@Maenad I was chatting with a friend about this last week and we made a distinction between

things like "man, I really hate this salad" or "DUDE where's my car"

and things like "hi man what can I get you" or "dude, your hair is nice!"

idk I guess the former two are more exclamations or interjections, and the latter two are directed at the person being spoken to?

anyway i'm ~totally cool~ with case one but case two seems to bother me. I don't know. if I see enough people do it in a non-gendered context I will probably get over it.