Should Gender Stereotypes be challenged?

[drfuzzy]

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 Yes, gender stereotypes should be challenged because there are institutionalised harms associated with them (e.g. misogyny, domestic abuse, child abuse, homophobia, transphobia).  

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 I'd like to point out that gender stereotypes was not magically imposed by someone. These stereotypes(or rather characteristics) were formed as a result of thousands of years of evolution.  

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For example:

Personality traits —

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 For example, women are often expected to be passive, loving and caring, while men are usually expected to be aggressive, protective and dominant.  

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The reason women are inherently passive is because of their relative physical weakness when compared with men, in an world without laws a women being blunt to a man will usually end bad. The loving and caring characteristics are because females are usually the ones that breast feed the child which creates an intimate relation with a mother and her child.
The aggressive nature of men are not because of a stereotype. It's because of their relative higher testosterone in their body which attributes to aggressiveness, protectiveness and dominance. This helped men, in the old times to fend off other ill-intended males from harming their mate and children.

I guess my point is, these characteristics are not a result of gender stereotyping, these characteristics were formed as a result of thousands of years of years lived in the wild and in the society. So is it really smart to challenge them?

Your statements about hormones driving stereotypes are well-put.

BUT - These stereotypes worked in illiterate hunter-gatherer societies which were always at war with other tribes.  The hormonal differences and gender-role differences were supported by evolution:  males got bigger and stronger and more aggressive because they are the ones who survived.  This, combined with misogynistic religious beliefs and female vulnerability during pregnancy, have kept females in the role of sex slaves - - as they still are, in some parts of the world.  And, it also restricts men - they lose the ability to express emotion, to show vulnerability, among many other things.
       Denying females equal person-hood removes an enormous pool of potential knowledge and progress from a culture.  Holding male power and aggression up as an ideal exacerbates violence against women, and causes more incidences of violent crime.  (The old "might means right" is just not a good thing in this day and age.)
       We need to dial back the harmful parts of old stereotypes, and support each other for our strengths and basic humanity.   

When I was a little girl, there were no after-school sports for girls - none at all.  When my Grandmother was a little girl, women were not allowed to work outside the home.   An unmarried woman was allowed to be a schoolteacher or a nurse or a maid - but had to quit work once she got married.  My Mother was allowed to get her own credit card in 1974.  Marital rape wasn't a recognized crime until 1993.  Equal wage for women still isn't a thing.

I think the old stereotypes needed to be dialed back.  I think greater gender freedom is a positive thing.