Genre

it is comforting to know the rules of something so you can obey them and be in harmony with others, feeding the “follow the herd” instinct

top down processing: taking things your experience and dropping it into a category.

“call a thing with wings and feathers and a beak a bird”

“My God, had women written histories
Like cloistered scholars in oratories
They’d have set down more of men’s wickedness
Than all the sons of Adam could redress.”

Gender as a form of genre: imposes its expectation, the genre actively shapes the way we participate and reinforce it

I am different people with many different people, the only thread holding my “self” together as a cohesive personality is the common genre of my identity, which imposes itself on each sub-genre of self.