Help me articulate why this is sexist

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If you described yourself as ‘crying like a girl’.
Yes women are more inclined and encouraged to show their emotions. But it’s still sexist is it not?
There are massive negative connotations to the phrase surely?

I agree with Errol.

In Robert Webb's "How not to be a boy" he says that the only negative emotion that a lot of men are allowed to express is anger.

So sadness, frustration, disappointment, etc. etc. come out as anger and women pay the price for that.

“Girls can wear jeans and cut their hair short and wear shirts and boots because it's okay to be a boy; for girls it's like promotion. But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, according to you, because secretly you believe that being a girl is degrading.”

Ian McEwan, The Cement Garden

So if you are male and you do anything 'like a girl' (the inferior, penetrated sex) you are degrading yourself.

Of course it's sexist. It's part of the default assumption that girls/women are LESS than boys/men. So by definition, if you "cry like a girl" that is MORE crying, less dignified, less relatable, less understandable because girls cry easily/for silly reasons.

Similarly, "throwing like a girl" is a blatant statement that you are throwing badly because again, all girls throw badly. (obviously, all these are the baseline, sexist assumptions).

The "man up" type comments are the same but from the other side - ie it is desirable to behave like a man.

Dh saw a lot of this when he used to be out and about with Ds when he was a toddler and he said it really upset him every time. To see a 3 year old being told off for "crying like a girl" because he'd run out of bread for the ducks or whatever made him so cross.