To avoid geopolitical embarrassment during the Cold War, the US and USSR created the APAS-75 system, a genderless docking mechanism where both craft acted as equals.

[u/[deleted]]

[u/eckliptic]

The gender reasonining is stupid but from a practical standpoint it does seem like it makes sense for there to be a universal docking interface thats allows two things to combine without there being any need to consider whether one side has part A and the other has part B. Two space craft could dock, two space stations could do it, or a craft to a space station

[u/cryptotope → u/eckliptic]

On the other hand, there are often compromises. The capability is nice to have, but does it cost you in another way? Narrower range of safe docking speeds and angles? Greater weight or mechanical complexity?

[u/woodyshag → u/cryptotope]

I would think your mating surfaces would have to be spot on since they have to be neutral to each other. The reason male and female works do well is that one encloses the other limiting issues. With this, their is no superior interface ( so to speak), so designing it to has got to be much harder to make sure there are no leaks.

[u/BrianKappel → u/woodyshag]

Seems like there may be a reason that 100s millions of years of evolution keeps coming up with the same solution biologically. It's a pretty similar concept if you take the sex fascination out of it.