How is that “ massive pressure on kids to conform to heteronormativity”?
That distinction goes back to decisions made by a few department store managers around WWII. It’s nothing but a cultural norm reinforced everywhere so pervasively most of us aren’t even aware of the pressure.
Yes and me and my wife laugh about it but there is an obvious distinctive preference for kids male and female which will play into sales .. no one is forcing anyone to buy anything and even back in the 80s growing up I knew kids that would buy toys you'd associate with the other gender.
A societal pressure doesn't mean it's forced. Most societal pressures aren't. Instead, they are strong expectations and in occasions, frowning upon behavior that deviates from the expectation. This creates tremendous pressure. Just look at teenager social dynamics, lots of "unenforced" expectations become critical for them.
The colors used to be switched in the 1800s. Pink for boys and blue for girls.
And before that color was too expensive. But one wouldn’t say that gender roles did not exist. Color is nothing but an added expression like lipstick or horsehair wigs.
For some today black is the macho color, for others it’s the artistic color.
My only point is that because of the color switch we can see that certain concepts of gender identity preference, "color", are social constructs that influence society.
That just says that gender norms are malleable, not that they don't exist. Both in the 1800s and today there were strong expectations in terms of "expected" roles for different genders.