BEYOND GENDER...WHY DO WE NEED THINGS THAT SEPARATE US?

In August, 2018 I saw the play "Paradise Lost" by Erin Shields that was adapted from the poem by John Milton performed as a world premiere at the Stratford Festival, Directed by Jackie Maxwell. The play portrays the innocence of Adam and Eve and it occurred to me that gender was only recognized after their innocence was lost. So, before that there was no need [?] for gender assignment. This made me think of gender assignment as separating us from each other or at least potentially doing that. It also made me reflect on the fall from innocence portrayed in Paradise Lost as something that separated Adam and Eve from each other and according to some spiritual beliefs, separated them from God. Eve is portrayed as yielding to the temptation to learn about good and evil, and then encouraging Adam to join her. This has been used to blame women for the fall and somehow to also consider women to be inferior to men. This has led to thousands of years of pain and suffering as women were considered separate from and unequal to men. This makes me think that the original understanding of Eve's role is wrong as I believe that whatever separates us as humans is wrong. What does separate us? Feeling better than others; judging others; excluding others; sterotyping others; assigning gender roles? So many ways to justify separating ourselves from others. So, is gender assignment another way to separate us from each other?

What purposes do gender assignment and gender roles have?  They seem to invite thinking sterotypically, seeing differences vs similarities and not being a open to actually seeing each other vs seeing the stereotypes that we have created and stored in our memories.  

What do you think?