At the risk of going on too much, I've sometimes thought a bit about gender and its enforcement in terms of the three faces of power, as described by political scientist Steven Lukes. There's decision making power, non-decision making power, and ideological power. Decision making power is maybe your parents or teachers telling you growing up "no that toy is for boys, you have to play with these instead." Non-decision making power is shaming people for going out of bounds, it's not as socially appropriate to, say, have friends of another gender. And then ideological power is the tricky one, it's when people's thinking is shaped so they don't even realize the power is influencing them. It's women who support the patriarchy, it's never even thinking to try certain things because of gender, you don't even realize it's happening, that's what I mean when I say it shapes you and can be hard to dismantle. It's just another way to conceptualize the kinds of things you were talking about, I guess.