One of the possible reasons could be that users feel Stack Exchange is not setting the right priorities. For many people (including me), the community not being inclusive (enough) is not something we encounter frequently (or at all). This is especially true for the technology-oriented Stack Exchange sites, which make up the majority of the sites and traffic in the network. I've been a moderator on Ask Different for two years and inclusiveness hasn't come up a single time (as far as I can recall; my memory might fail me or I might have been on vacation).

I've read the transcripts in the Teachers' Lounge where the alleged violations of the Code of Conduct by Monica took place (I was probably even online during some of them), I needed to read them again before I could identify where it was supposed to happen and I had to read them another time in order to really empathize with the users involved (both Monica and the users who felt offended). Now, I'm bad at empathizing, but I suspect many other users here feel the same way: they just don't see the problem and don't understand why the company is making such a big deal out of it.

What they do see is a company which

• shows highly inappropriate advertisements and seems to be unable/unwilling to do something about it
• unilaterally changes the license without having the right to do so
• generally seems to struggle with its presence on Meta Stack Exchange and Meta Stack Overflow (I'm not up-to-date with the current status on MSO, but here is an example)

There are probably a lot of other recent examples, all of which affect the majority users much more and much more often than the inclusiveness/gender-neutrality problem. They might feel that it's OK for Stack Exchange to be one of the champions for gender neutrality, but not right now. My feeling is that these changes would have been received a lot better if they had happened one or two years ago, maybe during the Welcome Wagon. If that's the case, it would have been better if Stack Exchange had addressed the other problems in an adequate manner, before releasing these Code of Conduct changes.

One of the possible reasons could be that users feel Stack Exchange is not setting the right priorities. For many people (including me), the community not being inclusive (enough) is not something we encounter frequently (or at all). This is especially true for the technology-oriented Stack Exchange sites, which make up the majority of the sites and traffic in the network. I've been a moderator on Ask Different for two years and inclusiveness hasn't come up a single time (as far as I can recall; my memory might fail me or I might have been on vacation).

I've read the transcripts in the Teachers' Lounge where the alleged violations of the Code of Conduct by Monica took place (I was probably even online during some of them), I needed to read them again before I could identify where it was supposed to happen and I had to read them another time in order to really empathize with the users involved (both Monica and the users who were offended). Now, I'm bad at empathizing, but I suspect many other users here feel the same way: they just don't see the problem and don't understand why the company is making such a big deal out of it.

What they do see is a company which

• shows highly inappropriate advertisements and seems to be unable/unwilling to do something about it
• unilaterally changes the license without having the right to do so
• generally seems to struggle with its presence on Meta Stack Exchange and Meta Stack Overflow (I'm not up-to-date with the current status on MSO, but here is an example)

There are probably a lot of other recent examples, all of which affect the majority users much more and much more often than the inclusiveness/gender-neutrality problem. They might feel that it's OK for Stack Exchange to be one of the champions for gender neutrality, but not right now. My feeling is that these changes would have been received a lot better if they had happened one or two years ago, maybe during the Welcome Wagon. If that's the case, it would have been better if Stack Exchange had addressed the other problems in an adequate manner, before releasing these Code of Conduct changes.