If someone looks/acts like a specific gender based on cultural norms and personal experience, I’ll default to calling the person that gender. It’s just a simpler and easier form of communication, and takes just a moment to correct if the opposite is desired.

They/them is technically usable but really clumsy sounding in English because that changes the entire sentence structure to plural even when you are speaking about a singular. Which is a personal pet peeve.

It feels more natural to default to a neutral “he” and change to feminine “she” if corrected than it does to default to a plural “they”. Heck I’ve seen someone default to a neutral “she” and it still sounds more natural than a plural as a neutral. Just a personal issue with the English language there.

And on the side of people who are trans… I have seen sentiment that the whole asking pronouns things makes some people feel very uncomfortable. It’s a constant reminder of being born into the wrong body, and makes it feel like all the effort to pass and be their true selves is meaningless.

I think I’d rather offend a couple trenders that don’t understand language use than remind someone whose mental health is at stake about that and invalidate their efforts to pass with something so unnecessarily superficial.