Gender imposition, not gender "expression"
If you pay attention when you fill out job applications or look at job listings or hear politicians talk about sex and gender, you will run across terms such as "gender identity" and "gender expression" and "gender assigned at birth." If you pay attention when you read my writings you will know that I find this all to be 100 percent grade-A bullshit. But do you know why?
"Because you're a bigot, right?"
No. Sometimes I am prejudiced based on previous experience and sometimes I go sour on an idea, a person, or an institution, but to me bigot means inclined to hate for no good reason. I got me some damn good reasons. If you don't think so, I hate you too. So there.
But that's not what's going on here. What's going on here is gender is bullshit and I am pointing out that fact. Again.
I think I have laid out the differences before between sex and sex class and gender, and I will probably have to write about that again at some point because Substack doesn't index articles for readers in a way I find user-friendly, but suffice it to say that sex (female, male) and sex class (woman, man) are about body parts and species (the chicken sex classes are hen and rooster, for instance), and gender is just made-up stereotypes. But most English-speaking people think gender means the same thing as sex class. Therein lies the problem.
So anymore, when I see someone talking about gender being assigned, I come back with: Gender is not assigned. It is imposed.
What on earth do I mean by that?
As far as everyday language among normal people is concerned, we gender things that don't have sexes. We have a tendency to label things as feminine or masculine that have absolutely fuck-all to do with reproduction.
Think about it.
What's feminine about pink? Men can wear pink, right? What's it got to do with females then?
What's masculine about a table saw? Women can use table saws, right? What've they got to do with males then?
If gender is ever "assigned," THAT is what gender assignment means. Not looking at a newborn baby with a penis and going, "It's a boy!" Boy is not a gender.
The imposition part comes in when you notice that all the cool shit gets to be labeled masculine and all the weak, ridiculous, humiliating shit gets to be labeled feminine and you never got a say in the matter. Those of you with the IQ of a table leg will read that and go, "Well, that just means you're trans masc." No, that means you're fucking stupid. Let go of the idea that a table saw is equivalent to testicles. Please. The 1950s are calling. Go with them. Forever.
And when you use the term gender expression, you are arguing that there is a narrowly defined set of behaviors and preferences and appearance traits for each sex class, because you are talking about sex classes when you say "genders," and that when you slap on a pink dress and heels and lipstick you are expressing the gender of woman (which, again, is not a gender) instead of just wearing a silly outfit you can barely walk in.
I mean, what about butch lesbians? How are they not expressing "woman gender" [sic]? They're women. They literally can't do anything else.
Stop gendering every fucking thing we do. Sex is for making babies, not for picking out paint colors for the man cave. If it were about picking out paint colors for the man cave, you'd get kicked out of Sherwin-Williams for indecent exposure. And that would be fucking funny. If any of you could be funny.