Funny thing, i used to also think that gender was clearly an arbitrary social construct. Why did people care so much about it? But then I met and talked to trans* people (or people i knew came out as trans). Then i had a daughter who manifests, from what i can tell, as very much female despite us not pushing gender roles on her. Interesting, right?
Turns out gender isn’t a social construct, instead I am ~agender and just don’t experience it like most people do. I also learned fairly recently that i’m autistic and many if not most autistic people are non-gender-conforming in oen way or another. I am still processing what this means as i am pretty apathetic about my pronouns and such (i don’t use singular they for me, i trip over the grammar anyway). I like to call myself ‘gender-meh’.
So i don’t want to take up space that others need more, and am very much still figuring out what this means for me, but just thought that story was of note. If gender seems super arbitrary or objectionable to you, it may be because you are agender, not because it doesn’t exist for other people.
I am so happy iNat is a relatively safe place for so many LGBTQIA+ people though i also see from some of the responses her and elsewhere that we can do better.