From memory of recently seeing excerpts from The Polymath: The Life and Opinions of Samuel R. Delany, Gentleman:
Delany spent a while living in a hotel which mostly catered to transsexuals, and he found it unnerving to not know what gender the person he was taking to was. He speculated that wanting to be sure about gender was hard-wired.
After about five weeks, he realized he’d taken elevator rides with people of non-obvious gender, and it didn’t bother him at all.
Back when I used to advocate gender-neutral pronouns for everybody (i.e. eliminating gendered pronouns from the language altogether; I’d still support that in principle, but I have to pick my fights), that resembled the usual objection I got — “Then how will people know the gender of whoever you’re talking about?” I’d dismissively say “If you’re talking about someone whose gender is specifically relevant, then just explicitly say their gender”, but intuitively, I could sympathize. (How can you even conceptualize someone without knowing their gender? Why, gender is the most important thing about a person! — or so our actions tend to imply. So much that the first thing the doctor says is “It’s a boy!” or “It’s a girl!” and not “It’s alive and well!”) I noticed that this emotion started feeling more distant to me as I stopped caring about being straight. It used to be that I’d see someone and think “Hmm, she’s pretty cute… oh shit, that’s a guy! Gotta stop feeling attracted to him!” I’m finally getting to the point where I can just think “Hmm, she’s pretty cute… wait, no, he’s pretty cute. My mistake.” And if I could think in gender-neutral pronouns, it would probably go more like “Hmm, ey’s pretty cute!” with no need for a feeling of mistakenness in the first place.
So, a hypothesis generalizing from one example (well, from a few (anecdotal) examples, from a few people I’ve discussed this with): an intuitive feeling of needing to know people’s genders will be most common among exclusive heterosexuals, second most common among exclusive homosexuals, and least common among bisexuals, because the feeling has to do with wondering whether you’re “allowed” to be attracted to somebody. This isn’t to imply that you actually look at everyone you see as a potential partner until you know their gender, just that this thought process is a habit generalized from the pervasive, intuitive process of looking for potential partners.
From memory of recently seeing excerpts from The Polymath: The Life and Opinions of Samuel R. Delany, Gentleman:
That is awesome.
Back when I used to advocate gender-neutral pronouns for everybody (i.e. eliminating gendered pronouns from the language altogether; I’d still support that in principle, but I have to pick my fights), that resembled the usual objection I got — “Then how will people know the gender of whoever you’re talking about?” I’d dismissively say “If you’re talking about someone whose gender is specifically relevant, then just explicitly say their gender”, but intuitively, I could sympathize. (How can you even conceptualize someone without knowing their gender? Why, gender is the most important thing about a person! — or so our actions tend to imply. So much that the first thing the doctor says is “It’s a boy!” or “It’s a girl!” and not “It’s alive and well!”) I noticed that this emotion started feeling more distant to me as I stopped caring about being straight. It used to be that I’d see someone and think “Hmm, she’s pretty cute… oh shit, that’s a guy! Gotta stop feeling attracted to him!” I’m finally getting to the point where I can just think “Hmm, she’s pretty cute… wait, no, he’s pretty cute. My mistake.” And if I could think in gender-neutral pronouns, it would probably go more like “Hmm, ey’s pretty cute!” with no need for a feeling of mistakenness in the first place.
So, a hypothesis generalizing from one example (well, from a few (anecdotal) examples, from a few people I’ve discussed this with): an intuitive feeling of needing to know people’s genders will be most common among exclusive heterosexuals, second most common among exclusive homosexuals, and least common among bisexuals, because the feeling has to do with wondering whether you’re “allowed” to be attracted to somebody. This isn’t to imply that you actually look at everyone you see as a potential partner until you know their gender, just that this thought process is a habit generalized from the pervasive, intuitive process of looking for potential partners.