Activities, clothing, hairstyles etc etc don’t have a gender, people have assigned them one way or another to reinforce the binary of ‘male or female’.
At times your comment reads as though you understand this, at other points you look to be confirming one designation or the other, one side of the binary or the other.
It would be better if we could go along with our lives without making a ‘Thing’ out of gender identification, without anyone having to think about it, nobody worrying about what liking a particular activity or wearing a certain item of clothing signified in the minds of others, yes absolutely it would.
The problem with going on about your life wondering why people are making a fuss about this when you never have to give it a thought, never wake up wondering or affirming, never worry about what reactions your choice of clothes for your day will draw from others — is that it’s just not that simple for so many people!
It’s a daily battle for a lot of people, emotionally, physically, to be left alone to just do what they want, or wear what they want.
It might be ok to you if someone looks at your clothes and thinks you’re a man — but have you ever been challenged over which public toilet(bathroom/restroom) you enter? Have you filled forms in and been confronted with a ‘male or female’ choice of boxes to tick — and known that legally you are going to have to tick the one which goes against your whole sense of what is right for you, which conflicts entirely with your presentation or expression, that people are then going to question you about that, perhaps becoming insulting, sneering, denying and threatening….because you are transgender, non-binary, gender non-conforming? Have you ever feared for your life because of someone else’s reaction to you, because they don’t think that your choice of clothing or makeup ‘fits' with the visable Adams apple in your throat (or lack of one), the depth of your voice, the shadow of stubble beginning to show on your face, what you have or don’t have on your chest or between your legs?
People’s lives are threatened all the time in this way. People are killed every day for reasons like this.
It’s for these reasons that we HAVE TO start thinking about gender expression/identity, all of us. When we make it SAFE for everyone to just go about their day, to wake up and not have to even think about it, to be able to get up and dress how they like without so much as a thought about what assumption either we or other people will assign to the choices we make to express who we are,to just live lives doing and being what makes us happy — THEN we can maybe start to drop all the labels completely, because you’re right, it would be better to never have to justify ourselves, to never even have to contemplate what we ‘are’, to just be able to Be.
Hopefully we’ll get there one day.
There’s a lot to do before we get to that happy point though and first we need to start thinking, talking, declaring and erasing the hard casings that have been built up around the ‘male’ and ‘female’ descriptors; blurring lines, opening up the space between, creating space for fluidity, change and choice - or just eventually seeing people as individuals who are who they are without having to make any choice or declaration at all. Where everyone is simply themselves and everyone is safe and happy.
Sounds like fantasy or scifi right now, but it it’s a lovely utopian ideal for us to work towards!!
