It makes logistical sense to me -- if the ports have genders, then every docking has to be heteronormative. What happens if two ships just wanna cuddle? Or if you want to expand your space-station by docking it with another space-station?
(Gendered docking means you automatically fail the Space Bechdel Test, every time... for all humankind...)
This would be a post about USB connectors, except that's even worse.
Oct 4, 2026, 1:32 AM@woozle @elfin the horrifying part is how they arrived at the answer, since it reveals misogyny is load bearing in both international politics & science, & that there's so little resistance to misogyny that such a reveal simply gets laughed away. None of this is new or anything, but it's still horrifying to see.
@vex @woozle @elfin Looking at connectors, the extruding part is the more complex and error prone to build and neither trusted eachother to build the complex part.
A connector is not an airlock, sure. However, to me, that sounds far more logical than neither wanting to be called the girl in the relationship.
Yes it's being suggested like this in the video, but reality is never that simple, in a team of dozens of people building something as complex as an *airlock*.