I first became familiar with the idea of gender in High School in the 90’s. Unlike most, I have forestry credits as I was in boarding school and had some very… odd classes. We ran an apiary and made our own honey, kept and raced sled dogs, worked a restaurant we ran, ran a library, etc.

We were tasked with taking care of a square kilometre of forest up in Northern Canada and, as such, had to learn about plant species native to the region. We learned about plant gender.

Plants have a gender because they lack a biological sex; it was a different classification system. In regards to humans, however, the dictionaries (and people using the term) at the time used it interchangeably with the term sex. The only differentiation that I ever saw between the two was in dealing with plants OR academic papers involving humans that may have thought that “sex” was a dirty word, but even then they were discussing the same thing.

Intersex humans were, at least taxonomically, an aberration and not a classification. Early on they presented and operated as whatever their dominant sexual traits would indicate and frequently did not deviate and there was little issue with this.

But… even since the early 80’s when I was born, there was a wide berth in what it meant to be a man or woman. When people were talking about stereotypes, they seemed to be speaking about things that I’d seen in old TV shows from the 50’s and 60’s, not things I was familiar with in real life. That “housewife and single breadwinner husband” home shit was long past and seemed antiquated even then. It wasn’t BAD to be stereotypical or not, mind you, but other than a few farming households I knew, I never saw the “stay-at-home-Mom” dynamic. Every family had a different dynamic and people fit where they built themselves space to do so. I knew very few “stereotypical male” Dads or “stereotypical female” Moms other than on TV, and we all knew damn well that TV wasn’t true to life.

When I witnessed feminist messaging start to get big in the 2010s speaking about this stuff like it was common, expected, and had to be destroyed, it was odd to me. It was like they were fighting with ghosts from days long past.

I recognize that my personal experiences don’t match everyone, but I lived in Cincinnati, Edmonton, Calgary, Saudi Arabia, Kingston, Amsterdam, Thailand, Kentucky, and many more. The only place I witnessed what could be described as “traditional roles” was in Saudi, and even then it was only defined by a few laws, not the way people actually acted. I knew many friends that had their father completely cowed by their mother even in that insane theocracy.

All that to say that gender in humans… doesn’t seem to have a purpose to me. Since gender can be fluid in humans, it is not at all worth categorizing in humans. It means, effectively, nothing. It’s like trying to categorize hair colour down to the hex code; it accomplishes nothing whatsoever.

Sex is a medically distinguishing characteristic. I get why it needs to exist. Gender? I don’t understand why it came to be used for anything as it hasn’t done anything other than stir basic culture war garbage.

Why do you feel it started entering public consciousness in regards to humans about 15 years ago?

Because politicians who feed off of hating minorities needed someone new to pick on now that basically everyone is fine with gay people.

Was it needed?

It was needed for them to get votes, since that’s how they function; Weaponizing hating the other in order to gain support.

Did it do what it was intended to do?

Sadly, yes. Look at the polls.

Are things better or worse now in that specific area?

It depends on the social circle. Trans issues have now become mainstream in the LGBTQ communities, where even 10 years ago, you would hear gay men making trans jokes.

But also, other people are very boldly, and loudly spewing hatred.

Is there anything you do not understand or would like to discuss about the idea of gender?

Nope. It’s not hard. End of the day, let people be who they want to, and call them by the name they would like to be called.

I’m going to make a longer comment with some of my more personal thoughts later but the one part that caught my attention initially was the ~15 years part.

Now I’m not going to be a stickler about precise time ranges but certainly in the 90s there were significant discussions about male/female gender roles.

While discussions about trans/gender identity topics only really picked up steam in I would say the last ~7 years these sorts of things were pretty common discussions in feminist academic circles for quite some time even before that, so it’s likely that the discussion would have happened sooner or later, even if in a different way than it did.

Last comment about timing - I suspect politics had something to do with it. More cynical analysis might say it’s been used as a wedge between the American right and left (as passion for fighting over, say, gay marriage has lessened) and there’s a cynical argument to be made that both parties actually want it to be a contentious issue because it helps then to differentiate and appeal to their base in different ways.

Some equally cynical analysis from the left specifically associates the rise of gender as a topic (and several other social issues) as a way to distract the new left from economic issues (ex: occupy Wall Street, Bernie Sanders-esque stuff). While I don’t think most on the left would claim the aforementioned social issues are unimportant they would claim that they’re of secondary importance when a great number of people are struggling just to get by with the situation only slowly getting worse.

I’ll make a separate post later on my personal feelings more on-topic.