system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Gender neutrality of babies and toddlers...

When I was little I thought of babies as being neutral and genderless; and thinking abut it now I think my child-self was right. Other then obvious physical parts babies and toddlers are genderless. They exhibit no so-called gender specific behaviour. It is all in the way we treat them. We dress them the way we think boys and girls are dressed. We give them 'boys' toys or girls' toys'. We implicitly and/ or explicitly treat them in such a way from the moment of their birth that makes their fledgling personal identity develop one way or another ....or cause them a complex in later life if the way they want to be isn't the way we have told them they 'ought' to be.

What are Reddit's thoughts on this?
gpt
You're rather spot on; and there are large industries invested in maintaining this arbitrary gender divide starting as early as possible; think of all the products sold to either men or women, and the amount of investment in one's own gender required to pay some of the ridiculous costs associated with these gendered products.

Simone de Beauvoir, longtime partner of French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, in *The Second Sex*, that one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. 

Judith Butler, in her book *Gender Trouble*, argues that gender is performative. That is, we learn how to be a man or a woman by 'performing' gendered actions (putting on makeup, playing house, acting as a princess, etc.) repeatedly until it becomes so habitual that it is viewed (by oneself and others) as something completely natural; think about any part of your own identity you've recently 'found', and how awkward the initial stages of any part of immersing yourself was; the phrase 'fake it 'til you make it' is actually short hand for how we develop parts of our identity.

>or cause them a complex in later life if the way they want to be isn't the way we have told them they 'ought' to be.

Of course, be it as it may that gender is neutral in infants, there are interesting questions about the amount of social capital that can be given to a child based on teaching them to be match their sex and gender. Manly men are more likely to succeed in business because it is a space already occupied by manly men, and women are more likely to be treated favorably by society in general if they aren't manly women. 

That is, gender may be a social construct, and it does have real political consequences attached to it; however, there is something quite powerful in merely recognizing the arbitrariness of gender as a concept since it is so often used in arguments legitimating oppression and sexism towards women and effeminate men.