My qualm with this is thinking is that it supposes the gender role binary is created then reinforced, rather than emergent and reinforced. The key difference be

My qualm with this is thinking is that it supposes the gender role binary is created then reinforced, rather than emergent and reinforced. The key difference being the conclusion: is the gender role binary reinforced by oppressing individuals or is it reinforced by indulging individuals? My opinion and probably the most popular side across all cultures and all time: human gender role binaries are emergent behavior, and we indulge that emergent behavior. If humanity restarted from day 0, on day 1 girls would be playing with dolls far more frequently than boys, and boys would be playing with trucks far more than girls. On day 2, parents would buy their girl a new doll she wants and buy their boy a new truck he wants. The gendered behavior emerged without social construction of any kind, but because parents love their kids they indulge that behavior, thus reinforcing it. In your view, if humans began at day 0, what would happen on day 1? Would boys and girls play with trucks and dolls evenly? Is it only on day 2 that parents start reinforcing gendered behavior? Now obviously there’s a discontinuity here because there was never a day 0 for humans, but the fact that practically every culture across space and time no matter how separated, including all the way back to chimps, shows girls playing with dolls and boys playing with objects suggests that this isn’t some societal cram down, it’s an emergent phenomenon from biology, or group behavior (one sex is larger, one is smaller) that causes this to appear almost always.