So much energy goes into reinforcing gender, I wonder how people have time to live their actual lives. Or maybe performing gender is their life. I don’t know.

People reinforce their sexual identity with drag, that is to say, with costume, hairstyle, makeup, ornament, and mannerisms, and I am all for that, whatever their physical equipment or lack thereof. I’ve never been very good at drag, or rather let’s say I don’t feel like bothering with it for the most part, but I will happily cheer on everyone else if it’s their jam.

I notice I’m wearing a flowered quilted jacket right now, so one vote for female drag, but the rest of me is in the mode of Raggedy Andy–drawstring pants, t-shirt, socks, Crocs–and also right now, some of my very short hair is sticking out behind. I only dry my hair after I wash it if I’m going right to bed afterwards, and I have a basic man’s cut, even if my hairdresser insists on calling it a pixie. As I get older, people very occasionally mistake me for a small man from behind, but never from the front unless I’m wearing a mask and a bulky jacket, because I have breasts and a relatively small chin.

I do put a swipe of eyeliner on my lids and a scribble of pencil on my brows before I run errands, I admit, and always have, because otherwise people think I’m tired or ill. A small amount of makeup on a woman codes as healthy to most people.

My husband once told me confidently that women spend $10,000 a year on makeup, and I looked at him and said I bet $1,000 was possible for a lot of us, but I spent a lot less than $100 (more like $20). He didn’t look convinced. I don’t know where he thought I concealed all those beauty products. In my underwear? Buried out back? He did tend to think of me as someone like his mother, despite all appearances to the contrary and no matter how many times I told him he was delusional. The funny thing was that in many ways, he was more feminine than I was.

The other way people strengthen the sexual binary is the usual human method, which is to say emphasizing their own solidarity with their personal category, accentuating the differences, and looking down upon the others. (It’s a method that works equally well for race, ethnicity, national origin, health status, language, grammar, neurodivergence, economic status, class, and age, all of which are arbitrary labels without clear boundaries.) (There’s two bell curves in every one of those categories, and the curves overlap.)

It must be nice to be so clear about who one is, I conclude. Though that’s a disingenuous statement, because I know people aren’t clear about their identity at all or they wouldn’t have to reinforce it so much.

Yes, it’s reductive to say there aren’t any differences at all. I mean, I have female genitalia last time I checked. I certainly got pregnant, bore a child, and nursed the child, and though there are men and nonbinary people who can do that, it’s a marker of sorts. I have a higher voice, sure, and I’m average height for a woman. Against a top male fencer, I would generally lose in a bout (ditto against the top female fencers, though it would be a closer score, because I was pretty good and could beat a surprising number of men), and the weights I lift aren’t as heavy. I did have periods much of my life, and I’ve been through menopause, and though neither was particularly difficult for me, I can confidently check “F” on the box at the medical checkup.

I got on this rant because I have been reading Reddit too much, particularly the subreddit for the baseball team I follow. It is always amusing to me how men like to praise “balls.” You mean the little dangly tender bits? The things that, when men spar, they avoid hitting, unless they’re in a real fight for their lives or they are humiliating someone? The round soft things that, when they get too cold, retract, and when they get too hot stop producing all those manly sperm? The things some weirdos hang from under their license plates on their immense pickup trucks, where they swing like breasts without bras?

I make fun of six-packs, too, which are a weird recent fad generally requiring dehydration, steroids, and targeted weightlifting in order to achieve a temporary resemblance to a plowed field. And don’t get me started on “looksmaxxing,” which is a preoccupation of young boys with smooth faces. They don’t realize all they have to do to look manly is to get older, whereupon their noses will enlarge, their ears will get bigger, and their faces will widen while their softer tissues recede. ( I know this because it has happened to me.)

But I’m an equal-opportunity insulter, because I have just as little patience with female drag, such as lip-plumpers, Botox, breast lifts and enlargements, or buttock injections. And the GLP agonists (which are rapidly becoming popular with men as well) are a nice easy way of starving yourself, with all the side effects of starvation (hair loss, muscle wasting, confusion, nutritional deficiencies, lack of periods, and (if you go off them) the prospect of anorexia, bulemia, or gaining all the weight back). Anyway, I will never look as if I am 12 years old again. Hell, I didn’t look 12 when I was 12. I also don’t want to wear shape wear or high heels. I’m just over all of it.

I realize two things as I write this: 1. I need to get off Reddit, and 2. I have my own binary, which is between me and everyone else in the world.

In other words, nothing new.