WARNING: I've been up 20+ hours with a severe lack of caffeine. Likely to ramble.
I would like to be in charge of assigning gender identities and favourite colours. "YOU! BOY! PUCE!" "YOU! GIRL! BEIGE!" "YOU! HERMAPHRODITE! MAUVE!"
As a masculine male, I feel sort of obligated to point to the XKCD where he jokes about men not seeing as many colors as women - no boy would know "puce" if it bit him on the head [either one]. Can't find it though
Anyway, I don't think Homo Sapiens can ever completely outgrow a certain us/them mentality, as the species we are now. We can work on making the "us" bigger, and on altering our behavior towards "them", though.
That is, protecting "our" group against invaders/foreigners/aliens/carnivores/... has its advantages and its reasons. Mostly, you know, no longer valid, but still. But whether it's skin color, physical gender, hair color, age, sexual orientation, place of birth, political stance, sports team, nationality, or anything else, we, in my opinion, need to learn to deal with the "other", not as an aggressor, but as something to explore and learn from.
Consider animals: some animals will see something new and scare away and panic. Others will come closer to investigate. Yet others will try to eat it.
We, as humans, show bits of all of that - a 2 year old will stuff
anything in his or her mouth. A scientist will observe something new and hopefully examine it closely. A backwards uneducated hick will see something different and draw back in fear (which leads to hate, suffering, etc).
In a way, I wonder if we'll ever manage to consider "humanity" as "our" group. Probably not until there's a "them" to pit against.(Hey, Watchmen had the right idea!) - there's a reason a lot of SF has humans as the (possibly unwitting) first aggressor.
However, I think there's been a huge leap made from what I said in the original quote vs the question asked here.
Do I think gender identity is important? Well, yes. I do think people, in our current society, need to find their gender identity role. I'll try not to lose myself in all of the options; as far as I'm concerned, they're all acceptable, no matter how many trans- or cis-'s you throw in there.
Do I think we could theoretically do without? Also yes...Though it would be tough. Our sexual identity is, imho, at least partially nature, but it's hard to be sure, as there's no point of comparison. I'm male, and I like women. Could/would I like men if the society I grew up in was based on homosexual sex? I don't know, nor do I think this is the place to try and have that discussion.
However, I think that we should not be imprinting specific presumptions and prejudices on children. It's not because my (imaginary) daughter identifies as female that she "should" like pink. Or dolls. Or tea parties. Or not like football, roughhousing, kickboxing, math, or construction work. "Tomboys" or "effeminate" men shouldn't be seen as breaking some weird gender barrier; they're expressing personal taste and thereby defying prejudices and assumptions.
I think your personal preference for, say, more "logical" things, or more "abstract" things, or a more "technical" leaning, or being a more "nurturing" type, are mostly nature, not nurture. It's nurture, however, that still says a guy who's good with his hands becomes a carpenter, but whatever.
So, I believe children should be allowed to try their hand at all kinds of different things, to "test" them for all kinds of different abilities/talents. Right now, a boy and girl with the exact same talents, interests and abilities, will still get served different tests, different hobbies, and likely evolve in different ways -one may end up a veterinarian and the other a wet nurse.
That has nothing to do with gender identity, but, oh horror, I sound like Charlie here,..."the patriarchy" if you insist, but in actuality simply "ingrained, outdated cultural standards which we're only slowly getting rid of".
Perhaps, on average, more women will be of a "nurturing" type than men, and more men are of the "technical" type than women. That doesn't mean "nurturing" jobs are feminine or vice versa. Saying they are, is somewhat akin to (but not exactly the same as, clearly, this is a parallel, not an equality) saying that "cotton picking" or "butler" are just jobs black people tend to gravitate to because it's in their nature.
