Can assignment be used with null conditional operators? - eviltoast

With regards to null conditional operators, calling properties and methods will work fine, e.g.:

HttpContext.Current?.Response.Clear();

But I’m wondering if assignment is possible? I get this error when trying to do this:

HttpContext.Current?.Response.ContentType = "text/json";

The docs say:

The null-conditional operators are short-circuiting. That is, if one operation in a chain of conditional member or element access operations returns null, the rest of the chain doesn’t execute.

So wondering if it’s possible and I’m doing it wrong, or am I taking “does not execute” too literally? :)