Personally, I think the cure for this would be exploring the past and other cultures.
When you consider that it was one common for men, and in fact men of high class, to wear tights, skirts, robes, long hair, powdered hair, shoes with high heels... And on the other hand use women as bargaining chips in power struggles, and on the other hand, exactly opposite later, and including equality. Celebrate homosexuals, villify homosexuals.
Define gender (or lack thereof) in opposition, contrast or in conjunction to others - or not at all. By various means as well.
We're past even the remix culture yet many people still cling to cultural authoritarianism of Elizabethans and Puritans and conformism far surpassing that of the darkest medieval times, full of war.
Perhaps it is a way to reduce confusion about the world that is too complex to comprehend. Or an attempt to perceive yourself as having any kind of power or dominance or sense of belonging to a group identity, a no longer extant imperium, even if that identity is long term irrelevant.
The group within group perceives threat and reacts, by forcing yet more conformity, higher polarization up to a point of caricaturing itself.
So, instead of fighting one conformism with another kind of conformism (so common lately), why not find another way?
When you consider that it was one common for men, and in fact men of high class, to wear tights, skirts, robes, long hair, powdered hair, shoes with high heels... And on the other hand use women as bargaining chips in power struggles, and on the other hand, exactly opposite later, and including equality. Celebrate homosexuals, villify homosexuals. Define gender (or lack thereof) in opposition, contrast or in conjunction to others - or not at all. By various means as well.
We're past even the remix culture yet many people still cling to cultural authoritarianism of Elizabethans and Puritans and conformism far surpassing that of the darkest medieval times, full of war.
Perhaps it is a way to reduce confusion about the world that is too complex to comprehend. Or an attempt to perceive yourself as having any kind of power or dominance or sense of belonging to a group identity, a no longer extant imperium, even if that identity is long term irrelevant.
The group within group perceives threat and reacts, by forcing yet more conformity, higher polarization up to a point of caricaturing itself.
So, instead of fighting one conformism with another kind of conformism (so common lately), why not find another way?