My three year old came up to me the other day and asked me if Optimus Prime was a boy or a girl.  Not really knowing how to answer that, I told him that Optimus Prime could be whatever he wanted him to be.
“Well, Bella says that he’s a girl and a boy.”  And then it hit me, Optimus Prime is… a robot.  The last time I checked robots didn’t have genitalia.  Okay, so I’m just guessing there because I never thought to check if robots had genitalia.  I hadn’t planned on having sex with them, much less procreating with them, so it just didn’t occur to me to check.  I haven’t searched the mythology of the alien robots to find out how they procreate and if Optimus Prime can or has pushed a little alien robot from its loins.  I mean, the only reason my three year old was even asking is he wanted to be able to tell his sister that she couldn’t be Optimus Prime, only he could. The robot’s genitalia wasn’t actually of any consequence to him other than to have proof of what he wanted.

So I answered him, “Well, Optimus Prime is a robot, so technically, he’s not a girl or a boy.”

To which he responded, “Well, I’m gonna be Optimus Prime.”

And because I have to get the last word, “Well, then technically, you’re not a boy or a girl.”

And he continued to play with no detriment to himself.  He didn’t all of a sudden lose his penis because Optimus Prime is a robot, or  because I told him that while playing said robot, he was genderless.  The world continued to turn, and he moved on to helping Handy Manny fix pipes.

The whole point of gender is to designate whether you can procreate with someone.  Okay, if I’m honest, that’s in my little world.  The current point of gender is to say my penis is bigger than yours so that means I’m better, though if I get a hard on, seeing as my penis is so big, I’ll just pass out and render my penis useless for anything besides waste removal. I may be biased on the matter though…  The reason people cling to these gender roles is because they want to be able to say I understand you.  I identify with you.  Because if we don’t understand or identify, then you’re foreign and uncomfortable and the average person doesn’t like uncomfortable.  It makes us unsure and frightened.  It turns us back to our base ancestry because we don’t know if you’re foe or friend, all because we don’t know if your genitalia dangles or hides.  In a Patriarchal or Matriarchal society, gender is used to promote one sex above the other so that the gender can continue to thrive while holding the other gender back.

But naturally, what is the point of gender anyway?  Logically, it’s so we can identify a mate that we can procreate with.  Not have sex with, but reproduce a human life.  Make new humans.  That’s the only real point to gender identification.  We don’t want to get home and unwrap the gift just to find out there’s not ever going to be a surprise inside.  Beyond that it’s over thinking.  Yes, it would be nice if you meet a nice girl at the bar, on the internet, or wherever people meet other people these days, and she could say, “Hey, I don’t have the right equipment to reproduce your genetics.”  But because of how close minded we are, that can get a person killed.  Maybe if we take the stigma off of it and stop looking at things from a caveman point of view, then we could work up to allowing people to be who they are without forcing the “Can you push a baby from between your legs?  You can? Okay, then you can wear make-up, dresses, and have breasts,” mentality upon people.  And if your goal isn’t to reproduce then what does it matter who you have a meaningful… or not meaningful… connection with?  If you’re not into anal sex (because some straight men are) then good for you, maybe you should know a person well enough to have discussed it, but that’s my conservative (or logical if you think of all the stds of the world) side showing itself.

So my plan is to start with my kids teaching them that gender doesn’t matter.  It doesn’t matter if the world thinks that only girls can do this and only boys can do that.  Do what you do and show the world how very wrong it is.  Maybe then they’ll teach others and it will spread because I want my children to live in a world that doesn’t define them by their reproductive abilities.  I want my children to not define themselves by whether they can only make a child or carry a child within their bodies.  I want my children not to define themselves or others by whether their genitalia dangles or hides.

So Optimus Prime is a robot, and yes, you can wear a princess dress just to sit on the floor and play trains, because really, it’s not the dress that makes the man, it’s the masculinity.