I think the main point of all of this can be broken down a bit. There are two topics here, and they keep getting mixed up in unproductive ways.
Topic #1) Should the game have the ability for creatures and cultures to make differentiations based on gender. This includes simple things like only women wearing skirts to major things like females being 2x bigger then males.
Topic #2) Should Humans/Dwarves/Elves/etc have these differences and if so which ones are appropriate for that race.
Topic #3: Should adventurers be exempt from gender differentiation.
Personally, I'm all for #1 being true. I WANT to have weird races and cultures where gender differences are important. I want to have a human culture of amazons fight with the goblins because their women are virtually slaves. I want lizardfolk where females are huge and do most of the fighting/heavy lifting stuff. I want elves that don't see any reason to differentiate at all since there is so little different between their males and females. And I want to be able to mod the hell out of it.
For #2, I think as long as #1 is handled properly everything else will fall into place. Toady can and will make Vanilla DF into his vision for the races and the rest of us will be able to mod things to our satisfaction. Don't like that he made dwarven women beardless, change it. Don't think that human women should be common sights among the soldiers, change it. Whatever makes you happy.
But don't say "I don't want X therefore no one should be able to!". It's not fair and it's a silly stance in a game as moddable as DF.
Edit: Good point, Sergius. I'll add that one too.