sometimes it's less like there's masculine and feminine things and gender neutral things, it's more like. there's gendered things and there's ungendered things. masculine things are ungendered feminine things are gendered. masculinity is the default and femininity is the abberation, the Gendered Experience. pants are for everyone skirts are for girls. suits are for everyone dresses are for women. you know
and can we maybe think of why a lot of historical feminist pushes to make masculine things gender neutral worked and now in the current modern day nobody bats an eye if women wear pants, but men wearing feminine things is still a hot topic of debate at best and grounds for violent assault at worst? is there maybe a word for this phenomenon?
it's almost like there's. a male default. activities deemed masculine have a value considered self-evident. and also considered default experiences. a desire to participate in those is considered natural. and everything outside of that is considered "gendered" and therefore Marked, as like, lesser, unworthy,
i think the simplest example of this is things are nearly always a he at default, if it’s a fantasy creature *he’s* doing something, if it’s an inanimate object it’s often a *he* - everything must be attributed masculinity because that is a societal default and unless something explicitly preforms and acts out femininity in its entirety (and even if it does, that isn’t often enough as is the case with transmysogynists) it is a he in some way and even if *he* isn’t used it’s dude or bro or any other thing that can be dismissed as something other than male defaultism. That defaultism is a reward that can be seen when something is explained not to be a *he* when a fantasy creature is explained to be aligned with femininity or androgyny it’s no longer annoying or a fucker or anything it’s a bitch it’s a cunt it’s a whore it’s any misogynistic comment possible because the lack of maleness makes something lesser and require some kind of societal punishment
