I don't think anyone is objecting to gendered pronouns (he, she, him, her) but rather gendered nouns in general. For example in french "night" and "baguette" are female whereas "book" and "chair" are male. It seems arbitrary and makes learning the language more difficult.
The nouns for heel, foot, and toe have gender. When I get to the end of a dance step mentioning all 3, and it says "and in the final beat you lift <pronoun>", I use the clue that the pronoun gender should match the noun gender to try to finger out what the antecedent is.
