Oh, and:
Calling a human “HER” is a microagression, but calling a car is not.
Cars have defined genders; humans do not.
These things she believes. Passionately.
English is a language in which very few words (nouns) have gender. A ship is about the only one that comes to mind -- ships are always "she" or "her." German, French, Spanish, Italian -- nearly everything has a gender because the noun used to describe it has a gender.
Take an ordinary white ball for example. Its gender in Spanish is feminine -- bola. If you want to say "the white ball," the gender of the word tells you that you would say la bola es blanca." That is the function of gender. The ball doesn't have a sex; it is neither male nor female. Only living organisms have a sex.
The gender of the Spanish word for ninepins, on the other hand, is masculine -- the word is "bolo." So if you wanted to say "the white ninepin, the gender of the word tells you that you would say, "el bolo blanco."
Just FYI. So yes, you could say the car has a defined gender, at least in Spanish, "el carro," and it is masculine. Depending on the language, objects like cars, ninepins, and balls do in fact have defined genders. What none of them have, however is a SEX. Animals and other living organisms, on the other hand, almost always have a SEX, and it is either male or female.
Just FYI. I hate that something as critical as a being's SEX is being equated with something as arbitrary and trivial as "gender." The same that I hate that the word "gay" has been hijacked to mean homosexual.