Gender nouns

Is there a point in nouns having a gender? I was always told it removes confusion, ironically the opposite is true for me anyway.

>>6

Esperanto kind of attempted to avoid gendering but in the most half-arsed apathetic way possible and still hence ended up with genders.  If that makes sense.  My understanding of it, and I don't speak Esperanto so I could be very wrong here, is that all nouns were assumed male (at least historically) and the suffix is added to transform it into feminine.