“Gender is an outdated 20th-century social construct, just as class struggle is an outdated 19th-century concept,” future sociologist Judy, a 22-year-old Chinese American, tells me. In her studio, not far from Columbia University, we eagerly eat the sauerkraut I brought, which I presented as the Russian version of kimchi. Judy confirms the precariousness of the gender construct through her example. At school, she came out as a lesbian, to the dismay of her straight parents.