Three words grandpa: respect begets respect.
Now as for the gender question of the MC...
Honestly, it never even occurred to me.
It sounded like a a kid in his early teens, maybe 14 or 15 years old, growing a pair.
It was a question of interpretation. Grandpa saw the world as a man's world, where dogs did all the work, and then when the dogs got smart enough to bugger off, man forced woman to do the work, and they followed the dogs' fine example. So what's left? Some teenage boys to push around and verbally abuse until you get what you want.
The narrator on the other hand, sees the same events, but interprets them differently. He saw the previous generation as a villainous and exploitative bunch of self-centered old farts who screwed up the world. The only way out of this is to just up and leave. And he finally worked up the courage to do it. The women and dogs waiting for him on the opposite shore weren't waiting for him because he's really a girl, but because he has the common sense to break out of the vicious world of the old timers. After he meets them and grows up in their society, presumably with other young boys like himself, it's just a matter of waiting for the old generation to die out, while he and his generation receive a proper education and prepare to forge a brave new world.
And kudos Cian for the excellent reading. Don't take this the wrong way, but your grandpa voice added a whole new dimension to the story, and made me hate him even more.