I think you might still be a bit confused about what Hofstadter is trying to do in the post? He's trying to show how strange the use of gender in English was (

I think you might still be a bit confused about what Hofstadter is trying to do in the post? He's trying to show how strange the use of gender in English was (pronouns, "man" to mean everyone, etc) by writing as if he were in a hypothetical alternate universe where race received that treatment instead of gender.