Most of the time we really DON'T need to know what sex someone else is, do we?

[solidgoldbrass]

You don't need to know what's in people's underwear to pour them a pint, buy a used car from them, arrange a mortgage for them, share a table with them in a crowded cafe, have your letters delivered by them, etc etc etc.
Apart from when you're contemplating sex (or TTC) with someone, or you are a medical professional needing to treat an ailment, are there many other occasions when it actually matters what sex/gender another person is?

Vashti: But there are occasions when we interact with other people and their sex/gender is not obvious, whether that's because we're interacting with someone via the internet/some other way which doesn't involve seeing the person in the flesh or because the person we are interacting with has minimized any visual gender cues (is wearing loose unremarkable clothing or protective clothing which conceals nearly everything, is of average build with unstyled hair, has a mid-to-low range speaking voice etc). It shouldn't matter if we don't know someone's sex, yet it seems to bother people a great deal if they don't.

A few years ago I attended a meeting with three other people I had only spoken to over the phone. A) was a very feminine looking women, B) was a very ordinary, unmade up feminist and c) strolled in, in a man's suit, men's shoes with a short haircut and a gender neutral name.

A) spent the entire meeting with her face in her lap, stuttering and clearly disturbed and perplexed. It obv mattered to her to be able to tell a persons sex, or rather they should, for her comfort, conform to a gender stereotype, to avoid her embarrassment.

C) turned out to be a woman, a fantastic person, super intuitive, caring, huge amounts of empathy.

It did challenge us to look beyond a persons presenting gender/sex and just listen to what she was saying.

I agree that most of the time we dont need to know their sex.Or race,or anything else for that matter.Didnt know people did.
There might be a few laughs from men if say there was a woman fisherman for example,but so what.She just gets on with it.

Ha. I've just registered on the IKEA website to take 'advantage' of its 'shopping list' function, which turned out to be utterly useless as it then decided that my shopping list needed to take up about 14 pages, so I wish I hadn't bothered.

Anyway, one of its compulsory fields of registration was 'gender'! It would not let me register without telling them whether I was male or female. i suppose I should ask them why they need to know this and what they do with the information? Won't bother though as if they do reply it'll be of the bland, cliched corporate marketing business nonsense crapola variety. Grrrr!

Well how else are they going to know if you want pink sofa marketing leaflets sent to your house :)

John Lewis demand it too (when buying something online from a gift list). I wonder if it's a gift list thing so they can say to the recipient "Trills has bought you a gift, click here to see what she has got you".

You see, I think the insistence on gender segregation is a really bad thing, because it's all rooted in the idea of one gender being inferior. Just look at the way kids' toys, clothes etc are marketed, as well as all that shit like pink toolkits for adults.

depends on where the segregation is taking place. Safe spaces for women, women's groups should be women only. Men have groups too.
Schools even as girls do better in single sex schools.
IKEA website, toys, clothes etc whyon earth?

HP: I don't, actually, like the segregation of toilets, it can be bloody inconvenient and I frequently use the mens' toilets when the queue for the women's is too long.
Bearing in mind that most abusers of women still marry or at least date them before attacking them, I think public toilets are fairly low down on a list of dangerous places, anyway.

I think someone who wants to assault a woman in a public toilet probably won't be stopped by a sign saying "Ladies".

i like toilet segregation. Having been a cleaner I know men piss all over the seats and floors. How can they not aim?!

As has been said before, on other threads, the fear of stranger-rape is out of all proportion to the statistical risk of it happening. Most rape is committed by rapists at least acquainted with the victim, not by blokes hanging round public toilets. To an extent, fear of stranger-rape is a propaganda tool of the patriarchy: Women! Accept the ownership of one man to stop yourself being raped by all the others - and stay indoors, don't drink, cover yourself up, etc etc. Even though your male owner's the one likely to rape, beat or kill you.