If who you are and want to be fits pretty well into those norms, and you've rejected the parts that harm men, then no problem. But - there are at least 1.2 million non-binary people in the US alone. They identify as such largely because they are tired of being told who they are supposed to be. They just want to be them.
In addition, children are constantly bombarded with gender-based expectations from society and from the media, and they are reinforced by both peers and adults alike. Sometimes that reinforcement is coercive and comes in the form of teasing or bullying for failing to comply with norms. Boys are more likely to be subjected to this kind of censure, sometimes with terrible consequences. A study by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) found that “20% of gender non-conforming students reported attempting suicide compared to 7% of gender-conforming students. The data is bad for both sexes, but it seems to be worse for males.”
People who believe that the artificial maintenance of gender binaries is worth bullying and harming others over are the problem — not those who don’t fit well into their boxes.
Patriarchy (and all male dominated cultures) are predicated on a gender binary (how else to justify the marginalization and control of one gender?) For 97% of human history, we were highly invested in our own autonomy - to the point where even when we started to have chiefs and kings, they had little actual power outside of their immediate area. That's why so many indigenous cultures have more than 2 genders, and why even with gender roles, mostly people do what they want without the sort of policing into gender that takes place in patriarchies. A lot of the point of gender roles in indigenous cultures stems from a desire to ensure that all the work gets done - because there are few hierarchy structures.
And, it's extremely well documented that gender norms for men in the US and other similar cultures are extremely harmful for men - and for everyone else. They are driving violence in the culture as well as mental, physical, and emotional health problems for men. How is THAT not the actual violence?
“As recognition of the importance of men’s gender norms grew, there was and continues to be an evolution in global and public health approaches that recognize, leverage, and seek to change particularly harmful aspects of gender norms.” — Paul J. Fleming, et al.
Humans have only “rejected” radical individualism relatively recently — and yet, it’s always found expression — even when to do that came with a lot of negative consequences and danger. Instances in history of women disguising themselves as men so they could live in the way that they wanted to and that felt most natural to them are too many to name.
Western individualism tends to pit each person against others in competition for resources and rewards. It includes the right to accumulate property and to use wealth to control the behavior of others. In contrast, as Tim Ingold (1999) has most explicitly emphasized, hunter-gathers’ sense of autonomy connects each person to others, in a way that does not create dependencies. Their autonomy does not include the right to accumulate property, to use power or threats to control others, or to make others indebted to oneself. It does, however, allow people to make their own day-to-day and moment-to-moment decisions about their own activities, as long as they do not violate the band’s implicit and explicit rules. For example, individual hunter-gatherers are free, on any day, to join a hunting or gathering party or to stay at camp and rest, depending on their own preference.
Individuality and the desire to express that freely without censure is a core human value that has been suppressed in the past 10 or so thousand years. Cultures that don’t allow that (even ones where women hold a lot of the power) are rife with tension amongst at least some of the people — because they don’t want to be what they’ve been told to be, they want to be who they are. It’s THE most fundamental aspect of human beings, aside from a deep desire for connection/social togetherness. Those two things are not remotely incompatible — as we see from the vast majority of human history.
Enforced gender binaries are extremely harmful in all sorts of ways to all sorts of people — but most often to men — and this is well documented.
Previous research has found that men who adhere to the norms of hegemonic masculinity have worse mental health68 and general well-being69 than do other men. Additionally, they are more likely to maintain high degrees of control over their female partners,70 engage in more sexual risk taking,20 avoid health care clinics,71 and enact more physical and sexual violence with their partners.
All progress drives backlash. That’s not a reason to stop progressing. I’m certainly not going to stop advocating for gender equality just because of the Manosphere and the rise of Andrew Tate (and you can’t have actual equality if one gender is envisioned as better, smarter, more deserving of power). I honestly just do not understand why you want to live in a world where other people who have been long dead and people you don’t even know get to tell you who you are supposed to be — particularly when the harm of that is so widespread and so readily apparent in the world.
In a lot of indigenous communities, there are gender roles, and then at least some people don’t particularly follow them and that is seen as fine. I’m OK with that — but the policing into boxes that may or may not fit is just unbelievably destructive and incomprehensibly stupid. That’s the part that is not OK.
