Approximation is an important tool for compressing information into useable forms. All labels are limited approximations too. Such compression is inevitably lossy, but that is a sacrifice for the sake of practicality. The important question is what level of compression is acceptable for a given context. If I describe the location of a chess piece on the board, I don't need to specify how far off-center on its square a given piece is, so a 0-7 offset along each of the two axes is enough for game purposes.

When it comes to gender, I think we all agree that [0, 1] is insufficient, but how do we determine what is sufficient? Do we argue that a 2-bit vector (masc, fem) is enough to describe {neither, fem, masc, both} for rough rounding, or do we need more detailed values along those axes, or perhaps a third axis too (or more)?

Even if every single person in the world had a unique gender, you could store that in 33 bits

You can store that in a small QR code

Mine is #1B4D3E

Ayyyyy wanna smash bros?

My gender is e, which can be represented by neither integers nor floating points.

There are 10 kinds of people in this world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.

lets burn down our civilizations by spending all our wealth discussing this

The issue is based on legal terminology. Gender isn't a legal thing only pushed into our vocabulary.

Allocate an unbound memory blob and sit back for the herd of the Rust coders to line up. Sell them a soda while they do their best chicken parody

Obviously, there is True, False and FILE_NOT_FOUND

Choose one class of gender:

• Natural
• Rational
• Irrational
• Complex

Maybe it can be represented by 1qbit

I have PS2

No Y = 0

Presence of Y = 1

Looks like you can express it with binary if you want, though you would need an interpreter

I've been thinking about this now and again. IMO gender, if one insists on tracking it at all (which I mostly find counterproductive), would need to be a vector / tuple of floating-point values. The components would be something like:

1. Sexual Development Index: Encodes chromosomal sex, genitalia, and other primary sexual characteristics (X/Y chromosome ratio).
2. Hormonal Balance & Secondary Sexual Characteristics: Combines hormonal levels and the resulting secondary traits (body hair, muscle mass, etc.).
3. Brain Structure: A dimension indicating how a person's brain structure aligns with typical male or female patterns.
4. Gender Identity: A measure of self-identified gender, representing the psychological and social dimension.
5. Fertility/Intersex Traits: A combined measure of fertility potential and the presence of intersex traits (e.g., ambiguous genitalia, mixed gonadal structures, etc.).

Ideally it would track the specific genes that code for all of the above factors, but unfortunately science hasn't got those down yet.

Gender is not a boolean value, it's a variable.