Gender, as generally discussed within acedemic studies, is essentially the segregation of characteristics and behaviors that are associated with a particular sexual dimorphism. What these characteristics and behaviors are are culturally constructed signifiers that signal that sexual dimorphism that develop over time and are more or less arbitrary. However, their meaning is derived from the experience of gender by gendered individuals and the performance of gender. Essentially, if your sex is male, but you wish to identify as female, the best way to do so is to adopt the generally agreed upon characteristics of a woman. But TreadOnMe, you ask, aren't those just stereotypes? Pretty much, yeah. But gender is real in the same way all cultural practices are real, because society as a whole accepts it as such. Variation is allowed, but only within certain margins in certain areas of society.

However, gender is particularly weird in the west because of the amount of outrage variation causes. A Hollywood actor doing a facelift in order to be perceived as younger is odd but perfectly acceptable, but someone gets top surgery and people start losing their shit. I think it has something to do with Christian sexual pathology and conservative Western civilization collapse narratives, but that isn't something I'd really like to study.

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Gender is what dolls you played with, sexuality is what cartoons you watched

So, I'm cobbling together a lot of informal understandings here, rather than a disciplined reading of Butler or other philosophers of the area. If another comrade with a more formal understanding wants to step in and correct me, I defer entirely to them. They are correct, I am trying to synthesize a bunch of stuff from a scattershot understanding:

I'm gonna short-hand some philosophical concepts here, so if they don't entirely land, I can try and follow up on them after the fact. I'm also gonna do this in bullet-point format, because I find dense paragraphs of philosophy unreadable.

• Gender is a socially constructed (which is to say: it is not intrinsic) role which is performed (which is to say: gender is a series of external behaviors and signifiers).
• This is important because it is directly opposite to sex, which is (at least for now) determined by intrinsic biological traits. What is critical to understand here is that there is nothing about gender which is inherently tied to physical sex.
• To make this theoretical model more concrete: Possessing a certain set of chromosomes and/or genitals does not, for instance, actually mean you 'can' or 'should' wear a dress. It does not (despite some claims to the contrary) make you better disposed to caretaking tasks or productive tasks. We can therefore understand gender as constructed in its Anglosphere form as the set of behaviors and signifiers traditionally assigned to individuals based on physical sex which are not in any way intrinsic to physical sex. This contains everything from expectations of appearance and modes of speech to socio-economic roles.
• One of the important proofs of the difference between gender and sex can be found in the ways in which gender varies from society to society. We can point to the existence of different concepts of a "third gender" (scare quotes because that's often a massive oversimplification) in some societies, for example, to challenge the traditional binary found in the Anglophone world.

So, now let's talk a little bit about Marxism and gender:

• First, I want to make sure that we clearly state that treating a superstructural element (and gender is mostly superstructural) as wholly dependent on and responsive to the base is vulgar Marxism. Don't take it from me, take it from Stalin (in his answer to the first question) and Engels. This is important, because one tendency of some Marxists is to treat superstructural elements as fundamentally derivative and without any motive force of their own. This is not so.
• Second, I want to emphasize that despite that fact, gender has been shaped by changes in the base that are easy to follow. Despite the way that modern conservatives emphasize the 'conservative' principle that 'women's work is in the house' or other such nonsense, the period they harken back to in order to justify this view was, in point of fact, exceptional, and their perspective is mostly bourgeois. The simple fact is that under industrializing capitalism, women and men of the working class both worked outside of the house because they could not possibly survive without doing so. We can also see this relationship in frontiers culture in the US, where the rights and roles of women were significantly expanded on the frontier long before they were expanded in the more developed east.
• Third and finally, the abolition of capitalist relations of production transforms gendered performance, but there is no reason to believe it eliminates them. This is important because there is often a call in radical circles for the abolition of gender. This seems to me, at the very least, to be a quixotic task. Rather than seeking to abolish gender, we must seek to liberate it - to free each individual from being assigned gender by society and allow them the power to choose, change, and define gender roles in a way that allows them to be more themselves, not less.

Gender is to sex as astrology is to astronomy

Gender? But I hardly know them!

This is something I've been wondering about. Queer folks talk about presenting as masc/fem but isn't what's considered masc/fem based on social norms and stereotypes? What if positions like "men don't wear makeup" and "women shouldn't be swole" stopped being dominant? I haven't put a ton of thought into this but basically, what is gender without stereotypes?

Like I don't like being trad masculine or even give a shit about being the traditional role that a man has to be, as a provider or someone who must commit themselves to a role or talent until death, but I don't really get the point of gender identity outside the context of what sex you prefer to be.

I know I put my pronouns to They/Them, but I don't really get the point. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not educated enough to really have an educated opinion on this.

I guess if it makes people happy to have an identity, then there is nothing wrong with it. My identity is basically is basically just a rejection of everything and fitting in no where and all it's ever brought me is pain and suffering

redpill me on gender

This may not be the best choice of phrasing, given the subreddit r/TheRedPill and their particular views on men and women and societal roles.

its a big bunch of baloney

Uhh so basically you got these labels, and they're kinda made up bullshit based on nothing, but so is the rest of language so if you wanna communicate it can be useful to use them. Some people find the labels limiting and prefer to avoid them, and that's cool. Other people like them and find them useful for describing themselves, and that's cool too. Some people get a sort of tunnel-vision where they see these approaches as opposed but they're really not. If someone is AMAB and they like to wear skirts, they might identify as a cis male crossdresser, or as an NB who doesn't give a fuck about gender norms, or as a trans woman - and indeed, the same person might identify as all three at different points in their life. And the gender police most likely won't care about the differences. Ultimately just do what you want and let other people do what they want and if you like labels you can use them, or not.

I've been suggesting Whipping Girl by Julia Serano pretty frequently recently. I don't know quite what you mean by "redpill", but Serano definitely talks about gender in very interesting ways. It's definitely very much written from the point of view of a trans woman, but it's really quite interesting and thought-provoking even if that's not your particular relationship to gender. So yeah, I'd suggest reading that. It's good.

Tbh it's just how you cross your legs

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