My hill to die on

 GENDER: the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex. - Merriam-Webster Dictionary

..."typically associated"...

If I could have 5 bucks for any time in my life I heard someone saying to me, "you xxx [insert here a verb] like a man," or "you are such a man in this," I would be rich.

It always pissed me off because I wanted to have the right to be a "woman" and do and be those things.

I never believed that being one prevented me from liking gas turbines or not wanting to have children.

I fought for years for the right to claim that.

I always found fundamentally irrelevant the social "male" and "female" labels attached to clothes, attitudes, expectations, relationships, or physical attraction.

I see these cultural constructs as I see astrology.

Isn't it weird to think that all the Pisces are "typically associated" with intuition and emotion?

Or all the Gemini are "typically" attracted by Aquarius?

Like, really?

I know you are giggling.

So why should this be any different from expecting that ALL men shouldn't like nail polish?

Or *ALL* women shouldn't love engineering?

And if you are *very righteously* arguing that "identifying as a woman" goes waaaay deeper than preferring pink to light blue, I am there with you.

But, to be honest, after *I* stripped away all the "typically associated" societal tags, besides the strictly biological aspects of my persona, I am not sure (and I am speaking very personally here) what "being a woman" actually means.

I am *me*.

So, sometimes, I just really wish that it would be possible to be free from having boxes constructed around me in one way or another.

It kind of upsets me that instead of simply burning this "typically associated" shit on the pyre of nonsense, we are here arguing about who is *entitled* to be this or that.

But after a very heated discussion, I must admit that Laz is right.

[Yes, you can screencap this]

I will not live to see that day.

And people are hurt, and they are hurt now.

So, if my refusal to conform to the male and female stereotypes cannot be destroyed in any other way than one "they" pronoun at a time, I will be glad to die on this hill.

And they *will* see that day.