A baby is born: we might say, “It’s a girl!” or “It’s a boy!” Even before birth: we might watch on the screen to see whether it’s a girl or boy, where that is decided by virtue of the absence or presence of a penis. The attachment to gender rests from the very beginning on phallocen- trism: on the penis as the decider of the future, two sexes as two paths: the sex- ual binary as fate, as fated, as fatalism. Even when we critique the sex-gender distinction, even when we learn from feminist critiques of this distinction (Gatens 1983; Butler 1990), we know that that distinction works as a form of sequencing: as if from sex, gender follows. We could call this sequencing “gen- der fatalism,” as implied by the assumption that “boys will be boys.” I remem- ber that utterance “boys will be boys” as one often made by adults, often with a nod of the head and an intonation of forgiveness: an unruliness explained as boys being boys; aggression, violence, even. Gender fatalism rests on ideas about nature as well as time: what “will be” is decided by “what is.” This is what boys are like; girls, too. But likeness becomes not only an explanation (he is being such boy; what a boy he is being) but an expectation. The “will be” in “boys will be boys” acquires the force of prediction. A prediction becomes a command. You will be boy. When you have fulfilled that command, you are agreeable; you have lived up to an expectation.

— Living a Feminist Life by Sara Ahmed (Page 25)