Is it possible to look at someone and regard them without paying attention to their gender? I guess this is a question of equality, but does anyone find that they look at someone and don't think of them in terms of 'male' or 'female'?
I understand thinking of someone as 'him' or 'her', since that's more of a means of identifying someone, the same as 'blonde' or 'brunette', but is it possible to look at someone and think 'him' without also thinking 'male' or 'guy' and vice versa?

Sorry, random contemplative moment.

I'd very much like to answer this question as I'm someone who's always busy with gender identity but I don't really understand what you're asking (?)
Sorry! :P

Not sure of how else to word it, it's all a little jumbled in my head, too.

I guess the idea is; We all think of people as 'him', 'her', 'he' or 'she', it's impossible not to. We point at people and say "Did you see what he did?" the same way we say "Check out the blonde at the counter." What I'm curious to know is, can we look at someone and say "Look at him" without 'him' automatically translating into: Male, Masculine, Bread-Winner, Physical Strength, Limited Capacity for Expressing Emotions, etc, etc. Is it possible to look at someone and see 'him' or 'her' without any preconceived gender roles being attached to them? Can someone look at a girl and not immediately think 'Less capable, physically' and reserve judgement until they can actually see what a person is capable of or what sort of person they are?

It just seems that the people I've met have to consciously ignore socially constructed gender stereotypes, but can someone naturally, without conscious effort, regard someone as equal?

I think that really depends with every individual.

I myself notice I sometimes use him for girls. Especially when I'm really close to them and I hang out with them a lot. But that happens very rarely. We people tend to place things in boxes or label them. A lot of men, not all of them, think of girls being 'weaker' then men. I myself disagree as I'm quite sure there are plenty of women who are more capable than I myself am.
It all really depends on the person and his/her view on things.
I think that's the best answer I can give you. I hope someone can explain it better than I do.

Personally I think it "translates" into those labels if you let it. When I see a male or female, that's what I acknowledge, along with other observations such as hair or eye color. But when I see a male I don't think "well he's masculine and probably brings home the paycheck" nor when I see a female do I think "well she's probably a housewife and is weaker than her husband."

For me to know whether this male is the big macho, bread winning, emotion hiding slab of meat would require me to spend a certain amount of time with him to understand who he is, where he comes from, and what traits make him the individual he is. Perhaps I just have an odd way of thinking, but I can't imagine people go beyond a certain point mentally when you're taking somebody in physically, especially a complete stranger. Maybe I'm also just way off base, I'm special, you know.

tl;dr: Yes, you can look at somebody without perceived gender roles being attached.

It's honestly not that hard if you put yourself in situations to be successful. I started in a high school GSA in my first year and never stopped partaking in such communities. I am in a hetero-relationship, am gender fluid, and find myself attracted to all numerous variations of people. Some days I feel more feminine and I do my best to rock it, others I feel masculine, and still some I'm somewhere else entirely. We all feel varying levels of what we consider appropriate as a man or woman or queer male or queer female and most simply don't know what to expect from any other form of person. The simple fact is that we feel a great many things and their associations to the gender binary are human created. We hide the feelings that don't match our identity and play up those that do. Once you find peace with all your feelings, you may find it much easier to to view others as simply being.

That all said, I would just say the first step is changing your language. Yes what you think is extremely important, but your socialization will not change overnight. If you start using other language you will find that the assumptions interlaced with all the he's and she's can be far less illustrative of a person than what makes us define them as such. There is nothing wrong with speaking to a person as a he, she, or otherwise, so long as they identify that way and consent to it first.

Language is the very first step I've noticed. I'm a cisgendered female but I have multiple friends who don't identify as male/female and usually prefer if I use 'they' rather than him/her.

I've noticed that, while I still slip sometimes, I've started looking at everyone around me (that I don't already know for sure), as 'they' and gender doesn't really matter from there. Rather I'm quicker to notice if someone has nice eyes, or a neat name (which I might see on someone's ID or receipt at my old job), or something similar, rather than gender.

I've become less and less careful with this over the years. I genuinely don't care about gender identification, as far as I'm concerned you're human and that's the base on which you're going to be treated. If you want to be called by a different pronoun, sure just tell me, no big deal, but I'll only do that because you asked me as a person. If you want me to put you on a pedestal for something that's about as important to me as being blonde or brunette... Well, you're probably not going to like me anyway. If on the other hand, we can hang out and have enjoy our selves, what could it possibly matter to me whether you identify as XX or XY?

Strangely enough, though, there's more than enough people who take offence to this mindset.

The cultural marxism is strong in this thread.

Dingo said
Not sure of how else to word it, it's all a little jumbled in my head, too.I guess the idea is; We all think of people as 'him', 'her', 'he' or 'she', it's impossible not to. We point at people and say "Did you see what he did?" the same way we say "Check out the [b]blonde[/b[ at the counter."

I'm not sure it is possible for the majority of people; such observations are a natural part of brain functioning. You automatically assess the things around you and assign terms (e.g. big, tall, male, fat, etc.). Can you avoid the prejudice thoughts associated with such terms and assessments? Yes, I think you can. I think that could also be why some people might be uncomfortable around people of mixed/swapped/trans gender, as they get confused as to what terms to assign them. I could be completely wrong, so don't hesitate to blow me out of the water.

Yeah, I would make the conclusion that is would be really difficult to do such a thing. Mentally, we compartmentalize everything. We have different types of memories, different areas for different processing, different schemas for different subjects, etc. It would ultimately be very difficult to be able to think of "he" and "she" as the same "they", mostly due to our society and how we work, in social terms. However, in the right environment, one where man and woman has not been organized as two separate things - basically, a world without any idea for "gender" - it would be possible. It can also be possible with deliberate retraining, with purposeful "reorganizing" of your schemas within gender, but that's hard to do when all around us men are masculine.and women and feminine.

If you're talking about bias and generalization because of gender (gender roles and all that), then it is still difficult to see things as wholly equal, but it would be a lot more possible. The reason it is so difficult would be attributed to our society again; its just how we roll. The original classifications and assignments for each gender weren't made willy-nilly, however. Most were made for perfectly fine reasons. For instance, men are just biologically primed to be stronger and larger than women, in terms of mass and muscle, so it wasn't a big leap to classify men as the more "tough" and "protective guardian" gender, when it is easier for them to be the protector, due to their body composition. Women can make babies, men can't. Thus, women began stereotyped as the "homemakers" and all that. It was just a natural order of events, a normal train of thought.

Now, that's not to say gender roles can't switch around and change because they can. It's just that the ones we have now were not made for no good reason. It should also be noteworthy that our society, as it currently is, is a lot more "equal" between the genders than we have been in the last few hundred years, so there's that at least.

The way I see things: Even when I don't know a person's gender, I tend to make an assumption, though occasionally my assumptions are wrong. This is because I see 'having gender' as a defining trait of just...being an individual human. We're not snails or jellyfishes, we're men and women. We're people! Thinking of someone as 'they' sounds...highly impersonal to me, like I'm thinking of a corporation and not a human being.