Here's a German native with that same question. So yes, it seems like a loaded term, but a very common one.
And some people seem to think that “men” and “women” would be better terms, but those terms are usually referring to adults and not boys and girls?
Yes, from what I've seen that's also a problem, because people use «men» and «girl», so a child term for women and an adult term for men. I think the point is to use the adult form, if you're not talking about literal children.
It can be both. But in this case I see they reuse system libraries, which goes against the idea of ending dependency hell. Apart from that, I don't see any advantage with respect to snap or flatpak.