If sex doesn't matter, than why does it matter so much so me?

When I hear people say things like, "he is such a boy!" I vomit in my mouth.  Especially because 'being such a boy' usually means something like a child throws a rock or something.  The same can be said for the girlie things like...being obedient.  I have seen first hand how girls are praised for playing with 'girlie' things while 'boy' type stuff is taken from them (and vice versa of course).  I really feel deeply within my soul that whether someone is a boy or girl has little (dare I say nothing) to do with whether an individual will like light red (also known as pink) or vehicles.  The fact that we think it does makes us all a little bit crazy (and by crazy I mean just plain dumb).  Let me clarify.  I mean all this stuff for AT BIRTH.   Because, within seconds of being born babies are already being gender socialized which of course means different sorts of connections are being made in their brains.  I know this because I have my PhD in both Cognitive and Neurological Psychology.  Ok, I don't and I can't let the sarcasm stand because we all know sarcasm doesn't travel well through the inter-webs, AND there is a .01% chance someone who doesn't know me is reading this and might think I am actually that educated.  So, girls and boy are the same, right?  At least in many if not most ways.  Or maybe I should say that males and females have the chance to be the same.  Or something.

Ok, so...

WHY IS BEING A WOMAN SUCH AN IMPORTANT PART OF MY SENSE OF SELF?

I mean really.  Being a woman is WHO I AM.  It is perhaps the greatest part of my identity.  I love being a woman.  I love being part of the sisterhood of women.  This is making my brain hurt a little.  If I really think sex doesn't matter, than how can it matter so much to me?

Perhaps it is because we life in a boy/girl world and not a male/female world.  What I mean by that is that we almost exclusively use the culturally loaded words BOY and GIRL instead of male and female.  When a baby pops out no one shouts, "It's a FEMALE!" but rather, "It's a GIRL!" and instead of picturing I vagina (as I did when I typed 'it's a female') we picture pink-lacy-skipping-ropey beings instead of blue-car-driving-sneaker-wearing beings.  My point here is that maybe at this point there are some real measurable differences between boys and girls because we as a society have worked SO hard  to create this dichotomy (and the price for breaking these rules is severe).  Let me be clear.  I am not a biological determinist.  I believe that beautiful babies are born and the world is their oyster-until we put them into a pink onesie.

So maybe I am just using good ole practical common sense.  Maybe SEX doesn't matter when we are talking about little babies.  But maybe GENDER does when we are dealing with adults who have been heavily socialized to conform with the cultural limitations of gender construction.

Please forgive me for not delving into the implications for those who do not fit the label male or female.