Understanding transgenderism.

[The Grand Nudger]

Said it before, I'll say it again.  There is absolutely no doubt that gender is a manufactured construct which references a specific culture in a specific time at a specific place.

Gender as a concept was created as a way to carve nature at her joints. A way of dividing things up, precisely because there is more to one's sex than mere genitals. This "sex beyond genitals" is gender. As such you cannot understand gender without sex, because gender is nested in it. Gender is what sex does, what sex wears, how sex acts, how sex thinks, how sex appears. You cannot stop doing and displaying gender because you are a sexual being, and everything you do can be seen through the lens of sex. No society is required for gender to exist. A feminine male is still performing his gender, in the absence of any cultural feminine classification.

That said, yes, we agree that societies construct trends, roles, and expectations for either sex. And in so doing create prototype for femininity and masculinity. (Mostly as a consequence of how males and females are already behaving in that society.) Culture is important, but culture isn't where gender begins.

Gender isn't what sex does.  Gender is what a society says a sex should do.    Different societies, different notions of gender.  No society, no notion of gender.