Is gender that important?

Imagine that you are an exchange student in a foreign country. High school. Sophomore/junior level. You are not familiar yet with people's names and some other aspects of this country's culture. You go to class and next thing you know, right next to you sits this awesome person who is a little weird but very friendly and interesting. For two weeks you keep talking after class, you even make plans to go to the movies together. She finds out that you collect coins and gives you this amazing chipped off coin supposedly minted in the 19th century. Life is great. What else can you ask for?

Then one day you talk to someone from that class and hear them say "he" referring to your female friend. They repeat it several times and all your hopes for a slip of the tongue are gone. How does that feel?

I stood in the hallway barely paying attention to anything around me, trying to stop this violent whirl of thoughts in my head. So, she is a he. I could not believe it. In the end, I'm not in preschool to not be able to figure out if that's a boy or a girl in front of me. Granted, my friend was always wearing pants and really didn't seem to care how "she" looks. But isn't that pretty common in our era of androgynous teenage girls? In my defense, the person didn't have any facial hair, had a slender body, spoke with a fairly high-pitched voice, and had a shoulder-length hair. And how on earth could I know that unlike Jordan, Brandon is not a unisex name? After giving it much thought, I realized he was hitting on me.

Shocked. Confused. Bewildered. I avoided the guy ever since.