Humans are Similar

zenosanalytic:

Lately it occurred to me that, in all the “Humans are Weird/Great/Space Orcs” genre of posts I’ve seen, I haven’t seen any yet that deal with the relatively low level of sex-related morphological difference in human bodies, compared to other species. Like, things as simple as the length of a particular human’s hair, or the pitch of their voice, or their vocabulary can confuse other humans, with brains evolved to analyze these differences, as to the sex of said particular human. History is filled with examples of men and women posing as the other through the simple expedients of clothing and grooming. For that matter, history is filled with examples of people assigned male or female at birth living as the other through the same expedients. And then there’s all the complexities of gender presentation and identity. And then there’s all the ways environment mucks up conventional “gender differences”. And then there’s the obvious fact that, the minute technology allows humans a new way to experiment with gender and sexual anatomy, they jump at it.

I think, ironically, aliens might end up being better at just referring to people as they wish to be referred to if only because, to them, all humans look basically alike and it’s just easier to ask each person and stick with what you’re told. I’d imagine they’d view all the gender-enforcement common to some human societies as being pretty ridiculous and impenetrable.