with the times and have generally sought to become more mindful in my choice of words, this particular ball of wax is always challenging for me because even as a kid I truly never thought of such words as actually specifying a man. So I tend to get really pedantic in trying to understand humor and memes that touch on those issues because thinking of the terms that way is still a bit of a manual (no pun intended) process for me.

various edits to fix a typo and provide clarity

Realistically, using "man" in this context absolutely does carry a male defaultness to it because we don't use a different term for "male post-person".

I disagree, we don't speak Latin either, but many of our current words are derived from Latin words, and those were introduced indirectly through French from the Norman invasion, but it's not like we're going to throw out all Latin roots because they no longer apply.

I'm fine with evolving our language, but I think it's silly to just throw out etymology and historical context entirely. I think "man" can have multiple meanings and be used as a gender neutral suffix, I'd never consider someone toxic for using it (unless they're just being as asshole about it).