I kind of wish that we had the opportunity to not interact with Mason if we didn't want to. I have no real interest in spending time with a dude but it feels like a dick move to force Mason to be a female. I honestly don't like any interactions with Mason and would prefer no interactions. You have to defend Mason from a bully, you have to deal with Mason's personal backstory. I don't care about any of it.
An easy way around it could be for the game to give you a choice. If you don't want to be personally involved but still supportive, the Main Character could decide to ask Nikki to help get Mason back on his feet instead of you.
Let me assure you that, as someone who spent over 20 years of his adult life programming, it is not "an easy way around it".
EVERY time Mason has interactions with other characters, not just the MC, at the very least, code would have to be created to exclude him from the scene. If renders are necessary (as they usually are), a second set of renders would be required to handle the dislike of Mason.
I'm sure there are more problems involved, it has been almost 20 more years since I last looked at code. HEY, maybe we could have an "exclude Mason patch" similar to the existing exclude Nicki patch! I hope everyone understands that this patch proposal is just a joke.
EDIT: added the missing word programming ... oops