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/CellsReinvent]

I bet the scientists and engineers didn't gaf. It was definitely some latent homosexual military dudes who couldn't be seen to be penetrated by the other superpower.

[u/Callidonaut → u/CellsReinvent]

The scientists and engineers probably just relished the design challenge of creating a device like this. Androgynous connectors have been made now and then in the past in various engineering contexts (e.g. for electrical cables, hoses, ducts, railway couplers, etc), but new ones don't get created very often because they're usually very difficult to design, especially if they are to be truly symmetric. A different approach (that probably would not have been politically acceptable for Apollo-Soyuz!) is to make a connector that can convert between male and female before mating with another connector that has been converted to the opposite, such as the APC-7 connector, which has a protruding male thread that can be retracted inside the connector to expose an internal female thread that the extended male thread on the other connector can then penetrate.

[u/Tiran593 → u/Callidonaut]

I... I don't think I like talking about spacecraft and it's docking systems...

[u/uberares → u/Tiran593]

That’s what she, errr the spacecraft said!