Gender is Dumb

That being said, why do we have gender in the first place? Who created the binary that we are so used to and have to deal with? Regardless of the answer, what benefit does it provide? What is so useful about having to pick a label to describe such a large swath of one's identity? Could we do something different?

I can't say where gender came from, I'm pretty sure there's no real definitive answer. This is an entire academic field of study and I cannot boil it down to a paragraph. I can talk about its benefits, or rather, lack there of. For the longest time our behavior and social class have been in part been determined by our sex at birth. As it turns out this is not terribly helpful. Its extremely limiting and in the case of those with gender dysphoria actively damaging. So people started transitioning but then what happens when you don't feel comfortable as either a man or a woman? People create non-binary identities. There are a lot of non-binary identities and it seems as though its a point of anxiety what identity to take. For most cis people I talk to they don't seem to think about gender much. Sure there are the asshats who declare that the desire to have an identity that does not match ones assigned identity is some how degenerate. However, ignoring those people, most just take what they are assigned because they don't care. When I ask someone why they are a boy and they say "I don't know, I just am" is this a useful system for identification?

The point of this system seems to be to separate people into an arbitrary category based on a set of behaviors, aesthetics, and expectations. It's useful for some businesses, allowing them to summarize the entire human experience into a few categories, but, it clearly does not represent everyone. The other benefit to genders is the ability to prescribe who can do what, that a man must protect the home and provide and women must care for children, but, these prescriptions do not represent everyone and tend to be used to limit one's freedoms rather than empower individuals. To use this system to make prescriptions and declare roles is also pointless if people can just change their gender at any point. This system is not useful and not good for people.

So what would be a better option? Abolish the whole thing, do not use gender. For ones roles and goals, they are determined by the individual and no one else. Same idea for one's behaviors and aesthetics. Same for ones pronouns and methods of being identified. You decide who you want to be, no labels unless you want to use those labels. You can be how you want even if different parts of your identity don't "match up". 

"But people will say they are things they are not!" So? If someone's stated identity truly is causing real, measurable harm, then yeah don't do that. You can say don't cause measurable harm and you'd be in the right to do that. No one does this though, most people don't do anything damaging by identifying as something they "are not". Most folks don't say that they are literally dogs, or helicopters. When people say these things its either a joke or roleplay, which is fine. Most interactions will not require you to behave completely differently. 

"But how am I supposed to figure out how to behave near this person?" Act normally? You don't need to know that much about a person to interact with them. For most things we have defaults that we can use when we don't know what to use. You can use they/them pronouns pretty universally without causing much trouble and when it will cause trouble people will tell you ahead of time. If you really need to know a piece of information about someone and can't assume it beforehand just ask.

"This will break things!" What things will break? At worse some emails may not use your preferred pronouns? That is pretty easily fixed. For instances where ones biological traits(sex) are stored as "gender" either change gender to sex or make it known that sex is what you mean. (There is a whole discussion to have about sex because its interesting, but maybe another time). If you use gender to store pronouns, store the pronouns explicitly. Further more on pronouns, store the pronouns as text and allow users to write their own or select the most common few(he/she/they/etc). This is a technical change that is relatively minor. If your system requires gender to work as is its not a very good system I hate to say.

"This invalidates existing identities" How? Are you non-binary or trans? You still can be without the concept of gender. It just becomes an abstract label rather than a super concrete one. Its not "gender" but its still who you are and still describes you if you identify as such. Not only that, but if you have been given a label that you don't want, you don't need to use it. 

So yeah, gender is dumb. It does not help us. Its a hinderance and actively harmful as a system to a fair number of people. We could do without it. Better yet, we can do without it without breaking much of anything. I think that as more and more people find differing gender identities we will see gender slowly become less relevant and start to disappear. Those that defend this system will continue to do so but they are losing relevancy and power in this debate. I just hope we can be chill and not worry about something that shouldn't exist. Until then I and others should and will continue to defend those that are and will be attacked for their identity.