A brief primer in gender critical feminism & its intellectual roots (if anybody is interested). Apologies for twitter oversimplification.
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In fact, the way they function in patriarchal society is to ensure that one sex remains subordinate to the other. They are a barrier to real
emancipation. The task of feminism, then, is to deconstruct, and ultimately destroy, gender norms, because that is a prerequisite of real
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freedom (intra-psychic, interpersonal and political). It follows that what binds women together as a group can be a matter of biology
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(though this is actually a contested & tricky issue even for gender critical feminists), or shared experiences that are inextricably linked
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to that biology, but it cannot be merely a matter of identifying with a particular gender (because gender is contingent and constructed).
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Moreover, in a patriarcal society, to the extent that a person feels comfortable inhabiting a prescribed gender position, the more they are
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the more they are complicit in a patriarchal construction. This goes for men *and* women. So if you read about the history of 2nd wave
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you'll find there was a lot of painful wrestling with the issue of whether identifying as heterosexual, particuarly in the form that
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heterosexuality takes in extant patriarchal socities, is a betrayal of feminist ideals.
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In sum, then, gender norms in patriarchal society are both constitutive of what it means to be a "woman" in those societies, and they are
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coercive, contingent and a barrier to genuine female emancipation. If you identify with those norms, etc, then you are in some sense
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complicit with a patriarchal construction. That's the argument, basically - with apologies for oversimplification & lacunae.
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