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Notes -
I have definitely encountered the hyper-individualistic idea of gender as a unique creation or performance that every person makes. It never made much sense to me, since I feel like it's a category mismatch. I wouldn't call something that has as many manifestations as there are people "gender" - I would call it something like personality, personal style, or something similar.
I think the other issue I have is that gender must play with the existing stereotypical sex roles in society.
If you can truly convince everyone that pink isn't a girls color, or that particular clothes aren't just for one sex or the other, you haven't created a world full of radical self-expression. Sure, boys will wear dresses and pink, and girls will wear boyfriend jeans and suits, but the meaning, the context of these things will have completely changed. It won't mean anything, because there will be no backdrop or framework to interpret these acts as subversive or unusual. It will just be one of many normal things for people to do, and when that is the case there is no point in actually doing it.
If AOC's "Tax the Rich" dress was something you could buy at Walmart before the Met Gala, she wouldn't have worn it, because the context would have been completely different. She would have gone with some other, completely different form of self expression as a form of protest instead.
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