Iris V. Wahring and co-authors show that differences between men and women due to cultural evolution and different social roles lead to significant differences in the value attributed to romantic relationships. Romantic relationships are much more important for men than for women due to a deficit in intimacy and emotional support. This regularity, however counterintuitive the image held in a patriarchal and sexist culture based on gender stereotypes and shaped by literary content and film motifs linking being romantic to women rather than men, is quite well recognized by feminists. In our paper, we draw attention to the feminist critique of this phenomenon. Feminism, especially of the second wave, has exposed the subservient role of women consisting precisely in providing all kinds of support for men. The essay “I Want a Wife” published by Judy Brady Syfers exposes – from a feminist point of view – why marriage and, more broadly, romantic relationships are more in the interest of men than women (Syfers, Reference Syfers1972). Traditionally, in the vision of marriage understood as a partnership between a heterosexual man and a heterosexual woman, it was the woman who was understood as the party who should guarantee full service to the man. Even though today, in some parts of the world, some of the tasks traditionally associated with women, such as childcare and housework, are also performed by men, emotional and interpersonal development is one of the areas that has undergone minimal, if any, evolution. This psychological and emotional area remains strongly linked to gender.

Both men and women suffer the negative consequences of a patriarchal and sexist system in which social roles established from childhood regulate even the ways in which emotions are experienced and shared. Since it is difficult to imagine the actual establishment of global gender equality, we assume that a genderless society should be the development goal of humanity. Accordingly, role models who exhibit patriarchal masculinity should be marginalized and then eliminated. The expected effects of such a change would be equality also introduced on emotional and behavioral grounds, a reduction in violence against women, the development of pacifism, and an improvement in the well-being of men themselves, who are also victims of patriarchy.

The phenomenon described by Wahring and colleagues reveals an emotional asymmetry between men and women that, in an emotional sense, is more harmful to men, while in an institutional and social sense it significantly burdens women. The harmfulness of this situation for both genders provides an argument for abolishing the social category of gender as harmful in emotional, social, and political terms. A genderless future is difficult to realize if we look at how important a role is played by reproduction, which is usually based on the sexual difference between females and males. Perhaps this biological, sexual reproduction will always significantly limit the possibilities of developing a genderless society, unless reproduction through technology alone is established (Fausto-Sterling, Reference Fausto-Sterling2012).

Social categories such as gender are always context-dependent, and there is no single essentialist characteristic that determines whether someone should always be perceived as a woman or a man (Sveinsdóttir, Reference Sveinsdóttir2018). In a sexist society, gender is always associated with expected roles and responsibilities. From this perspective, it is not a neutral category. The inevitable classification by others into a particular gender creates expectations and demands for certain types of behavior that are beyond our control. This is also the case with emotional support, which is assigned to the gender “woman.”

On the other hand, in many contexts where men are evaluated as gender-neutral, women are usually viewed through the lens of their gender (Mikkola, Reference Mikkola, Zalta and Nodelman2024). This is one of the reasons why men “want wives” more than women want husbands, and why men find it harder to cope with breakups and other setbacks in romantic relationships, because despite many changes in customs, at least in the Western world, the emotional sphere has remained essentially unchanged.

Gender understood essentialistically determines how we are perceived in society (Dembroff, Reference Dembroff2018a). This determination takes the form of ontological oppression, in which social kind, in the case we are interested in, is gender, limits and completely determines how we behave, how we are perceived, what our place in society is, as well as what rights we have or do not have (Dembroff, Reference Dembroff2018b). Language that is gender-specific not only expresses but also contributes to the reinforcement and continuation of sexist divisions that emphasize the subordinate, secondary role of women. The nonsensical and discriminatory nature of gender-specific expressions is highlighted by imagining race-specific language that would be full of expressions indicating the race of the person in question (Dembroff & Wodak, Reference Dembroff, Wodak, Khoo and Sterken2021). It seems that a necessary first step toward building a genderless society is to adopt a nomenclature that will describe those willing to go beyond the binary classification. The genderqueer category should not only describe people who disagree with the binary understanding of gender (Dembroff, Reference Dembroff2020) but should also completely replace the binary classification.

Oppression affects more than just women and is not solely due to sexism. Oppression affects everyone, both binary and genderqueer people. This oppression is caused by the existence of the gender system, which, despite the fairly recent distinction between sex and gender, in practice determines our lives because of our sexuality (Rubin, Reference Rubin and Reiter1975). Abandoning the binary gender system in favor of a genderless system would have many positive effects. Genderless society is a necessary and indispensable condition for the introduction of true emotional and behavioral equality. Women around the world are associated with and therefore raised in a gender-specific manner, with the aim of preparing them for their future role as psychological persons of service, even in societies where gender equality has been achieved in many other areas. Focusing on tasks, functions, and skills without linking them to a specific gender will also benefit men, who in the emotional and relational sphere could already receive as boys the same interpersonal and emotional preparation that girls and women usually receive from an early age.