I've been debating Graham Linehan and his terf clan daily on twitter for the last few weeks (now blocked by Rowling, Jonathan Ross and that Fred Sargeant guy Glinner loves so much - yay), so want to brush up on some areas, particularly around the supposed social construction of gender/gender stereotypes and how being trans fits into this. a common beef i've found from terfs with trans rights is that they believe gender is a societal construct, a construct that suppresses women and benefits the patriarchy. terfs want to get rid of gender roles altogether, and therefore bang on about biological sex as being the only thing that matters. where i'm finding it difficult is that i do agree that gender roles shouldn't be restrictive - girls should be able to wear blue, play with trucks and boys should be able to wear pink and play with dolls, and so on. my current view is that anyone, be they trans or cis, can wear or do whatever the hell they want, but at a deeper level, i guess what i'm trying to really gauge is what it actually is to be a man or a woman? if it's not about biological sex/genitals (which it definitely isn't), and it's not about gender typical roles (which it also isn't), then what are we actually talking about when we discuss our gender expression/identity?