So I've been editing some sims, and a problem I've been having is, I give a male sim earrings, I click over to another outfit category to edit that outfit, I go back to the first outfit and the sim isn't wearing the earrings anymore and is instead wearing a random accessory in the earrings category

I think this is a known issue, reported and confirmed as bug in 2019- here. I'm not sure if it was fixed since then.

Do you use Dresser? It's worth double checking that the settings for that aren't conflicting with your MC CAS ones, or temporarily taking it out to see if it's interfering. Otherwise, it may be worth bringing back to the dev's attention that the issue is still prevalent.

Editing the accessories themselves to be unisex should work, in the meantime.

I downloaded it recently yeah - i havent changed any settings though

and yeah its frustrating - like i usually have to go and put the accessories back on like three or five times until they stick and considering the accessories tab takes like 10 minutes to load-

unfortunately i dont think changing the accessories to unisex would work for me b/c 1. i have *a lot* of cc 2. i only want men to have female accessories in a few of my worlds, not all of them

If you could at least sort the accessories you want to be available for men into their own folder, I could make you a batch recategorization XML to change their gender flags.
Then you'd follow this tutorial to grab the IDs to plug into it and it will generate a package with those changes, which you can freely take in and out to reverse the changes when you don't want them anymore

Is there a way to also do this for basegame/expansion pack accessories? Or accessories I installed as sims3packs?

It's a little more tedious to get EA ID's, but certainly possible.
For .sims3packs, you would need backups of those packs to convert to .package just to separate their IDs from the soup of everything else.

Yeah, I would appreciate that xml file, thank you
i guess i have a lot of sorting through cc to do then

Here you go: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ojw54E ... sp=sharing

The tutorial I linked should cover how to get the IDs for both CC and EA items, which are pasted into the XML. Anything you convert to package for the purpose of getting those IDs can be deleted after, the file generated should be able to cover it as long as it's in the Overrides folder. Just make sure Ignore Store Content is unticked in the options.

Do let me know if you have any issues with any of the steps, it was the first tutorial I wrote so it's probably got some bumps to iron out!

Update: I'm trying to put female clothes on a male sim and that's not working either

I think there may be some issues with MC CAS modifying categories in general, for now.

But clothes include their body parts, so they aren't as lenient to allow for other ages/genders anyway. You would see huge seams where the neck/torso/feet didn't line up.