… Esperanto is nice in theory, but the idea of learning an auxiliary language with obligatory gender marking just seems like such a huge waste of time all-around to me.
Have you seen this: http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/ ?
Specifically this part http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/o.html
I hadn't seen those, but there's actually a Wikipedia article about this issue that I have read most of.
It's just... Holy shit, Esperanto. Gendered suffixes are nice and all, if, perhaps, your unsuffixed forms were gender neutral? But, uh, no. And the "fraulo ~ fraulino" from "Fräulein" one just... rly. It looks like the article you linked mentions that as well. Why would he even? "Frau" literally means woman. The word was right there.
It is one thing to be having these sorts of problems while learning e.g. German, where sexism and obligatorily gendered terms are literally baked into the language because of its history, but someone consciously chose to have Esperanto do this and that makes its value as an auxiliary language seem very low to me.