I'm actually curious as to how people view this. Aside from the tiny percentage of people who are trans - people cannot choose their race or their gender. Is it fair to be treated differently for that reason? And can we say that treating someone differently based on gender is the same as treating someone differently based on race? Let's look at some real world examples.

Roommate listings. You will frequently find listings that discrimination based on gender. Should they be viewed the same as a roommate listing with racial requirement? The argument of course is safety/comfort of the individual, the simile reality is that men are more likely to assault a woman. But is it appropriate to discriminate against an individual based on something they had zero control over?

Insurance. Men in many countries pay a premium for their auto insurance coverage. Is this fair? And if it is, would it be the same to add a racial component? And if we treat auto insurance that way should we also treat health insurance in a similar manner? (Let's not derail into health insurance discussion, this is just an example).

Employment - when my wife has to get patted down at the airport it is always a woman who does it. That's just the policy and procedure in place from what I understand. This makes sense on a societal level but is it really different than a passenger not wanting a specific race doing the pat down? I absolutely see the difference but at its core it really isn't defensible.

Now I do want to be clear. Racism in all its forms is pretty fucked up. The idea that someone should have group stereotypes thrust onto them as an individual is bull shit. People are not responsible or hold any culpability for the actions of other people of the same skin color and I would argue that applies to gender just as much. But I see some inherent hypocrisy in the idea of treating all men (or all women) differently based on the stereotypical behavior of the gender. I don't see how someone can be opposed to one form of discrimination of an inherent characteristic and turn around and say its OK to do it for another.

As an aside things that people *choose* to do are different. Their profession, their religion, their political party. While its always dangerous to paint with too broad of a brush those factors at least are within someone's control.