I have an acquaintance who works as a truck driver. He's a big, huge, bearded man who could barely fit on the couch. And in his loud bass voice, he complained to me, "My friends tell me I'm too feminine." I was very surprised and asked what that meant. "Well, how? Men's down jackets are supposed to be black. And I bought myself a red down jacket. Now everyone teases me with a pussy."
It's a funny example, but most people form their gender identity according to the "opposite" principle.
Being a man means not doing what is considered feminine. To be a woman is to deny all of your masculine traits.
The modern system of upbringing is built in such a way that children get their gender identity through denial: "a boy is not a girl" and "a girl is not a boy. Children are taught to create their image through the negation of the opposite, that is, in a negative rather than positive way.

First of all, the question immediately arises: "Not a girl" and "Not a boy" - how? And then a lot of stereotypes are formed: a boy should not like bright colors, should not show emotion, should not like to be in the kitchen... Although we understand that it has nothing to do with masculinity. Opposing dolls and cars is as strange as opposing "orange" and "thirty-six.
Speculation about male and female psychology is ludicrous. If a man likes something feminine, the same red color, for example, he is immediately looked upon as a pervert and given a lot of complexes. If a woman buys a black down jacket, no trucker will marry her.
Does that sound delusional? And this is the nonsense that children are raised with.

Second, all gender stereotypes are arbitrary. Who says that not feeling emotions is a sign of a "real man"? Or loving to kill is "inherent in the nature of any man"? Or who can justify why a man should be able to distinguish fewer colors than a woman?

Fictions are needed to clearly separate the realm of the masculine and the feminine and to establish rules for relations between the sexes. But social stereotypes teach us everything upside down: a man, they say, is obliged to be less sensitive than a woman. And if he follows his true masculine nature and becomes, for example, a couturier, the truckers do not appreciate and do not support this.

You can think of many such stereotypes that you can't make up on purpose. For example: socks are an attribute of a woman's closet, and a normal man, of course, cannot wear them. "What about soccer players?" - I asked. "They can, it's like in the theater you have to paint your lips and wear a wig."

All these fictions arise entirely by accident. But for what purpose? They are necessary for any social group to clearly separate the sphere of the masculine and the feminine and to establish rules for relations between the sexes.
In animals there is no such question - the instincts tell us how to behave in this or that situation.

Third, modern upbringing shapes a deliberately negative attitude toward the opposite sex. Boys are told "don't whine like a girl" - being a girl is bad, and your sensual part of your personality is also something negative, something to be ashamed of.

Because boys are taught to suppress all the supposedly feminine traits in themselves, and girls are taught to hate and suppress everything masculine about themselves, intra-psychic conflicts arise. Hence the enmity between the sexes: the feminists' desire to prove that they are no worse than the men, and the machists' desire to "put the women in their place.
Both are essentially unworked internal conflicts between the feminine and masculine parts of the personality.

If you don't confront the masculine and feminine, probably the conflicts between people will become more complex and relationships will become more interesting. You have to teach girls to accept the masculine qualities in themselves and boys to respect the feminine qualities in themselves. Then they will treat women as equals.