@TinyCake
I see, so it is the whole idea of Gender that people are critical of. That makes sense. When I read the link posted earlier I was thinking but gender is just what society says is femininity and masculinity so it makes sense to me that people can identify anywhere on a spectrum or want to step outside being defined in that way at all.
Tiny, this is a comment (below, in bold) which I made on a thread that was asking what gender actually is.
Yes, it can be viewed as masculinity and femininity, but if you limit it to things like hair, dress, mannerisms, etc, you're not seeing the full picture and might be missing the implications.
The way gender was explained to me was a bit of an eye-opener.
It was quite simply that women are oppressed on the basis of their sex, and gender is the means by which it's done.
Due to things like inheritance, men wanted to control women's fertility, pregnancy and offspring. And of course, their sexual availability to only one man to ensure the lineage.
So women needed to be controlled (oppressed) on the basis of their sex.
And that's where gender steps in. Because you have to find the means to do it.
So women are too uneducated to vote, too unintelligent to be educated, they need to stay in the home, not get involved in business, cant be independent and own their own property, can't have a bank account. And they need to be sexually available to the man who owns them.
And of course, this is all true. Rape within marriage was legal. We couldn't own property or get a mortgage. We weren't accepted into university. And our abuse at the hands of men was not recognised.
I'm not sure exactly how far we've come, to be honest!
But that's the way it was explained to me.
And although some gender roles might seem positive, they still appear to serve a purpose. So women are 'nurturing and caring'. Which just means they are going to put men and everyone else, ahead of themselves. It still keeps them down.
Hence the absolute explosion of rage when women don't conform to this. Strong, articulate women in business, get called mouthy or a ball breaker. Women who don't nurture or care are called unnatural.
Whore, tart, etc, for women who have lots of sexual partners. Of course, no such slur for promiscuous men, because it doesn't serve the purpose).
So when people say sex role stereotypes, that's exactly what it means. The stereotypical roles that are imposed on women. And of course, men have some too. That probably accounts for a lot of the homosexual transsexuals, who weren't too keen on conforming to strong masculinity or toxic male sex roles.
So feminists want to abolish gender. Because it's a patriarchal tool of control.
And hence why I don't believe in a gender identity, because the roles comes from without, not within.
Anyone who does, to my mind, is cementing gender roles as innate.
That's how it was explained to me. And as a framework, so far, it's been infallible. It fits every scenario I can think of.
Gender identity as some kind of inner neurological, or religious feeling that you're the opposite sex, is, to me, a made up term to explain why some men don't want to be men. (Or women, women)