where I grew up in California not only is “dude” generally non-gender-specific, half of the time it doesn’t even refer to a person at all.
I said it to a faucet today.
A customer once came to me to order a sandwich and said “I want this dude”
Dude is more than a word, it’s an emotion.
Today in the store I showed my sister a shirt by saying ‘look at this dude’, but honestly sometimes ‘dude’ isn’t even a noun it just is.
Everyone is Dude. He’s a dude. She’s a dude. They’re a dude. You’re just dude.
Dude is a cosmic level word