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People constantly conflate gender/sex preferences that are culturally/socially contingent and those that are universal (and thus almost certainly biological in nature).
Some actors obviously do this in bad faith. Like the typical feminist/queer theorist who says 'pink used to to be for boys, blue for girls, now it's the opposite, thus proving all gender preferences are arbitrary and that the idea that women prefer people and men prefer things is also arbitrary and socially contingent!' Gotta love those huge non-sequiturs.
Really, you can seperate gender preferences (including sexual preferences) into three rough catagories - (1) things that are universally/biological, (2) things that are socially determined but are influenced and constrained by biology to some degree and thus are not completely arbitrary, and (3) things that are socially determined and are completely arbitrary.
Men liking things and women liking people is an example of number 1. It is universal and biological, and reflects the biological division of labour.
Most (historically) gendered clothing fits into number 2. Clothing still has to reflect the practical needs of each sex, which is in turn derived from the gender role (which in turn is derived from the biological division of labour). But there is obviously a significant degree of wiggleroom which is culturally contingent. An obvious example is the fact that women wear bras and men don't. This obviously isn't an arbitrary completely socially determined choice. Though the specific designs or styles of bras might be.
Colour preference for genders is an example for number 3. There is generally no compelling reason why certain colours should be assigned to either men and women. This is culturally socially determined (though I suppose someone could try to make an attenuated evo psych argument about how red is biologically masculine cause blood or some shit).
All this basically applies to sexual preferences too.
Sexual attraction to well defined, feminine hips might be an example of number 1.
Sexual attraction certain kinds of modes of behavior (e.g. stoic, dominant nature in men) might be an example of 2.
Certain kinds of decoration, such as tattoos might be an example of 3.
I'm not going to deny that there are certain behaviors or traits that are dominated by genetic influences (if we dropped a pair of children off on a deserted island and they made it to adulthood, I'm sure they could figure out how to propagate the species), and I do agree with what you say generally, however I do believe that even in your post you overstate your case.
What do you think the world would look like if from birth all the media men were exposed to showcased men as caregivers while women were out earning a living? Where their male role models were all stay-at-home dads taking care of the domestic duties and their female role models were breadwinners? To the extent that we're all exposed to this pervasive monoculture(ish) it seems to me that it's impossible to say just how far we could move the needle on what you're describing with (benign) environmental changes alone.
From my other reply:
I would say that would be pretty dysfunctional society that wouldn't be able to operate effectively, most people would be miserable, if it didn't just completely collapse on itself. Men and women would immediately (unconsciously) attempt to reverse that situtation if it weren't held together by powerful social engineering/political force.
If you don't like the hips example (you can socially engineer people to deny their most basic biological instincts), another example is youthfullness being sexually attractive.
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Men would watch less TV? For that matter, so would women probably.
Or if it's actually done well, they'd happily identify with the female characters, and not think about it twice, like they do with Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor?
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