It is? I’m female (straight bio-female, in case anybody gives a hoot), and I shake hands with both men and women pretty much the same. Is this the thing where guys are traditionally taught to shake a woman’s hand more gently than a man’s so her rings won’t hurt her fingers? Or do men (or women, for that matter) expect a woman’s handshake to feel different from a man’s (besides the typical difference in average hand size)? I’ve never seen this discussed before, and I’d be interested to know what the differences are.
Sounds reasonable to me, and I quite agree it can be awkward not to know what set of gender pronouns or forms of address (e.g., “sir” vs. “ma’am”) to use for somebody. AFAICT, there’s nothing contrary to etiquette in discreetly asking a third party what gender the person in question identifies as, or even asking the person themselves if a situation comes up where you really can’t avoid a gendered reference.
Somebody who presents socially in a very non-gender-specific way needs to be prepared for other people sometimes guessing their gender wrong, and needs to correct them politely without making a big deal of it or making them feel bad about it.