Just one example: the mindblowing volume that botanist Anne Wollstonecraft wrote in the 1820s in Cuba, only permissable because she did so under the guise of being an illustrator - beside making exquisite illustrations and detailed descriptions, she interviewed the indigenous people of Cuba and wrote about the ways in which they saw and used plants. Something a gentleman explorer would never ever do! The book was never published, only a single (!) hand-written (!!!) volume exists. It makes one weep at what could have been, had women been permitted to participate in this sexy, horny field of botany. How much richer we could all have been, how much more complete our understanding of the world. All because we had to frontload the whole thing with our own prejudices and sexist nonsense.

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Returning to my original point, which I lost sight of almost immediately: I wish we would stop referring to plants by the gendered terms we invented to refer to ourselves. Plants don't have genders, and thinking they do has caused a surprising amount of misery.

A happier postscript: to this day, there's a strong tradition of female botanical illustrators in Europe and the UK; I know plenty personally, all the masters are women. As has always been the case, people are resilient in the face of oppression, and so things improve and times change - though the past echoes on forever.

By the way, the mindblowing volume, "Specimens of the plants and fruits of the island of Cuba", which was discovered only a few years ago, can be viewed here: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo.31924100271489

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@anomalocaris Given that the meaning of the term gender has changed, sex [may?] be the more accurate biological term. Yes, the little gametophyte is either male or a combination of male and female. I don't see what's wrong with using a term derived from a fascinating Greek myth. The only other choice is to use a random letter generator to coin a new term. How about Abbatitate = an individual that produces both sperm and ova?

I guess I'm just not seeing where the confusion and burden is.

@rspfau I entirely agree that there's nothing inherently wrong with these words, the problem for me comes from the connotations they have for many people - sex and gender are very much mixed up in our language. Male and female plants, while referring to genetic states, inevitably conjure up ideas of gender for people. I teach and I talk a lot about plants, and I know people will describe dioecious or grafted plants as transgender, even if only jokingly.

I'm talking about plants because that's what I know - but maybe it would be better to drill down into the language to disambiguate the ideas of sex and gender entirely. Have 'sex' refer to a genetic or physiological state, and 'gender' exclusively to the human condition, so we wouldn't have to change a bunch of terminology, just two definitions. But somehow, that seems no more surmountable a task, and even the physiological descriptor would be full of exceptions and peculiarities when applied to the entire living world.