Word World/Headscratchers

Why do Word Friends even have genders? If the letters are all that's needed to give life, what's the point of having a gender?
- Well, there was that episode when Bird laid an egg and the Word Friends watched it for her. So I guess they are capable of making a baby either way.
  - Which just raises further uncomfortable questions.
What I don't get is the Earth Day episode. They don't have factories, the planet is sparsely populated, they don't need to cut down, mine, or burn anything. They don't have cars, just one train that comes in and out to occasionally deliver letters. And they sure as Hell don't need to worry about running out of letters. They have so many, that Dog uses them to fill his pool! And if they were running out, all they'd have to do is put an "S" at the end of a word and have millions of copies of the word to pull apart and have more of the letter they want.
- Likewise.
- They want to promote eco-friendliness
Am I the only one genuinely disturbed by the fact that they're made of letters but also make food and other crap with letters? It's like if we lived in a world where everything was made of disembodied body parts and random organs.
- Except when things aren't. I don't see the big grassy field labeled "Field" or "Grass", unless the letters are really big. Another thing that makes me scratch my noggin' is that if they have one letter of a different color from the others, it morphs to the majority color on formation of a word.
- You can sort of think of it like how we're made out of atoms, and so is everything else