I had submitted my pull request not to indicate that gendered pronouns should be neutralized, but merely to make the entire example more coherent. At one point it had used gendered pronouns, at another it had used numbered philosophers, and at another it had used named male philosophers, and when using both numbered and named male philosophers used the singular "they."
My personal preference when I am writing is to use a mixed group as examples, use the appropriate pronouns when referring to specific individuals, and use singular "they" when referring to an unspecified person, and that was consistent with the existing usage of singular "they," so that's what I proposed in order to see if the use of specific named individuals would be acceptable to meet your goal of having a more inclusive philosopher example. I am quite sensitive to the reasons for preferring feminine pronouns, however, so switched to them based on your objection.
Based on the objections since I switched the full example to using feminine pronouns, it looks like your predicted reaction was actually correct. 
I hope that we can manage to find a way to convince people that using feminine pronouns for an individual from a mixed group of people is not an assault on the English language.