I am sorry to say, but anyone who says 'I am Heathcliff' has anything to do with gender doesn't understand Cathy and Heathcliff's characters, the entirety of the book, the concept of gender Itself, and how this type of love between kindred spirits works.
Cathy and Heathcliff are kindred spirits, and they see the other in themselves and themselves in the other. They recognise in each other parts that are them. This type of connection often makes them feel that their souls are merged and coalesced together. This is what causes their intensity and passion, because they literally cannot stay away from each other without feeling violated. What's more is that they do not even need to have the other physically with them to be with them. As long as they're inside them, they would be fine. Ideally, of course, they would be physically together to fully realise their union. The way they can be inside each other is through each of them individually being their true selves. Since they're the only people who accept the other for who they are, they can only be truly themselves with the other.
@faintingheroine since you're Turkish, you must have heard the famous line from Leyla ile Mecnun.
'Leyla benim içimdedir. Sen kimsin?'
(Leyla is inside me. Who are you?)
I think it's the same with Catherine and Heathcliff. Even when Mecnun doesn't recognise the physical Leyla, her soul, her essence is still inside him. That's what carries him on. That's the real Leyla. The reason he doesn't recognise the physical Leyla itself is that she has been forced to lose herself.
Catherine and Heathcliff's love for each other is also their love for freedom to be themselves. It's in their veins, their most intrinsic parts because it symbolises the most essential human need, to belong, maximised greatly. They are both, at the most fundamental level, each other.
This is what Catherine means when she says 'I am Heathcliff'.
This book is very, very philosophical and goes to the most primordial and existential depths of human nature. Guillermo del Toro put it perfectly when he called it the autobiography of the soul.
As for how it cannot possibly have anything to do with gender, you're completely right that gender and gender roles are two different things and conflating the two only makes transphobes say nonsense like 'gender ideology' is trying to force women into rigid gender roles. Cathy can be a woman despite not being feminine (which she actually is, but that's another topic).
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