[friendlybus]

Gender/sex roles are a part of a bigger cultural story we all participate in. Sex is in everything. You can't remove it, without losing an essential part of humanity.

A lot of young men work hard for symbols of masculinity as a form of validation. A job that doesn't pay can still be rewarding in part if it increases the validity or reputation of your sex drive. Gender can change how you reward people.

Compsci may be discussing video games where women prefer completion and fantasy while men prefer destruction and competition. Knowing the gender of the writer and the context of the post can cut down the time and awkward social questions needed to deliver the relevant information.

Gender can change your attitude for risk taking. Suggesting a low risk low reward solution to a young guy looking to prove himself will likely get ignored.

Estimations of the trustworthiness and gut level assessment of competence of a answerer offering an answer that has an unknown quality to the questioner can be assessed on non-rational levels like their competence in other areas of life, including perceived gender role success or attractiveness.

You can't cut out the gender of the speaker and maintain a human conversation that uses most tools of conversation available. Some people work towards a better sex life via money and competence. Cutting out the ability to discern what is important to the questioner makes for spammy answers before you figure out what he/she wants.

It is fundamentally anti-human to cut out the motive force that propagates the species or recreation from a discussion about what people want to achieve in life. It may work as an experiment or produce hyper rational results and be heralded a success. I don't think people will favour the move over all.

The removal of pronouns is fine for the symbol of masculinity at the moment, as a part of a much bigger story. But the symbol of femininity is taking a hit for it, whether you want to continue that trend or reverse it is up to you.

[belorn]

It is true that sex and gender is important cultural factor, but it is also stereotypical and reductionist to take a complex person full of individuality and reduce them down to a single bit of information; is it a he or she.

Taking a historical perspective with gender equality, there is two opposing camps pushing in opposite directions but with the same goal. One side want to eliminate gender, seeing that the shared humanity, traits and behavior is vastly larger than any differences. The other side want to highlight the diversity of gender while maintaining equal value for both.

So looking at both camps, gender is extremely important to people and essential part of humanity, while at the same time the least important part of an complex individual. It is important for gender equality and at the same time an unnecessary detail among a sea of commonalities.

As I identify myself as belonging to one specific camp, I would strongly disagree with the claim that "you can't cut out the gender of the speaker and maintain a human conversation". I try to do that every day and in particular when I see a gender stereotypical (or non-stereotypical) situation. If I meet a male kindergarder teacher I treat them as a individual interesting in working with children, and if I meet a female mechanic I treat them as an individual interested in working with cars. Cutting out the gender of the person makes it easier to maintain that human conversation.

[friendlybus]

Those two camps "eliminate gender" and "obtain every gender" are not rational positions. They are the simple categories of nothing and everything applied to gender. We don't need to push our definition of gender into the chaos of everything or nothing. A black and white binary. The meeting in the middle of those two is he/she. We have had it forever and though many will heroically go out to the edges, to boldy go where no man has gone before, to find something new you will end up with the same when you come back.

Your virtuous behaviour towards female mechanics and male teachers already has a name. It's politeness.

I understand the US wants to shrug off the last remnants of the UK's culture as it no longer works in our new authoritarian world. You can throw away the gendered line from one of the greatest accomplishments science produced "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind". You can take down the pictures of all the gloomy old men that advanced 'mankind' and call it whatever you want.

But there doesn't seem to be a reason to believe that reality is any different from the past. The advance of gendered science gives us greater understanding of the world, and new ways to be polite. There isn't a requirement to change english to suit. You can simply be polite to everybody involved on an individual basis.

The idea of gender equality is fundamentally impossible to begin with, we have unassailable differences and preferences. The feminine role should be celebrated for what it is and not jammed into the masculine role for the sake of future politics.