You can't "lock" something that doesn't exist.

[Alucard135]

I understand the argument that the term has been around forever, and it's not specific to FFXIV. That said, it's still a dumb term that I'd think the MMO community would have outgrown because -- in this case, anyway -- it's not accurate in a technical/functional sense.

The term was used in a different way in other MMOs. It was used to denote a class that is locked to one gender (e.g. sorceress class being only female in Black desert online). Since the class already exists in the game with all it's animation, play style etc, it was considered gender locked since it's can only be used by one gender. The key point here is the existence of said locked feature as a playable feature in the game.

Take a look at Tera online. There are races with only one gender (Baraka, Elin and Popori). And the term gender lock is used there for classes that are locked certain genders (Brawler was female humans only). But no one was using the term to those races that only had one gender, since nothing exists in the game for the other genders to be considered locked from.

Now when it comes to male Viera and female Hrothgar, there is no playable feature, models or anything for them inside the game as of now. So it can't be considered a locked feature. Male Viera are mentioned in the lore only and nothing more. The actual lock we have is the race lock in Garleans and Lupin (we've only seen one gender for Lupin too, but nobody cares it seems lol), since those already have their models, animations etc in the game.

Genderlock has been a term in use for MMOs for a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG time. Well before FFXIV.

Can you provide an example of that term being used the way some are using it here in other MMOs?