Views on Gender among the bird folk

What's a gender anyway?

In stark contrast to how gender is handled in the majority of the western world, the bird folk never cared much for it. All names are seen as gender neutral, even the names brought in from other countries. Additionally, names can be changed at any given time and as often as the person wants to. The same applies to pronouns. The bird folk use the same three "standard" pronouns as english speakers (namely He, She and singular They) but virtually anything can be used as an acceptable pronoun. Those three are simply the most common ones. It is seen as an extreme faux pas to not honour someone's pronouns, no matter how silly and/or excessive they seem. There has been a joke going around of someone coming back from a trip to Mexico and from then on used the entirety of "La Bamba" as their pronoun. A more modern version would be someone choosing the entire Bee Movie script as their name.
Since the bird folk also don't display a clear sexual dimorphism there also is no gender binary. Or gender roles. Secondary sex characteristics are distributed more evenly among the population, regardless of "what's in their pants".
So what happens at birth? How are names picked out? Does s loose relationship to gender also mean there is no concept of biological sex?
Well, when a Hikīki child is born, instead of getting sorted into one of two categories depending on body parts, instead the pediatrician will write down all reproductive organs present. And that is all.  There is only one pool for names to choose from. Names for men and women and surnames are the same. In theory, everything that is a surname can be a first name and vice versa. The bird people do have a concept of male and female so at some point the child can choose for themselves what they like more. Until then, everyone uses the pronouns "they/them" for the child. Since gender is treated more casually so is the biological sex. The list of reproductive organs is just one of many documents in a person's medical folder. If it ever comes up in an appointment, instead of assuming, asking or having the person to strip down, which is just uncomfortable for everyone involved, the doctor can just consult the document and knows immediately what to deal with.
What if you don't know someone's pronouns?
When talking about someone you don't know the pronouns of it's better to avoid them entirely. If that's not possible because their name is not known either, then "they" is used. In Hikīki "they" is used by default for all living things, including plants. Some use it even for the weather.