Specifically, the conditioning of gender roles in society.

It raises more questions than answers.

Why do women like 'chick flicks'?

Why are men 'macho'?

Why is an alternative sexual preference an alternative? How is normal judged?

Can we mark specifically where in our (constant) upbringing we have encountered figures of authority or peer pressure placing stringent guidelines concerning our behavior based upon nothing more than our gender.

Boys don't cry. Boys don't hit girls, but if a girl hits you it means she likes you. Ladies shouldn't wear that. Girls are sugar and spice and everything nice. etc.

Is there a rational basis for the perpetuation of gender stereotypes?

We can already see that societal emphasis on lifestyle choice sometimes means hiding facts about oneself: closet gays, closet atheists, etc.

We can also see that the alleged stereotypes are the ones seen most often in media and entertainment.  How much influence did Happy Days, Dharma and Greg, or Will & Grace (examples) have if any on perpetuating gender roles in modern society?

How intertwined are self-perception and societal-perception? Do we care more for how we see ourselves or how others see us or are they equal?

Hamby has covered a great deal of information in his posts on the subject.

Perhaps a target that he hasn't addressed in his post-coitus predilection for perversion posts. lol.

Why is it irrational to teach children that 'gay' is bad?

Reference click: Works of Hamby

[edited for addition of link]

 Simple answers follow.  More in depth answers... well, some are in those articles Josh linked to, others I haven't written out yet.  Will try to address some of this in more detail soon.

In short, because chick flicks are about commitments coming through in the end and things like that.  Women have a much higher genetic need for commitment, especially after a child is a little older.  So, stories of families sticking it out through tough times are particularly appealing to women.  Men have no such genetic need, and in fact, there's a hypothesis that men have an evolutionary drive to abandon their mates and children when the children are old enough that they're likely to survive, but not yet fully adult.

Testosterone.  The more specific question you're asking, I think, is why certain macho behaviors become ingrained in our society, not what causes macho behavior.  Again it comes down to what women want, believe it or not.  (If you're ever unsure about why humans do something, it's a good bet that "because that's what women want, evolutionarily" is the right answer.)

Mating is competition, and males with more testosterone are more competitive, aggressive, and dominant.

Here's the PhD thesis topic.  I'm afraid there's no consensus on this one.  In my opinion, alternative sexual preferences are alternative because 1) they usually are less reproductively viable and 2) as a result, they are always going to be in the minority.

It seems counterintuitive that homosexuality always maintains approximately the same percentage of the population despite lower reproductive rates, but the answer appears to be that homosexuality is at least partially the result of very successful genes combining in particular combinations.

For an analogy, think of a game with two six sided dice in which you want to hit numbers between 4 and 9.  Any rolls from 10-12 or 1-3 are losers, but everything else wins.  Pretty much every time you play, 1s are going to combine with 3s, 4s, 5s, and 6s for winning combinations.  In fact, 1 can never lose on the high side, so that's an advantage to throwing a 1!  Similarly, 4-6 can never lose on the low side, so even though 6s are dangerous as a first throw, they often succeed.

If a round is a hundred throws, and we play a thousand rounds, we'll always have a certain percentage of losers, and they'll always involve the numbers 1,2, 5, and 6, but we'll have lots of winners with those numbers, too.  In the same way, each generation, there are a certain number of people whose genes combine to make them "unsuccessful" reproductively because they prefer their own gender, but they don't breed themselves out of existence because the genes aren't bad.  The combination is just unlucky from a Darwinian perspective.

It's not hard for me to imagine a similar kind of thing happening with people who are really into other alternative practices, but I think things like poo fetishes and more extreme things like that are probably more culturally driven than genetically.  At least I've never seen any indication that S&M, for instance, has been linked to genetic predispositions.  At most, we could probably say that someone has a genetic predisposition to aggressive dominant behavior, but linking that specifically to sexual practice... I dunno.  Seems like it might be too much of a stretch.

Yes.  Babies only a few days old already show genetic predispositions to gender biased behaviors.  Our society reinforces these quite unconsciously from the get-go.

Um... yes.  Didn't see a question, so... yes.

Yes.  As I've mentioned, gender biased behaviors begin before culture can possibly have an influence, so if we were to insist on gender equality in all ways, we'd just be setting ourselves up for failure and making both genders try to be something they're not.

How far we should promote gender stereotypes?  That's a political question, and I'm not going to get into it.

I actually don't believe most of the hype about the media molding society.  I think it's the other way around.  Society molds the media.  I haven't really put this down on paper in a defendable format yet, and I'm not prepared to, so treat this as my hunch, not a proposal.

Inseparable.  Self-image is not how we view ourselves, exactly.  It's more properly described as how we think others view us.  When someone says they don't care what other people think, they're lying either to you or themselves or both.  What they mean is they don't care what certain people think about certain things.  We all care what other people think unless we're extremely mentally disturbed.

I don't even like separating the two.  They're two sides of the same coin.

Now everyone knows why I like Hamby as a person.

Tits and a vagina and she'd be my crush. lol. Bald's ok, but the beard would have to go.

I do think society affects the arts rather than the converse... with regard to intelligence. Smart people see Knight Rider as a story. Ignorant people say, "Wow. They make talking cars!" I think the same holds true for sexuality and media.

Some people see Rosie and Kelli and think "That's awesome." Depending upon which channel you're watching, they are either heroes or villains. People still watch the channel you don't agree with and it shapes their opinions because they are unable or unwilling to form their own.

Sex is sex. I don't know why people are so hard on such a natural human process. Its just stupid. Course, religion does that with all of our basic human needs. We aren't allowed to want money or food or feel good about ourselves--it'll all send us to hell according to religion. Still, 'sexual morality' is a rather stifling concept. throw it on in, I say.