It seems these days that tomboy is looked at rather derogatorily, both by some radical feminists and possibly by trans too. Any smack of tomboyness, and your room is changed, off to the psychologist/psychiatrist and doctor for you! To be put on hormone blockers and then FTM'ed during your teens and raised as a boy. Talk about reparative therapy!!
In any case this is my response when one post in a group mentioned that the perfect gender neutral state that "no girl would be called a tomboy and no boy a sissy". As I state sissy IS a derogatory word and boys who were gentler and more vulnerable and emotional and girl like were beat up behind that word.
But Tomboy was a proud identity that DESCRIBED the kind of girls we were, we had a name and a Way of Being. Many of us grew up and graduated to Butchhood upon coming out...every Butch I know WAS a tomboy from a very young age. It ties all of us lifelong Butches together. Here is my post:
Tomboy is NOT a dirty word..whereas sissy is considered derogatory. I was a proud tomboy grew up and came out Butch...it wasnt the word but HOW I was treated for being a tomboy. The opportunities I was denied for being a girl, being shamed for not being feminine enough, and never taken seriously as boys/men are..and forced to wear dresses /skirts for going out to dinner and formal family events. I HATED skirts and dresses!!!And the humiliation for having to wear them...and wanting to play ice hockey which I got to do for only 2 years, the ONLY girl in the ENTIRE league, and then karate after that...I wasnt much for feminine girly stuff. And my family, classmates and others shamed me for not being so.
Just like Butch, tomboy GAVE me a clear identity I could completely relate as a very different kind of girl who rejected femininity!!! My favorite character I saw as me, was Anybodys in West Side Story, a tomboy character.
Being I actually grew up in the upper West Side as a tomboy leading the other kids in various risky adventures most girls feared to go, and mostly boys as companions on these adventures and that I fought and protected my younger brother, that character reflected me in many ways. And back then(60s, early 70s), there were very few tomboy characters or reflections of ourselves..
Tomboy is part of our American and Lesbian herstory and should be honored, not eliminated..
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