Uh, I don't know what last sentence means, either because of the way I'm reading it or because I'm not familiar with the Douglas-Hofstadter-referencing community. When I first read that essay-thing I thought it was kind of weird or condescending or whatever, but like, it was the '80s. I don't know if things were different then.
Also, even though the race thing is manipulative, it makes the idea of doing away with gender binary palatable. Like, we should be aware of the dangers of "separate but equal" (oh hot damn, more racial references). I just don't think that a singular gender-neutral pronoun is absurd. People who want the singular 'they' are only ok with doing away with plurals because they think it's never really going to happen.
And is it distasteful to compare sexism to racism? I would say no, because there's not an objective measure for how much oppression one group experiences. I think the idea is not to trivialise racism or say "look, people care about their rights but not ours!", it just makes people aware of what kind injustice they may be ignoring.
I'm sorry if I pointed out the obvious there and you still disagree. Is this the kind of thing that gets threads locked?