I follow a few people that go by they/them or that simply don’t subscribe to that whole spiel. Personally, I don’t care about gender at all; I think that’s either an extremely agender or an extremely cis thing to say. In my case, I think I’m just cis.

Still, it’s not like other genders bother me. Not even a little. It’s simply something that, to me, holds absolutely no weight whatsoever. I’ve realized, over the years, that that’s a somewhat controversial position.

Most—if not all—men I’ve ever spoken to about this have made it clear that women and men are, as far as they’re concerned, different. I mean, on the surface, I agree; men and women are different because men are men and women are women, but that’s like saying the rising sun is different from the setting soon. I think that’s a perfect analogy, actually. Why would I care if someone is the sun at noon or the sun at night? It’s still the sun; I don’t care.

Now, of course, there’s the issue of living. Different people, because of the way they identify themselves—their identity—do live differently. I’m not trying to deny that fact.

However, I think that misses the issue entirely. In my view, the whole question is wrong.

To me, gender is irrelevant because a person isn’t a gender. Are women different from men? That’s such a stupid question. Everyone is different from everyone else, no?! I’ve never met someone like me. I’ve met people that are similar to me—most of them have been women, by the way—and I’ve certainly met people that share some things in common with me, but I’ve never met someone entirely like me.

Are men and women different?

Can someone be something other than a man or a woman?

Why would I care? Those questions are laid upon a terrible premise. As such, they simply don’t matter.

I realize that lived experiences aren’t quite as detached from reality as I’m framing this issue, mind you, and I do realize that trans people do suffer quite intensely. I don’t mean to sound… Dismissive of their strife. All I’m trying to say is that, fundamentally, I find the whole concept of gender to be rather empty.

Throughout my life, I’ve felt that women tend to take a liking to me. Women and children, actually, but children isn’t a gender so I’ll gloss past that one.

I wonder if my view of gender has anything to do with that. I’ve thought that, maybe, women go their whole life being treated as different by the men in their life and they like it when they get treated as fundamentally equal. Or maybe it’s just a different feeling, not a strictly good one, and their curiosity is being misinterpreted by yours truly as affection. Children like me too, after all, maybe I’m just kinda weird… I’m not sure.

Being raised differently, with different expectations and different experiences… Of course men and women are different. Then again, everyone is raised differently, so everyone is different.

It’d be silly to make a gender for everyone, of course. I suppose that’s a name, actually. A name is like a gender that refers to only one person? I think that makes perfect sense.

See, I’m not opposed to putting people in buckets for convenience. I just think that the particular buckets we put people into suck. I feel like gender should convey meaningful information. I guess that’s why some transphobes are so upset, actually, as they relied on gender to figure out people’s genitalia? Trans people throw a wrench in that so they get mad? Maybe my rather uninterested take on interpersonal relationships makes that particular bit of information seem disproportionally irrelevant, and in turn, I devalue gender.

Maybe that’s why I’ve obsessed with personality-type quizzes… Maybe not, lots of people like those. I do think stuff like that is a better gender, though, even if it’s not very good either.

Well, that’s just what I think, anyway.