Imagine seeing someone attractive, you get to know them, and during this time you find out something that destroys their attraction. Maybe finding out they were of the opposite gender you like, maybe finding out they were an awful person who abuses pets, maybe finding out that they were much younger than you assumed. How much of the destruction of attraction is biological in nature verses social in nature? And even more complex is that idea that the origin is sociological in nature, develops to be biological.
I'd suggest looking up research on linguistic relativity. The extent of the impact of it is still being researched, and it is unknown the extent it might impact attraction (even far more mundane things like object placement and color recognition are still being researched and debated among scientist).
2018 article that has found evidence some mental processes may be impacted while others appear not to be:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002438411...
Sadly basically all the research I found on it is locked behind paywalls, but I will say that while a lot of the initial concepts have been challenged and thrown out, from what I've read the idea as a whole has survived to some extent.
The attempt to force any kind of ideology that makes everybody exactly the same and eradicates differences is , in my view, problematic.
I'm not sure that's the case – I get the impression that the "vast majority" of the planet's population doesn't really ever think about gender identity at all.
Sorry, using your arguments, you cannot say that the fight against discrimination of any kind is a moral thing to do. It's in fact problematic, as it eradicates differences, in your own words.
Did the use of the words "them" and "their" in the previous sentence seem natural to you? Probably it did because they referred to a generic "person". However, if I'd referred to a named individual, "Chris", say, using "them" or "their" then I think you would have immediately felt some weirdness.
It's not that unusual nowadays, I find, to meet people whose gender is not obvious so it would be good to fix this linguistic problem, but I can't imagine it getting fixed overnight.
For example, in the article linked to below there are a couple of instances of "they" referring to a named and identified person, and the reason for using "they" is obvious and explained in the article. Nevertheless, I noticed I needed an extra fraction of a second to process mentally the sentences in question.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-44575229
Singular "they" used in that way is certainly a lot less weird than Spivak pronouns or "xe" so even if those two are, perhaps, technically superior solutions I would guess that singular "they" is what people will (continue to) use.
Gender, sexual orientation, and the identities associated with them seem like such weird anachronisms to me. I understand the reasons behind why the exist and why society evolved in this direction, and I've got no interest in forcing anybody to abandon their self-image. But I do find it strange that people want to construct identities around what are ultimately just biological facts.
That's an odd perspective to me, because from my point of view what other than facts would I base my identity on?
Identity is based not only on facts. It's also based on wishes, labels, lies and social constructs.
Even if we granted your presumption, it still seems like something that could not possibly be pragmatic or tractable even in hundreds of years, unless there was essentially a global propaganda campaign lasting for generations, orchestrated in unison by wildly different governments and cultural institutions.
Again, I’m not making any normative claim about your viewpoint. I’m only questioning the “still waiting” part .. because surely any even optimistic estimate about when the human species would have a radically different concept of gender or identity would be hundreds and hundreds of years from now, if ever.
There is good reason to suspect that heterosexual behavior is strongly correlated with the ability of a species to survive. Of course, not all members of a species may see survival as a desired goal.
My point is that non-hetero sexuality and non-binary gender should be viewed as simply an uncommon aspect of human biology and identity, which has no moral weight in and of itself. Some people are left-handed, some people have red hair, some people are gay.
This is fundamentally different. I'm pretty sure if the entire population of a species was left handed or had red hair it would still survive.
> since neither a single partner or no partner is optimal for survival.
Single partner may be more optimal for survival when offspring don't mature in a matter of weeks, months or even years.
I haven't seen any person identifying themselves by their eyes, or their umbilicus (which is in fact unique on every single person). Because it's normal thing. If gender identity is a normal thing, then let's ignore it altogether?