Gender assignment is a sensitive topic for a lot of people so when someone says that a “dot” is assigned a certain gender, it might rub people the wrong way. Plus you know dots on the screen cannot talk so it can’t tell you anything.

Now if you are just discussing language rules, then maybe you can word it differently. I am trilingual and my other two languages do assign genders to nouns, but it doesn’t mean the objects “tell” me their gender