The range of socially constructed gender roles is diverse, often based on occupation rather than social activity. In agricultural societies the situation is often entirely different. Some societies even create 'in-between' categories, or 'third genders'. The eunuchs of India, for example, who are frequently invited to bring spiritual blessings at the birth of a baby, are often not perceived in terms of gender at all. Such categories challenge the idea of a universal opposition between female and male.
Feminist theorists bypass or dismiss all such matters, as irrelevant to the main issue.
They argue that the imposition of gender ideology is particularly oppressive to females, because the characteristics linked with femininity are usually negative and passive. Feminists argue that women's oppression is a result of men's categorization of women as an inferior class . Some see femininity as a wound inflicted upon women. For Shulamith Firestone, for example, the battlefield of gender is not just about partriarchy but also about reproduction. Other feminists have celebrated women's gender difference and taken the nonaggression of femininity as a political position.