If it’s so innate, why does the child have long hair? Is it perhaps the parents enforcing a gender role upon a child and through the interaction continue to enforce a gender role upon the child?

Sometimes it doesn’t take much to really impact someone. There was a story I remember hearing about how a family had tried to raise their kids without specific gendered expectations and the son was really into something traditionally feminine. It was only after his friends came over and gave him a weird look over it that suddenly he immediately dropped the interest because he was told very clearly through the reactions of his peers that what he was doing was “wrong.” I imagine the exact same thing has happened with this child. From my own personal experience, as a child I had a high pitched singing voice and one day I was singing in the car because I loved to sing and my aunt laughed and laughed and laughed at how girly I sounded. I can barely sing in front of people to this day because even after coming out as trans and realizing that it was bullshit, the experience has made me deeply uncomfortable singing near people lest they laugh at me again, though this time for having too deep of a voice I suppose.

Normal people: “ thank you comrade daughter for wanting me to be part of your life and share your happiness with me.”

White conservatives: “ did you know my daughter has a crush on me? She kept telling me to brush her hair…”

When i was a little kid and my dad would wash me in the bath he would shampoo my hair into funny shapes and then I would put on a towel and run to show my stepmom

I did this because she was the only one who hadn’t seen how funny my hair looked, not because of some bizarre Oedipus complex