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.
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 ...
This is our monthly thread for collecting these little gems and pearls of wisdom, rationality-related quotes you've seen recently, or had stored in your quotesfile for ages, and which might be handy to link to in one of our discussions.